Month: September 2012

NEVER FORGET

What a day to remember. We all have our memories of this day 11 years ago and I know we will Never Forget. It was such an emotional day in America. While I was not affected to the depths of others who lost loved ones and who were close to pure insanity that ensued my heart still was heavy. Pray, Pray and Pray some more is all I knew to do – Love my family and be grateful for what we had. I continue to do just that. I hope everyone does the same. I hope everyone REMEMBERS all of our HEROES not only from 9/11 but throughout history as well as our current and future HEROES. God Bless America!

9/11/12 WOD

Our BOOM Box WOD was one to honor 9/11 and to Never Forget. Time is set for 20:01 and we were to do 99 Weighted Overhead Lunges (35/45lbs) and 111 Pushups. If you finished under 20:01 AMRAP it out. At 20:01 we ran 1 mile as a team. I struggled a bit with the OH Lunges, I took them in 10s and 5s. I probably took too much time to rest as well but it starts to hurt! I got to the HR Push Ups and I faired better than I thought I would. I was actually doing those in 10’s and 5’s and I threw in 2’s and 3’s as well. I finished strong in sets of 5. I don’t even recall the time when I finished but it didn’t matter because I had to keep going until 20:01 was up. I ended up getting 56 reps of OH Lunges into my 2nd round. We took off as a team and ended as a team for our MILE run. Thank goodness one teammate, Andrea, has a glute that is slowing her down. Not thank goodness that she’s not 100% but that she had to keep a slower pace. And another teammate Travis was wearing a weight vest. I’m not sure how much it was but I know wearing it for the whole workout and then running with it was a PAIN in the booty! So he was slower than normal. We finished at 33:11!

In other NOT SO SOLEMN news
We were having jokes this morning since we all survived the WOD and I decided to share my personal top 5 of “YOU KNOW YOU’RE A CROSSFIT JUNKIE WHEN…” I know, I know it’s been done and there’s probably a ton of versions out there but whatever! Heheheh. Plus I’m only doing 5 instead of 10 so just humor me or let me try to humor you ツ

TOP 5 REASONS YOU KNOW YOU ARE A CROSSFIT JUNKIE

5. You make everyday tasks and chores a WOD i.e. Car wash WOD, Laundry WOD, Clean the Bathroom WOD

4. You realize you no longer shop for normal clothes and you only shop for CrossFit type shirts, shorts and accessories.

3. You find yourself picking your calluses mindlessly in your car, at your desk, well pretty much everywhere!

2. You realize you have a love/hate relationship with LACROSSE Balls. One is in my car, on my nightstand, at work, etc.

And the NUMBER ONE reason YOU KNOW YOU ARE A CROSSIFT JUNKIE (this one’s for you Kristen)

1. You practice your HOOK GRIP while driving!

 

I’m a dork I know but hopefully that’s why you ♥ me! Have a crazy, insane and AWESOME day! Yup you know it. Be the most AWESOMEREST!

 

Welcoming the COOLDOWN

The weather has been freakin AMAZEBALLS down here in Texas. Ya it’s still probably a little warm to everyone else but when you get out of the 100’s and into low 90’s high 80’s you’d think it was winter! That means our mornings are in the 50’s and 60’s. You can’t ask for better!

Saturday WOD
As most of you know we had a Community WOD at the BOOM BOX on Saturday. It was a filled with all sorts of fun. We started out with a contest of counting the weight on the barbell. We had a couple of rounds since only 3 people competed against each other at a time. They would be turned away from the barbell and Coach would load up the bar, 3, 2, 1 LOOK and be the first one to write the correct answer on the board. If you got the weight right but were not first you had to do 5 burpees. If you got the weight wrong you had to do 20 burpees. We went head to head till we had one winner. I made it to the final round winning 2 heats! I got panicked and rushed and got it wrong and ended up penalized with 20 burpees… BoooHoooo!

We then proceeded with a TEAM WOD. We had teams of 3 and 3 stations: Weighted Overhead Lunges, Chest to Bar Pull Ups (no assistance allowed) and Wall Balls. Well shitfire, I can’t do CTB Pull Ups so we’re screwed or so I thought. Turns out we don’t have to do all the stations which is great for me, but it sucks for whoever can do CTB because they have to double up on CTB. And I have to bust out the other movements to make up for my loser-ness. We did 3 rounds of the 3 minute stations and counted total reps. My legs are still dead from Wall Balls but we came in 1st place with 385 reps! Woooo Go us (Nick, Trenton and me)! ツ

9/10/12 WOD
Like I said my legs were still dead from the Wall Balls although I’m sure the Lunges have some factor in the achy legs too. Again with the weather it was so nice to get through our warm up and not be drenched in sweat!

