back squat

Holy Tornadoes Batman! And other stuff!

So I know I’ve been Slack Action Jackson as of late and I’m sorry. Life has consumed me and I’ve neglected my blogging. Please still love me, Please! Heheheh. K or don’t. It’s fine by me.

Let me first tell you, North Texas got hit pretty hard with some crazy weather … tornadoes, hail, and rain – oh my! All jokes aside, I can report from my end that we are all safe and I pray that all those affected will come out of this craziness just fine. My home was narrowly missed as were the kid’s schools, thank GOD! I don’t know what I’d do without my family!!! There was so much damage in my neck of the woods. It makes my heart sad for all those that have to deal with this tragedy. Fortunately there were not any fatalities.

So now that my unofficial news reporting is over I just have a little rant for y’all and then I’ll kinda sorta recap the past several days of the BOOM BOX.

Listen up y’all – This is not a new rant, just extended from previous ones …. QUIT saying you need to start working out or eating healthy and then just go right on and eat junk and not move at all!

Seriously?!? WTH is wrong in your noggin? Does it feel good to SAY that you need to get on top of it? Does it really? Do you feel better after you say that then eat a double cheeseburger or a lean cuisine and soda (maybe even diet soda). I see and hear it everyday. It’s not good, I want to help you all, but I know I can’t. It has to come from within you. NO matter how bad I want good health for folks I can’t make you do it. I’m not perfect. I had my junkfilled haze just recently and it took a few days to get back on the straight and narrow.

But I will tell you, just that little bit of insanity from my end ruined my world. Ruined my stomach, ruined my head, ruined my overall self. I’m still recovering. It’s not good folks. I can’t imagine feeling like that day in and day out. I know I was like that a year ago and I seriously can’t recall feeling physically out of wack but I’m sure I did and I just didn’t realize it was a direct result of my everyday food intake. CRAP! mixed with healthy stuff but in general CRAP none the less! So please if y’all really want to do something then DO IT! Just give it a go for 30 days, then plan yourself a cheat day. But at least give it a go for more than 7 days before you treat yourself. Yes some of you may go bonkers without a “cheat” day but don’t try and convince yourself 2 days in that you need that office cookie or that handful of M&M’s. It’s not helping you at all! And get moving, even if it’s walking up and down your street. You don’t have to be a die hard worker outer bee. You need to eat right, eat clean…. that’s 80% of it folks. Not 10% or 20%. Nutrition is 80%!!!!! Thanks for listening. And sorry for the ramble. I just see it day in and day out and it just infuriates me. I want to shake people sometimes … but I can’t without fear of getting smacked or yelled at, hehehe!

ANYWAYS!!! So the last time I shared my WODs with you was Tuesday last week!!! Wow I am a slacker 😀

So here goes my wrap up. It will be short and sweet I hope.

3/29/2012

Skill/Strength – Band Dead Lifts 12 sets of 3. I can’t recall the weight but it was fairly light maybe 75lbs. Not 100% sure. But what you do is drape a mobility band over the top of the bar and let it rest on the ground. You then step on the band to add resistance and knock out 3 reps quicklike.

It took a couple of sets before I felt somewhat comfortable doing them. It is definitely a unique feeling and takes some core strength to stabilize yourself. After the 12 sets, we did one set without the bands. HOLY MOLY it was sooo weird and you feel crazy strong and really feel like you execute the lift properly no questions asked.

MetCon – Yes COACH brought up Toes to Bar. Even though he knows we had enough from the Open, he still had to bust those bad boys out. Well I could only manage to get 3 TTB in so I switched to Knees to Elbows for a workout instead of just struggling. All week had been upper body and I think this day I was just tired. I only managed to get 4 full rounds in and almost got 5 round completed. I know I worked, I just hate that bar! On a side note, Box Jumps at 20″ felt really nice. I finally feel like I have some spring in my legs, NOT MUCH mind you, but some 🙂

3/30/2012

Skill/Strength – Back Squat Deload. This is something I like to see. We aren’t trying to go for max weight here or crazy progressions. We are putting in work but it’s a nice “rest” if you will.

