I missed a day this week so the workout section of this post will be short and sweet. Then we’ll tear into a problem a lot of CrossFitters have when they spend a heavy workout on the bar doing pullups:  calluses. I’ve been having some problems with calluses when we’re on the bar a lot and sometimes it’s just annoying, sometimes it’s full-on painful. I’ll dig into some solutions in this post.

**Weekly Workouts

Tuesdays and Thursdays at 4:30 are when you can find me at the CrossFit Nanaimo box (fancy term for a CrossFit Gym). This week life handed me another schedule. I was all ready to hit the gym up when we I had to change times for meeting the lawyers to complete on a house I just bought. So naturally I would go to the 6:30. Nope, I was doing a demonstration for a new website application for work. Ok, so no CrossFit for Tuesday.

Luckily Thursday swooped in and saved the day. I get a bit twitchy if I don’t get outside and burn off some energy at some point during the week and Thursday’s workout quickly squeezed that extra energy right out of me.Here’s Thursday’s Workout :

For time:

21 – 15 – 9

Burpee Bar Hops

Back squat (no rack) (rx: 135, z1: 115, z2: 95)

Backward Skips

I’ll do a quick once over on the workout and then tell you what it was like. It was a timed workout. You go as fast as you can until you’ve done the required reps for each exercise. The 21-15-9 part is how many of each exercise you have to do. For this one, it’s 21 of all 3 exercises, then 15 of all three, then 9. After you’ve finished the 9 backward skips, you’re done. The sweetest feeling.

Burpee bar hops are burpees and then a 2 footed hop from one side of your barbell to the other side. We had barbells beside us for the back squats. A burpee is a bit of an evil thing. It’s like a pushup and then a jump with a clap over your head. It’s definitely an arm workout. And you need to those arms to get that bar over your head for the back squats.

Back squats are a squat with a bar on the back of your shoulders. Normally you’d do them off a rack so you don’t have the extra effort of getting the bar off the ground, up over your head and then down onto your back. But today we got to play with getting the bar up off the ground. When you’re legs are shaking from all the jumping, skipping and squats and your arms are shaking from burpees and lifting the bar over your head (95 pounds in my case, I was doing zone 2 weight), lifting that bar above your head is a harrowing experience. Efficiently lifting 95 pounds above your head as fast as you can is not an easy tasks. I was as focused as I could be. I realized half-way through that I would visualize the lift before doing it and then execute. Thankfully we only had to lift the bar off the ground once per set of backsquats.

Then backward skips. It’s amazing how set we get in ways of doing things. If I was thinking about it, my body instantly would try and skip forward like I have all my life. I had to really focus hard on all the pieces so I could get the rope spinning backwards properly. As split second off focus and I’d fall back into habit and try to spin forward.

For being so tough, this was one of my favorite workouts so far. I’d love to try it with heavier weight but I don’t think it would have gone as fast. Burpees would have been very slow in the last set. I got 6:02 for the workout which was pretty quick so I probably should have stepped my weight up to 115.

Now that we’ve talked about a few exercises that really have nothing to do with hanging off bars and doing pullups, I’m going to talk about calluses. They’ve been a big problem in some of my workouts so I wanted to look into prevention so that I have fewer and fewer bad workouts because of torn calluses.

Callus Correction – What to do with calluses in CrossFit

I was going to start this section with the loud exclamation, “Calluses suck!”

I guess I sort of did because there is it there.

The truth is though is that calluses are only a problem if you let them become a problem. The problem is when they tear.

Calluses are from friction on your hands between the skin and the bar. The skin needs to protect itself and builds up layers of skin where it rubs more and more. So how come calluses are bad if they’re protecting your hands. The problem comes out when the calluses become too thick off the palm of your hand. When they get too thick and form ridges and rough edges on your hands they’re going to catch on the bar when you use it. When it catches on the bar, your skin tears off the bar.

Holes in your hands from tears suck. If you haven’t had them yet, do everything you can to prevent them. If you’ve had them before, you know how much they suck. They are very painful for doing the rest of your workout and they suck for a couple days while they heal. I don’t recommend it.

Blisters

If you’re holding onto a bar and it’s spinning in your hand, there’s a buildup of friction when your hand touches the bar. If there’s enough friction you might get a blister under the calluses you have. There’s a good chance that callus is going to tear with a blister under it.

Prevention

So if calluses can lead to tears (very soft, new hands can be prone to tears as well), what can you do to prevent them? Well you can’t do much about calluses. They just show up because there’s friction between your hand and the bar. But you can take care of them so they won’t tear.

Callus Maintenance

From all my awesome correction connections (links) from below, I’ll touch on a couple good methods for keeping your calluses in check. Most of the methods revolved around grinding the calluses down regularly. You can use a knife, blade, emery board, pumice stone or even a dremel sander to scrape the extra skin off. You’ll want to do this any time the skin on your calluses gets a little raised above the rest of your palm. They’ll have rough edges or little ridges above the rest of your skin. That’s when they need to be ground down a bit.

After a hot shower is a great time to do this. Your skin is soft and it’s easier to see where the extra skin is that you can get. Don’t go too hard on them, you don’t want to rip all your skin off. You need some of those calluses there as some padding against the bar. Your skin does that for a reason. It might take some practice to find out exactly how much you need to go. Most of the sites recommended trying to get to level with the rest of your palms. Anything raised might catch and tear.

Outside of that, make sure you keep your hands moisturized outside of the gym. Dry, cracked skin is more likely to tear.

