Tuesday. Wod, 50-35-20 reps of: pull-ups, push-ups on parallettes and jumping lunges.
Today's main focus was purely on one thing. Breaking the current record of unbroken pull-ups. It stood at 41 reps from some years ago. I wasn't in a war zone mentality but managed to pull out a personal record anyway.
So I took some warm-up and mobility the same way I do every day before jumping on the pull-up bar. Nowadays the actual warm-up basically happens during the workout. For example today I didn't do a single pull-up prior to the workout itself. Well anyway, I jumped up and started moving. It took me sub one minute to complete those reps. It went pretty smoothly all the way up to 39 reps. Then I had to complete the remaining amount of reps as singles with a little pause in the bottom. My left hand's grip started to fail me and it was hard to hold on to the bar.
I'm very happy over this accomplishment. It was like hitting a wall once I came down. I mean it was tough to get those 7 more reps to finish the first round. Following with 50 push-ups on parallettes, and my upper body was blown. Finished the round with 50 jumping lunges, which by the way seems to be a bit underrated movement. That bit my quads a lot.
After the first set of push-ups I thought I ain't gonna do another pull-up / push-up. But lunges took the focus from upper body to lower body and somehow that recovery from upstairs gave me more energy to hit more pull/push movements. Did the set of 35 pull-ups as 20 - 10 - 5. And the last set was 20 unbroken pull-ups.
Thursday. Bar complex of cleans, front squat and jerks. Gymnastics, max reps pull-ups (PR 41). Bench triples (70-90kg).
Felt good going to the gym with Pauliina. Body was okay, no prob whatsoever, ready to hit it hard. At warm-up I realized my legs are sore as hell. Foam rolling my thighs was painful as hell and I remembered I completed 4 sets of triples @ 135kg yesterday. I've done 1 set before at that weight… No wonder my trunks were a bit tired today. So it turned out to be a lighter day this Thursday. One PR was still the outcome!
Bar complex.
1 power clean
1 squat clean
2 front squats
2 jerks
Weights, 40, 45, 50, 55, 60, 65, 70kg
One tremendous workout is completing this complex starting in an ascending ladder style. Starting from about 50% of jerk's 1 rep max, finishing one set of the complex and then add 5kg on the bar. Keep adding 5kg after each set till failure. Once you can't move the bar anymore, start over and repeat the whole thing. Awesome workout for strength, technique and muscle endurance. Love it!
I've done it twice to around 80-85kg, take a look at the specs and video here. I believe I could have it what it takes to reach 90kg, at least somewhere around there. Today my legs were jello at 60kg, they obviously hadn't recovered enough from yesterday. Other than that the bar was moving nicely. I had good cleans and jerks, the weights were quite light anyway.
Bench 90kg
Gymnastics. Result 41 reps
Max reps unbroken pull-ups
Last time I tried for max reps was in the summer time as I was hitting benchmark workout Nicole at Pirkkola with Marko. Nicole is 20min amrap of pull-ups and running, nasty lady got to say. Anyway, as it was difficult to continue moving the barbell I decided to jump on the pull-up bar and give myself a gymnastics test. As many unbroken reps as possible. I wanted to nail a record even with a tired body.
I took a firm grip so my hands wouldn't get ripped due to friction between palms and the bar. Tried to keep it as stable as possible. Pull-up bars sometimes give me problems as the calluses tend to cause some injuries. Today it was no issue at all. At 15 reps it felt like nothing, easy stuff. At 25 reps I knew it's gonna be a PR day. I was able to continue the continuous movement up to about 32 reps, then took a breath and continued moving. It was a battle till the finish from then on.
My bro just got 40 reps about 2 weeks ago so it was compulsory to fight it a little on top of him. It's classic bro-rivalry between us that pushes us both to better achievements =) That's exactly the reason why we've been trying to match the schedules to train together. This far it's been impossible, hopefully we'll find some time.
Bench.
5x60, 5x70, 3x80, 3x90, 3x90kg
Wasn't ready with working out, Pauliina hinted me to try some bench. I took it easy as my body wasn't the most receptive at the moment. Still, it was good I got some reps at 90kg. This was more like a little fun in the end, nothing serious. The entire training day was lighter in nature. It was still awesome to hit those pull-ups better than I've done ever before.
Games update show
Mobility. In the end it was just natural to do some mobility, stretching and rubber band movements. Usually I'm in a hurry after the workouts and there's not that much time afterwards. I spend quite a time prior to the workouts in getting my body ready. Plus at home I use foam roll a lot and hang from a pull-up bar several times a day just to loosen some tension in the upper back of mine. Very useful stuff.
