Squat

Trying

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So my gung ho declaration of getting back on track went strong for 2 days. Then my car died and I missed a work out. Then I had a mental breakdown due to my car dying and there went another missed day at the BOX. And then (think Dude, Where’s my Car, Chinese restaurant lady) baseball took over friday and saturday. And then and then and then and then! UGH.

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So we cycle back to a new week and I’m pulling myself out of the pit of my depression and yesterday began Day 1 of eating clean. It wasn’t a perfect clean but it was 95% on point. Which is 95% better than what Wednesday through Sunday! This morning as part of breakfast I go with two tablespoons of Almond Butter and what do I read on the label? SUGAR! NOOOOO. Ok Sugar is not going to kill me instantly but it’s not CLEAN eating. I was surprised that this particular brand that I’ve purchased before has sugar in it! I figured all of this brand was sugar free. Doh! I just grabbed it off the shelf thinking it was good to go. That’s Wal-mart for you! It was a small jar and it’s so much better than what I’ve been eating so I’ll get through it and be more mindful for the future.

Now if I can just get past 2 days and even through a whole weekend! Then I know I’m getting somewhere. At least I haven’t completely fallen off the CrossFit train. Showing up, although sucking at life, is still better than not showing up. Keeps me connected and definitely shows me how hard it is to eat like crap and perform well. Cause I’m not performing well at all! In 9 days I’ve worked out 3 times. Out of those three times I forgot to take pictures for 2 of the workouts. One more thing to add to the list of eating like crap. The brain fog takes over and I forget everything! SMH!

Nice salad full of protein and fat!

Nice salad full of protein and fat!

6/3/13 CrossFit Total
Yikes! My first dedicated day to getting back to it and it’s CFT! I haven’t worked on anything consistently. I’m not even sure I’ll hit my 1RM on these movements. What’s CFT you ask? It’s comprised of 3 lifts. Back Squat, Overhead Press and Deadlift. You do 1 Rep Max of Back Squat, Press and Deadlift. You get 3 attempts at each movement to get the biggest lift. You also get a time frame of 15 minutes per lift. Then you add up your lifts to get your CFT. Like I mentioned and as you all know due to my lack of blogging, I have barely been showing up. I have been eating like crap and there is no consistency in any of the mentioned lifts! Sigh! I have to just relax and let it be. It is what it is and I can’t change that.

6/3/13 CrossFit Total

6/3/13 CrossFit Total

15 minutes goes by really quickly to warm up and get those 3 lifts in. In my warming up for my Squat the bar felt heavy and I just couldn’t picture myself hitting my 1RM and guess what I didn’t! I got to 155lbs which is 10lbs off. Booooo! Next up Press. I was looking for a PR because I’ve been stuck at 75lbs for what seems like forever but NOPE, NO SIR, NOT GONNA HAPPEN. At least I made the 75lbs or else I probably would have cried. Deadlift, last but not least and the only lift I had any confidence in for the day. There was quite of a few of us in class so I had to wait around for plates. Which ate up a lot of my time. So I only got 2 lifts in but guess what? I finally PR’d a lift! 225lbs. That’s a 10lb PR and I’ll take what I can get!

As for the last time I did CFT back in August…I went from 400 for my total to 455. It’s a PR which is nice but I know it should have been much bigger than that!

6/4/13 WOD
Warm Up: 30 GHD Hip-ext, 30 GHD sit-ups, Shoulder mobility
Missed this as I drove up right as class was starting :/

Skill/Strength: Hand Stand Walk Practice
This was so easy in my former life. I can hold a handstand but not for long so walking is out of the question. I will have it back one day I know it!

METCON: 3 rounds for time of – 12 Burpee Pull-ups, 7 Power cleans 185/115
Seriously? 3 rounds is quick is what I kept telling myself when the voice in my head was telling me to stay home. And I love me some Cleans and it’s been so long. So there I was trying to figure out how I was going to scale Burpee Pull Ups. After the burpee, I had to jump up onto stacked plates and do a jumping pull up. Those were pretty miserable but even more so after heavy Power Cleans. I went with 95lbs which again is HEAVY when you’ve been a slacker. And doing burpees after that was a butt whoopin. I made it with a time of 9:41. I survived!