Grip

This part doesn’t have as much to do with lifting a bar as it does for managing your grip while doing pullups. Kipping pullups can be one of the worst things for tearing calluses. Some workouts are huge numbers of kipping pullups and the weight on your hands combined with all the movement just creates ripe conditions multiple tears.To hold a pull-up bar so it doesn’t lead to as many tears, you have to let it go a little bit and let the bar slide into your fingers a bit more. You want the bar in your fingers than in the meaty part of your hand. If you look at your hand from the side in a normal grip it would be a circle around the bar. With this different grip your hand and first part of your fingers will be straight with the rest of your fingers curling around the bar. This awesome article on calluses on FitBomb has a video in it about the grip.

The last important part to this part about changing your grip for pull-ups is that it’s harder. To hold your hand like this it takes more forearm and finger strength. One of the authors calls it the training grip. He calls the easier full-hand type the “business grip”. He uses the training grip as much as possible because it leads to less tears but for tests or competitions he often uses the “business grip.” It just sounds cool too.

Movement

With kipping pull-ups there’s usually a lot of movement going on to get yourself up and over the bar. You probably don’t have to move as much as you do though. You can use more hip action and less swinging to get you up there. The FitBomb article talks about a good video on GymnasticsWOD here that shows Carl doing very minimal movement in his kips. Less movement, less rubbing on your hands.

Covers (gloves and tape)

Most of the sites didn’t recommend using any sort of gloves or tape regularly to stave off calluses and tears. They’re a fact of life in something as hand intensive as CrossFit. Ease into workouts, don’t go all out when you’re brand new with 100 kipping pull ups. Try and use the training grip when you can. But there are certain times like competitions or tests or just a marathon training session where there is absolutely nothing you can do to save your hands. If that’s the case then it’s time to get some gloves or tape your hands up. There’s a specific way to do it so the tape doesn’t ball up and just pop off your hands in the middle of the workout.

Less chalk

One last tip before we hit the end of the article here, is that you might be using too much chalk. If you’re caking your hands with it that might be leading to more friction with the bar (as well as drying your hands out) and increasing the chances of tearing. Maybe try a little less next time.

A Collection of CrossFit Callus Correction Connections

(apologies for my appalling attempt at alliteration)

How to tape your hands on Rifs Blog

Removing Calluses on Beast Skills

CrossFit Journal: Hand Rips – Causes, Treatment and Prevention

CrossFit Hand Care on FitBomb – A great article on prevention, proper grip and proper kip technique. Plus an experiment on healing techniques.

Blood, Blisters, Sexism and Pull-ups on CrossFit.com – Pär Larsson talks about why torn, bloody hands are not sexy. 

**

If you’re just joining us, check out the rest of the 3 month CrossFit Challenge. Thanks so much to Heather and Katie at CrossFit Nanaimo for making this challenge possible. You can follow them on CrossFit Nanaimo Facebook too.

The post CrossFit Challenge Week 12: No Rack Back Squats and Callus Correction first appeared on Pack & Trail.

Tuesday’s WOD

7-6-5-4-3-2-1

(200m run in between)

Snatch Deadlift (Deadlifting the weight off the ground with a wide Snatch grip)

Hang Power Snatch (Snatching the weight over your head from a hanging position)

Squat Snatch (Snatch the weight over your head from the ground into a squat position)

Overhead Squat (Squats with the weight over your head)

Ow! Overhead squats are still my enemy! This was one intense workout.

Overhead Squats (and Squat Snatches) are definitely in my Goat list. I’m still having troubles rotating my shoulders around enough to get a good solid overhead hold in the low squat position.

The Hang Power Snatches and Deadlifts were fun, probably because I didn’t even have any weight on the bar because of the Overhead Squats later on in the workout. I didn’t want to be changing weight half-way through the workout so I just used the 45 pound bar the entire workout. I have to use more energy that I should because I can’t get my shoulders around though. Every Cash-Out I’m doing some stretches to help with the shoulder mobility problem. I know I’ll be able to lift the weight once I get my shoulders in place. I was hoping for a quick fix for the mobility problem but it looks like it’s going to require a lot of patience!

I was thankful for the runs in this one. I can usually stomp the runs no problem. It lets me get out of the gym for a quick refresh outside before I tackle another round of killer Overhead Squats.

Thursday’s WOD was the Beefcake from the title. I know one big workout once in a while isn’t going to make us all huge muscle beefcakes but it felt like the old days in the gym with low reps and huge weight.

Thursday’s WOD

Bench Press 1-1-1-1

Backsquat 2-2-2-2

Deadlift 3-3-3-3

It was solid day but I had a sore back from hockey so I didn’t push it. I still got almost up to my personal best in backsquats for 1 rep max. I was doing 2 reps though so I’m not sure what it would have been but if I had only been doing 1 rep I would have been able to beat my 1 rep max.

These days are nice to have to measure up your progress. Most of the WODs have such a variety of exercises in them that it’s hard to measure progress on certain exercises. Don’t get me wrong, I love the variety and keeping things fresh for every single workout but slowing down and doing one exercise is a really good test.That’s it for workouts this week. On to the questions. This week’s question has been coming up more frequently at the gym so I decided to check into it and see what my options were.

CrossFit Questions

Footwear – what’s the deal?

I’m currently just using a pair of runners for my CrossFit WODs but they aren’t the best so I’ve been researching what makes a good CrossFit shoe. Here’s the answers I’ve been able to come up with.

CrossFit is very similar to a lot of other sports in terms of footwear. You can wear normal runners to start but you’ll quickly find out that there are better options out there. Runners can get you started at CrossFit or playing Ultimate, Soccer or Basketball but they’re not the best. A few points on each of the shoes stand out as big differences to some of the other sports footwear.If you like minimal running shoes, you’re in luck. A lot of the preferred CrossFit shoes are basically flat, lightweight running shoes. And so what makes a good CrossFit shoe? Let’s get into it.

