The mile time is correct, it's just that no one has really been competitive in chasing down the time. I'll take it in a couple of weeks but i'm sure that will just inspire the top tiers of the gym to chase it down.

Doing SS before CF was really beneficial for me. Possibly even more so than if I were to have spent that time doing CF itself. So no need to sweat about waiting too much.

That much?

Yea there's a lot of things from crossfit I could probably still incorporate into my workouts.
One thing, I think they are called couplets? Is there a list of those available online somewhere? Things such as that burpee/rowing challenge can be done in almost any gym.

ONce you're experienced in crossfit and can do all the individual excercises/stunts...do you just head to their gym at a scheduled time..warm up stretch and just knock out the WOD and head home? even if the WOD only took 6 or 7 minutes!? I know now you're prolly spending a lot of time there working on the timing and coordination of some of the excercises but after that is just 1 WOD every day enough of a workout ?

Even the experienced CFers will be there for at least 1 hour with short WODs. I think the LONG learning curve is what really appeals to people about CF. Even if you spend a couple of years getting your Olympic lifting form down then there's probably a lot of gymnastic progressions they want to achieve, or rowing times or PBs on lifts etc. Plus our gym always follows the pattern of 2 WODs, something heavy then something fast or a skill then something heavy and fast. Even if they did just to do those two it would easily be enough of a work out, there's a couple of guys who seem to do just that and they have always made progression and progression on their lifting numbers.

A couplet is just two exercises in one WOD. or less simply more elitist put from the CF journal:

for the record, crossfit didn't invent this idea of "couplets."

Bench was 70kg. Pull ups were blue band assisted. I probably could do 10 x 5 kipping pull ups now but the whole WOD took a lot out of grip strength.

Today was:

"Litvinov"

5 rounds, each for time:

8 Front Squats @ 65% of 1RM

Sprint 400m

Rest 3 minutes between rounds.

I used two 20kg KBs for the front squats.



AFTER the first round we were told we would have to do 1 burpee per 2 seconds difference from each split compared to our best split time, when the workout finished. Brutal but fun idea. I owed 26 burpees for starting off too fast. It was a really tough workout.

Rob Orlando is visiting the gym tomorrow which is a big deal in the crossfit circle.

Being slightly more conscious of eating bigger than I normally would. Yesterday felt like a big eating day for me which was:

I'm pretty shocked i hit 5000kcal. Happy that it seems even on days that I don't eat that much i'm getting at least 3000kcal. Normally i'd only have 1 maybe 2 servings of protein and not as many nuts. Protein is too high obv, I'd like to get to 40/40/30 p/f/c and i'd like milk to be less a part of my nutrition so less milk and protein, more veg and nuts.

I think I def need around 5000kcal on work out days. Maybe more. It's a 2.6 mile round trip run to the gym and back then at least 90 minutes of low intensity practice or mobility work then 2 WODs plus my base rate of metabolism at ~180lb (really not sure how much i weigh). Might try eating in a leangains style.

5K cals sounds like alot

should have done heavier deadlifts but everything else was still tough.

Pretty dumb WOD IMO; def dumb WOD when doing single unders. It was surprisingly my hip flexors feeling worse from the sit ups.

Very good partner WOD. You rest while your partner works. The 1k Row was split up between us as 4 x 250m. We got 7 rounds + 5 box jumps. I went first so did 4 of them. The starts were staggered so it was a team vs team which helped for an add push. The box jumps were the killer for me.

Practiced handstands, kipping and started a muscle up progression. I'll probably regret these words but i think i might get my first muscle up fairly quickly as the transition felt smooth.

Did another physio session about my knee. Learnt I have terrible lumbar and thoracic curve/flexibility. More things to work on.

I think you should drop the crossfit and take up muay thai kickboxing and/or brazilian jiu jitsu.

will do both eventually.

Hit some PBs on my lifts today which i'm very happy with. I'm ~83kg.

3 plate deadlift which i've wanted to get for a while. went up easy. the coach said it wasn't ugly enough to be my 1rm so tried 150 which i couldn't move and then couldn't move 145. happy still.

57.5kg press which was easier than expected since i've only once hit 50kg x 5 x 3

85kg bench. happy to get that first milestone of BW bench. again went easy but failed on 87.5kg.

my eyes are blood shot after all those.

the 3 of them are pretty close to intermediate club. I want to get all the 5 lifts at intermediate standard. tried squatting again today w/ just the bar but my knee inflames right away, just going to have to be patient with it and continue mobility. then need to learn the power clean obv.

