Crossfit Conversation

I used to take every opportunity I had to talk about Crossfit with people.  Any time working out, or lifting, or running came up everyday conversation I would find a nice segue-way to chime in about how combining those three yields the best results, and about how as Crossfitters we employ "constantly-varied, high-intensity, functional movement" in an attempt to tackle the 10 areas of fitness (as defined by Greg Glassman, copyright Crossfit 1995 blah blah).  At some point I realized that wasn't getting through to anyone, so I switched to the scientific reasons why.  However, talk of the phosphagen, glycolytic, and oxidative pathways associated with anaerobic and aerobic fitness only returned blank stares and made me sound pretentious.  "Anaerobic and aerobic fitness...didn't we learn about that in middle school health?"  Talk of the psychologic, physical, and physiological connection that Crossfit demands only made people dub me the fitness "shrink" (thats psychiatry, morons) for awhile.  Throwing "increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains" means absolutely nothing to my friends who are interested in physical fitness, whether they be male or female.

After a time I got frustrated, because I am so passionate about this and fitness but I could never display this properly to anyone.  So i stopped.  For a time.

I think I'm finally getting it though.  As much as aesthetics are NOT a central part of Crossfit, lets be honest.  Crossfitters look good.  Its evidence-based fitness.  The people who I am trying to convince to try this are about 20, and body image is a large part of our lives.  I am comfortable promising someone that they will be stronger, faster, leaner, healthier, and happier (because I wholly believe they will be) to convince that person to try it out.  I've had a couple friends join me for a saturday morning "Bring-A-Friend-To-Crossfit" day in which we usually throw around a scaled FGB or other benchmark workout to give them a good taste, and when I ask how it went, the prevailing response has been "well it sucked but I kinda enjoyed it.  I also understand why you crazy people look the way you do now."  And those who have seen that and understand are the ones who are most likely to come back.

So you know what?  Take your shirt off more.  Lift stuff with ease that most people look around for someone to help them with.  I was helping a friend move in to her apartment last night, had a bag in one hand and picked the trailer up off the hitch with the other so her mom could move the car.  It wasn't super heavy, I'm not bragging on myself.  But that simple lift (new WOD: 21-15-9 bag carries and trailer lifts) had the other guys I was working with kind of interested in whatever juice I was drinking.  If you get the chance, and you can do it without sounding cocky, throw around some numbers.  A lot of us are able to lift 2 or 3 times our body weight, and sometimes for multiple reps.  Thats shocking to the general public, especially when they realize that its not a huge powerlifter doing so.

Just keep it simple for those ig'nants we have yet to convert.  They don't have the passion we do yet.  Also realize your audience.  Present it as a challenge if you are pitching it to a dude, or athletic woman.  Tell them they WILL get results if they put in the work.  Remind the girls that they ARE NOT going to turn into a super-muscly woman by doing CF.  They will get stronger, and shed fat.  That goes for the guys too.  Think of yourself pre-Crossfit, and figure out what you would have said to yourself.

Lets take this cult public!

Thursday WOD:
AMRAP in 30min:
400m row
400m run (w/ 20# ball)
-6 rounds + 400m row
-cardiorespiratory destruction...bruised a rib by mentally checking out on the rower and hurling the handle into my sternum repeatedly.  I is intelligent.  This comes out at 3.25 miles in 30 minutes, though, so thats a heartening time if I ever wanted to try for a timed 5k.

Friday WOD:
For time:
10 Pullups, 30 Situps
20 Box Jumps, 30 Situps
30 KB Swings, 30 Situps
40 Pushups, 30 Situps
50 Squats, 30 Situps
1 mile
-17:45
-came into this one a bit more under-rested than I would have liked, but thats the way it goes.  Adapt, Aaron.  My mile time was too slow, even for capping the workout.  I attribute some of the sluggishness to the heat (1:00pm in the Piedmont region is akin to a balmy day in hell) but I really just didn't have any gas in the legs.  Congrats to J.P. and E on STELLAR times on this one (sub-17).

Leaving wednesday for a two week trip to Europe.  I had initally considered treating it as two weeks of active recovery (lots of walking, some stretching) but Scott reminded me that Europe has boxes too...so heres a couple boxes in cities I'll be in:
http://www.crossfitmunich.com/
http://www.crossfitwerk.de/

I'm pumped.  International bonding over fitness!

