WOD 080930

Happy New Year! L'Shana Tovah!

My inaugural workout for the Jewish new year:

• 4 rounds for time of:
• 25 dead lift 135 lbs
• 25 push ups
• 25 box jumps (24")

My time: 26 min. I did a lot of resting between rounds.

WOD 080929

The CF 080928 WOD:

• Push jerk 5-5-5-5-5 reps

My results:

• Push jerk 135 x 5 /135 x 5 / 145 x 5 / 145 x 5 / 155 x 5

Easier than I expected. Might be time to go up in weight. I'm jumping better but I still have a tendency to lock out the bar with a press rather than pulling under it. Looking back on my previous workouts, this is the first time I've gone heavier than 115 on the push jerks.

I warmed up a little more than usual today.

• 3 rounds of:
• jump rope 1 min.
• half squat rotations 10
• arm circles 10
• push ups 10
• inch worm
• squats 12
• Samson stretch
• kettle bell swings 35 x 10
• pull ups 10
• dips 10

The warm up felt good. I must have been inspired by the Bears victory over the Eagles.

WOD 080928

Sunday's workout was a make up for Saturday.

CF WOD 080927:

• Four rounds for time of:
• Run 400 meter
• 50 Squats

I did not keep time but I didn't stop and rest either. I'd say my 400 times were in the 2 minute range. This one was a nice quad burner.

WOD 080925

This is a rest day on CF.com so I decided to do Angie.

For time:

• 100 pull ups
• 100 push ups
• 100 sit ups
• 100 bodyweight squats

My time: 27:35

The pull ups are killing me. It took me 15 minutes to get through 100 and I knocked out 20 in my first set. I tweaked my chest a bit on the first pull up rep.

Even so, this is a pretty good improvement. On July 7th I finished in about32 minutes with jump pull ups. On August 19th I finished the full workout in 35 minutes. So my time went down by about %25.

Touch rugby finals

I play 6-a-side touch rugby over the summer with the Austin rugby club. My team -- the Exiles -- is made up of players from the Austin rugby club, the Austin Huns, and a few expatriate kiwis. We finished each of the last 2 seasons in second place, losing to the Blues in the finals. Last season we lost in overtime. Tonight we played the semi-final and final matches to determine the 2008 champions.

In our first game we played the Golds. This team is comprised of mainly ARFC players. We beat the Gold pretty handily even with an 11 year old player, Patrick Medina, the son of our scrum half Rick Medina. An interesting side note -- Patrick almost scored a try but was touched in goal by ARFC lock Matt Fry. I hope Matt is proud of himself. He probably went home and kicked his dog.

The other semi-final match pitted the Blues against the Hawaiians. The Hawaiians were the odss on favorite, led by USA Eagle 7s fly-half Dallen Stanford. However, in a back and forth match that saw the lead change several times, the Blues came out on top. Mickey (?) paced the Blues with 3 long tries. Mikey is a former UT and Beavers 7s player. Mikey has tons of talent bt he gave up rugby due to recurring shoulder injuries. The Blues prevailed in overtime, setting the stage for a rematch of the 2006 and 2007 finals.

In the final match we took a 2-0 lead before giving up 2 tries. The Blues systematically worked the ball down field into our territory and then capitalized on our defensive mistakes. They actually went up 3-2 but we countered off a long risky football pass to the sidelines by yours truly. Just as it happened in 2007, we went into overtime under the lights at Burr field.

In touch rugby overtime is unlimited time sudden victory. The first team to score wins. Overtime begins with 6 players per side and then 1 player retires at each minute mark until each team only has three players. As you can imagine, playing 3 vs 3 rugby on a full sized rugby pitch is quite demanding. We felt that if we could make it through their initial onslaught we had a good chance since our team had a speed advantage. We played overtime mostly in our end. We made several mistakes and they kept us pinned. We stopped them right on the goal line on 8-9 occasions. I was the 3rd player to exit. About 2 minutes into the 3 vs 3 stage, Terrel Modkins took the outside corner and made a long break down the right sideline. Mikey took a good angle and nearly had him at the goal line, but when the dust settled Terrel had scored a 50m try and the Exiles had won their first touch championship 4-3 in overtime against the hated Blues.

WOD 080922

This was my own invention.

20 reps of:

• Left hand DB snatch (40 lbs)
• Right hand DB snatch (40 lbs)
• Ranger push up
• pushup on DBs
• right hand DB row from pushup position
• left hand DB row from pushup position
• pushup on DBs
• DB deadlift (jump to standing with 2 40lb DBs)

This was a pretty good workout. I didn't push it very hard. Isabel was today's CF WOD -- 30 135lbs snatch for time.

WOD 080921

For Crossfit today was a rest day. I decided to workout again just to keep things going. I feel like I have a lot of momentum right now.