By the way, Crossfit Open 2014 is about to start now! The first event announcement goes live 5.pm pacific time, so in Finland we'll see it in the morning if I've understood the time zones correctly. Well, it comes sometime during the night so the first thing I'll do when I wake up is check the workout. I'm not participating in the Open but I'm following the competition closely and cheering for my bro and Toni in their pursuit on the competition.
Tuesday. Benchmark workout Nicole. 8 rounds and 120 pull-ups.
I'm waiting forward to these outdoor training sessions! We have agreed with Marko to meet in Pirkkola, outdoors sports center where they also have track and field possibilities. It's also the venue for "HC Triplet II, in to the woods". This time we were going to include running and other bodyweight movements. A new benchmark was ahead of me, girl named Nicole.
Nicole. Result. 8 rounds, 120 pull-ups.
Complete as many rounds in 20min as you can of:
400m run
Max rep pull-ups
How simple can a workout be? Run and do pull-ups, period. The location of the pull-up bar is not close to the track so we ran in the middle of the forest. I've enjoyed these running metcons, at least this far ;) My brother was doing Murph at the same time in another place, that's deep. It took about 32min from him. Got to try it some day.
Back to Nicole. Run 400 meters, then complete as many pull-ups as possible without dropping from the pull-up bar. Have no idea how fast I was running each round, my timer was on the ground. Even though my upper back was kinda jammed I still hoping to break that old 33-rep record of mine.
On the first round the pull-ups started to feel heavier than normally at about 15 reps. Shouldn't feel like that at this stage. However, I was able to force more reps, little by little I reached 35 reps and a new PR! Didn't come easy though. This gave me more confidence as I felt I wasn't at my best because the pull-ups started to feel heavy earlier than they should have.
For the net 3 rounds the number of pull-ups was 15 each round, and on the last rounds a bit less. Total of 120 reps and it was time. My lats were smashed already after the first round of 35 so I had some difficult thoughts about how to perform pull-ups with style. Here's the number of pull-ups each round:
1st round. 35 reps
2nd round. 15 reps
3rd round. 15 reps
4th round. 15 reps
5th round. 10 reps
6th round. 10 reps
7th round. 12 reps
8th rounds. 8 reps
Total of 120 reps
Marko's workout.
800m run
50 wood thrusters
50 burpees
50 lunges
800m run
Good amount of reps for this fellow! A lot of sweat was shed and muscles will hurt tomorrow, and the day after. The only thing he subbed was the amount of burpees, dropped from 50 to 30. And the last sprint of his was phenomenal. It was cool to see him give his everything and sprint like a mad man!
Time for a benchmark workout, Lynne. Consisting of bench press and pull-ups. We drove to the home Box with Pauliina and had the possibility to workout just the two of us, nobody else at the spot. Toni is on a cruise currently in Tallinn, Estonia, so he's not going to train during the weekend.
Lynne. 25 bench press, 105 pull-ups.
5 rounds of
ME bench press, bodyweight, 80kg
ME pull-ups
Results. Total of 25 bench press and 105 pull-ups
1st round, 8+33 (PR)
2nd round, 5+20
3rd round, 5+17
4th round, 4+17
5th round, 3+18
This workout is not for time. You may rest between movements and rounds. The kilos for the bench press are determined by the athlete's bodyweight. I weigh 80kg at the moment so I equaled that with the barbell (176lbs). The idea is to do max effort each round, starting from bench and continuing to pull-ups. That is max set of repetitions unbroken. Once you have to put the barbell away or you drop from the pull-up bar, you may not continue anymore.
1st round of Lynne, bench press
Yesterday's thrusters made my triceps hurt and they were sore already in the morning. Bench felt heavy from early on and I didn't manage to push that many reps this time. Well, I have never lifted 80kg more than 5 times so I guess this was still ok. On the first round I got 8 reps, then 5, 5, 4 and 3 reps. I might have tried for 1-2 additional reps at least in the beginning if there was a spotter behind me.
The combination of bench and pull-ups was tougher than I thought. After two rounds my upper body was in flames. It is a difficult set-up to continue for another 3 rounds in that condition but I managed it pretty well in my opinion =) Set a PR on the first pull-up round. The last 4 rounds were pretty stable and consistent, only varying with 3 reps (17-20 reps each round).
1st round of Lynne, pull-ups
It felt difficult to grab the pull-up rack but once I got the first pull-up, I tried to ignore the pain and simply keep the rhythm stable and keep on moving. There were a number of pull-ups today, probably going to feel this training session tomorrow in my upper body!