Lightweight

When you’re ripping around in the WOD and on runs you don’t want to a big heavy shoe that’s going to slow you down. They need to have some weight to them to stick together but the consensus seems to be lighter is better.

Durable

New CrossFit shoes for your WODs is exciting and they most likely will have an impact on your performance, comfort and safety. Having new shoes wear out because you’ve worn them a few times sucks. Make sure you get some shoes that are good and tough to last as long as you can in the gym.

Neutral Drop

This is probably the most confusing part on this list. It’s not a feature that has been listed on shoes until recently. It goes something like this. All shoes have some sort of measurement for the difference in height from the ground to your heel in the shoe and to your toes. Most running shoes have large cushion under the heel and only a bit under the toes. This creates a drop as you go from the heel of the shoe to the toe. In other words, when you have the shoe one, your heel is higher than your toes are. The drop from heel to toe and all the padding under the heel was created under the assumption that we’re supposed to land on our heels when we run. Recent studies have found that’s not how humans are supposed to run.

New running techniques like the Pose technique shorten your stride when you run, pulling the spot where your foot lands in front of you in closer to your body, nearly underneath your weight. Our feet are meant to land on the ball first when we’re running and the only way to do this is to shorten up our stride and lean forward a little. Coming back around to shoes, all the cushion in the heels of most running shoes and a big drop from heel to toe makes it hard to run on the balls of our feet. New running shoes are coming out that have zero drop from heel to toe, making it easier to run properly.

Another benefit from the limited cushioning and zero drop in these new shoes is that they’re very stable for lifting heavy weights. Every time we go to lift heavy weights, the cushion in those big shoe heels worms around and creates an unstable platform for balancing all that weight. We want to stack the odds in our favor when we get that big weight up on our shoulders and chests and having a wormy, squishy, unstable platform under our feet is not the way to do it. A direct connection to the ground through the heels is a great way to do that and you can get it with shoes with little to no padding.

Breathable

If you’re not sweating, you’re not working hard enough. Chances are your feet are working extremely hard in your workouts and they’ll sweat to. You don’t want everyone to run out of the gym when you take your shoes off in a steamy mess so it’s probably a good idea to get breathable shoes. The less moisture you have in your shoes the less likely they’ll slip around or create blisters too.

Quality Sole

Many of the workouts rely on you being able to stick to a certain spot on the ground or box. If you’re sliding around on your shoes every time you jump or run, you’ll never get anywhere in your workouts. You’ll want a quality sole that won’t break down quickly and that gives you nice grip when you’re jumping and running.

Stable

This ties in a bit with the neutral drop above. Unstable shoes can lead to injuries or just sub-par workouts. Heavy weights demand a stable platform to do that from. Shoes with a solid base or just minimal padding will give you a good solid start to heavy lifts. The rest is up to you. Now that you know exactly what to look for in a shoe, here’s a few examples of good ones that are favorites in the CrossFit community. Some have been out for a while while some are brand spankin new.

Inov-8 Bare-XF 210 – These guys are great minimal trail runners. Inov-8 makes a variety of them. They make great trail runners as well as CrossFit shoes.

Vibram Five Fingers – The famous Vibram Five Fingers. They’re like gloves for your feet. Give them a try on before you get them because they’re not for everyone. They come in a variety of designs, they’re about as minimal as you can get. They do have a thin sole on the bottom so you can run on the road but you’re going to feel any rocks you step on.

Merrell Barefoot Trail Glove – A shoe version of the Vibram Five Fingers. The Barefoot Trial Glove is a minimal trail running shoe but works great for CrossFit workouts. They have zero drop and little padding so you getting a direct connection with the floor when you lift. Then you can run the trails using your Pose Running Technique after the WOD.

Reebok CrossFit Nano – One of the newer shoes by Reebok specifically for CrossFit, they have zero drop and are super lightweight. They have a special grip on the toe to prevent wear from climbing ropes. Definitely check these ones out if you’re going to be around the gym a lot.Now you have the details on exactly what to wear on your feet for CrossFit.

Have you tried any of these shoes? Which ones do you like best?

**

If you’re just joining us, check out the rest of the 3 month CrossFit Challenge. Thank you so much to Heather and Katie at CrossFit Nanaimo for making this challenge possible. You can follow them on CrossFit Nanaimo Facebook too. 

The post CrossFit Challenge Week 11: Goats, Beefcakes and Good Shoes first appeared on Pack & Trail.

**

This week we got to experience the Turkish Get-Up. Dun dun dun. They’re not that scary really. But they do make you think.

Buy-in: Ring rows and handstands

Our Buy-In this week was ring rows and handstands. Ring rows are basically the opposite of a push-up. The rings hang from the roof or a bar and you set them about hip height. Setting them higher or lower changes the workout and how hard you have to work. Hang from the rings with your arms vertical and your body sort of horizontal, like you’re laying on the ground but just above it. Your body should be straight and rigid. Then you pull up with your arms until the rings get to your armpits or shoulders. To make it intense you can put your feet on a box so they’re up high with your body angled down to your shoulders.

Handstands are, well, handstands. I think everyone has tried a handstand once in their life, even if it was just as a little kit pretending to be a world famous gymnast. I thought handstands were something spies should be able to do when I was little so that increased their appeal. I never could do one for more than a few seconds though. Working on them in Buy-in’s has made me quite a bit better. I think I’m to 5 or 6 seconds with a good handstand and then a flail after that. If you want to try handstands make sure you have some space so you don’t end up kicking someone in the face or putting your foot through the wall.

Tuesdays’ WOD

Today was really simple. Simple doesn’t necessarily mean easy though. It can still mean crazy hard. Here it is:

1 Power Clean, 1 Push-up.

That’s it!