9/10/12 WOD

Skill/Strength: 3 Front Squats + 1 Push Press (15 minutes to get as heavy as possible)I know my MAX Push Press is 100lbs so that was at least my goal for the morning. We steadily worked our way up in weight and when I got to 85lbs I felt some tightness near my underarm in the Push Press, it was NOT comfortable but I still got the weight up overhead. I’m not sure if this is because my rotator cuffs are fried or what but when I jumped up to 95lbs I just wasn’t making the cut. I was ok with where I was at because I knew I had pain and I didn’t want to make it worse and at the end I just couldn’t get the weight up. Need MORE Mobility!

MetCon: 3 rounds of 3 GTOH @ 85lbs, 8 Pull Ups, 1min rest
I wasn’t sure about doing the GTOH with the quickness but I was convinced I could do so. It wasn’t so bad but I was so focused on my shoulders being dead that I wasn’t JERKING the bar efficiently. I got to the pull ups last and well we all know I’m slow at pull ups so that didn’t help me out either. I was all ready to get to the bar FAST and realized no one else was doing anything! I forgot about the 1 minute REST!!! It was nice to have the rest but I still struggled. By my last round of GTOH which I was Clean & Jerking by the way I failed on my 3rd attempt. I was like WTH?!?! Cleaned the bar focused and Jerked the Hell out it! Well that was EASY! Why didn’t I do that the whole time?!? Ha! I have no clue. Then I went on my merry way to struggle on pull ups! Time: 4:48 (NOT GOOD)

Enjoy your hopefully Beautiful MONDAY! It hasn’t been beat down drag ass like Mondays can be so it’s a good day! And remember BE AWESOME.

❤ THIS…CHECK IT OUT!  The SECRET SOCIETY OF AWESOME!

Happy Happy Joy Joy

At last it’s Friday! I went to bed last night feeling the hurt from the Bear Complex yesterday monrning. It’s an all body take down. I woke up feeling the hurt even more. I wasn’t sure all my limbs would make it out of bed but thankfully they did. I wanted nothing more but to crawl back into bed and hibernate.

As my story typically goes… YOU Know I got up and dragged my sore ass body into the BOOM Box. What awaited us was Muscle UP Work, Double Unders and Running that is if I can make it through the warm up, which involved Bear Crawls, which typically are fine in my book. My arms didn’t want to hold me up at all. Worst Bear Crawls EVER, then inch worms right after that?!? What a cruel cruel world! 😉

9/7/12 WOD

Skill Strength: Muscle Up Development
Let me first state, I can’t do a pull up, I surely can’t do a Muscle Up but working on technique never hurts. In my head I will pretend I am awesome at the MUs. So we work on lowered rings with bands and proceeded to learn and understand what our HIPS should be doing from a horizontal position… please hold your jokes for later. After a while of that we worked on being balled up and holding the position right before you would actually press up to a finished muscle up. Put it all together and you have the workings of a Muscle Up. And to top it off I found pics on the interwebs to illustrate, sorta, kinda!

You use a handy dandy band for assistance.

We were a little lower to the ground but you get the idea, bring hips up to rings.

Ball up and end like this.

MetCon: 15 Double Unders UNBROKEN, 200m Sprint
Well Well Well, Something I’m pretty sure I can do but ya just never know. I’ve clearly explained before that when I’m ever trying to get MAX DUs in a time frame, the shit hits the fan. My brain turns to mush when the clock starts counting down. Getting 15 DUs unbroken shouldn’t be a problem and thankfully it WAS NOT a problem. My biggest problem is that I’m a slow ass runner. I SUCK at running. I know I say I’m horrible at a lot of things and mostly that’s my disappointment in myself talking and you all get a dose of it DAILY but I know I’m getting better in the long run. When I say I SUCK at running, I really do. I’ve had progress and what not but I’m not a runner, mentally or physically and I don’t aspire to be EVER. If only I had some mental drive to run faster then maybe I would have been more successful on this MetCon. I did push on my last sprint so I broke that mental barrier for the morning but it’s hard to do. Time 4:39