Wednesday. Back squats 4x4 (max 130kg), 50 pull-ups for time. Time 1.52.
Main focus on squats. Focusing on deep ones and then 50 pull-ups in the end. In the evening I had floorball training. Toni still traveling but I heard he has plans to work out today!
Strength. Back squats 4-4-4-4 (100, 110, 120, 130kg). Then back squats 10 & 10 reps (100 & 100kg).
Wanted to do sets of four and finish it with some nasty cashout in the end so I took sets of 2x10 squats with 100kg. From the warm-up on I really focused on getting my butt as deep as it could possibly go with my mobility. And that is below parallel. I did quite a lot of hip openers for starters and then I felt good to start squatting with weights. I put 100kg on the bar and took 4 reps, continued with that rep-scheme up to 130kg. Managed to push that last set with success as well. After those sets I took two sets of 10 unbroken reps up with 100kg. Felt good in my hamstrings!
Pull-ups. 50 pull-ups for time. Time 1.52.
I realized I haven't done as many pull-ups as I should. One of the most principal movements crossfit insists you master. Simply haven't programmed as many pull-ups lately as I wanted. There's no reason for this, there are just so many things to practice constantly. I enjoyed this workout a lot and was happy completing the 50th rep. My strategy was not the smartest because I wanted to hit a PR today. It's been a while since I tried max reps so my goal was to go for 30 reps in a row and I managed to do that, yeah baby! I had the feeling I could have squeezed some extra reps but I don't know what would have happened after that =) My wings and forearms were in fire! I took another 10 reps, then 5 and 5 reps. Had I tried my absolute best time in this workout, I might have completed 5x10 or sets of 15 or something like that, with short breaks in between sets.
Some floorball after work with my team. Guess we're gonna make some tactical planning as we have a game on Friday against a team in western Finland for qualifying to a higher division. Got to win 2 out of three games to qualify further.
Monday. Back squats 5x3 (max 120kg), metcon of back squats and pull-ups, time 10.43, 73 pull-ups.
Alarm clock had its moment at 6.00, I woke up and ate breakfast, then headed to the gym with Toni to go for back squats and back squat + pull-up oriented metcon. My quads were still sore from front squats and thrusters. Toni took bench presses as strength training and then five different Tabata workouts.
Tabata rowing in process
Strength. Back squats 5x3 (100, 110, 115, 120, f 125kg). Nowadays I know I can reach 120kg every time I go for it. 125kg seems to be a tough one, today I tried it once but didn't get it up. Sets of 100, 110, 115 and 120kg succeeded. My legs and joints were not that flexible this time, somehow they were stiff from the very beginning. Even though I put effort on my warm-up and used more time in opening my legs than normally. Anyways, 120kg was the max of Monday squats.
Metcon. Time 10.43. Compare to 21st August. Squats with 60kg, my pull-up reps for each round are in brackets.
18 back squats
Max pull-ups (PR 25 reps)
15 back squats
Max pull-ups (12 reps)
12 back squats
Max pull-ups (12 reps)
9 back squats
Max pull-ups (12 reps)
6 back squats
Max pull-ups (12 reps)
50m walking lunges with 20kg bar overhead
Total of 60 back squats with 60kg and 73 pull-ups. Not bad, my pull-ups have improved greatly. I still remember the feelings from that August workout and this was very much similar. All rounds of back squats went "unbroken" but in the second and third rounds I had to take a 2 second pause to shake my legs before continuing further. That 60kg is about 50% of my max load. This workout is not only for time but also for pull-up reps. Last time I got 48 reps, this time 25 more... That's progress, I'd say. The first round of pull-ups witnessed my new PR, 25 reps. On the second round I finished 12 reps and decided to hold on to that number throughout the workout.
50m walking lunges in the end after having done back squat strength training and having done 60 squats in this particular workout really burnt my legs, big time. Pressure in the shoulders and upper back area were considerable because of the pull-ups and the overhead position. I did this one in 20m + 20m + 10m sets. For some reason I like this workout a lot and I will keep on doing this one in the future as well. Try it out and you'll see what I mean =)
Total of 34 dips, 87 sit-ups, 72 hspu, 850m row, 118 double unders. Result for dips was 2reps, 9 sit-ups, 4 hspu, 100m row, 5 double unders. I would say the first round of Toni's double unders were probably the best I've seen from this fellow. It seemed he was like a pro doing his basic double under training. Toni's handstand push-ups were modified to keeping the legs on the stall bars. The biggest thing was that he also made a personal record in bench press, single press of 95kg, nice! Didn't get that on video but here's the 2x90kg
