Tuesday 31.7: clean & row

Tuesday. Two workouts for today. Morning consists of strength and wod. The afternoon exercise concentrates in rowing.

Strength: clean 5x5. Rest 5 min.
Wod: 5 clean + 20 burpee + 10 DU. 3 rounds. Time 7.58
Interval rowing, 4 x 500-750m

Morning training is over. So am I... The first part consisted of strength training. Some of the crossfit movements are a bit strange for me so I'm still learning. Especially weight lifting moves like cleans and snatches. I took off with merely the bar (20kg). 5 reps, 1-2 min rest, then add some kilos, repeated 5 times. The sets were 20 - 30 - 40 - 50 - 60kg. My technic is clearly evolving, still there is some job left to be done. With leighter weights, I can keep the package tigth and solid but in 60 kilos I can see that it comes a struggle and my technic kind of collapses. Then it's purely a matter of state of mind, you decide you are stronger than the bar and you can move it to the right position. So I won the bar this time. This is not my max, I know that but I need some more practice on the move.

Okay, after 5 min rest I took a metcon, created by myself. Three rounds consisting of 5 cleans (40kg), 20 burpees and 10 double unders. Cleans were not bad, I could have upped it to 50kg. However, the burpees and DU combination was brutal. My heart was racing as maniac. I could push through the burpees, not unbroken but almost. I can do those jump ropes in a double under - single under - double under - single under... - style. Now as my pulse was very fast, concentration faded a bit which caused me to perform something like 16 double under attempts to gain 10 reps. That means I used a lot of energy to a double unders which were not counted as reps, this is something I could have saved a lot of time in.

Afternoon metcon was all about rowing my ass off. It shortened the distance and hastened the speed. I made it pyramid style. First set was 500m second one 750, third one 750 and the last one 500m. I also did 5 x 10 toes-to-bar.

1. 500m, 1.50 min
2. 750m, 2.38 min (1.45 min / 500m)
3. 750m, 2.30 min (1.40 min / 500m)
4. 500m, 1.40 min

The first set was warming up, then I started to put more effort to the pulls. I tried a different style than normally. Usually I row so that my pull is rather quick and the return to starting position takes almost the same time. This leads to exhaustion in time. This time I put more effort on the pull, it was stronger and quicker and the return part took about twice the time compared to the pull. I read some elite crossfitters do it like this. No wonder, my results were faster than what I'm used to. I usually aim for speed somewhere around 1.50 min / 500 meters. This time my time was 1.40 - 1.45 min / 500 meters in the last three rounds. That difference is huge! I will concentrate in focusing more power to pulling and letting my body to recover for a second or two before the next fierce pull.