Caught up: Thursday
8/29/2013
Any anti-crossfitters may want to skip this lol.
I left the office early to get some things done. Afterwards, I Decided to meet up with my wife for crossfit, since she’s been asking that I go for the last year. It’s actually something I’ve been wanting to try for the cardio aspect. She’s a cardio freak and often comes home from CF totally beat, so I had no doubt they do good work there. Though, the training facility is at their work and I’ve never seen it and didn’t know what to expect.
Turns out, they have a pretty nice gym and several football fields worth of space. From previous comments, I’ve gathered that they really focus on cardio-centric and body weight type work. I asked my wife if they ever do deadlifts or pull ups before and she said, no deads and only occasionally pull ups. They use kettlebells and DB’s quite a bit, but never anything with barbells. Due to working my back pretty well yesterday, I didn’t want to push it if they often did deads & etc. Which they don’t do, so no problem.
Well, we get there and there’s apparently a new trainer. He seems like a nice guy and from listening to him, seems pretty legit. We do a few warm ups of crab crawls, inch worms and bear crawls (reminded me a lot of the ye ol wrestli’n days!). Then he tells us to go in and grab a kettlebell, as we’re going to do some summo DL’s followed by KB hanging cleans to finish up warm ups. The immediate thought of, “oh fuck DLs” came to mind. Well KB summo’s can’t be that bad, right? I’m the last in line and the lightest KB left is a 55 pounder. Again, I think “no problem, it can’t be that bad”, as I noticed all of the other guys using 25 to 35 pounders, at which point I’m cringing on the inside.
As we get going, the trainer compliments and points out my form, which is great and all, since I never pull sumo. We do 30 of these and then switch to the hang and clean, which we do another 30 of. As we transition into it, all I could think was “My back is burning and this is just the warm up?” Ya, just the warm up and 3 rounds of it. Finally finish and I’m ready to hit the showers.
So, we get to the WOD and this is awesome. Why would you warmup the back if you weren’t going to work it, right? This is what the WOD looks like (while right up my alley, it’s a day too late):
30 KB swings (still holding onto that 55 pounder)
500 meter run
150 rope skips
500 meter run
30 PULL UPS!!!
500 meter run
Rinse and repeat 5 times. Oh yes, and it’s 96 degrees out.
I figured the pull ups would be the worst part, since I did a bunch the day prior, but those went well. I just did 10, paused, 10, paused 10 and go. Almost everyone was using banded assistance, so I felt pretty good about being able to do them without. In fact, I didn’t see anyone doing them raw except one girl who was kipping. I need to learn kipping if I’m going to continue to do this.
As it turns out, the KB swings were absolutely murder for me. The trainer saw that I was trying to do them quickly, so he pulled me aside and demonstrated another method to speed it up. They were fast, but more strenuous too. Usually, running and jump rope is not an issue for me, but I was winded after the first round and skipping rope was horrid. On a good day, I can hit 300 skips without resetting. After the first round, I was resetting after every 50 at best and more commonly around 20 or 25.
These are timed and there is a time limit. By the end, only my wife and one other guy finished the entire WOD. While I wasn’t really trying to compete, so much as beat the clock, I came in fourth and a few other guys were right behind me. Given the circumstances, I don’t think I could have done any better had I tried. I was glad to hear everyone else saying that this was the toughest session they’ve had in the past year.
This kicked my ass, but was something I enjoyed. I haven’t felt that level of exhaustion from conditioning work, honestly, since the wrestling days. They have sessions every Tuesday and Thursday, which kinda fits in with my Madcow. It’s free for me, so I’ll probably hit up some more sessions, maybe once a week. As long as it doesn’t interfere with my lifting sessions, I think it will be beneficial towards my lifting goals.
TL:DR - I did crossfit
If I was younger, and it wasnt so much $, I would be all over that. I just dont want to start beating my body up with all that, if beating myself up means, its HARD WORK , ha.