Today was my first day of switching over to Crossfit Endurance.

The goal is to use crossfit and crossfit endurance to run the London Marathon 2012, the slightly more intimidating goal is to use CFE to run the Comrades Ultramarathon in June 2012, using my London Marathon time as the entry requirement.



I'm moving to San Diego for 3 months from middle of November so i'll run the Vegas Half Marathon along the strip as a tester to how much overlap there is to long slow endurance runs from this.

The CFE page is so confusing and so unpolished that I haven't completely decided on my programming yet but i've gone back in the blog entries to the start of a program and going to take it from there.

Today was tabata intervals. 20s on 10s off 8 repeats. They felt great. I'm trying to change up my running form to POSE style, learning from the CF journal articles on it and it's a lot easier to run this way when running fast.

Then 3 hours later did the CF WOD



I was terrible at the gymnastics and the WOD. Gymnastics movements were my first time doing them and the WOD was tough because my forearms burned out so early, so I had to switch to assisted for the final round and I was so exhausted that even single unders became a big challenge.

when you gunna start climbing?

Eventually man, eventually. It's kicking around in my head as one of the many things I want to take up and do semi-regularly. If you're back in AZ while i'm in SD let us know and we can do it then.

WOD:



Practiced muscle up progressions before this; **** false grip.

Split the partner WOD to take turns anyway we liked. Instead of Squat Clean Thrusters at 50kg what i was doing was more Deadlift Reverse Curl Push Presses at 35kg. Need to practice form obv. I was dying at the end and we switched to doing a single SCT each, obviously not wanting to let your partner down pushes you and it was brutal.

Thursday I went down and just did practice and mobility work. I finally have the flexibility to be able to sit semi comfortable at the bottom of my squat and spend some time there. Before that was the CFE WOD which was 6 repeats of 2min on 2min off.

Friday I spent all day curing a hang over and then Sunday I did the same. Saturday some KB messing around.

Today instead of Sunday I did the 10k CFE workout. Went out w/ a friend so easy pace, it was my first 'long' run in ages and felt very easy at about 9.5min/miles.

WOD:


Brutal weekend made me slow. Practiced form rather than working up to a 3RM, big improves in squat form from all the mobility. Played squash on the night.

just do SS/running training on the alternating days imo for running. i'll be running the boston marathon this year doing my training, it'll be interesting to see who goes faster, that is a challenge. i must defend the honor of ss gomad.. and marathon running..?

haha gl dude. lmk what your running program is.

I think 5/3/1 would be better for me now if i were to do a strength only program. For running I'm going to follow crossfitendurance.com, consider the challenge accepted!

Lazy week of training. CF twice, CFE zero, zero strength sessions, lots of beer, hang overs and squash though.

This was the additional WOD:

CFE:

5km Time Trial (TT) - 21:20 6:40min/mile pace. I'm happy with it. It's the fastest I've ever been by a long shot. From reading around i'm still a LONG way from my 18 minute 3 mile goal but I have 9 months of CF and CFE training ahead of me for my ultra marathon so I imagine it'll come at some point without direct training.

Monday:


That was a lot tougher than expected.

Got 120kg for 5 w/ good form then 130kg for 3. I believe my i'm not using my quads enough at the start and end of the movement, i.e. lifting my hips first and then opening them at the start. I think it's because my set up point has my hips higher than needed and I'm doing more of a 'row' lift than needed. Will have videos soon.

Today:

CFE: 3 x (200m + 400m + 600m) Work:Rest 1:1. Rest the exact time it takes to complete each interval in a set.

I'm an idiot and thought it was 200m 400m 800m, in fact i only just now realised this - I didn't have GPS so I did it by times of (50s on 50s off + 100s on 100s off + 200s on 200s off) x 3 holding pace.

I was nowhere near fully recovered from the squats, kettlebells and runs on Monday and the run on Sunday, so it was tough.

CF:


5 hours later for this though i felt great. I practiced my squat form and pistols. I have a massive imbalance in stability on my left leg compared to right leg. For squats, I used a tied small resistance band around my knees to feel pushing them out and keeping them out, i think in the past i've let them slide in at the bottom and it was cause for my knee injury, the band helped highlight this.

We split the row up 500 each, i pulled it at 1:38 which felt very easy. I scaled the dips w/ a blue band but with the rings high so there wasn't that much tension. My partner was super fast so not much rest time.

Enjoyed this WOD a lot. I was miserable on the run. I don't think i have enough foundation to be CFing 4 times a week and CFing 3 times a week yet. Eventually though.