Status:

• Body- an absolute wreck.  Hip flexors are killing me from driving all day, shoulders are joint-sore, rib is tender to touch, smacked my face on a barbell.  But honestly...I feel great.  :-)
• Nutrition- alright.  Minus the corndog I found in our freezer at school and the Bojangles I had on the way there.  And the donut at Dunkin Donuts.  Ok so maybe nutrition was worse than I thought.
• Sleep- Best I've had in awhile.  I sleep better in my apartment at school, oddly enough.
• Notes- I think I finally have the butterfly kip nailed down, at least to where I string together 10 or so (I did this afternoon) and thats really gonna help in some of these workouts.  I don't mind doing the regular kip but it can get pretty slow.  

Forging Elite Sarcasm

Best website I've found in awhile, short of lolcats.  Heh.

Aaron

Good news!  Headed back to Elon for a couple of days, so will be able to actually put some weight on the bar and squat something worth getting under!  The school weight room down there is fairly anti-Crossfit (they asked us to stop after one particularly rowdy Diane...) but they at least have a squat rack or two.  Then I get the true therapy heading to the Valley to work out with some of my favorite people ever.  All in all, should be a great day.  Except for the rounds of 400m run, 400m row Scott has us doing.  Pony up!

Got the shoulder work in this morning but today has been off in every imaginable way.  I had a little energy early afternoon right as a thunderstorm hit, so I couldn't run, which I had been planning on (fun little running WOD, 30 minutes easy pace with a full on sprint every 3 minutes) and by the time the storm passed, I was napping.  Only the one WOD today.  Had to ice for the first time in awhile, the left shoulder is tweaking again.  All in all, this is a boring post, but I'm determined to keep up with it.

Status:

• Body- Bad.  Hip flexors are so sore and tight that they feel a bit like spring loaded pistons.  Left shoulder is sensitive to most movement, and I can't press the fingers into the front of it.  The sound my right wrist is making would make Orville Redenbacher proud (gotta rotate that hand forward in my presses), and I'll probably need to go back to wrapping it for a while when doing anything overhead.
• Nutrition- Bad today, too.  I eat all the healthy stuff in the house too quickly, and then I just get so stinkin' hungry that I eat whatever I can get my hands...which amounted to two frozen pizzas this afternoon, back to back.  1400 instant calories, most of it useless.
• Sleep- Better tonight, but still leaving much to be desired.
• I'm going to be trying to get my shit back together and heal up leading up to and during the duration of my trip to Germany (15 days, leave on Wednesday).  Hopefully I can come back with my joints actually being friendly, well rested, and ready to hit the training hard.  Today's goal is to go ahead and start doing weekly programming.  I'm going to shoot for twoaday strength/metcons and either a lengthy, easy paced run, or a shorter, more intense run 3 times a week.  We'll see if my body can keep up with my head!

Thrust 'til you bust!

Aaron

The Why

The past two posts have been the What.  But I've been sitting in my room playing Call of Duty and just generally being a waste of space (because I have no job, hence no money for gas, hence I sit in my room playing CoD) and sitting usually ends up resulting in thinking, and thinking generally rolls around to CF or training, or just fitness in general.  So between that and a conversation with a dear friend about her being nervous about her first class on Wednesday night, I decided I need to figure out WHY I do this to myself daily.  Why I love the CF Koolaid more than coffee (and I REALLY love coffee).

Carly, my friend, was telling me she was nervous, and asking me what to expect.  I told her that thats one of the best parts of this cultish lifestyle.  You don't know what to expect, and you're always nervous.  Admit it, you know that if the T-minus 10 before the (loved, and hated) GO doesn't have your stomach in knots, your tongue stuck to the roof of your mouth, and a sudden urge to just run away, your WOD isn't hard enough. And even though those 10 seconds are some of the 10 longest you've ever experienced, its not time dilation, its just anticipation.

Then 3, 2, 1...Go.  And you obey.  You go.
The going...well the going absolutely sucks.  The initial muscle fatigue hits right as your sweat starts to ramp up, so right around the time you start wearing down the bar starts getting slick.  Figures.  Then you realize you're on rep 8 of 12 or 10 or 50, first exercise of however many.  So you grab some chalk, shake the shoulders or hips out quickly, stop thinking about anything except the reps, and keep pounding them out.

