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Crossfit Kelly, take 2.

Kelly as specced:
5 rounds for time
400m run
30 box jumps
30 wall balls, 20#

The box jump height isn’t specified; I did a 12” jump. Also, a 14# ball. And three rounds.Yes, I am a wuss, and these are the same mods as on my first try back in June. (I ran a quarter mile each time, though, and that’s very slightly longer than 400m!) On the first try my time was 26 minutes something or other. I shaved off a minute today, for a time of 25:15. All of my improvements were in the running portion: I maintained 5.5mph for a while on the run! This is so vastly much better than before that I’m boggled.

Wall balls still slaughter me, though. The whole thing was one huge cardio burn. My heart rate was at 180 when I got onto the treadmill for the last round.

The rest of the hour was TRX stuff that was hard enough that my hands are still shaking an hour later.

Crossfit Annie, take 2

Crossfit Annie is one of the simplest Crossfit workouts there is. To recap:

50/40/30/20/10 reps, done for time
double-under rope jumps
situps

My substitution was to do twice the number of regular rope jumps instead of double unders. (I still can’t do them reliably enough. Woes.) So in total, 300 rope jumps and 150 situps.

My time on my first attempt was 14:53. This time I did it in 12:51. Two minutes faster, woot! And really, it was all about cardio fitness, because my muscles did not fail until the very last round of situps.

The rest of the hour was spent doing two reps of a 9-exercise circuit. Each exercise is repeated continously for 1 minute.

single leg hamstring curls, 30 secs per leg
kneeling pushups, hands on dumbbells for instability and depth
ab crunches on a balance ball
bicep curls, 20# bar (or something really light like that)
single leg box squats, 30 secs per leg
Smith machine body row
stiff-legged deadlifts with 2 30# dumbbells
Arnold shoulder press, 10# per hand
extended plank, sort of, with arms stretched overhead gripping the bar used for the rows

My abs were toast, and those crunches were hard. Welcome back to work after a week off, oh muscles of mine.

Resolutions for the month of December.

I shall go back to the climbing gym at least once a week! My toes still aren’t quite right, but they’re good enough to climb with again. I miss the fun of climbing.

I shall make at least one visit to the gym for self-directed fitness-related program activities, sans trainer. In other words, I’m gonna show myself I can drive myself hard and get a great workout on my own.

I shall not drink too much heavily spiked eggnog, no matter how delicious it is.

I shall drive my ridiculous sportscar somewhere ridiculous on a sunny day, at least once.

I shall finish building my first model airplane, the lovely Supermarine Spitfire, no matter how frustrating it is.

I shall get out of the house for some brand-new experience, exactly what I don’t know yet.

Wall balls are hell.

One 14# leather ball, not very bouncy. One 20# leather ball as target for butt in squats. Now squat, thrust upward, and throw the 14# ball against a wall. Catch it as you come down to a squat again. Make sure your butt touches the second ball. It should look a lot like this. 15 of those slaughtered me today. Oh, I am such a wuss.

Okay, the wall balls came at the very end of a fairly intense workout hour. Today’s theme was a strength exercise paired with a high-heart-rate cardio exercise. The pairs:

20x pushups
2min treadmill on steep incline

20x overhead squats (45#)
1min jump-rope

20x lat pull-downs (70# and 80#, but 80# was too hard for 20 reps)
2min rowing at a 2:20/500m pace

Three sets of each pair. Nice, classic exercises.

The Turkish get-up torture.

Today I did Turkish get-ups with a 12kg kettlebell. Only I didn’t just do get-ups; I did them in stages just like in this training video. Three reps of each motion, working on getting the form right at each stage. This was an excellent thing to do, because my left-side get-up got better. Also, it was a great workout. TGUs are not easy for me. On the third set of this, my left arm started failed. This, of course, is because bad form exhausts the arm muscles.

It’s also amazing to me how much harder the exercise got when I moved from an 8kg bell to a 12kg bell.

What else? Lots of flexibility work on the TRX and a stepping stool. And a fiendish plank variation that had me moving from elbow to hand with one arm, then with the other, then back down again. That is, start in a standard on-elbows plank, move to a pushup position, then go back down. Ferocious. And in the category of exercise I call “pushup-related program activities”. As were the bench presses. 3 sets of 8 reps at 75#, with strict attention to hand position to make sure I’m working on the muscles that get activated during a proper pushup.

One more fiendish thing today: V-sits combined with bicep curls, with 12.5# dumbbells. Oof. I have observed that my trainer has moved me along to more complicated exercises. I never do plain things any more. Like crunches. I didn’t just do crunches today, oh no. I did crunches with an 8kg kettlebell held overhead.