Kidding. It increases every minute until you can’t do any more at 1 minute: 2 Power Cleans, 2 Push-upsat 2 minutes: 3 Power Cleans, 2 Push-upsand so on till your arms collapse.I was surprised that the limiting factor in this exercise was the push-ups. That’s probably an indicator that my Power Clean form isn’t very good and I was using my arms too much. I was aiming for 8 rounds. That was the lowest score from the previous workouts during the day. I wanted to at least get 8 and then anything on that would be gravy.

8 was when I really started to feel it. I had to really think about my Power Clean form. I had to really push through the push-ups. The rests were getting shorter and shorter.

10 got really hard. You can’t pace much any more, it’s an all out sprint for  both the exercises. You have to get through the exercises as fast as you can or else you won’t have time to continue. If you run out of time doing push-ups, you’re out. No more rounds for you.

12 was killer. I managed to just crank out the last few push-ups of the round but I was toast. That was all I could do. They were the worst push-ups I’ve ever seen but they were done. More Power Cleans? Nope.

Thursdays CrossFit WOD

So if Tuesday’s WOD was all about nice, small numbers, Thursday’s WOD was about the highest numbers I’ve seen in a WOD. Over 200 reps total with all the bodyweight exercises in it. Each of the exercises aren’t that hard but they start to add up at the middle. The last half is way more work than the first. You know you can do it but it’s mind game by the end. You can do it but how fast? How can you split it up. It’s tough to do 20 box jumps or 30 sit-ups when you’re really tired so do you do sets of 10? 5? Try and power through all of them?

Here’s the WOD:

20 Walking Lunges (each side)

30 Sit-ups

20 Box Jumps

10 Pull-ups

5 Turkish Get-ups

10 Pull-ups

20 Box Jumps

30 Sit-ups

20 Walking Lunges (each side)

Box Jumps are 2 feet hops onto a box. Simple right. Awesome leg workout. Just don’t trip and fall on your face!

Turkish Get-ups are a bit strange to explain so here’s a video. You can do them with any weight. The girl in the video has a heavy weight so it’s much more work.

For cash-out we just did some mobility stretches and a slow cool down.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Turkey Day everyone. Hope the weekend was awesome. If you wanted to do a Turkey Workout from Nanaimo CrossFit, Katie has posted one that everyone can follow along with. Give it a try. Remember to warm up before you get right into it!

The post CrossFit Challenge Week 10: Turkish Get-ups and Too Many Sit-ups first appeared on Pack & Trail.

Partner workout?!

That means I actually have to get myself moving faster because I have a partner to answer to?!

Yup.

Working with a partner can push you harder. It really depends on how you feel about that partner though. You could not care and only go as fast as you want to. Or, like most people will I think, you can push it that little bit harder because it’s not just you on the team anymore.

Our Buy-In was trying Butterfly Pull-ups and then some Tricep Rows. I’ve done Tricep Rows before but the Butterflies were different. Tricep Rows are started in a push-up plank position. You then pull one hand at a time off the floor straight up to about chest height. Your elbow goes straight up in the air. You can do it with weight if you like but it’s a pretty hard exercise without it. The closer you put your feet together the less stability you have and the more core workout you get.

Onto the WOD!

WOD 1

15 minutes or 4 rounds (with partner)

5 Plank Over Under

5 Chinup hold

5 Burpee Box Jump

Ended with 3 rounds + 16

Some of the groups made their 4 rounds with this, we almost did but didn’t quite have the time. The Plank Over Unders are holding a high plank while the other person crawls under you and then hops over top. Chin-up holds are just a hold on the bar with your chin above it. Most  of us dropped into just hanging from the bar for the last few rounds. Guys had to hold it for 20 seconds, girls for 10. These were tough.

Burpee Box Jumps are dropping to the ground for a push-up, then standing back up for the Burpee and then jumping with 2 feet onto the box.  They start out deceptively easy. Then after a few rounds, your legs start to burn and jumping each time is a concentrated effort. By the final reps, it takes some serious self talk to get yourself all the way to the top of the box and down without falling on your face.

We made it to the middle of our last round of Chin-up Holds when the timer went at 15 minutes. I was glad to see the end after those holds. My hands were toast. They couldn’t hang out for one more round. After the terrible Burpee Chest to Bar’s and the Chin-Up Holds this week, I decided I need to work on my grip strength. I knew my muscles were strong enough to do more than this but my hands have been giving out too soon. I’ve found 8 exercises for grip strength that I mention below.

WOD 2

Loved this WOD! The Sept 27 CrossFit Workout was right up my alley with a lot of running. I think that’s why I liked it so much. No grip strength required either! Well that’s not true. There was a little bit but all I needed was to stay above the rings for the Ring Dips and then run like crazy and I was done.

So todays WOD was a countdown.

28’s

7-6-5-4-3-2-1

muscle ups or ring dips

400m run in between

14:34

So easy right? Get on the rings for some muscles ups or ring dips and then go run. I definitely can’t do muscle ups (I haven’t even tried yet but the girl in the video is killin’ em) so I opted for some ring dips. We started with 7 dips then a run, 6 dips then a run, 5 dips then a run all the way down to 1. Aside from the running in the workout, I liked the fact that the dips got easier. Every time I got back to do more dips I had to do less.  I can’t wait for more workouts like this one that I was excited to complete.

Goals

Here’s a quick update on my CrossFit goals for my last few updates of the CrossFit Challenge. Only 5 more updates for the Challenge. It’s gone by so fast! These are things I’ve come across that my performance in is pretty poor. I’m going to be working on:

Weighted Overhead Squats – I’ve got bad shoulder mobility, working on mobility for this one.

