Monday Workout

still a bit sore this morning from the filthy fifty yesterday but went in for the 6:00 am this morning anyway. for the warm up we did a 500 meter row followed by 2 rounds of:

• 10 push-ups
• 10 GHD sit-ups
• 10 back extensitions

We then went on to do a bit of skill work. This is something new for my gym but it sounds like they are going to start doing this regularly. The idea is the same as in any sport, you don't improve your performance in a game that is done in practice. In crossfit the metabolic conditioning (metcon) WOD's are the game but you need practice too. To get some of this a lot of crossfit gyms break up their 1 hour classes into multiple parts. Start with a warm up, move on to some sort of skill work, do the workorkout (strength or metcon), then do a cool down. Some gyms do warm up, strength work, metcon, and cooldown and leave the skill work to you on your own time. The skill work is designed to help you improve your form on a particular move or class of moves and is usually done with little or no weight with a coach watching and correcting. The idea is if you do the move correctly with little or no weight over and over again you will do it correctly when you have weight on the bar. I like this idea a lot and am glad to see my gym going in this direction. I think I mentioned before that I am more interested in good form than kicking ass on the times. We worked on cleans today for skills. We did some med ball cleans and empty bar cleans. The coach broke the moves into their individual components and had us perform each on its own and then put them together. I think this addition will be helpful and am looking forward to more, although it did take a long time to get through the workout today.

We then moved on to the workout which was strength based.

3,3,2,2,1 for weight (complete all sets of each exercise before moving on)

• shoulder press
• push press
• push jerk

My results were

• shoulder press - 85#/95#/105#/110# Failed after 1/115#
• push press - 105#/115#/125#/130# Failed after 1/130#
• push jerk - 105#/125#/130#/135# Failed after 1/135#

I am relatively happy with these numbers. I think last time I did a shoulder press max I also did 115# and I don't think I have done a max on the others before. I feel like I must have got the numbers pretty close given the fact that I failed on my second rep on the 4th set for every exercise. when I say I failed I mean I dropped the bar on the second attempt each time not just that I could not get it. I also am happy with the fact that I then came back and put that weight or higher up for the final rep.

This is my last trip to the gym for a while since I will be out of town for a hockey tournament in Las Vegas. If you want to follow our progress you can go here and sign up for notifications. I am playing on the Frederick Force in the Red Flag division. we have 2 games a day for most of the weekend assuming we keep winning so I think the missed gym days will be fine. I might do something at some point anyway though.