Kid Front News
I had a big KID win last night by making sweet potato hash and topping it with spaghetti meat sauce. Justice gave it a 10 and compared to the zucchini noodles which was only given a 6. Still not bad but preferred the SWEET POTATO! And so EASY to make. No pics but I”ll give a quick breakdown: Cook you up some GRASSFED Ground Beef… season away, me I use: salt, pepper, cumin, garlic powder. Sometimes I add tomatoes, onion, real garlic, mushrooms, etc but we were in a hurry last night. Add beef to already warming up SUGAR FREE, ORGANIC PASTA SAUCE (I can’t recall the brand I use at this moment, but if you really want to know just comment below please, I’ll have it later today.) While that’s going on, peel and shred up however many sweet potatoes you need. Sautee in coconut oil or Bacon Fat till soft. Pour meat sauce on top of potato hash, Add a side salad. You’re done! I have no pictures because I was not planning on sharing, how rude of me! It was late, post football practice, kids starving, fuel was needed… NO TIME for blog ideas!

Sorry but one more kid note… Jonas took some baby spinach to school and had some friends inquire as to what it was, it’s seriously a sad day that kids don’t know what fruits and vegetables are out there. Shoot I know there’s a ton of adults who don’t know as it is but geesh, spinach people, spinach. One of his friends tasted it… it’s raw, no dressing, seasoning or anything and they thought it was LOVELY and couldn’t believe it came as is! Seriously, it blows my mind! And to go with that is a lovely 70’s Saturday Morning PSA that I hope y’all enjoy!

Hope y’all have a super duper weekend. Community WOD at the BOOM Box tomorrow if you want to come out and have some fun! Hopefully it’s still in the 60s at 9am! So no excuse of being too HOT! If you can’t BE AWESOME with us just make sure you are AWESOME in general.

BEAR of a Morning!

I felt really good this morning. Maybe because I slept flat on my back ALL night, or maybe because the Cowboys won and I didn’t go to sleep pissed off, or maybe just maybe it’s just a good day. Good energy, not as achy as normal. Who knows! I feel good and I like it!

I even woke up with ease this morning and was ready for the BOOM Box! Skill/Strength: 5 rounds 50yd sprints. I can do short distance sprints much better than 100 or 200 yd ones. Plus on flat ground vs. that damn hill makes the running all the better. Today we mostly focused on form. It appears I was sprinting like a loonball and Coach had me work on technique. Let me tell you it’s hard to actually THINK about how you run. All of sudden I feel like I’m in quicksand. My BRAIN is draining what little speed I thought I had. But by the end my technique was better, now I just need the speed!

MetCon: 2RM of the BEAR Complex
Our task this morning was to warm up and work up to a 2 rep max of the Bear Complex with a 30 minute time frame. 30 minutes sounds like forever, but we were teamed up on a bar to take turns and I’m sure to make sure we get SOME rest so that was nice! I know some of you are wondering what exactly is the BEAR Complex. You start off cleaning the bar, doing a front squat, push pressing over head, bringing bar down to back of shoulders, back squat, and push pressing back up overhead. That’s 1 REP. You’ll see the movements in the video below. You also hear her explain it’s 5 rounds of 7 sets. Our goal however was work up in weight and do at least 2 REPS.

We started off at 55lbs, EASY BREEZY. I squat cleaned to a thruster to a backsquat to a thruster really well at such a light weight and was able to do that up to 80lbs. It was at 85lbs that I had to slow it down. And it was at 90lbs where I grew a chicken wing and FAILED 3 times, womp womp! I got through 1 Rep fine, it was the 2nd rep and the last push press where I couldn’t get it up. My left arm/elbow would just fly out. It couldn’t hang with the bar. My left arm is FIRED! And on my last attempt I was so damn focused on getting that 2nd Push Press I totally FORGOT to Back Squat! Seriously? WOW Stephanie! Ah well, that Push Press didn’t happen anyways so what if I missed the Squat, whatever! Heheheh. I know that 90lbs is MINE. It just sucks I couldn’t string it together! I got you Bear Complex, I got you!

Also, I just want to let you know if you’re on the fence about OLY Shoes… GET THEM! I felt great in my squats. Good depth, stable and confident. You realize right off the bat how beneficial they are BUT it was TODAY that I really could tell a big difference. Maybe all this Feeling GOOD is me finally breaking into a new level mentally and physically…. cross your fingers this is TRUE and that it sticks ツ

In other news
So Paleo is the thing we do, we’ve been lacksidasical in the past two months, I know, but still we eat pretty clean and stick to Paleo pretty closely. Now Ernie is flipping the script and reading up on Carb Backloading! I don’t know if flipping the script is the right terminology, it’s just different!