10 Kipping Pull-ups – My grip strength is the issue here.

10 Double-Under skips – The timing is tough with these. I’ve done a few in a row but it’s tough to keep it going.

5 Butterfly Pull-ups – Just tried these ones the other day. It’s a complicated move.

1 Muscle-Up – Haven’t even attempted these. Going to play with them for cash-out one day.

Grip Strength – I need to be able to hang onto the bar longer. I explain this a bit more below. 

CrossFit Question – What’s a butterfly pull-up?

A butterfly pull-up is basically a pull-up with some body movement thrown in that helps you get up and over the bar. The basic move is a pull-up where you move your body up and down. It’s hard and slow. The kipping pull-up is a little faster. It brings your hips into the equation and helps you up and over the bar with some momentum from kicking your legs up.

Finally there is the butterfly pull-up. The butterfly pull-up  gets your body moving in a much smoother rhythm to get your chin over the bar. When you can do these ones they are much faster than kipping or strict pull-ups. Sometimes in the WODs you have to do many push-ups under a certain amount of time and the faster you can do those the faster your time will be. It’s important to be able to do them quickly.Here’s a bit of instruction to show you how to do a Butterfly Pull-Up

CrossFit Question – How do I improve grip strength?

Grip strength is the limiting factor in a lot of CrossFit exercises. On it’s own improving your grip strength is going to be a huge advantage for climbing, kayaking and mountain biking but the main point of it here is to increase the weight you can lift while training. You can have huge strong arm and back muscles but if you can’t hang on to the pull-up bar or the barbell then you aren’t going to do much. I was feeling very limited in my pull-ups. I took a look around online for some suggestions and ran into the idea of being limited by grip strength. I’m not the only one having problems with it.Here are some good additions to your workout that focus on grip strength.

Farmer Carry – one or two plates in each hand. you can use 2 thin ones and hold them together. I will be adding this to my cash out.

Weighted Chin-ups – chin-ups but with a weight belt or a weight between your feet. Really stresses holding on the bar as long as you can!

Deadlifts (with Fat Grips) – The fat bar really works your grip muscles. When you return to the regular bars they’ll be easier to hold on to.

Low bar lifts (half dead lift) – pick up and hold as long as you can

Spring Loaded Grip Trainers – These are the little grip trainers you can do at home or at work. They’re just little spring-loaded handles.

Rope Climbs – I don’t have a rope but it would be a good trainer

Heavy dumbbell carry in each hand – This is like a farmer carry but just with dumbbells. They need to be heavy to work well.

Towel Pull ups – Wrap a towel around a bar and hold onto each rolled up end. Be careful with these ones, apparently it’s hard to drive home after.

Challenge Update

I’ve only got 5 more updates for the CrossFit Challenge and then it’s done! Once I’m done the regular updates, I’ll be doing a couple wrap-up posts to let everyone know what my decision is to continue or not. I’ll be touching on a few things that I’ve found great about CrossFit on it’s own and for other human-powered sports. If there are still some things that you don’t get about CrossFit or you want to know more about, email me or comment down below. I want to make this a good intro to CrossFit for the human-powered sporters.

The post CrossFit Challenge Week 9: Butterflys and Grip Strength first appeared on Pack & Trail.

Tuesday’s WOD was a 20 Minute AMRAP was a collection of bodyweight exercises that added up to 50 reps. It started with 15 air squats and decreased in number from there. I love these ones because there’s a mind game to them. You have to pace yourself. There’s a 30 second rest built into each round but after a couple rounds, you’ll wish you’d have 5 minutes to rest and not just 30 seconds.The hardest part about this WOD was keeping count! Every time I finished a round, I added to my tally. Except that I forgot to on a couple rounds. When I got to the end and added things up I was much lower than everyone else. This was confusing until I was trying to remember tallying each round. There were definitely a couple that I missed. That and the fact that there were 50 reps in each round instead of 40 like the board said. Oh well. Chalk that one up to being confused. To score yourself, you add up every rep. Each full round was 50 reps and then the final few reps that you had from your last round.

Thursday’s WOD was killer.  

There was some legs involved in the workout but only to keep you upright. All six exercises absolutely thrashed my arms. By the end of it I was barely getting up to the bar on the pull ups with a bungee on the bar. I think part of my problem for this one was mindset. I wasn’t really in it from the beginning. Thinking you are going to have trouble is pure poison to a good workout.

Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right. ~ Henry Ford

Check Your Expectations

Some days just don’t go so well. Some are down right crappy. At the end of the day though, when you’re tired, frustrated and sore, the fact that you got up off the couch and went for a workout is a huge success. Most people don’t even get to that point. Sometimes all it takes is a realignment of expectations.What’s the goal? What’s can you control? What do you expect to get out of this? All these are great questions I’ve found I have to ask myself sometimes.I find sometimes my expectations are ridiculously high. Why am I not good at this new workout or new exercise? For one, I’m new at it. A little reminder that this is the first time I’ve done a lot these CrossFit workouts goes a long way. Looking at things from the outside is helpful to see that it can take a long time to get good at most things. Expecting perfection on the first try or even the 20th is a recipe for frustration.

Control Your Goals

Another idea that’ pops into my head a lot after workouts, adventures or any worthwhile goals is all about your goals and who controls them. The more external your goals are, the more frustrating it might be when you can’t attain them. If you have full control over your goals then it’s going to be a lot sweeter ride to the end.For example, if I head into CrossFit Nanaimo, with a crazy goal of doing 80 pullups in 10 minutes I’m probably going to end up disappointed. I’m pretty sure I can’t do that yet. It’s completely out of my reach. But if I were to say that I want to do 80 pullups in a short a time as possible, or I’m going to do as many pullups as I can in 10 minutes, then I can definitely complete those goals. They’re just going to have a time or number attached to them.The key is what I’ve attached my happiness and feelings of success to. If I say I won’t be happy unless I do 80 pull ups in 10 minutes. We’ll I’m not going to be happy because it’s not going to happen. But if I say I’m going to be stoked when I do my 80 pullups or after my 10 minute AMRAP, then I’m guaranteed to be happy after.

