Tuesday 7.10: Push press, Ghost

Tuesday. Strength, emom, 3 push press at 70kg, for 8min. Metcon, "Ghost", 6rds of: 1min row, 1min burpee, 1min du's, 1min rest. Result, 517 reps.

I'm so happy today was a day off of squats =) Normally I love to squat but now my knee was a bit in pain yesterday so I needed to have a day without them. No surprise because there's been a huge load in my back rack in volume. I worked for overhead strength today, and then hit a workout called Ghost, named after 6-time world champion boxer Robert "Ghost" Guerrero.

Row calories, burpees and double unders

Strength.

• Every minute on the minute
• 3 push press @ 70kg, for 8 minutes

For starters I wanted to have a barbell overhead before hitting a metcon. I had thought about doing some sort of push presses or clean and jerk complex (1+3 style) but it was a bit vague when I opened the gym door. I talked with one guy about training and then it struck me. It was gonna be emom training of push presses.

The weight was not serious heavy ass load. It was moderate weight but it made good to my body. I loved doing overhead presses, it's been a while, at least it feels like it. The barbell felt a natural extension to my body, and the movement and bar path was good. On the push press I focused on pushing my knees out while coming up from the "dip and drive" in order to drive the barbell in a perfect vertical line. If you don't push the knees out but straight forward it's gonna go too much forward which obviously isn't a good thing. I succeeded well in this project.

Metcon. Result, 517 reps

• 6 rounds of:
• 1min row for calories
• 1min burpees
• 1min double unders
• 1min rest

I saw this one in the summer time as mainsite brought this one to daylight, I believe it was back in June.  It looked attempting at first glimpse but it's taken a while until I got it on my calendar. Today I needed to get a bad ass metcon that would take my breath away. Old school metabolic conditioning, traditional style crossfit workout. And it definitely blew my mind, it was tough!

There was a total of 119 calories (a bit over 1 mile), 93 burpees, 305 du's, totaling 517 reps. This workout is difficult to compare because the total reps is not the only crucial thing but as Dave Castro says, you got to give your best effort at all 3 stations every round. Don't just pace it so that you would nail big numbers of double unders in the end. No, the point is to go hard at rowing and burpees too. Otherwise, you're missing the point of this workout.

Take a look at Dave Castro explaining the workout

My pace was steady as you can see from the picture above. Rowing was solid, with basically 20 calories per minute. I jumped off the rower after 55+ seconds, took my timer with me and started doing burpees. On the first round I got 18 reps and it felt good. Round by round it got nastier and towards the end it got more disgusting =) I tried to remain at 15 reps till the end but it's difficult to describe the feeling, I was so tired that it felt impossible to move faster.

Double unders felt great in the first round, got 30 in a row, then after short recoveries I took 2 more sets of 15 reps. That one minute rest was needed. I gave my all in each round today so 60 seconds of rest was great news after every round. Second round I completed 25 reps at first attempt, then climbed up to 55 reps. From 3rd round on it was challenging to start du's right after burpees and my breathing was sky rocketing so I had to take smaller sets. I had only one miss during this workout. I just needed to have pauses as my guts were burning.

The workout was great. Nothing less of a superb metcon. Something I'm not gonna repeat in a while =) It was awesome to finally hit it after thinking about it for couple of months. I recommend you all to try it out.