Sounds too good to be true, eat clean, eat clean, eat clean, WORK OUT, then stuff your face with all sorts of good and bad carbs, then go back to eating clean until after your next workout. That’s the gist of it or that’s how my brain is taking it in. Thoughts? Anyone else doing this? PLEASE NOTE – I have yet to read/research/educate myself about it. Forgive me if I have it all wrong. I don’t even know if I do ENOUGH physical work to justify this type of program. Just throwin it out there to see if anyone has any comments, ideas, suggestions, testimonials, etc.

Tha, Tha, That’s ALL Folks for this Thursday edition of Drinking the CF KOOL-AID. Let me tell you… it’s still good! Be the most Awesome of AwEsOmE today!

Simple Cooking with KALE

Taking notes from fellow bloggers (Martha, Jennifer), I’m making a small attempt at being more HELPFUL than being more about ME! Heheh but you can’t have AWESOME without ME so hopefully I take on this task without the ramble. Ok I ramble that’s a given, you’ll just have to follow along as best you can! It’s my rest day from the good ol’ BOOM Box so why not post a recipe. I haven’t shared a recipe in quite a while because frankly we get busy in our house and food, although delicious, gets boring and repetitive.

For my dedicated readers you know I rarely talk about my work life, maybe not at all now that I think about it. I am a graphic designer for a housewares company, Dexas International. We manufacture/produce all sorts of kitchenware, gadgets, etc. No this isn’t an ad for my company, just giving you some back story. Well this month’s social media topic for us is KALE!

And as most of you no I’m not a CHEF and I’m surely no pro at all things Kale but I do cook it semi-regularly at home. There are different varieties but I usually use the plain ol’ green or red tipped versions. It’s the SUPERGREEN of greens. It’s all sorts of good for you. I’m not going to go into all the details of kale but check it out for yourself. Maybe start HERE and Google away. It’s almost daily that I get poked fun of by my co-workers for my clean eating. Throw out the word Kale and it’s a circus, then I realized that maybe they are just intimidated by it. So I got to thinking that maybe others are too. So I have a super quick recipe for you to use. This is good especially if you are on a time crunch. TIME is what I lack in all aspects of life so having a side dish to go with dinner that can cook super fast is IDEAL in my world!

This is KID APPROVED and hopefully CO-WORKER approved as well. Please NOTE my kids LOVE LOVE LOVE veggies so it’s not hard to please them but they really do like this simple ingredient, super quick side. I’m pretty sure I’ve discussed this dish before in previous posts but I never broke it down or had many pics to share.

Ingredients:
Bunch of Kale
2 slices of Uncured Bacon (nitrate free, no/low sugar)
1/4 cup sliced/diced onion or more to liking
Himalayan Salt (or preferred salt) to desired saltiness
Pepper
Garlic Powder (or real garlic if you have it on hand)
Red Chili Powder (OPTIONAL but if you want a little kick! A+)

Now what?!?
Get your skillet/pan heated up
Cut up bacon into small slices or bits and toss in skillet
After bacon is slightly brown add onion and sautee till bacon starts getting crispy
While bacon and onion are cooking prep/wash kale. I just tear it from the main hard stalk and tear up into smaller pieces. Rinse thoroughly and wait for Bacon to get a little crispy
Add Kale to skillet. It will look like a lot and depending on your skillet size you may save half Kale for later or wait till Kale wilts down before adding more.
Season as desired using above seasonings or whatever flavor profile you prefer
Once all the Kale is wilted down, you are READY TO SERVE!

Kale tore up and ready to be rinsed off.

Kale stalks NOT used for cooking! Not real sure if they are good to cook or not actually but not for this recipe!

YUM BACON!

Brown the Bacon a bit before adding Onion. Then let cook together tiill Bacon starts getting crispy!

Toss in rinsed Kale right on top of bacon and onions. At this point is when I add my seasonings. Let simmer than stir away as it wilts down.

As you can see it goes from A LOT to not A LOT. This was about half a Kale bunch.

Ready to SERVE!

OR READY to PACK up for LUNCH!

I made this in the morning before work and it took me less than 20 minutes to prep and cook. Maybe even 15 minutes. I didn’t look at the clock but you get the gist. It’s quick and easy! Cook it while you’re sauteeing some chicken. Add leftover roasted chicken or serve it with Fajita meat. The options are endless. And it’s a WINNER in our house.

So go forth and be AWESOME! Eat some KALE!

September you ARRIVED so quickly!

Where has there year gone and where is it going? I have no idea, but it’s just flown by with super ninja like quickness! We’re already in September and I’m not ready for the rest of the year!