6/10/13 WOD
Skill/Strength: Front Squat work up to a heavy 3
Now I really haven’t done any Front Squat work in months so I was scared what HEAVY would be for me. Turns out my heavy was 125lbs. Which is 10lbs less than my 1RM. So that’s not too bad. I haven’t had too much strength loss there.

METCON: 8 min AMRAP of Run 200m, 20 HR PU, 10 Push Jerks 145/100#
-then (no rest)- 3 min ME Lateral Burpees (over bar)
I can not tell you enough times how poor eating can ruin everything. I struggled running 200m! That’s just crazy talk! But it’s true. I was so beat down after running the measly 200m I just wanted to lie there and not do the Push Ups. As for the Push Jerks, I went with 85lbs and although they felt good I had my umph in my try. So I did 2 or 3 at a time. Physically it felt good to get the weight up, mentally I was in a haze. I only managed to get 1 full round in with a run, 20 HRPU and 3 Push Jerks into the 2nd round. As for burpees. I went as slow as I could without just completely quitting. I managed to get 24 in 3 minutes. HORRIBLE!

So that’s it for now. Day 2 of clean eating (sort of)! At least I’m making the efforts I suppose. If I can figure out kiddo scheduling tonight I should be hitting up the Boom Box tonight. I guess that’s it for now. I’m trying my hardest to find my way back to AWESOME. So go ahead and be AwEsOmE for the both of us! Thanks and Happy Tuesday!

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Hangin’ In There

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It’s been a busy couple of days in my little world. But we are making it work and I’m still showing up for evenings at the BOOM Box. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to go back to 5 a.m.! I know I need to just for the sake of having evenings free for doing all the things the boys schedules require. But it sure is nice to be awake during my workouts!

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And in regards to a busy life, YES I have fallen prey to excuses and pure laziness. In my eating habits, I have become increasingly better but I can definitely still feel in my joints from all the poor eating whether I partake in it once or day or ALL day. It takes a toll on the body. Everything is inflamed. I once lived in a day to day world of dirty eating. You get used to the aches, pains, sleepiness, headaches, etc… You write them off as getting older, not enough sleep, and numerous other excuses. I can honestly attest to the fact that those aches and pains go away when you eat clean and move your body.

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The SORENESS from working out doesn’t ever go away but that’s not a PAIN that plagues you. That’s a sign of getting stronger. And you keep moving and eating clean and the soreness does fade away AND the joints get better, your mood gets better, sleep gets better. Do I need to get back to that HAPPY place? YES HELL YES! Should you give it a whirl for 30 days, 3 months, a year… DEFINITELY! Will you fall down? Probably but who really knows but you. Your mind and body will fail you but it’s up to you to get back up and back on it. I’m sitting here in the corner like a sulking kid knowing that I’m hurting myself and it sucks. So I’m trying to get back there – back to feeling good, to performing well and to eating clean. It’s like starting all over except for the fact that I know the reward at the end. For those of you who haven’t made the decision to change, it’s hard to imagine what 30 days can do for you. Get up and get moving. Cut out bread one week. Cut out artificial sweeteners the next week. Or just jump in the deep end and go strict. It’s up to you. You know YOU. Make a better version of YOU!

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Below are some links that I found interesting this week. I’m going to try and share more of what I read more often. I tend to read a lot of info and then just digest it for me. Sharing is Caring!

http://www.naturalnews.com/040325_Splenda_diabetes_artificial_sweeteners.html

http://eattoperform.com/2013/03/15/the-gradually-awesome-approach-april-simmons-blackford/

http://breakingmuscle.com/strength-conditioning/is-the-juice-worth-the-squeeze-how-to-get-more-with-less-in-your-workouts

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As far as recaps. I’ll be short and sweet. I have 4 days to go over and I’m sure you don’t want to die of boredom reading them! So here goes it. By the way, all of the following WODS, I have sucked at! Which in the end should mean I will be getting better but this past week has been weakness after weakness for me. It’s defeating but I keep showing up.

