Saturday 19.3: CF Open 16.4

Saturday. CF Open 16.4, 13min amrap of: 55 deads @ 102.5kg, 55 wb, 55 cal row, 55 hspu. Result, 196 reps.

Huh we were running errands with Pauliina for something close to 7-8 hours in a row. That was probably not the most ideal preparation for training session. But that was not the first priority for today anyway. I thought I'm happy if there is enough time to hit it at all =) After we came home I jumped in the car right away and started focusing on 16.4 which was released the previous day.

Saturday's cheat meal

CF Open 16.4. Result, 196 reps (31 hspu)

• 13min amrap of:
• 55 deadlift @ 102.5kg
• 55 wall ball shots
• 55 cal row
• 55 handstand push-ups

I watched Ro vs. Boz battle from Crossfit's Youtube channel (check below). That made me think about the strategy how to approach this one. The thing that got me intimidated was the combination of deadlifts right into wall balls. That sounds like a murder for lower back. Anyway, Rory seemed to do a deadlift set every 30 seconds. I figured going for that same game plan and see how it turns out. It was the perfect decision for me too. Went 5x10 reps and then 5 reps to finish it.

Tried to go for the first set of wall balls quickly and start moving. It was probably 15 reps to kick it off. Then it was mostly 10's with rather small breaks. This started to feel more in my legs and maybe lungs. Don't know, maybe it was just an overall feeling.

It took me about 15 seconds to get to the rower even though my focus was to get to the saddle soon and start moving the "boat", no matter the pace. No idea of the speed I had on this rowing piece. Tried to just pace myself and get breathing settled in the beginning and then stick to the pace.

CF Open 16.4

The most challenging part of this one strength-wise was the handstand push-ups. I have those pretty well under control but going for 55 reps in a row is not a piece of cake. I went 10 to start them, then 6 and 4 reps, little by little they went to smaller pieces. Those got hard, no doubt. End result was a total of 31 hspu's and 198 reps for 16.4.

Saturday 29.3: CF Open 14.5

Saturday. Crossfit Open 14.5: 21-18-15-12-9-6-3, thrusters (42.5kg), bar-facing burpees. Time 14.29.

One word: Brutal! The last workout of the Crossfit Open competition was announced the other night (Finnish time), with 5 past champions on the staage at the same time. The reigning champ Rich Froning dominated the workout by going unbroken all movements and ridiculing the barbell and burpees. It looked like he's moving a toothpick when he had the bar on his hands. I wanted my share of the feeling and suggested to Juuso we'd hit the workout together. Yesterday we were celebrating and went out with my work team but we both went home at midnight and prepared for the workout ahead of us. Earlier in the morning my bro had done the workout too. So it was time to hit the gym with Pauliina and Juuso.

Metcon. Crossfit Open 14.5. Time 14.29

• 21-18-15-12-9-6-3
• Thrusters, 42-5kg
• Bar-facing burpees

The number of reps was high. When you start adding the reps together, it climbs up to 84 reps for each movement. 84 thrusters sounds bad already before you've touched the barbell. Then add 84 burpees with a twist there. I've done bar-facing burpees only once in my life. The mental picture I have in my head was that I remember spinning around without knowing which way to go. But I guess that's part of the 10 elements needed in crossfit: coordination, agility and balance in this case.

I think CF Open 2014 covered all elements

I heard my bro went to complete this workout at a local affiliate in the morning. He did a good job there so I had some pressure about getting the work done in shorter time than he. It's part of the bro-rivalry =) He revealed his strategy of cutting the thrusters in 2 sets. Considering my strength level I knew I have to cut most of the thrusters in 2 sets but I had planned to go unbroken on the first round. Decided to make it 14+7 instead because of my bro's tip. That was probably a good thing. This was a long workout so gassing yourself in the beginning brings problems in the end.

