Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays. During Christmas time I had the opportunity to hit it almost every day, only Eve was a rest day. On that day I focused purely on celebrating this festivity. Couple of rather spicy ones took place.

Thursday 22.12

Every 10:00, perform one wod

• 21-15-9 of:
• Wall ball
• Burpee

• 21-15-9 of:
• Hang power clean @ 40kg
• Push-up

• 21-15-9 of:
• Shoulder-to-overhead @ 40kg
• Air squat

• Times: 4:15, 3:30, 2:51

This looks easy on paper. However, my feeling could not be further away from it. I wanted to have intense work being done. After the first piece it felt like it´s enough for the day hehe. My body was sore as I woke up in the morning, especially my arms / triceps. So doing pushing in a fast pace mode made them almost numb. It took me a little over 4 minutes to complete. Went unbroken all the time and with as little as possible transitions. Burpees probably slowed down somewhat during the process.

Both elements were also unbroken on the second piece, on both cleans and push-ups. Push-ups were the more difficult part of this one. Had to take short pauses on top at times in order to finish it ub.

The third one´s jerks went nicely even as the last reps of the sets felt challenging. Not that it was a heavy barbell. It was light indeed. But my body was shaking because of the intensity. Arms and shoulders were burning, and legs were on fire. Air squats felt very nasty at this point. I didn´t give slack to my body on this one so it hurt.

Friday 23.12

• Overhead complex, 5 sets of:
• 2 push press
• 2 push jerk
• 2 split jerk
• Barbell @ 70kg

It felt great to put the barbell to the sky. Barbell cycling in a combination of three different press/jerk styles. My warm-up was basically same routine at 40 and 60 kilos, then on to the work. This was good. On some sets I went touch´n´go from first to last rep, on some sets I paused on the front rack before another lift.

Wod

• 20min amrap of:
• 10 pull-up
• 7 front squat @ 70kg
• Run up and down the street (ca. 400m)
• Result, 5 rounds + 200m run

Last time I wrote I haven´t been doing pull-ups in months. Then I did 50 in an accessory style, and it hurt in my lats for a couple of days. This time I went more ambitious with the number of reps per set. Positively surprised that pull-ups were not an issue at all in this metcon.

After jumping down from the pull-up bar, I went for squats. Unbroken each set, tng. Right on to running back and forth the street in front of our house. This was a great workout. Felt like a steady pace all the way. Truth can also be that running slowed down a notch. Result was 200 meters shy of 6 full rounds.

Saturday 24.12

Rest day. There´s a lot of action taking place on Christmas Eve so there´s always a lack of time to do any training. Plus I had decided beforehand that I´ll focus on spending time with family.

Sunday 25.12

• Front squat 5x5 @ 110kg

Just came up with the idea of throwing 110kg on the barbell, and complete 5 sets of 5´s. These went great in my opinion. Had no problems with them. It was super to realize afterwards that the last time I did front squat 5´s, the last set was a tight 110kg. And today I completed 5 sets at the same weight.

• Wod, 8min amrap
• 2-2, 4-4, 6-6… of:
• Overhead squat @ 40kg
• Toes-to-bar
• Result, round of 12 reps + 8 t2b

There´s a little walking back and forth between stations. In the beginning I could have saved some time with the spots being closer but in the latter rounds this wasn´t an issue anymore. Ohs was unbroken all the way. Broke the t2b´s on the round of 12´s (into 8+4). Last round was also tough on the toes-to-bar. I finished the round of 14´s after the 8min time domain was full.

Accessory

• 3x20 unbroken sets of hang power clean @ 40kg
• Recovery run in the end

My father-in-law Kari was there to train with me. He went running and deadlifting, plus he threw some kettlebells around. I decided to do some accessory stuff. It turned out to be high rep cleans with light weight. These hurt in my grip.

Monday 26.12

• Oly
• Clean and jerk, unbroken sets of:
• 5 reps @ 60kg
• 4 reps @ 70kg
• 3 reps @ 75kg
• 2 reps @ 80kg
• 1 rep @ 85kg

I´m very happy jerks are getting back to where they used to be, and how they looked like. This were touch´n´go sets all the way. Except that last single at 85kg where I paused on the front rack before the jerk.

Oly

• 4x5 hang squat clean @ 80kg

Smooth stuff.

• Wod, 12min amrap of:
• 4 deadlift @ 130kg
• 8 handstand push-up
• 12 pistol squat
• Result, 6 rounds + 4 deads

Nasty mofo! None of these elements were easy. Okay, deadlifts were not super heavy but I just haven´t gone heavy so these were something to focus on. Hspu´s were probably the one I felt most confident about. Pistols were a misery but still doable. It was funny how it felt I´ll crash on the ground if I try to complete the first rep. But once I started lowering myself, they felt just fine anyway. That´s kinda cool to understand that you can do the work no matter how it feels like.