5/9/13
Skill/Strength: SKIN the CAT and DU PracticeI can not skin the cat. I am horrible at this and my shoulders are dead. I felt super loserish because I was the only one who couldn’t do it at the 6pm time slot :/

I can however do Double Unders like a champ and worked on Triple Unders. Other than the one time I got ONE a few weeks ago, I can not manage to get another!

5/9/13 WOD

5/9/13 WOD

MetCon: Run 3 x 800m, rest 3 minutes in between run, 25 burpee penalty if over 21 minutesShould be an easy goal. Just run all 3 800m in less than 4 minutes. That didn’t quite happen. Poor attitude towards running = POOR RUNNING! I was horrible and not getting better. 25 burpees went really slow after all that running.

5/11/13 Community WOD
If I had known about the workout ahead of time I wouldn’t have shown up! More running! My poor partner, Eric, had to deal with my slow running!

5 min EMOM, run 400m, then with whatever time was left alternate minutes with Max Effort Sit Ups and Push Ups

5 min EMOM, run 400m, then with whatever time was left alternate minutes with Bar Hold and Push Up Hold (negative points if you fall from bar or drop to knees)

5 min EMOM, run 400m, then with whatever time was left alternate minutes with Max Effort of KB Swing and Jumping Air Squats

With my sub-par running I wasn’t able to get many reps. And I dropped from the Bar Hang which is -5 points. All in all we didn’t do too shabby I guess finishing with 243 reps.

5/11/13 WOD

5/11/13 WOD

5/13/13
Skill/Strength: Back Squat 3, 3, 3+ at 70%, 80%, 90% 2 min rest between set
Today it all felt heavy. But I ended with 5 reps at 90%. I literally forgot how to breathe today and was holding my breath way too much. Once I would breathe, the lifts were much easier! Duh!

5/13/13 WOD

5/13/13 WOD

MetCon: 21-15-9 of Toes to Bar and Ring Dips (modified Straight Let Sit Ups and HR Push Ups)
I’ve established that I can do TTB even if it’s one at a time but Ring Dips are a no go. So I busted out TTB one at a time like a beast with only a few NO REPS. And I rested too much on push ups! On my last round of TTB I ripped and it hurted! Bad! So bad that I didn’t show up for Tuesdays WOD. Time: 9:39

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5/15/13Skill/Strength: 5 x 3 Pendlay Rows, 5 x 3 Floor Press, 3 x 5 band weighted pull ups
Pendlay Rows are awkard for me and it’s been a while but I worked up to 95lbs so that felt good. It feels like it’s been FOREVER since we did Floor Press so I wasn’t sure what I could handle. Again we worked up to 95lbs. By the 5th set I was struggling to get all 3 reps but again I knocked them out and was feeling strong after being weary. Instead of weighted pull ups and cause of my wounded hand I opted for Ring Rows. So we would start up with chest to rings and slowly lower ourselves down over a 10count pace before lifting back up. These were easier than negative hang pull ups but still sucked!

5/15/13 WOD

5/15/13 WOD

MetCon: 2 rounds of Max Reps of Push Ups 90 seconds, Pull Ups 90 seconds, Rest 30 secondsAbout 30 seconds in on Push Ups my left shoulder was in pain. I sucked it up as best I could but only managed 39 reps. INFLAMMATION from crappy foods. As far as pull ups. I knew I wasn’t going to get many so I went ahead and used the green band and did the best I could. 9 reps. My hand held up pretty well the first round. Towards the end my forearms were dying. For the second round I busted out 10 push ups really nicely and fell apart from there. I completed 31 reps. Moved to Pull Ups and may hand was just hurting. Only completed 6. Total: 70 Push Ups, 15 Pull Ups

It’s almost Friday! WOOOOOO! If you are in the DFW metroplex… CrossFit Boom is having a party tomorrow night. Come out and have some food, fun and more fun! Go out and move! And you know the drill… BE AWESOME TOO!

