Sunday 23.3: Rings, squats and a metcon

Sunday. Skills, ring muscle-ups. Strength back squats 3-3-3-3-3 (125-130kg). Metcon, 10-8-6-4-2 back squat (100kg), 15-15-15-15-15 kb swing (32kg), 50-40-30-20-10 push-ups. Time 15.50.

Never skip a squat day. That's my goal, it took some time to learn how to love the squat but now I do so I'll try to keep it up. It's a cruel movement having a load on your back or front rack, going down and pushing it back up. Today I started by playing with the rings and practicing a weakness of mine, muscle-ups. Then it was time to put some plates on the barbell and do back squats. The metcon took about 15 minutes of agony =)

Skills.

• Ring muscle-ups
• 1 false grip muscle-up
• 2+1+1 no false grip muscle-ups

This is freaking awesome! There are just a couple of reps I've been able to do without false grip. I guess you guys know the difference these two grips have in real life. I've had only successful reps with false grip for couple of weeks now practically without any misses. But having the rings in my palms is totally a different thing.

I've been practicing those for maybe 2 weeks now, in few training sessions. The first one I got was when we worked together with my bro 8.3.2014. It was a huge moment to get that rep, we both got actually. Since then, I've been able to do some reps with this style. It's important to practice normal grip because that seems to be the only way how I can nail consecutive reps. I've got 2 reps in a row once and today I got 2 as well!

I took 1 false grip muscle-up for warm-up to remind my body how the transition stage should go. Then I took a double and 2 singles with normal grip and a kip. I wanted to take these reps on video so I could see how the kip / swing looks like. As I compare it to professionals I understand my movement is inadequate. It doesn't matter at this stage but I need to work on my swing. It has to be more fierce and I got to utilize my entire body better.

Strength.

• Back squats 3-3-3-3-3 (125, 130, 130, 130, 130kg)

After I took a PR on the exact same day we worked out with my bro 2 weeks ago, I've been taking it easier on the squats. There's a reason for that. I was on holiday for one week after that day and I was mostly training twice a day during that week, oly lifts and different types of metcons with running included. There was no room for heavy squats. There was pause squats included during that week and heavy overhead squats but no 130kg+ back squats.

On that Saturday following my holiday I completed Crossfit Open 14.3 with lots of deadlifts and boxes which made it challenging to squat on the following 3-4 days =) That deadlift set was tough! This Thursday I took heavy-ish front squats so now it was about time to hit back squats for real.

Took 5 sets of 5 reps in total. The first one was 125kg, then 130kg across the 4 remaining sets. All sets felt a little tough. For some reason my lower body felt like it's been hammered badly on the previous days. Maybe yesterday's workouts had an effect. Anyway, I knew all the reps would come up but I had to concentrate a lot and psyche myself up to the lifts.

I feel like the squats felt heavy today but I need to be working with heavy sets in order to make squats part of my "wheelhouse". I'll keep squatting on a regular basis.

Recap of squats

Metcon. Time 15.50

• 10-8-6-4-2 back squat, 100kg
• 15-15-15-15-15 kettlebell swings, 32kg
• 50-40-30-20-10 push-ups

Created on the spot. I brought my little baby with me, 32kg bell, and decided to rock some metcon with it. It turned out to be 100kg back squats, kb swings and push-ups. I had squats and swings in my mind and made a mistake by asking my personal coach Pauliina what third element she would suggest. The answer was: "push-ups are your weakness, take them as well".

Who am I to stand up against this statement, that was as true as it could be. Didn't wanna start bitching about having done 150+ reps already yesterday in hero workout Chief. Just suck it up and start moving. The combination of the movements was actually pretty cool. Squats burned legs, swings took breath away and push-ups ate all my energy from upper body. Not bad.

Having 10 back squats with 100kg shouldn't be that bad but this one surprised me big time. My legs were jello already after 6-8 reps. That was sick. Those heavy squats definitely were the reason for this one. Well, the weight itself isn't that heavy so I did them unbroken each round. 10 reps on first round, dropping down by 2 reps each round.

On kettlebell swings I fixed the number of reps at 15 reps per round. Total of 75reps with my beloved 2-pood bell. Those swings were manageable, definitely got to breathing big time, forearms and generally everywhere. But I got them unbroken anyway, that was the goal.

Push-ups… Good call by Pauliina. They are a weakness, no doubt about it. They tend to eat my juice from upper body very efficiently. There were a total of 150reps in this workout: 50, 40, 30, 20, 10 reps. I took sets of 10 in the beginning, then pretty soon started doing 5's. I was able to do either of these sets for quite a long time.

Then in the end it was more like 4's and 3's. I tried to keep the recovery between attempts quite short. That was my goal, just concentrate on one rep at a time, just keep on pressing up and down till you've done all the reps required per round. As I look at the performance afterwards I hope I had extended my body further to full lockout in the top position with my elbows.

This workout was cool. The first 2 elements were burning posterior chain and brought heavy breathing into play. Then push-ups are a "goat" that needs to be working on, never a bad choice. Thanks baby for the tip.

Here's a recap of the workout of the day