• Run 5K

I ran the 3 mile loop at Town Lake with Matt Haga, a former rugby team mate. We stuck to an easy 10 minute pace and enjoyed the scenery. Running Town Lake with a friend is much more enjoyable than pounding out a 5K on the treadmill with no headphones.

WOD 080920

Another benchmark workout I've been looking forward to: Grace.

CF WOD 090918:

• "Grace" For time -- 135 pound Clean and Jerk, 30 reps

My time: 9:15

CF WOD 080919 and 080915

I took about a week off because my shoulder was bothering me, but today I came back with a vengeance. 2 WODs in one day!

090819:

• Run 5k
  

090815:

• Fran: Three rounds, 21-15- and 9 reps, for time of:
  
  • 95 pound Thruster
  • Pull-ups

Both times were slower than I wanted but I busted my ass in both workouts and I was very sore from touch.

My results:

• 5K -- 27:42
  
• Fran -- 10:12

Fran kicks my ass! Moving from thrusters to pull ups feels like the wind is getting knocked out of you.

Touch rugby 080918

Thursday night I went out to the Austin Rugby club and played touch rugby. We played 2 20 minutes matches with 7 a side. We tied the first match 6-6 and the won the second 7-4. In the second match we played 2 men down (5 versus 7) in the first half and 4 on 7 in the second. We were actually up 6-0 at half time and narrowly held on for the win. Of course it helped that we had Dallen Stanford, the USA Eagle 7s fly half on our team.

It was a great workout. Even though I feel very fit from Crossfitting, I am not in rugby shape. The sharp accelerations, quick stopping, change of direction, and repeated sprinting was hard on the lungs and the joints. But I felt very explosive and quick. I scored a bunch of tries on long runs and on defense I ran down a bunch of long breaks to prevent scores.

Workout 080913

I did the CF 080912 WOD a day late.

• Clean and Jerk 3-3-3-3-3 reps

My results:

• Clean and jerk 3 x 135/3 x 145/3 x 145/3 x 155/ 3 x 155

I enjoyed lifting weights in my backyard. Throwing my barbell after each set made me feel very manly.

CF WOD 080910

Today I narrowly avoided the becoming the first person to throw up while lifting weights at my workplace gym!

5 rounds for max reps of:

• Body weight bench press
• Pull-ups
• Body weight back squat

My results :

• bench press 185 lbs 10/6/5/5/6
• back squat 185 lbs 12/10/8/7/7
• pull ups 15/10/8/10/10

With no spotter I didn't go to failure on any exercise except pull ups. I rested about 2 minutes between each circuit and I was GASSED. This workout was brutal.

CF really stole my thunder on strength focused periodization within the crossfit cycle. I'd say 75% of the past 2 weeks WODs have been strength focused. Look slike I underestimated the Coach!

Another thing I learned is that it is damn hard to string together 3 days of strength workouts where you go all out on functional exercises like squatting and dead lift. But I do feel like I'm getting stronger.

Another interesting side node, in the past 4 months this is the 4th time I have benched and I've benched 2x in the last week.

CF WOD 080906

Linda: For time, 10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 reps of

• bench press (body weight)
• dead lift (1.5 body weight)
• clean (.75 body weight)

No rest between sets, move immediately from station to station.

My results: 10-9-8-7-6 reps of

• bench press (185 lbs)
• dead lift (275 lbs)
• clean (135 lbs)

I only had one bar so I wasted a lot of time switching weights between exercises. Eventually I got smart and did 7 bench, 7 DL, 7 cl, 6 cl, 6 DL, 6 bench. I stopped at 1 hour with 40 of 55 reps complete.

This workout entailed lifting more weight than I ever have in my life. (11000 lbs dead lift, 7400 bench, 5400 clean = 23800 lbs) I think I ruptured my spleen, btw.

I also ran 1.5 miles at Lady Bird Lake today.

CF WOD 080903

Another strength workout. I think Glassman is reading my blog.

As posted:

• Back Squat 3-3-3-3-3 reps

My results:

• 10 x 135 / 3 x 205 / 3 x 215 / 3 x 225 / 3 x 235 / 3 x 245 / 3 x 255

I didn't go heavy because I was lifting in my garage with a shaky rack and no spotter. Even so, I think it qualifies as a strength workout.

CF WOD 080902

As posted:

• Push jerk 3-3-3-3-3 reps

Push jerk is a movement I am not entirely comfortable with yet so I went light.

My results:

• Push jerk: 3 x 135/ 3 x 155 / 3 x 155 / 3 x 155 / 3 x 155

Even with the light weight I could tell that the trainers at my office gym were uncomfortable watching someone perform an explosive overhead lift. To their credit, they left me alone.

I also did my typical warmup (no running) and I did about 5 pull ups between each set just to stay loose.