Monday 24.2: Push press, rowing and burpee intervals

Monday. Strength, push press 3-3-3-3-3 across (80kg). Metcon, 10rds of: 250m row, 10 burpees, 1min rest.

Old school! Presses for strength, it's been a while since last time. Surely I have done push jerks and split jerks but now it was time to do push press. I was thinking about skipping strength totally but then again, I couldn't find a reason for that so it was time to do heavy presses =) The metcon was something I saw from Crossfit Mayhem, Rich Froning's box website. It was the workout of the day couple of days ago. Tough one!

Strength.

• Push press 3-3-3-3-3 across @ 80kg

It was great! I felt super good after having done 5 successful triples, all at 80kg. It astounds me every now and then how far I've come with the strength and metabolic conditioning. For example starting push presses at around 50-60kg for 1rep max, and coming to this stage where the bar moves well at 80kg for triples.

My original goal when I started to crossfit was to build a strong engine that would keep on going no matter what kind of metcon would be thrown at my face. Strength was definitely something I needed to work on because the starting level wasn't much. I've come far from those first sessions, in both strength and conditioning.

I had a dream yesterday that I could do couple of sets @ 80kg push press. No doubt I could jerk the bar easily but press is a different thing. It was awesome to witness the bar coming up for 5 sets without problems. The 3rd rep was tougher on the 4th and 5th set maybe on the 3rd as well. But in general, I was very confident in pressing the weight up in the sky.

Metcon.

• 10 rounds of:
• 250m row
• 10 burpees
• 1min rest between rounds

Huh, there is probably a reason this was posted on Crossfit Mayhem's site. By the way, they seem to have nasty workouts, go check 'em out every now and then. It's owned by Rich Froning, 3-time Crossfit Games Champion, 2011-2013. Story tells this upcoming year might be his last one as an individual, he might team up in the years to come.

Okay, back to the metcon, 10 rounds of rowing and burpees, total of 2.5km row and 100 burpees. Both done in intervals. Full throttle for 250m and 10 burpees, then 1 minute rest before moving forward to the next round. I went all in on the first round. Was confident I would recover fully before the next round. Well, I did but as I kept the pace up for the 2nd and 3rd round it started to become disgusting.

You don't know how big a desire I had to stop it at 5 rounds or at least keep a longer pause than 1min. I'm very happy I didn't give any slack on myself and I simply kept on going. It felt horrible after 5 rounds. Every round was a stomach twister, my guts were burning and lungs were in fire, legs were fatigue and so on, you get the point.

Milko Tokola, 20 year old weightlifter from Finland, manhandling the barbell

After 8 rounds I saw some light at the end of the tunnel as there was only 2 round to go. On the last round I put all in and got better time than last couple of rounds. The round times stayed very stable even though the feeling was sickening by the round. Rowing was around 48-50sec each round. On most of the rounds I was able to start moving right away as I got up from the rower. On 2 or 3 rounds I had to catch breath for maybe 4 extra seconds (compared to a regular round) before I was able to drop down for the first burpee.

This was a cruel workout and definitely was a good one for metabolic condition. I feel like this type of workout are great for building a strong inner engine. Go try it!

Here is Toni's "Grace", benchmark workout of 30 reps clean & jerks at 60kg. As you might remember math is not one of his strengths, it's impossible for him to get the reps right =) He performed very well on Grace last Saturday. When he went home and checked it from video, the camera showed he completed only 28 reps. I really feel sorry for the guy. This was clearly the best Grace he's done, ever. His time was 2.59 after 28 reps.