Monday 18.5: Squats, Row, C2b, Hspu

Monday. Back squat 5-5-5 (max 130kg). Metcon, 5rds of: 20 cal row, 12 c2b, 8 hspu.

Back squats it is! Boom it can't be a bad training day when you have them in your schedule. It was gonna be rather heavy 5's so they made me a bit anxious as they usually do. Metcon was another inspiration from Atlantic and South Regionals, scaled to my level of fitness. Great one!

Strength.

• Back squat 5-5-5 (125, 128, 130kg)

My approach for climbing up to the working sets is usually different to what happened today. Let's take today's workout as an example. I would normally do warm-up sets of something like 5x60, 5x90, 3x100, 2x110, 1-2x120kg, or 5x60, 5x90, 3x110, 1x120, 1x125kg. I'd say either of those combinations would be quite traditional when doing sets of 5's at weights around 125kg. Some of those reps at 60-90kg sets would be pause squats just to loosed up a little bit more.

Today I felt good and mobile on my hips so I made a conscious decision of cutting the sets to 5x60, 3x90, 1x110kg. This time it worked perfectly. Jumping 15kg before the first working set is unheard of for me. I like to make the jumps rather small to avoid surprises.

The sets felt good in all three weights. I had in mind to knock them at around 125kg so it was a positive feeling to being able to climb up after each set. It was great and I think the heaviest set of 5 reps I've ever lifted is 135 kilos.

5x125kg

Metcon.

• 5 rounds of:
• 20 calories row
• 12 chest-to-bar pull-ups
• 8 handstand push-ups

Watching the Crossfit Regionals was a blast last weekend. The workouts were great and interesting, and it was a huge dog fight in both mens' and women's side. My favorite Noah Olsen dominated the competition and Emily Bridgers took the podium on the Atlantic Region. On the other region - The South - Camille Leblanc Bazinet took the first spot as the defending Crossfit Games champion. Roy Gamboa was legit all the way and pretty much led the competition throughout the weekend on the mens, never finishing outside the Top 10.

One of the workouts was 5 rounds for time of 25 cal row, 16 c2b and 9 strict hspu. That sounded just perfect because I wanted to have pull-ups. Better to have 'em c2b if possible. I decided to scale this one a bit just make it being able to keep moving constantly.

5x128kg

This workout was awesome. Clearly the most challenging part was the c2b's for me. Rowing is just "keep moving", and handstand push-ups were a lot easier than I thought. My upper body was a bit numb always after c2b's and I thought hspu's would be tough. But when I threw myself upside down against the wall, they were easy and unbroken each round. C2b's were 6-7 reps every time at first, then 1-2 sets to finish it. First round was 7-5, the following were mostly 6-3-3. I messed up the timer in the end so I have no idea how long this one took to complete. But it was consistent =)