Thursday 31.7: Back squat, pair workout with Joni

Thursday. Strength, back squat (max 135kg). Pair workout with Joni. As a team, complete 80 deadlifts (100kg), 100 burpees while other one hold plank position, 80 deadlifts (100kg).

Today was a great training day for sure. In the morning I realized something big regarding olympic lifts and squatting. I was scribbling through Instagram and came across with Chad Vaughn's (@OlyChad) picture where he and posted a battle photo of the legend himself - Chris Spealler - fighting to save a clean in the Crossfit Games this year in the Speed Clean Ladder. He wrote some truths about olympic lifts. With that inspiration in my head I went squatting. Had couple of friends with me at the gym so it was a great training atmosphere to say the least.

Strength. Ass to grass back squats

• 3x90, 110, 120, 130kg
• 1x135, 1x140kg failed
• 5x90kg

What I'm referring with Chad Vaughn is described in the picture below. I have exactly that issue with cleans. I can't get to that position ever. I can pull the bar high enough but my problem is getting myself under the barbell quick enough. I have to drop the bar in the middle of the movement because it feels like I don't have enough time to drop under barbell. Coming up from the hole has never been an issue for me because my clean max loads are so much lower than front squat max loads.

With that in mind I went to the gym determined to try new approach in my squats. Decided to go as low as possible. Not pause squats. Regular squats but doing it with same style as in squat cleans, dropping down ass-to-grass without trying to brake the speed on the way down. I smashed down and then bounced back up and that's the time when I start to use my legs big time. Push it with all you got. At about that time when you bounce back, come back up and you reach parallel level. I found squatting this style very much different to squats where I go just below parallel and then stand back up. Feels like a different movement to say the truth.

I thought the weights would be much further away from my max loads than this. Thought they would be somewhere about 120kg at max. It was an extremely positive signal to realize I was able to knock way heavier weights up and down. The first fail came at 140kg. Didn't want my body to remember that as the last lift so I took an additional 5 reps at lighter weights, easy 90kg.

Metcon. Time 13.54

• As a team, complete the following reps:
• 80 deadlift, 100kg
• 100 burpees. While one athlete does burpees, the other is in plank hold position
• 80 deadlift, 100kg

Joni was squatting with me and it was a success day for him. Back squat PR has seen the daylight, great job man!!! After strength training we put the barbell on the ground, piled up some stuff on it and went after a pair workout. Main focus on deadlifts and burpees. Pair workouts are somehow motivational for sure. When you have that training partner beside you, there's a guy to share the feeling with you right on the moment.

We completed deadlift sets on 8 rep-sets all the way. Did them unbroken all the way. We were wondering about the reps and weights for a while and in the end we gotta say these numbers turned out to be perfect for metcon purposes. We kept a good steady and consistent pace in the deadlifts in the beginning and in the end likewise. No need to rest between sets. The period when you caught your breath the other guy was pumping those deads unbroken.

We decided in advance to knock the burpees in sets of 10 reps. While Joni was doing his sets of burpees my role was not to just chill out because that rest period would have been too long and the intensity would have decreased too much. So I was supposed to hold a plank position in the meanwhile. And vice versa of course. That plank hold turned out to be quite horrible. We both figured it would be a walk in the park (not really) but it was disastrous. Can you believe me if I say burpees were the rest in this workout? Well, they definitely were.

Joni is done

It was a good workout for sure! It was great to throw down with Joni for this one. We haven't done many pair workouts in the past even though we hang in there couple of days a week. Thanks for this one dude. Another huge thing was that my pal Jouni was at the gym doing his third crossfit workout. Today I put him to a dark place with the following workout:

• 1.000m row, then 3rds of:
• 20 burpees
• 20 thrusters
• 20 sit-ups, then:
• 1.000m row

For a guy who hasn't done crossfit this is uncomfortable stuff indeed. He dug deep but he finally saw the sunlight and was cheering for making it till the end with pride. And his face looked like he felt like a champion. I'm proud of this guy for manhandling this workout!!!

Monday 24.3: Push press, gymnastics

Monday. Strength, push press 5-5-5-5-5 (max 80kg). Gymnastics for 30min.

