Kelvin, Farenheit or Celcius, it's cold outside mofo...

Highlights from the preceding week:

Today was really productive. Again the routine on Friday has been centered around the snatch. After running through the Burgener warm up we went on to do 5 x 5 from a high hang. I went a bit lighter than the recommended percentage at 95 lbs for the entire session. I was able to concentrate on a quick hard pull with extension and drop into a very low squat to receive the bar. I don't think I was extending to my toes, so I wish I'd shot video. Next time. After some ab work then a short and futile attempt at double unders I moved on to row. Without really meaning to I started out at a pace, 2:05, that would have been too hard to hold and actually held on to it for most of the distance. I finished up with a time of 20:39. I'm not sure whether I'm more fit, using better technique or because I pulled at a higher resistance setting (6 1/2). 

Thursday I just did the kettlebell class.

Wednesday: Partnered on 5 x 1 push press to 175 for sure, maybe 185. 

Tuesday: Squats at ACF. 3 x 8 @ 225/255/375. Nice metcon of 8/4/24
power cleans @155, 4 HSPUs (scaled) & 24 calorie row. 

Another week of f**ked up bench press program as my shoulders were hashed from Monday and Tuesday. Squat work out of the monolift continued to rock as 
I put up 401 for 4. My original intent was to do it raw, but at 360 my knees were and quads were feeling the work from previous wods so I put on squat shorts. All 4 reps were fairly easy and I definitely had the juice for a fifth. 

Monday: Hang power clean & hang squat clean. Cool! Felt good but here is a suck. Target this for immediate attention. Wod was Cindy. Only got 10 rounds, pushups slowed me down but I got them all strict. Managed 1 kipping PU on each round followed by ring rows.

Early in the week my weight was around 229. My official weigh in this morning was 232.0, lowest yet on Judy's scale. 

Big plans for tomorrow. I need to start scaling up my total cardio volume.

On another note, the temperature at 0545 when I start my car has been around 0 degrees F.  

Bench press fail

Had another disappointing experience on the bench last night. The coach at CE (Dyke) suggested I back off and do a set of 4 at a .5 to 1 lb over my last set of 4. That was 216 a few weeks ago. Naturally I told myself, "too light, I'll go heavier" and wrote 220 x 4 in my logbook. After deciding to try the same work set after a rest and wearing a shirt I backed that off to 217.5.** Well I only got 3 raw and managed a fairly easy 5 with the shirt. I decided to skip the leg workout as the strength component prior to the wod was enough to fatigue me. This made two workouts in a row where I haven't hit my planned work sets. (Last week I missed at (both) 248x2) It dawned on me as I pondered my aching delts and traps, that I hit pull up development after the morning wods. So I think I'll skip that stuff on bench days or do it last.

Today Chris was back in the house and we partnered up for strict presses. 5 doubles, last set was at 135. The metcon was an interesting 20 minute amrap of 14/10/6 OH lunge (65), ring rows (scaled), inverted burpees. One thing I don't think I'm too concerned with for now is HSPUs or derivatives. I lost count. Yesterday's wod was pretty fun. 5 rounds of 10/10 ring rows/pushups. (scaled from MUs, another thing not on my radar) 15 kb swings (32kg) and 50 SUs (scaled from DUs) all done at 1:1 work:rest. I shortened up my rest cycles by 30 seconds and was still able to hit each round pretty hard. Finished in 15:30. Monday was a mixture of fun & horror. First, a barbell complex of power clean, push press, hang squat clean done EMOM for 7 rounds. I went 4 @ 155 and 1 @ 165. Good weight, challenging but maybe a bit conservative. The squat clean was the limiting factor and needs to get addressed on my suck list. the metcon was pretty awful, 

3 rounds for time of:

25 ring rows (scaled from HSPUs), 

20 ball slams @ 20#

15 burpees

10 T2B, I just did kipping pikes. 

I have no idea how long it took me now because I didn't log it. 10? 12? An hour?

Post wod weigh in today, 230 lbs. Yikes, it has taken a long time to get here. I hope the next 10 come off faster.

**At CE, Dyke has gotten incredible results from his (drug-free) strength athletes by constantly incrementing the weight of every work set, even if only by a fraction. It works, it's what we do. You may not do it, so be it.   

Half week off.

Had a busy week. I needed to go out of town on family business Monday through Wednesday so the first workout I could hit was the Thursday morning wod. And it kicked my ass. First time doing Filthy Fifty which I scaled to 40 reps and 20 inch jumps, 14# wall balls and single unders. I did the back extensions on the GHD though. Got through it in 23:30.

Friday I hit the morning wod and CE in the evening. Great progress on the snatch from a hang position and a challenging metcon. Cardio only on Saturday & Sunday.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday I was in Houston with my sisters for a funeral. Tough trip supporting my oldest sister. Diet was pretty good but I had too much wine and scotch. I didn't suffer too badly in the wods so I must not have gone too far astray.

Friday's PL session was a mix of good and bad. My bench work was horrible but the squat work was very good.

Here I am banging out 405 for a fairly easy triple. Why video myself? Critique. Notice on rep # 2 my left knee deflects inward a bit coming out of the hole. On rep # 3 I have some weird oscillation of the bar on my left side. That kind of crap needs to be trained out if I'm going to keep going up and not get injured. I can also see I'm hitting depth ok but I'd like to be a little wider and just a bit deeper. 

I meant to update my starting benchmarks after completing Fran and forgot, so here they are.


Starting weight: 238

Fran

95# & ring rows

6:44 (PR!)

1 RM Squat

415 (PR!)

10k Row

44:07 (PR!)

1 RM Snatch

150 (PR!)

7 min AMRAP burpees

75

Game time.

Had my first weigh in with Judy today and it wasn't pretty. 239. F%@K@!

She cautioned that it may not be a 6lb fat gain, the sugar causes a lot of bloating so it may be a lot of water. We'll see. We talked a lot about the effects of eating crappy after having been fairly clean and also some strategies for getting past the impulse eating. It worked today and tonight. More on this later.

I took yesterday off entirely so I missed Fran. I'm planning on making that up on Saturday. This morning we worked up to a 1RM squat. Really, the 20 minutes available for this just isn't enough for me to be comfortable pushing the limit, so I warmed up with doubles and singles to the weights I hit last week for reps and took a single at 415. That made for a 5lb PR and I called it quits there. Saving everything I have available for the end of the challenge.   

The wod felt pretty horrible but not as bad as the other day:

5 rounds of
{
     10 T2B (or anything up on the bar)
     10 Power snatch (75/55)
     10 wall balls (20/14)
}

I only scaled the T2B, swing my legs up to (mostly) parallel. Finished in ~ 12 minutes. Not quite thoroughly shattered however, added a 2k cool down row at ~2:30 pace, pretty slow and some practice pulls up to 315. Not feeling any deadlift love yet.

I still need to take "before" pics and measure my neck, waist & hips. Height and weight are already determined. 

I've also added something to my 2013 To Do list. I've signed up for a goruck challenge, set for April 20 in Albany. Really looking forward to doing this with some of the ACF buddies.

Had a decent bench session tonight. Worked up to another triple, this week at 238. Rep 3 was pretty damn ugly but I got it. That computes to roughly a 262 1RM. 

Tomorrow is the 10k row, so I need to refuel and recharge.