Thursday 24.9: Press, Hspu, Du's

Thursday. Light barbell, push press 5-5-5-5 (max 70kg). Metcon, 10 to 1, down by 1's of: hspu. 30 du between sets. Time, 12.40.

Today's effort on my behalf was a bit lighter and it felt good just like that. My friend Jouni who is in the middle of a big time life changing turnaround came to the gym third day in a row. He's just started crossfit and I guess it has bitten him in the butt just like it did for me and Toni about 2 years ago. I suppose the 2-year brainwash has made its effect on this man =) Anyway, it's been great to witness this big guy hitting wods with serious attitude. Today was no exception on his behalf. First time going through back squat for strength and then a classical metcon of rowing and burpees. I'm proud of this fella!

New jump rope in action

Barbell.

• Push press 5-5-5-5 (50, 60, 70, 60kg)

Jouni was the star of the day on barbell work. I was giving my best to coach him on back squat and between sets I took couple of sets of push press 5's, just to get them activated. The weights were light at all times, today I wasn't looking to work pure strength on this movement. Those presses felt good and my shoulders worked solidly all the way. Plus this was a good warm-up for the upcoming metcon which was clearly shoulder / lungs oriented.

Metcon. Time, 12.40

• 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 of: handstand push-ups
• 30 double unders between hspu's

I'm happy on this metcon, which I came up with on the scene. I figured hspu's got to be part of the metcon today. Plus I had just yesterday evening adjusted my "new" jump rope to correct length. New rope is a bit deceiving because I bought it in the summer of 2013. It's been in the package since then because my first real cf jump rope has served me well! Now it's gone a little broken so I wanted to try this one out. The handles are way bigger than in my old one so I had my doubts how well I would adjust to that one. It turned out to be perfect in all possible ways. It felt very natural from the very first jump.

It was actually very natural all the time and I got through those sets of 30 double unders unbroken every round and didn't even doubt about getting them done ub. It was kind of obvious. I'm definitely using this one in the future as well. The metcon was constructed so that in the first round I did 10 hspu's, then dropped one rep after each round. 30 du's between sets, the number of du reps remained the same, totaling 300 du's, and 55 hspu's.

I got handstand push-ups almost unbroken each round. I dropped from the wall probably on the rounds of 8 and 7 hspu's. That was due to balance problems that were resulted because of tired shoulders. Those were on fire and that caused me to shake a little bit and then dropped down. I jumped right back though. The burn got worse by the round, and didn't really ease at any point because both movements got to my shoulders big time.

I wouldn't know which movement was tougher on shoulders, it was more like the combination of them. I was just blessed to have that transition between movement to get some recovery between stations. This was excellent workout and good intense action al the way. My round times were around 1:20-1:30  until the middle of the workout after which it started to drop gradually. Last rounds were around one minute, each round a bit quicker than the previous one.