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Goal Setting

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I’m typically not a goal setter. I never have been. I just go with the flow. As much as I would like to get better in EVERYTHING, I just don’t really follow through on attaining my wants. I think mostly because I turn into a lazy thing and let my “goals” slip away. And we all know I’m not some 20 something that can just learn and execute movements overnight. Oh how I wish I was 10 years younger and starting out. But I am not :/ Now that the open is over, I am going to try and focus on GOALS! Things like a sub 10 minute Karen, Pull Ups, HSPU, etc. I know it’s all possible I just gotta put in the homework. Over time with Coach’s programming at CrossFit Boom I have made progress in many things. I’ve come a long way. But I don’t feel I’ve met my POTENTIAL. Wait, I know I haven’t! And I know I can’t just “get” by with only showing up and not working on my weaknesses when I get a chance. I’m not going to try and kill myself but I know a little more mobility work each day will be helpful. Hanging on the pull up bar a little everyday will be SUPER helpful. So many little things that I need to focus on. And that’s my FIRST GOAL for now. Do HOMEWORK and hopefully take it to the next level.

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Today is just day 1 of new focus so I haven’t done much of anything yet. But hopefully this evening I can dedicate some time to all those little things. I have started to follow EAT TO PERFORM’s guideline to eating. I typically feel I eat enough. Eating Paleo for the most part kind of makes it all come together. But as laziness sets in, so does poor eating. Even if it’s Paleo, it can still be poor. You can still miss out on everything you need. You can get by, manage and still be healthy but after reading through ETP posts, I feel that trying out their guidelines and following them for a bit won’t hurt. I think my downfall is not getting enough fat in, not because I’m scared of fat though. It’s just I don’t eat enough of it. So I’m focusing on the FAT and getting a good dose of healthy animal fat and healthy plant fat. And of course managing my carbs and proteins as well. They outline a female that is close to my weight and they have her ideally eating 200g of carbs. HOLY SNIKES! That’s a lot! Sweet potatoes and carb heavy squashes here I come. I want to PERFORM and I thinking giving this a shot will be worth it. I will have to journal my food intake for a little bit until I get used to breaking it down. But hopefully that’s a short lived task and I’ll get the hang of it pretty quickly.

4/6/13 Community WOD
Free Community Workouts are back Jack! Woooo. I enjoy them because a lot of times they are Team WODs and alot of times we do fun stuff, but even when they are not it’s still a good time because you get to workout with people from different class times. This time around it was a doozy of a 20 minute AMRAP.

4/6/13 WOD

4/6/13 WOD

20 minutes of 20 KB Swings (1.5POOD/1POOD), 20 HR Push Ups and 20 GTOH with 45lb/35lb plate
We worked in teams of 2 and it was up to us how we would split up each round. My partner and I decided we would go 10 and 10 until we were too spent for that and figure it out from there. We started off strong and made it through several rounds of sets of 10, then fatigue set it and we started doing sets of 5 reps. We went straight through pretty solid and ended up just shy of 10 rounds! 5 reps AWAY! GRRR!

Ground to Overhead with Plate

Ground to Overhead with Plate

4/8/13 WOD
I actually got some decent sleep last night and felt good about waking up. Too bad it was only my brain that was awake cause my body wasn’t feeling it!

Skill/Strength: 5, 5, 5+ Back Squat @ 65%, 75% and 85% of our 1 RM
Well my back and hips are pretty tight from all of those KB Swings and GTOH with the plate. And although 65% and 75% felt good, 85% got me. Last week I went 6 reps, today 2, womp womp! Hopefully next week will be better, especially if I’m owning that mobility goal homework.

MetCon: 4 Rounds, 1 min on 30 sec off of Diamond Push Ups and Power Cleans 135/95lb Max Reps
Doesn’t sound too bad till it’s time to go! Holy heckola Diamond Push Ups are no joke. And that 30 second break goes FAST! We alternated between the Push Up and Cleans. So 1 minute of Push Ups, 30 second rest, 1 minute of Cleans, 30 second rest X 4. I didn’t go with the 95lb RX weight because Coach wanted us to go quickly. And I probably could do 1 round at 95lbs quick-like but not sure about 4 rounds with Diamond Push Ups as well.