Death by kettlebell.

Today’s exercises were a variety pack. Kettlebells, TRX for the trendy (yet difficult) stuff. My quadriceps were on fire when I arrived at the gym, thanks to Wednesday’s Crossfit Fran. TRX squats did not help matters. Neither did this kettlebell exercise:

2 snatches
on 2nd snatch, lower bell to rack position
squat
10 reps each arm, repeat for 3 sets.

I did it with a 12kg bell. Feel free to use a heavier bell if you’re beastlier than I am. My shoulder muscles failed on the last few reps of this. Really an awesome, well-rounded exercise. Cardio, abs, legs, shoulders all get engaged.

Also fun today: 40 second planks with a 25# plate resting on my back. Because regular planks are no longer hard enough, or something like that. 3 repetitions of that, alternating with 2 minutes on a treadmill at the steepest setting, and I was definitely wiped.

I’m also working on improving my pushup form by doing deep chest presses on the TRX. Some day I’ll do a good pushup…

Crossfit Fran, take 5, I think.

Today I did Crossfit nasty girl workout Fran, which, as you know, Bob, consists of
thrusters (65# women, 95# men)
pull-ups
21 - 15 - 9 reps each

My mods: 45# thrusters, jumping pull-ups.
My time this attempt: 8:04.

Last attempt my time was 10:31, with the same modifications. So! I do continue to improve! And I definitely consider Fran to be a reasonable fitness benchmark. My heartrate peaked at 178 and never dipped below 163 while doing this.

I gots shoulders.

I’m not sure I had shoulders before. I definitely have shoulders now. And I don’t just mean “my shoulders are wider”, though they probably are visibly wider than they were. I mean that I, as a person with a body, am conscious of having shoulders in a way I’ve never been before.

There’s muscle in them. Bulk that I can feel moving. Muscles in my back, making me stand up straighter than I ever have before. Muscles I can flex as I sit here in my chair.

Muscles that are sore after yesterday’s kettlebell extravaganza.

Heavy kettlebells.

Today’s theme was “kettlebell exercises I have done before, but heavier this time!”

3 sets of:
15 back extensions
planks, one arm and opposite leg raised, 15 secs each pair
2 minutes on stationary bicycle set to a very high level of resistance

3 sets of:
15 figure 8s, 16kg
30 swings, 24kg

Turkish get-ups with a 16kg bell (One solid get-up on each side, yay!)
clean and press, 20kg then 16kg (20 was too heavy for the press)
snatches with 20kg bell, 4 or 5 each side (ran out of time)

It’s amazing how swinging a heavy kettlebell hits my heartrate. I’m going, going, going, swinging just fine, then wham! Hello max heart rate! I did some figure-8s with a 20kg bell, just to learn what it felt like to handle that weight. Interesting. You really need to use your glutes to fire everything, or the weight just doesn’t move. Big muscles are powering the motions, and big muscles burn lots of oxygen.

Boxing.

Wednesday’s workout was nearly all boxing. I was in a bad mood because my former employer had laid off more of my former colleagues, so hitting something was a nice distraction. I stood on a high stool while Trainer Jeff lifted the sandbag up to me. Hooks in place, big hook into the eyelet on the support beam. Then he wrapped up my hands. That was interesting, and I can’t imagine boxing without wrapped hands ever again. Except that it’s a big time commitment; you can’t just leap into a bit of boxing-for-fitness if you stop to wrap.

So there I was, hands wrapped, gloves on, staring at 150 pounds of sand in a body-sized cylinder. It’s amazing how different it feels to punch that instead of punching at the gloved hands of my trainer. When I punch at him, I aim for his hands, which are away from his body. When I punch at the bag, I need to aim directly into it, at a point a few inches inside the bag. Aim anywhere else and I could hurt myself. But I can’t hurt anybody else. I’m punching at a thing, not a person, and wow, this frees me to punch. I was finally doing what I was supposed to do and getting my whole body into it. Hips, shoulder, legs. Fist into bag.

When I got the rhythm right, the bag didn’t swing much at all. I found it disconcerting when it did, because that’s a pretty big pendulum with a lot of inertia. Left right, left right, try to keep my feet in the right places, try to keep my hands in front of my face. Man, there’s a lot to learn for boxing. I know nothing!

There’s a huge power difference between left and right punches. Even when I set up a left with a right, the left foot is forward and it changes things. Fascinating. Also, I completely don’t get how to do uppercuts yet, not really.

Two days later my shoulder muscles are still sore from this. I find that fascinating as well. It’s aerobically intense, and I knew that from before, but I guess I hadn’t ever really put muscle into it before. And I was not conscious of having done so at the time.