MetCon – TEAM WOD. Sometimes I dread these and sometimes I enjoy them. This was one that I was happy to share the workload. We had the option of doing 5 Muscle UPs (hhahahha), 15 Chest to Bar (hahahahhahah) or 30 Chin Ups. Well our team consisted of 3 of us who can not do pullups at all. So we used bands to help us and had no choice but to pick chin ups. After Chin Ups we could do 5 Handstand PushUps (hahahah), 15 Box HSPU OR 30 Hand Release Pushups. Well one of team mates had neck issues that prevented her to do the BOX HSPUs so we went with the 30 pushups. And we finish off the round with 90 Air Squats. So us ladies just split the load up evenly and we finished in 16:43! Go US! It was fun and a beating all at the same time.

4/2/2012

Skill/Strength – Snatch Practice. It’s always good to practice SNATCH! It’s just such a complicated movement. We only worked with PVC and the bar. We did not add any weight but just going through the motions and working up to a full snatch is work.

MetCon – RUNNING! UGH! I almost stayed in bed after I checked the website. I despise running and this was designed to “sprint” the distances. I mean I can’t SPRINT 800m, but it’s the idea of pushing hard right? Our distance is unofficial so don’t think I’m super BEAST for getting a time of 2:32. The :24 was for the “200”, which was probably less. I think I can sprint a 100 yds in 17/18 seconds so ya. There ya have it. We rested 1 minute after each run. I hate running!

4/3/2012

Skill Strength – Deadlifts 5, 5, 5+ We had to do math and it’s hard to do at 5am. I can’t recall our weights, but I don know on my last round I just went 5. I didn’t mean to put the bar down, I just wasn’t using my brain. I had at least 2 more in me. So we’ll just go with I would have done 7 reps on my last round! Sound good? OK GREAT!

MetCon – 5 rounds of 30 sec plank, 1:00 of Thrusters and 1:00 rest. The idea was to match your max thruster count each round. Add up your rounds and voila that’s your score for the day. I managed a 10, 10, 11, 8, and 10 giving me a total of 49 @ 65lbs. Thrusters are not easy. I seriously pushed my butt off. I know I did what appeared to be a lot of standing around but I just was so out of breath and believe me .. just out of it. I don’t think I could have done more in a minute. I did know I had to push but when my push was out I dropped the bar. It’s hard to WANT to get it back up. It’s hard to breathe too! I feel I finished strong. Good MetCon!

And that’s a wrap for the WODs. I’ll close with some food shots.

If you want a quick meal that  you can partially prep over the weekend then try some sweet potato hash. I just shred up 2-3 sweet potatoes and put them in a storage container and keep in fridge. Each morning I take a handful of my shredded yumminess and saute it in one teaspoon of coconut oil. Top it with 2 fried eggs. I might add some bacon or fruit. Easy breezy and delicious!

Sweet Potato Hash topped with Fried Eggs!

And this was my lunch today. Sauteed shredded zucchini with meat sauce, 3 oz of steak and some steamed broccoli. It was  great filling lunch 🙂

Steak, Broccoli and Shredded Zucchinni topped with meat sauce 🙂

Happy Hump Day Folks! Make it great!

Magical Brooms and Manic Mondays!

Yes it’s MANIC. Rain, cold, no foods to eat for lunch, traffic, etc…!!!

And then the broom and it’s mysterious ways! Ok so the Magical Broom isn’t a long story but as one my kiddos was sweeping the floor this morning he went to lean said broom against the chair for a moment and then he realized that it wasn’t leaning on anything! It was cool and creepy all at the same time. I knew that if chairs started sliding and stacking on each other then we would be OUT of there ASAP! I don’t need a poltergeist remake!! But that was all. Just a magical broom doin it’s thing 🙂

ARE YOU SERIOUS?!? MAGICAL!