Attach success to the effort you put in rather than the result and you’ll end up much more successful. 

You have no control over the result, but you can put in as much effort as you like.

Cash Out

For our Cash Out’s we’ve been doing good mobility stretches from a sweet set of CrossFit posters at the gym. They explain them all and have pictures of each stretch. I’ve always known stretching is important but I’m new to the idea of mobility so I did a little research on what it means and why it’s important. That leads us into our first CrossFit Question: What is “Mobility”?

CrossFit Question – What is “Mobility”?

Anyone’s who’s done any sports knows the importance of warming up and stretching. When you get into actually working out you want warm, loose muscles that will take the abuse that you throw at them without going too far. That’s where injuries come in. You want to gently push your muscles without jumping over that limit.

Mobility becomes a factor with a number of the CrossFit exercises and it starts to limit what you can do. Mobility is like range of motion. If you don’t have the range of motion to complete an exercise, it doesn’t matter how strong your muscles are, the range of motion will be the limiting factor.  The Overhead Squat is a prime example and an exercise I have trouble with.

An Overhead Squat is a squat with a bar over your head (after getting it over your head safely). Sounds simple right? It’s not. As you lower into your squat your body leans forward to balance. The weight that’s over your head has to stay directly in line with your contact on the floor or else you’re going to fall. Sometimes you can get that deep squat but your elbows bend. Bent elbows don’t hold nearly as much weight as straight ones do. There’s the rub. You can either get into a deep squat and bend your elbows or not squat much and keep your elbows locked. Neither result in a great lift. A big part of the problem is the shoulder mobility. If you can get your shoulders to rotate so you can hold your arms and bar straight up while leaning forward into your squat then you’ll be able to lift much heavier weight.

That’s just one part of one exercise. Almost every exercise has a limiting factor in it that can be worked on using mobility exercises. I’m seeing more and more now that mobility can be just as important has lifting heavy. It’s one more thing to incorporate into every workout.

That’s it for today! Week 9 will be out very soon as I catch up with my posts. I’l be doing more CrossFit Questions in each post as well so if you have any questions for the CrossFit Nanaimo crew, let me know and I will get them answered ASAP.

Happy WODing!

– Ross

The post CrossFit Challenge Week 8: What’s Mobility first appeared on Pack & Trail.

Hard at work at the Nanaimo CrossFit gym, of course!

Well, every week except for Week 7 of the challenge. September 11 and 13th I had to miss out on my workouts because I was hit with the perfect storm the weekend before had a bad cold. I really didn’t feel like doing anything. I spent a couple days in bed, which is the last thing I ever want to do.  It did feel good to get some good rest in. This summer has been go, go go!

While I didn’t learn anything in the gym this week, I did realize I missed working out. A lot. I didn’t get my regular escape into CrossFit land and I could really feel it.

With many sports there’s a nicely balanced area of focus and effort where you don’t think about anything else. 100% of your mind is focused on completing the task at hand. It’s hard but not too hard. It’s fun but not too easy. Flow is what they call it in Creative Land and it’s one of the big reasons why I like pushing myself with workouts and good adventures so much. The trick is to find that balance.

The task can’t be too hard. If it’s too far above your skill level you’ll just be frustrated. If you’ve ever run, hiked or skied with someone much better than you, you’ll know what I mean. It can be really hard to keep up. Hopefully they’ll stop and wait for your but if they don’t, it’s frustrating. It’s not fun any more. There’s no flow.

But the task can’t be too easy either. If the task is below your skill level, it will be easy at first and a bit of an ego boost but you’ll get bored. Once bored, your attention will wander and you won’t be getting as much out of what you’re doing. If it requires skill, you might screw up because you’re not paying attention. You won’t be getting much out of the workout if it’s too easy. I’ve never been bored in a CrossFit workout. They’ve built it to be perfect for everyone.

CrossFit scales very well for every single workout. If you can’t do the prescribed, you can move down to zone 1. If you can’t do zone 1, you move to zone 2. If you can’t do zone 2, you move to zone 3. You can go even further if you need it. I haven’t been able to do some of the workouts so I’ve had to scale them down. That’s the whole idea. If you can do every single workout easily at CrossFit there’s no point. They’re meant to be very hard. I talked a bit about this in a previous post. Yes, there’s always room to improve, but it’s always a great workout for everyone. As long as your mind is in it, you can push yourself without getting frustrated.

Week 8 will be out soon so I can catch up on posting!

Stay tuned.

The post CrossFit Challenge Week 7: The Sickness first appeared on Pack & Trail.

You Choose Your Workout

Someone mentioned the other day after reading a few of the Challenge Posts that it sounded really hard. I agreed that it was tough but it got me thinking about how that affects new people coming into CrossFit.

Before I started CrossFit I had heard it was this workout-till-you-puke kind of system that sounded super intense but got killer results. I liked what I heard about the results and was curious (scared?) about the puking part. I’m not a fan of puking. I don’t know anyone who is.

When I started though, it was very obvious that it’s not a workout-till-you-puke activity. Unless you want it to be. You can make CrossFit as hard as you want. You can let it be an easy warm-up activity for something else where it gets your heart going but you don’t really push yourself. Or you can make the most intense hour of your life. It’s all in how hard you push yourself.