Different kind of day. I liked it a lot! Some strength for starters and that gymnastics part was extremely cool. I felt like a power monkey indeed. Tried some new cool stuff, implemented purely on bodyweight. I got the inspiration from a guy called Joel who's been working on some bodyweight movements lately. We talked about these last week and today was a great chance to work with him. I felt like a little kiddo =)

Strength.

• Push press 5-5-5-5-5 (70, 80, 80, 75, 75kg)

I've been thinking about would it be beneficial to throw some weight in the air in the near future a bit more than I've lately done. Push presses, push jerks and split jerks. To build up stronger upper body in order to ease pretty much all movements. There was a time when I used to do a lot of presses, that was in my early cf career when I didn't practically have any shoulder strength at all. It helped a lot and strength was gained.

Today I did push press 5's for a total of 5 sets. Started at 70kg, built up to 80kg for 2 sets and then finished it off with 2 sets @ 75kg. This 75-80kg was a good weight for me on push press 5's. I was able to do 2-3 reps in one continuous movement before I had to rest on the front rack, reload myself again and finish the set.

The weight was quite heavy even though I had no doubt in my mind about nailing those sets. I took it safe anyway with the last 2 sets dropping 5kg off the max weight today. After this strength portion I'm sure we're gonna see more of this stuff in the future.

Gymnastics.

• Handstand push-ups
• Planche progressions / holds
• Handstand
• L-sit to handstand press

It was like 20 years was curt off my age as we played around different types of bodyweight stuff! It was great! Various holds, plank holds, planche progressions and the last movement was pretty sick: from L-sit to handstand press. Or something like that. I'm not sure about the terms on these gymnastics moves =) I piled 3-4 plates under both arms, then did L-sit. From there I brought my legs back and did some sort of plank hold and focused on keeping a straight torso. Not all the way to handstand but kind of a plank hold.

Difficult to explain all the stuff we did but the main thing was it was so much fun and I enjoyed it every minute. I'm glad Joel was instantly ready to go when I suggested he'd tag along. It's cool to have a training buddy, no matter if it's crossfit stuff, pure strength or gymnastics like this. He also suggested we did handstand there. I've always thought handstand is impossible at this gym because there's not enough space. Now I understand that's just an excuse, there was plenty of space to practice this skill. Definitely going to work on this at home gym too!

Thanks Juha for this video tip, I've seen this once before, it's pretty awesome. Sick moves by Dave Durante and Dan Bailey. 

Wednesday 28.8: rowing, hs hold

Wednesday. Pair wod with Toni. Rowing, handstand hold, push-ups, plank hold and v-ups.

We are on a work convention with Toni and were therefore planning of taking a rest day. Instead, we found ourselves hitting the conference venue's gym for a rowing pair wod, after which we utilized the spa and sauna.

Pair wod. For completion:

• 4 rounds for both athletes of the following 2 sets, alternating turns on the row:
• 500m row
• ME handstand hold, then ME push-ups, plank hold or v-ups until 500m row is completed

So the point was that together we rowed for 4.000 meters. Switching turns after every 500m. Meanwhile the other one was rowing, the other one took max effort in time of handstand hold against wall. Once he dropped, he continued to perform either push-ups, plank hold or v-ups, depending on the round. This workout was not that serious, we only wanted to have some fun and get blood circulating in our system after a long work day. It definitely did good after sitting most of the day. Still, we kept a rather good and steady pace on the row, it took 14min to finish the 4k, that's 1.45/500m. On the handstand I was around 1min on the position in the first round, then somewhere around 30-45sec in the latter rounds.

Afterwards we got a treat in the form of sauna and finished the evening with a delicious dinner. The agenda says we have some sort of morning workout arranged by our employer. Guess it's not gonna be crosssfit :)

Tuesday 4.6: Muscle-up practice, metcon, headstand

Tuesday. Muscle-up training. Metcon, time 17.52. Headstand skills training.

Today's main concept was a metcon of bodyweight movements, got my breathing go heavy on this one. Prior to the metcon I tried to do ring muscle-ups. Afterwards did some headstand skills and abs copied from Crossfit Games athlete Talayna Fortunato's blog. For warm-up I rowed 500m and did 5x20 unbroken double unders.

