Sunday 24.3: Bench press, deadlift, metcon

Sunday. Bench press 6x5 (80kg), deadlift 5x5 (120kg). Metcon, bodyweight movements, 12min amrap.

It's the last day to perform CF Open 13.3 but I missed it. Open is over for me this year, same with Toni. I was afraid some sort of workout would be published by Crossfit Games I would have difficulties to go along with. If you remember from reading my blog earlier, I have desired to do Karen (150 x 9kg wall ball for time) for a loooong time but haven't found the premises and circumstances where I could do that workout. 13.3 was 12min amrap of 150 wall balls, followed by 90 double unders and 30 muscle-ups. I don't have access to crossfit box and didn't have time to find one this week. We were thinking about getting it together outdoors to do some wall balls with a self-made wall ball / basketball but organizing that workout faced far too many difficulties so we had to skip it totally. It's a pity but no can do. I'm not thinking too much about it. Instead I drove to my home gym with Pauliina to meet Toni who arrived home during weekend!

Warming up

Strength. Bench press and deadlift. Sets of 5 in both movements.

• Bench press 6x5 (all sets 80kg)
• Deadlift 5x5 (all sets 120kg)

Traditionally I only take one strength movement per day but today I felt good about doing both of these. My goal was to do 5 sets of 5 reps in bench but I wanted to do that one extra set to finish with pride. Last reps of the sets (4th and 5th) were clearly heavier than the first three but manageable. I could have added some weights but my first priority was to do complete sets of 5 reps so I didn't risk that. At least in the end I felt this was perfect weight for me but in the beginning the first sets were 2.5-5kg too light. Considering the total amount of reps, this was exactly what my chest needed.

Bench, 5x80kg

For deadlift I was thinking about the weights for quite a while. In both movements my aim was to do all sets with the same weight. After the workout I felt good. Now as I'm sitting at my computer and writing this blog I began to rethink about the whole thing and my conclusion is there was no sense in the deadlift's weight-scheme at all!?! My max load is 180kg so this was clearly too light. I have no troubles in lifting 120kg for several times so why would I do 5x5 with 66% of my max?

Deadlift, 5x120kg

My conclusion is I should have done done sets with around 140/150kg for 5-reps. The problem I have with deadlift is that my technique is not as good as I'd hope. It's not as smooth as it should be, it kind of consists of various steps when you look at my movement from down to top, in comparison to seamless movement from ground to full extension. For 120kg I can manage it with some sort of style but as we go heavier my hips shoot up before they should. So that was the unconscious decision probably to keep the weights less than 140-150kg.

HSPU

Metcon. Result 6 or 7 rounds.

• 12min amrap
• 3 hspu
• 5 pull-ups
• 7 toes-to-bar
• 9 push-ups

I saw this workout at one finnish cf box's website and decided to give it a shot. 12 minutes of bodyweight movements. Other than handstand push-ups the movements weren't bad. On the hspu I had some difficulties from early on and that's the reason my result was rather weak today. Maybe it was the bench earlier in the training that had its influence.

My clock had it's own soul life today so I'm not exactly sure was it 6 or 7 rounds. I was hoping to stay on 1.00-1.30 pace per round even with handstand push-ups in play. The other movements were easy considering the amount of reps included. From some point on I had to do the hspu's in singles which startled me. Beforehand I was confident to nail those unbroken throughout the workout. Reality was far away from it =) I had some technical problems there as well and didn't find my flow zone in hspu's today. Still, I'm sure they are not going to be a problem for that long. I have to stay consistent in practicing them so naturally at some point they are not gonna be an issue anymore.


Toni's workouts. First "Death by deadlift", 120kg. Result 6rds + 4 reps. Total of 25 reps.

Metcon wasn't easy!

Then a metcon. Result 215 DU's. Amount of double unders per round: 4-37.

• 12min EMOM
• 4 power clean, 60kg
• Rest of the minute double unders
• Result is the total amount of double unders in 12min

First he did a death by deadlift with 120kg, last time he did it with 85kg. The latter workout was cruel. All about metabolic conditioning.

Toni getting prepared for "death by" workout with 80kg