You have to know your own limits and capabilities. It turned out I knew mine pretty well. There were no setbacks during the workout, everything went as planned. What surprised me was that the burpees were tougher than the thrusters. No doubt the thrusters were burning my shoulders but they were more manageable than the bar-facing burpees. Don't know if it was the hop over the bar or what but it got tougher by the rep.

So on the first round I cut the thrusters in 14+7, on the second set it was 10+8. My clear plan was to finish them in 2 attemps all the way by completing most of the reps on first attempt. That's because there's a mental side of it. I didn't want to do them 50/50 because by doing most of the reps at first you understand there's just couple of reps left to complete so you don't rest that much between the attempts. If I had gone for 50/50 I think I would have taken more time off the bar than I now did.

On the round of 15 I did 9+6 reps, and then next round it was 8+4. At this stage I decided to do the remaining sets of thrusters unbroken, no matter what. And that planned stuck till the end, the round of 9's, 6's and 3's went ub. I tried to grab the bar as quickly as possible in the two last rounds because there wasn't much left to agonize.

On the burpees the amount of reps felt hopeless at times. Comparing the bar-facing burpees to regular burpees these felt like a never-ending movement. It honesty felt like the number of them is not going down at all. I had decided beforehand that no matter what kind of feelings would come up I would push them somewhere in the background and just grind through. At some point there was gonna be just a couple of reps ahead of me. And finally the last rep was done at 14.29.

I'm proud of this guy, Juuso, a brand new crossfitter I was able to brainwash to this great sport. He's been doing some spectacular workouts with me lately. Today he hit this CF Open workout, the first one in his life. Great battle, well done man!

What was toughest on this workout? Muscle pain in the shoulder area. Both movements burnt the same area. Breathing was also heavy from the beginning. That's always the case when you have thrusters in play. This is mental workout for sure. Don't rest too much between reps. Just do it.

Here's the first 10min of my workout. My camera can only record 10min at a time

Wednesday 5.3: Back squats and CF Open 13.2

Wednesday. Back squats 2-1-1-1 @ 140kg. Crossfit Open 13.2, 10min amrap of: shoulder-to-overhead (52.5kg), 10 deads (52.5kg), 15box. Result 237 reps.

Time for another squat day. That's definitely something I've forced myself to love. I recommend it to every one. I believe it benefits the overall preparedness when your legs are in shape and ready to keep the engine going. First it was heavy squats @ 140kg and then I reminisced last year's Crossfit Open by performing one of those workouts.

Strength.

• Back squats 2-1-1-1 (across 140kg)

I had in mind to take a couple of reps @ 140kg. For warm-up I took sets with 60, 80, 105 and 125kg. I was thinking about how to reach 140kg for the first time. Should I take a step somewhere around 130-135kg before making it to the final weight. The 125kg bar felt good so I decided to jump 15kg up to 140kg.

Double squat @ 140kg

I had an ambitious thought about making doubles at this weight. It was my 1 rep max for a long time. Some weeks ago I renewed it with a small increase to 142.5kg which currently stands as my max load. Having 98% of my max lift is not a walk in the park. Had an ambitious thought about completing doubles. It's already something considering I have lifted this weight up only twice in my life time. Both singles naturally, with months between the lifts.

Squat @ 140kg

You'll see the first set above. This is a day to put in the history books; a double @ 140kg, c'mon! I rested properly before attempting to the next set. The bar was a little too heavy for more doubles so I went on with singles. End result was 5 reps in total, a double and 3 singles.

Metcon. Result 237. Compare to 16.3.2013

• Crossfit Open 13.2
• 10 min amrap of:
• 5 shoulder-to-overhead, 52.5kg
• 10 deadlift, 52.5kg
• 15 box jump, 61cm

I've been thinking about the Open lately because it's very current topic in the crossfit world now. I thought about last year's workouts and remembered doing this wod - CF Open 13.2 - with a taste of blood in my mouth. What I remember from this workout was that it was a bad ass. Breathing heavy at all times, legs getting burned and overall it was a miserable experience, classic crossfit!