Thennnnn you can't breathe.  You're fighting the urge to start begging everyone you see for an inhaler, even though you don't have asthma...the sweat starts running into your eyes and the salinic sting is the only connection you have to the civilized humanity, because now you realize that you are primal.  You are absolutely feral, and the bar is standing between you and survival.

Enter adrenaline.  This surge is other-worldly, as you realize that gravity is losing its hold on you.  The going continues to suck.  But you realize you're flying...until you finish the last rep, or the bell goes, and you (gracefully, of course) hit the floor faster than the 500lb DL that you wish you had.  Make about as much noise, too.

You feel like you just finished an ultra-marathon...then you look at the clock and realize you've only been going for 8 minutes.  You only felt the first 3.  The rest, you were a machine.

And its there, on the floor, vision blurred, utterly gassed, devoid of air...thats part of the Why.  You know that you are unconquerable, even prostrate on the ground.  You are powerful, you are beautifully fit.  That its just a barbell, a pullup bar, a jump rope, or a set of rings; and you are something greater than all of those things combined.  You are capable of vast amounts of work (a shout out to all you physics nerds like myself: work=force*distance; where force=mass*acceleration; and acceleration=velocity/time (dv/dt).  It may look like mumbo-jumbo, but all I'm saying is that you moved a certain mass a certain velocity in a certain time, over a given distance.  Maximize mass, velocity, distance, and minimize time... and you've essentially got Fran.) that on paper look implausible for any one human.  And you know what?  You might have scaled it.  You might have done assisted pullups.  Maybe you had to substitute 3x singles for double-unders (guilty).  But you did it, and hopefully you put as much effort into your trial as the dude next to you who did it with the 40lb weight vest.

Another part of the Why; that same bro who did the WOD Rx'ed with the weight vest?  He finished 2 minutes before you, spent 30 seconds on the floor, and the other 1:30 before you finished he was cheering for you harder than he would have cheered for himself.  One of the most memorable events at my box at school (www.crossfittrainingvalley.com) was the entire gym erupting in cheers as a middle-aged mother got her first unassisted pullup.  I was as happy for her to get that, knowing how hard she worked for it, as I was when I got my first muscle-up.
The community aspect is the reason Crossfit is so successful.  I was apprehensive about Reebok taking the interest that they did (I'm an "underground" sort of guy) but I really think CF has invaded Reebok other than vice versa, which I was afraid of.

I apologize for the tangent, but can we petition Reebok to change the name of the Reebok Crossfit One affiliate to "Ree-Box?"  I would love that.

Well I'm sure as soon as I publish this I'll think of some other reason I chug the koolaid, but this'll have to do for now, because I think its cool enough for a run.

Peace, Love, and Thrusters...
-Aaron (aka Rn, aka "The Freak")

June 7th, 2011

I made it back.  (Paleo) cookie for Aaron.  I just finished WODs 1 & 2 for the day, my standard Tuesday morning WOD and a ring WOD for kicks.  I've pretty much decided that everyday (except Sunday) will be at least a two-a-day, and as such I have added some structure to daily stuff.  I leave one workout open to whatever I am in the mood for, or capable of.  But MWF I do the shoulder workout I posted yesterday (3 @85%, 5 @ 60%, and 7 25# DB- all strict press).  TRSa is morning legs, though.  So it goes a bit like this:

3rnds:
7 OHS @75#
9 Front @130#
12 Back @130#
2 minute rest

The weight isn't much but I have yet to NOT feel it, so I'll stick with it.  Its enough to gas the legs for a couple hours, but not enough to wipe you out for the whole day.

Today's second workout was a little ring routine I found here.  Fun stuff, but I absolutely CANNOT do the pseudo-planche pushups.  Something to work towards, I guess.  If it stays cloudy I'm going on a run later this afternoon.  I can tell I'll overheat if I go running shade-less.  It'll probably be a 30 minute run, with a fairly short sprint every 3 minutes or so.