The one good thing about September being here is a 3 day weekend for Labor Day! Woooo! In this weekend I ate rather poorly in all aspects: probably not enough food on some days, poor quality in food on all days and just overall processed, make you puffy and gain weight eats. I’m not sad or in the dumps over it. Just staying honest with y’all. I’ve been more let loose over the past couple of months than I have ever been and I think it’s about time to nip it in the bud. I guess a combo of vacation, summer time, football insanity and post competition has left me feeling the need to just not nit pick all my food choices. The vacation is over. Back to eating clean 90-95% of the time if not 100% and no more slackin off. Good thing is that it’ts NOT HARD to do anymore. Eating Clean, Eating Paleo is second nature to my whole family now.

Even though I ate rather poorly and had a restful weekend we still had some BOOM BOX fun on Labor Day. Coach was sure to make us to do work and that he did fellow readers, that he did! We started off with a game, although it wasn’t a game o’ fun. We split up into groups of 3. He gave us 3 different sets of CrossFit Totals from Friday, he didn’t give us the total just the weight for each movement. After we wrote them down we had to run 400m, come back and do the Math for the first CrossFit total, RUN 400m, come back and do the math for the 2nd CFT, run 400m and come back and do the math for the 3rd CFT. If we did the math wrong then it was a burpee penalty. Thank goodness we did our math right. After we all composed ourselves, the top 2 teams moved on to the LIGHTNING round, lol. Us losers had to pick a team to side with. We were there to watch, not talk and hope they got their answers right. If they didn’t we got dealt a burpee penalty for every wrong answer the team got. There were 6 categories and it was an A or B type answer format. Out of 9 questions the team we were with only got 3 answers correct :/ That left us with 30 burpees each for consequence!

Lumberjack 20 Crew!

That was just our little “fun” warm up. The LUMBERJACK 20 was what was in store for us after all the fun!
20 DL (135lbs), 400m run, 20 KB Swing (1 POOD), 400m run, 20 OHS (35lbs), 400m run, 20 Burpees, 400m run, 20 CTB Pull ups, 400m run, 20 Box Jumps (24″), 400m run, 20 Squat Cleans (75lbs), 400m run. We did this as a team at weights suitable for the 3 of us. Only one person could be working and only one person had to do the runs vs. the whole team running, which was a good thing I suppose. We were killing it at first because we had our youthful 15 yr old teammate (Grant) do all the running! It was at the Chest To Bar Pull ups where we slowed down and never recovered. If only Annette and I had anything to give in regards to those pull ups I’m sure we would have landed ourselves a 1st or 2nd place. Instead we fell short with a time of 18:49. I know my running pace didn’t help much either. Either way it was definitely a good and fun WOD!

9/3/12 Labor Day WOD

9/4/12 WOD
This morning was back to the normal schedule of 5am! And I was tired! Seriously zombie-like draggin butt tired. Nothing like a few Deadlifts to wake you up!

Skill/Strength: Deadlift 5RM
Woooowwweeeee. I worked my way up to 175 which is 10lbs shy of my 185 1RM. It wasn’t too shabby, so we jumped to 195, MY weight nemesis. I’ve been trying 195 for a while now and I got nothing and as of 5:20 this morning I still got nothin! So we moved back down to 185 and low and behold I busted out 5. Now they were slow and not pretty but I made it work. So why in the heckola can I not freakin lift 195 or more?!? It’s in my head I suppose. And once my brain learns to mind it’s own business then maybe just maybe I can freaking get that weight up!

9/4/12 WOD

MetCon: 1 minute of SOTO PRESS and 1 minute of max 10 yd shuttle. In my googlings (not very in depth) I found nothing to show as an example of what the SOTO Press is but I’ll explain the best I can. You stay in the bottom part of an OHS and you pull bar down (PVC for this MetCon) to your shoulders and just press up and down all the while holding that Squat. Talk about BURN! Mostly my RIGHT HIP because my right hip is a loser! If you stand up in that minute you are penalized with 5 burpees and minus 5 count on the 10yd shuttle run! Well this was a big ol FAIL in MetConLand for me. I couldn’t hold the minute squat on any round. I had to do burpees on the spot which ate into my shuttle time. It was bad. I only got one run in at the full minute and I managed to get 18 lengths. Too bad only 13 counted out of that 18!!!! Only 43 of my 73 10 yrd lengths counted! ARGH! Shoulda, coulda, woulda’s. Who knows what my score would be without penalties!!

That does it for today. REST day tomorrow and hopefully some good mobility work for my WHOLE body! Be AWESOME and someone please buy me the shirt below. It’s at Academy. Great! Thanks!