Headstand

Muscle-up training. Tried a few sets but today was not the day for my first ring muscle-up. Couldn't keep the package tight and thus the rings fell too wide apart from each other. This was still way better than before. Those bar muscle-ups definitely have helped me in this area. I can perform several of them in singles and soon I'll master the ring version as well!

Muscle-up training

Metcon. Time 17.52

• 15 hspu
• 50 air squats
• 50 double unders
• 50 push-ups
• 50 box jumps, 61cm
• 2.000m row

The main objective of the workout was to move my body without weights. Handstand push-ups to begin with. Originally I had 10 reps but decided to upgrade it to 15 to get more practice there. Good call. Last week's run / squat metcon brought me back to reality on the air squats. Got to do them 'cause they felt hard a week ago. Today I completed 50 of them.

The double unders I broke in two sets not to burn my shoulders too much. Still, the push-ups were a joke! Don't even dare to unravel in what type of sets I was able to do… But to say something, it took waaaaay too much time! The box jumps at this stage of the game were leg-burners. Breathing was going heavier by the minute so I got that feeling with the box jumps that I usually am after. The hamstrings are on fire, heart is pumping and focus is purely on the next box jump.

To have the 2k row at the end of the workout while blood is pumping fiercely in my veins, I had to mentally uptalk myself to finish the workout. I started and finished easily on the row, it took 7.34min to finish that rowing. The last part of the workout was cruel, but intentionally created.

Headstand training. Took a few sets of headstand training to find balance being inverted. Hopefully this helps my handstand training as well. Getting more and more familiar being upside down.

Cashout. L-sit 0:30, 0:10.

• 2 x max time L-sit hold, immediately turned into 1min plank hold into 30 sit-ups.

I read Talayna Fortunato's blog on a regular basis and caught inspiration from her training. Some abs in the end.

Toni's workouts. AM: swimming. PM: deadlift, burpees, pull-ups, push-ups and sit-ups

• Swimming 1k
• Deadlift 5-5-5-5-5 (100, 110, 110, 120, 130kg)
• Metcon 1-2-3-4-5-4-3-2-1, burpees and pull-ups
• 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 push-ups and sit-up

Wednesday 5.9: Rowing, skills training, tabata

Wednesday. This day was a mixture of all kinds of exercises. It all started 7:30am with rowing. My focus on the day was more like an active recovery and skills training, there was no strength training included at all, nor a wod. The idea was to meet up with Toni at the gym as I had planned to inspire him to better performance by coaching him but we had some miscommunication as he had a rest day due to several days of training in a row. So I decided to take a lighter version of training today as I had already wen through four sessions myself this week in two days.

There was a nice exercise at www.crossfit.com few days ago:

• 30 rounds for distance
• 30 seconds row
• 30 seconds rest

I took off with this workout by completing ten rounds, my distance was 1.600m, one mile. I'll definitely take this wod some morning, seemed cool. After getting my heart pumped up, I took about ten minutes skills training with jump rope. All kinds of jumping, single unders, double unders, single unders by jumping in different styles, sideways, with one leg etc. Very useful, this is my new favorite, I've had my jump rope with me pretty much every time in the last couple of weeks and I will going to master double unders this autumn due to skills training =)

I also wanted to take a quick glimpse to overhead squats (OHS). My mobility in shoulders and back muscles isn't flexible enough to make the movement easily. It takes a lot of effort and it requires a lot of work to get to - let's say almost 90 degrees angle - in the bottom position. It went better than last time I tried it some time ago. I've been kidding around with PVC pipe at the gym and I can see some slow progression in my shoulder mobility. I was able to snatch the bar to satisfactory position and then somehow managed to squat with the bar 3 x 10 (20kg). I'm gonna take this as a skills training in the future, accompanied after some strength training and wods. Anyway, the morning workout (45min) was active recovery, so to say, and increasing mobility on my body. Good job in my opinion.

In the evening I had 1.5h floorball practice and my coach asked me to get the team mates warmed-up with crossfit style training so I decided to go with tabata squats and another tabata style workout. It was kind of a plank hold in an upright push-up position, with the difference that you must extend your arms a little bit forward along your body. That means your hands are not at the breast level but over the head. Then the entire body must do work, not just your shoulders. You have to keep the entire core tight, abs definitely and shoulders too. I didn't take notes on the reps in squats but they were around 18+ per round.