When you get set up for the workout there are always 2 related variables that you can adjust: weight and speed.

For weight, you can choose the amount you do a workout with. More weight will make it harder, less will make it easier. But that’s not the whole story, there is also speed to consider.

When you complete any workout, you’ll do the movements at a particular speed. Faster movements are more work, slower movements tend to be less work. Faster movements will let you finish the workout in a lower total time. Slower movements will increase your time.

Getting back to the workout, you can adjust these 2 variables all you want. You could use a heavier weight and decrease your speed or use a lighter weight and increase your speed. Either way you’re getting a great workout. One catch though is that if you use a lighter weight and choose to push yourself faster, you may or may not push yourself as fast as you can go. Weight is a more concrete number to use than internal motivation for speed. Either way, you can play with how fast you go and your workout weight all you want.

What that all boils down to is that you can choose to workout exactly how you want to.

If you want to push yourself you’re on the floor afterwards, you can. If you want to get a nice workout in but still be able to mountain bike and walk the dog after, you can.

Onto the WODs!

Tuesday’s WOD was 4 rounds of 4 exercises with the plates we usually put on the bars. I grabbed the 35 pound plates for these exercises. The recommended weights were actually different for each exercise but I just used the 35 pound plate for all mine to keep things simple.

So we had 4 rounds of 20 Overhead Weighted Lunges, 20 Plate Sit-ups, 20 Plate Thrusters and a Farmer Carry to do.

Overhead Weighted Lunges are a lunge with the plate over your head, elbows locked and knee to the floor.

Plate Sit-ups are a sit-up with the plate over your head the whole time, elbows locked.

Plate Thrusters start with the plate held in front of you shoulder height in a squat stance and then rising out of the squat stance and using that momentum to get the plate up and over your head.

A Farmer Carry is just carrying 2 plates 20 metres. We were able to put our fingers through the holes instead of gripping the edges of the plates like some workouts make you do (killer!).

I really liked this workout especially the Plate Thrusters. My arms were toast by round three so I really had to concentrate for the last 2 rounds on getting the momentum from my legs and carrying that through into the plate and getting it above my head. There was no muscling it up with my arms any more, they couldn’t do it on their own. All the power had to come from my legs. I wish I had known that early on and saved some energy for the other exercises.

The Plate Sit-ups are killer. I’m not great with a sit-up as it is if no one is holding my feet down but 4 rounds of 20 of them with a plate above my head. Wow! Intense workout. I was down to 1 at a time by the end of it. 1, rest, 1, rest.

Everyone gets cheers

Even the coaches are working their tails off when they participate in the WODs. They aren’t in this to look good, they’re in it for a killer workout. Adam was hurtin’ on the Plate Sit-ups just like I was but we were cheering him on as much as we could after we finished our rounds.

Humbled

Thursday’s WOD was the hardest one yet.

The first section to the WOD was a partner row and 200 metre run. One partner rows while the other runs. When the runner is back, they switch off. After 4 rounds our time was taken in combination with our total rowed metres for a score. My partner and I did pretty well. I was saving a little bit for the next part of the workout though.

This is the part where I get humbled trying to do 100 Overhead Squats.

An Overhead Squat is an exercise with a bar (or a PVC pipe if you’re just starting or warming up). You Squat Snatch the bar (and weight if you have some) over your head and then drop down into a squat, then come back up. The squatting and raising of the bar is the Overhead Squat and you have to 100 of them. But there’s a catch.

The hard part comes in when you’re deep into your squat and your body is tilted forward. That weighted bar above your head has to be directly above your body. So that means when your body is tilted forward, your shoulders have to be wide open while supporting the weight above your head. Your elbows have to stay locked the whole time. If you can, give it a try right now. Grab a broom with a really wide grip above your head with straight elbows. Squat down keeping your knees above your toes until your thighs are parallel to the ground. Make sure your arms stay perfectly vertical even while your body comes forward with the squat. Not so easy.Now do 100!

I just used the bar for this one which was 45 pounds. I probably could have used the lighter bar for it to. By the end, I was doing 1 or 2 at a time to be able to do it. The mobility in my shoulders to keep my arms straight up while weighted just wasn’t there. If I pushed my hands out further on the bar my wrists couldn’t hold the weight. It was a workout of balance.

But I did it. I was last through and everyone was cheering me on. I couldn’t give up. I managed to push through and just finish off the last one.

I have found my new Goat. 

The post CrossFit Challenge – Week 6: Humbled by Overhead Squats first appeared on Pack & Trail.

For my week 3 post I put in my week 4 workout. We’re actually into week 5 of the challenge and I don’t have a week 4 post. Oops! I’m just going to leave the hole and pretend no one noticed!

Okay, on to week 5 then.

Welcome to Strength Week. 

I’m not sure if there is a plan behind the WODs each week but they seem to go in a nice pattern. Some weeks are more endurance oriented. Some weeks are more strength oriented. I will be picking Katie’s brain in a future article on what goes into organizing the WODs. There is probably a physical benefit to having a theme each week but I like the mental aspect of having some idea what’s coming up in the week. It doesn’t do anything but I just like knowing.

Tuesday

For Tuesday’s WOD, Back Squats were up first. Way back when, when I actually went to a gym, I did a few backsquats. I often worked out alone so I never did many of them. I certainly never worked up to my one rep max, preferring to stick with lower weight and higher reps. I was excited to see what I could do with a squat and this WOD was all about working up to your one rep max. First we had to complete the Buy-In.

