Saturday 9.8: Cleans and rowing

Saturday. Metcon, 20 power clean (80kg, 300m row, 20 power clean (70kg), 300m row, 20 power clean (60kg), 300m row, 20 power clean (50kg), 300m row, 20 power clean (40kg), 300m row. Time 21.26.

We set up a time to meet at the gym with Juuso and Pauliina. My focus today was on power cleans and rowing. The workout turned out to be great. I'm hoping to get some squats done tomorrow. Heavy deadlifts still feel in my body but hopefully tomorrow's another day. In the evening we are gonna celebrate a friend of ours who's having his 30th birthday party. It's gonna rock!

Metcon. Time 21.26

• 20 power clean (80kg)
• 300m row
• 20 power clean (70kg)
• 300m row
• 20 power clean (60kg)
• 300m row
• 20 power clean (50kg)
• 300m row
• 20 power clean (40kg)
• 300m row

Nature of the workout was interesting as this was a high-rep workout to say the least. Descending ladder of weights on the power cleans, the number of reps remaining identical throughout the workout. 20 cleans was rough on the forearms. The heaviest set was singles all the way from the first rep on. My max power clean is 95kg so these definitely weren't light.

Second set - 70kg's - went on in sets of 4 reps, 5x4 with some rest between lifts. The bar felt clearly lighter compared to the first one. Breathing was clearly getting faster by the minute. On the 60's I did them 8-6-6. At this moment my forearms were killing me. The bar felt a lot lighter every round. On the 50's I got through in 12-8, and same with the last round. It was kind of sick that the bar felt like I was lifting air in the last round but still, my forearms couldn't take the heat. I mostly did the 40kg cleans as muscle cleans because it was too light to use any legs.

I tried to save my grip strength by using hook grip as much as possible. At least the heaviest singles I did with that grip, and then I started every set with hook grip but as the set went on I might have slipped to regular grip. Anyway, it's starting to feel much more natural to go for hook grip.

Rowing in this workout was more like a recovery period. My pace was somewhere around 1.50-2.00. That is slow and I took it that way intentionally. Didn't wanna burn my grip even more here because I couldn't have smashed the workout any faster.

I was talking Juuso over for a while to do Cindy and finally he broke down and started working. He improved his result with 20-25% compared to the first Cindy he did, this time it was a little over 10 rounds. Great job man. The real crossfit news comes from Crossfit Vantaa where my training buddy Toni nailed his first ever ring muscle-up today! We both started crossfit in the summer of 2012 and muscle-ups seemed like such a far away dream. But we've been working towards those goals and reached them. Congrats Toni for another milestone!