And I recalled it correctly, it was nasty. I improved my performance a little. Not tremendously but still improved. I watched the video from last year yesterday and noticed I was moving pretty much all the time. So I was wondering how could I save some time. Just thought about trying to keep the body moving constantly. Okay I got all the reps done unbroken. But if you look at the scores from last year's scoreboard, the best athletes completed way over 100 reps than I was able. That is sick. I'm wondering how those studs were able to move so quickly. And it's impressive that they have such a strong engine.

The bar was 115lbs (=52.5kg) and thus light. Had no problems in moving the bar. Toughest part of this one was box jumps, without a doubt. Those heavy squats may have had some effect because I felt my quads getting burned already on the second round of box jumps. Wouldn't have thought them to get smoked so soon.

This was a very good crossfit workout. 10 minutes is a short time but sometimes it feels it takes ages to finish. Got to almost 120 box jumps and that's naturally the reason my lower body was smashed.

Thursday 7.3: CF Open 13.1

Thursday. CF Open 13.1. Result 103 reps. I'll add videos afterwards, it takes some time...

Let the Games begin!!! Today was the first day possible to perform the first workout and we hit the Box immediately in the morning with Toni and Pauliina. It was time to find those mental walls and break them because it's a competition. I PR'd my snatch with 7.5kg!

Workout 13.1. Result 103 reps.

• 17min amrap of
• 40 burpees
• 30 snatches, 35kg
• 30 burpees
• 30 snatches, 60kg
• 20 burpees
• 30 snatches, 75kg
• 10 burpees
• max reps of 100kg
• Burpees must be completed to rings that are placed 15cm above top extension.

When I took first glimpse of the workout at 4am when I woke up nervous, the Crossfit Games stated it's gonna be all about burpees and snatches. Jason Castro - the man behind the Games programming - pretty much combined two workouts from last year: 7min amrap of burpees and ascending weights on snatch ladder. The outcome was descending amount of burpees from 40 to 10 reps and alternating with ascending amount of weights on the snatches, from 35kg to 100kg.

I completed the set of 40 burpees, 30 snatches of 35kg, 30 burpees and 3 snatches of 60kg. My previous snatch record was 52.5kg so I broke the record with 7.5kg, and for three times!!! Total of 103 reps, consisting of 70 burpees and 33 snatches. I must admit I was a bit scared during night when I looked that 60kg should be lifted several times. A bit of desperation which I had to shake away and do some mental job. Once I started the workout I focused only on doing the next rep ahead of me.

I liked the burpees for some reason. They are normally that fun to do but today I enjoyed them, weird… 35kg snatches are not tough, still I took them in sets of 5 reps. My strategy was different compared to a regular workout because of the physical limitations of the workout. It was absurd that I would hit the round of 75kg snatches =) So I knew there's no need to hurry as fast as possible. So I completed the burpees and 35kg snatches with a steady pace but still catching my breath during the workout. Time elapsed after completing the first round of burpees (40 reps) was 2.10, time after first set of snatches (35kg) 6.10 and time after last set of burpees (30 reps) was 9.18.

The videos are too large to be put on Youtube. Here is a link to Vimeo.

I had plenty of time to focus on taking a new personal record. I caught my breath for a minute, then took a rep that failed. It came high enough to get a boost of confidence. I tried another rep and it came up, c'mon! One of the most spectacular feelings in my crossfit career! It looked horrible but it came up =) I took another attempt, failed. Then another successful rep, 102 reps in total. On the last minute I got another one, my third snatch of 60kg, unbelievable results for me! A total of 103 reps in the workout. It would have been awesome to get a chance to pound let's say a barbell of 50kg snatches. I would have liked to do tens of them. Now we'll have to wait for the next Open's workout (13.2) until next Wednesday-Thursday night.

Toni's result in CF Open 13.1.
100 reps. He completed the set of 40 burpees, 30 snatches (35kg) and 30 burpees. Tried the 60kg snatch a few times, this time it didn't come up.

Click here to see Toni's video of his performance at Vimeo.