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Diamond Push Ups

I can’t remember each round breakdown but I stayed fairly consistent something along the lines of 20, 24, 21 and 17 for the Push Ups and 14, 14, 10, 13 for the Cleans. It was for a total of 133 reps. I’m a slacker and forgot to take a picture of the board! Hopefully the next time higher rep Cleans are involved I will go for the RX weight. I was pretty spent. My hands, forearms, and shoulders are done!

It’s a new week with new focus. I’m hoping the BUSY of our lives doesn’t drag me down at least not as much as it has been doing. I gotta work around it and fight for the things I need to do for me! Happy Monday y’all and you know the drill … BE AWESOME!

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Trying NOT to SUCK

Woooo Monday again. Yippee Skippy! I hope everyone had a pleasant weekend. It was hot in our part of the world. And we spent it all outside on Saturday for some foosball.

Before the kid’s football games, I made sure to hit up the BOOM Box, I’m sad I’ve been missing the OLY class but my baby boys come first. At least I can squeeze in the Community WOD and boy oh boy was it fun! I can rest assured that if my vehicle breaks down on me that I am capable of pushing it out of the way!

We started off with a typical warm up, then tested our Kettle Bell Skills. We did max KB swings for 90 seconds. We did American style swings and for me at 1 POOD I managed to get 42 swings in.

Annie Sakamoto doing what looks like 2 POOD. I am not that beastly. I only did half that!

We then moved outside and Coach got in his truck and told us we would get in teams of 2 and have 30 seconds to push his truck as far as possible. I was up first with Omar and we were killing it till we ran out of room. So Coach decided to set his truck up going uphill towards the exit of the warehouse complex we are in. It was kind of amazing most everyone got the same distance. No team was drastically over the top. After we went in teams of two we split up into teams of 5. We got a little further but we also hit a steeper part of the hill and that took a lot out of me for sure. I think both teams hit about the same spot. After that Coach rolled his truck back and said it was time to go all on your lonesome if you wanted.

Coach showin us how it’s done … with Briggs and Leigh on the back!

My partner, Omar, decided to give it a go and made it pretty far, so I decided HECK I should just give it a try and well la de da de I could move that truck! I don’t remember how far I made it because I was sucking wind but it felt good to know I could do it! All the peeps who showed up and gave it a try did really well – BOOM!

After all the Super Hero truck pushing we still had a MetCon to do! We had a 5 minute AMRAP of 5 Push Ups and 10 Air Squats. I managed through 12 rounds + 5 Push Ups + 1 Air Squat. Wasn’t the greatest as I slowed down a lot on Push Ups. I was beat and ready to go home!

This morning I was not ready for the BOOM though. I was tired. I ate poorly and I was super sore, not sure if it was the truck pushin or the 121 air squats from Saturday but I definitely was walking funny!

Skill/Strength: 4 x 8 of Back Squat @ 70% of 1RM then 4 x 6 of press moving up in weight each set. I ended up warming up to 105lbs for my Squat and completing my 4 sets of 8 at that weight. It wasn’t super hard but it was definitely taxing on the ol’ lower body. I felt good throughout though which is a NICE feeling overall. Typically something starts giving me grief but today I felt I focused.

Moving onto Press was pretty nice as well. We were pressed for time and I felt the little bit of rush helped me at first. There was no time for thinking and I just did. The downside for limited time is that I don’t feel I rested enough for my last set. I failed at 65lbs which isn’t shocking because my max Press is 70lbs. So I dropped down to 60lbs and finished out.

9/24/12 WOD

MetCon: 12 minute AMRAP of 10 Box Jumps (20″) and 10 Regular Push Ups. This is where the SUCK came in and I tried not to SUCK but I couldn’t help it. Box Jumps! Argh. It’s been a while since we had the BOX Jump in our MetCon and it took a hold of me and beat me up. And then my Push Ups fell apart. It was so bad I had to drop to my knees to keep up any kind of form. Blah. I completed 9 rounds + 10 box jumps. Womp Womp! I still did work. I was spent. So it was a good work just a sad showing in my opinion.

There’s always tomorrow to redeem myself! Let’s just hope I do so!!! Until then! Be AWESOME!