Status:

• Body - Core is wrecked from yesterday, but not so bad that I couldn't do a few K2E warming up, and they were definitely there enough to support all 84 squats.  Lower back is better today, I'm assuming largely due to yesterday's fun.  Lots of twinging (not bad, though) in both rotator cuffs, due to the ring's wobble.
• Nutrition - So far, terrible.  Water and coffee, and thats it.  I cleaned out the apples yesterday morning, so looks like I'm headed for granola and carrots when I'm done with this.
• Sleep - Worst I've had in awhile.  5 hrs, with the last 3 being an uneasy doze.  I stared at the ceiling from around 12:30 to 4, and in true CF fashion, started running through various lifts in my head.  Therefore I dreamed about missed lifts and double under-induced flayed shin skin when I finally drifted off.  I daily run myself into the ground but I still can't sleep, if this keeps up I'm going to have to look to other options
• Notes - LegWOD was unbroken, and I'm glad I added the 2 minutes of rest after each set.  It really gives your legs a chance to recoup and then hit it hard again for the next set.  Once that gets too easy I'm going to hit the legs with some pistols and jump squats prior to doing the lifts.  No workout should ever be easy.

Fear the WOD.

-Aaron

Games Bound: June 6th, 2011

Games Bound: June 6th, 2011: "Never had much desire to blog, but I've been really looking for ways to ramp up my training in (hopeful) preparation for the 2012 Crossfit G..."

June 6th, 2011

Never had much desire to blog, but I've been really looking for ways to ramp up my training in (hopeful) preparation for the 2012 Crossfit Games.  This is an effort to find, document, and fix the things that are holding me back.  There are multiple issues hindering me, at the moment.  Diet (college student), amount of sleep (college student), money for equipment or gym membership (college student).  So its looking like me being a college student is what is holding me back :-).

However, dropping out of school to train is one of those life choices most people discourage you from making, and I'm in that crowd.  So I'm going to address what I can, in hopes of correcting a few things.

Introduction aside, lets get to the Crossfit meat!
This summer's ultimate goal is to drastically improve my metcon and endurance times without losing (hopefully gaining) strength.  My sorry little basement gym has enough for me to be creative with my programming.  There is one very unstable pullup bar that I cannot kip on (will be fixing soon...do you have any idea how hard T2B or K2E are on a bar thats moving more than you are?), two barbells with some assorted weights (that I got for 20$ at a yard sale) that amount to one bar set up at around 130 and another about 75, homemade parallettes, rings, a DB set ranging from 5's to 25's, and a couple of JS bands left over from post-shoulder surgery rehab.  In other words, I'm kind of limited.  Not going to let that hold me back though.

Morning WOD:
3 rounds:
3 Press @130
5 Press @75
7 Swimmer's Press w/ 25 DBs
2 minutes rest

3 rounds:
5 Press @75 behind the neck
5 Lateral Lowers with 15s (think of lat raises, just flipped 180 degrees)

This is a (obviously) shoulder strength workout, with the second half set up to address some of the shoulder instability issues I have always been plagued with.

Afternoon WOD:
100-75-50-25
Situps
Flutter Kicks (2-ct)
Leg Levers

Its beach season and I haven't had a good core burner in awhile, plus lingering lower back pain has me hankering for some midline stability.  This took MUCH longer than expected.  I bumped the Flutter Kicks down from 4-ct to 2-ct when my hip flexors started tweaking sometime in the 75 set.

Status:

• Body- Left shoulder was tweaky when I woke up but was fine pre-workout, and has felt great since.  If my lower back doesn't heal up soon though I'll need to take a couple days off.  Ice and ibuprofen has helped but I can't really pull with it yet.
• Nutrition- Apple and OJ with my coffee this morning, but I caved and had a few potato chips when I was craving salt post-workout.  Three cheers for dehydration making you think you want sodium instead of water.  Chicken casserole and whatever veggies I can get my hands on for dinner.  Going on a peanut hunt soon.
• Sleep- around 7 hrs. of very unsatisfying sleep.  That shouldn't be an issue tonight.  I just need to remember not to eat anything before I go to bed so insulin levels stay stable.
• Notes- The 130 press was easier than ever today, and I went through all 3 rounds unbroken.  Feeling the need for a good long run tomorrow if my back will cooperate.  The real challenge for tomorrow will be remembering my log-in information and posting again.

Wish me luck.

"Where do you begin? Perfect is a good place to start. We must always focus on improving things that are already perfect."

-Aaron