As far as the weekend went it was funday Saturday at the BOOM BOX! And the Throwdown Challenge I agreed to do with my coach. I didn’t participate in the Team WOD so I wouldn’t burn out for the challenge WOD but I helped my oldest son, Jonas, count his reps with his WODmate Jeff. They did very well! I was surprised at his effort and proud of him for pushing through. Also my 10 yr old managed to knock out some kipping pull ups on his own, even managed Chest to BAR! He’s gonna be a future CrossFit GAMES BEAST! proud? YES envious? INDEED!

Now it was my turn. Grant did RX and I went scaled. I hung on pretty well at first but fizzled fast! I failed to take a picture of the boards but it was a 2 part WOD. First part… Death by Push Press/Burpees! Push Press on the minute followed by burpees. If you haven’t been following along. Death by ANYTHING means do 1 rep on the first minute, 2 reps on the second minute, 3 reps on the 3rd minute and so forth. Go until you can’t complete all the reps within the minute. So we had a deadly duo of burpees and push presses! I managed to get through 7 1/2 rounds. I finished my 8th push press but no time for 8 burpees! To be honest I’m not sure if Grant finished his 8th round completely or not! I was DEAD! And we still had Part 2! WE got a 10 minute rest then it was time for 6 rounds of 5 squat cleans, 10 pullups and 200m row! We alternated rounds, so each of us did 3 rounds. I feel I killed the squat cleans at 65lbs. RX was 85 but I had done 65lbs with push press instead of the 85lb RX so I just stuck with the lighter weight. Pullups though KILLED ME! Seriously and I had bands. I hate feeling so weak. While one teammate was doing the round the other teammate held an L-Sit for as long as possible for max time. Each round we held one max hold. After that you could subracted that time from your overall finish. I believe we had a time of 10:59. It as a good effort. Hopefully next time we do a challenge like this I can really do RX and kill it! It was definitely nice to put in some work but I felt my shoulders hating me all weekend!

Before I get to this mornings WOD I just want to give another shout out to Burgandy Pasture Beef! We went out there Saturday afternoon. They are so friendly and welcoming 🙂 It’s nice for us to get away for that short little trip and shop for quality foods. Sam has been there everytime at the counter to take our order. She knows Ernie by Pork Belly Ernie because we had special ordered the first time we visited. It’s kind of funny and I like his new nickname. I feel awful but I can not remember the other ladies names that are there. They educated us a little bit further about the meat butchering process and we hope to take a tour in the Spring if one becomes available. SERIOUSLY if you have a little time head on out to Grandview, TX and check them out! Their beef is wonderful and they also offer chicken, pork, lamb and a few other items such as farm fresh eggs!

Now I had mentioned my shoulders were hating me and this morning they were still feeling the same but it is what it is and I had to push through. It was cold and rainy on top of that but I still had to get to the BOOM BOX. After our warm up we proceeded to Front Squats 3, 3, 3+ at 80%, 85% and 90%. I managed to knock out 18 reps on the my last round! Wooohoooo. My legs could have handled a few more but my wrists determined otherwise.

02/13/12 WOD

The MetCon was a nice little sample of Sumo Dead Lift High Pulls, Push Press (ARGH) and Back Squats – 2 rounds of 1 minute of each and 1 minute of rest after all three movements max reps. 65lbs for me. I went a little too quick like on the SDLHPs and wore out pretty quickly. Then I had to quickly transition to Push Press. It wasn’t pretty but I hung on. Back Squats were a little less taxing and a much needed break for the arms/shoulders. ROUND 2: I timed out my SDLHPs a little better and got a few more reps than the first round. But I was wasted for the Push Press. I knew I had to kill the Back Squats to give me any decent rep count. And I did alright as I matched my 1st round number of 42 reps. I wasn’t at the top of the whiteboard but knowing I couldn’t get those push presses cranked out I’m ok with it. I put in work and that’s what counts!

It’s a-rainy/drizzly/miserable here! But I saw it should warm up a bit in the next few days! Hope everyone has a MARVELOUS MONDAY and not a MANIC one! I have quite a few things to do tonight for kids VDAY stuff. Hopefully I get it knocked out super ninja fast!