Buy-in

Hand-stand attempts – This week’s Buy-in included 5 handstand attempts. Every time I try I can hold it for longer but it’s the standard dilemma with handstands, you need to push farther than what feels comfortable and be able to balance the whole time. A couple times I almost went over but managed to turn out of it and come back down onto my feet to the side. Before the class I checked out Jim’s Handstand article at Beast Skills to see about some pointers. I’m not sure much sank in.

L-sit Holds

L-sit holds are a move on the gymnast rings  holding your body off the ground and then pulling your legs up in front of you so your body and legs make an “L” shape. Simple right? No exactly that easy in practice. Holding myself up with the rings isn’t too hard, getting my legs up in front of my is really tough. You need the flexibility to be able to bring your legs up that high and then the strength to hold the weight there for 20 seconds. I can do about a 45 degree L-sit hold.

CTB & Strict Chin-Up

I thought Chin-ups were hard. Chest to Bars are even harder. They’re Chin-ups on steroids. The move is to pull your body up like a chin-up but you have to do it far enough and fast enough to get your chest right up to the bar or higher than it. Then follow those up with some Strict Chin-ups, which are chin-ups with no hip movement. Straight up and down. Swinging yourself up onto the bar with a hip movement is called a kipping pull-up or chin-up.

Back squats

Ok, Buy-In’s done. On to the WOD. Heavy back squats.We started with the bar on the rack and warmed up with the bar, then some lighter weight. I worked my way up to about 215 as a starting place for the workout. We needed some room to work up to our one rep max. I’ve not been in a gym in a long time and had no idea what to even start with on the back squat. I made it to 215 pounds and decided to from there

.My squats went 215/225/235/245/255. I may have been able to do a bit more than 255 if I really pushed it but that was about all I could give that day.

Heavy back squats weren’t the only fun thing in the WOD that day. To finish off we had 3 rounds of strict chin-ups to failure. I managed to struggle through sets of 13, 9 and 6 up to the bar. Part of me felt that I could have done one more one each of that set if I had just focused and really pushed through. The other part says, “Are you kidding? Your muscles were exploding.”

Teamwork and Encouragement

I was really excited to see a lot of encouragement going on for the chin-ups. We had to do them one at a time so everyone got to rest and watch the other people working out. I’ve seen a lot of encouragement in some CrossFit competition photos. Everyone standing around was pushing the last few people to finish off to finish strong. It makes a big difference to have people egging you on to get that one last rep in when you just aren’t feeling it. Even if you give up yourself, no one else will let you.

All our squats were with a partner as well. No one had exactly the same weight so every set we had to change the weights for the other person to go. Heavy squats are really tough when you’re not sure if you will be able to come up again. 255 pounds is a lot of weight to be stuck under or be 90% of the way through squatting but not be able to finish. It’s nice to have some spotters around.

Back to beginner

For Thursday’s WOD I really had to focus on getting my technique down and not think about trying to go heavy. We were doing Snatch Pulls and Squat Snatches. Snatch Pulls were the first part of the Squat Snatch. Both required good technique to lift heavy weight and not get hurt.

The WOD was to start with a warm-up weight and then workup to our one rep max for your Squat Snatch. The Snatch Pull was just as a warmup to the Squat Snatch and to work on our form. I worked up to 75 pounds which I was a bit disappointed in. Apparently I have a lot of work to do with opening up my shoulders and getting the mobility in them to let me get into a low squat with the bar over my head.

Technique is important

Not being able to do much weight with the squat snatch was a bit of an eye-opener for me and I’m sure there will be more. Technique is so important with many of these heavy lifts and there’s no point in pushing your weight until you get the technique down. There’s so much risk of injury there when the technique isn’t right. Mentally the technique workouts are tough. My muscles weren’t very tired after the Squat Snatch workout but my mind was done. I was having trouble putting all the pieces together and keeping things straight in my head. I have a lot to look forward to after I get the technique down though. There’s lots of work to get the technique down and then pushing the weight as high as I can get it. For now I’m limited to work on my technique but with a bit of focus that will change quickly.

400m Timed Run

At the beginning of the month Katie timed us all on a 400 metre run. We’ve run all month in our workouts and during the rest of the week so it was time to see how we did.I have to admit that I knew my first run was slower than what I’d normally do. I hadn’t been doing CrossFit long so I didn’t push myself too hard. We did it at the beginning of our workout so we were fresh but I didn’t want to leave all my energy on the road after running, I needed something left for the workout.My first 400 metre run clocked in at 1:49. My second at 1:19.  I pushed hard for the second run. Adam was right on my tail! I couldn’t slow down a millisecond and let him beat me. He put up a good fight and we crossed the line pretty much the same time for a photo finish.

Hiking the Juan De Fuca

Part of allure for CrossFit for me has been the positive benefit I hope it will bring to my hiking, skiing and mountain biking. I tend not to train much during the week and it shows when I head out on a weekend adventure. If I’ve been training, adventures feel good. If I haven’t, I’m sucking wind. Training is more work but nothing makes an adventure feel better than powering through a steep section riding or ripping up some fresh powder skiing because of the extra fitness I’ve got.

I hiked half the Juan De Fuca trail last weekend and tested out my 4 weeks of CrossFit so far. We hiked from the 11 km from Sombrio Beach to Payzant Creek the first day and the 7 km to Botanical Beach the second. An easy weekend with a lot of time laying around on the rocks in the sun. The perfect small test of my recent CrossFit results.

I had full gear for 2 nights of camping and hiking with water, filter, food, sleeping bag, mat, and stove. I had some lighter versions of what I usually carry because it was such a warm weekend like my Exped AirMat and my MontBell DownHugger #3 sleeping bag. Even with the lighter gear, I’m usually feeling pretty tight after 11km of up and down coastal hiking. Up over a ridge, down into a creek, up over a ridge, down into a creek, with lots of tall stairs and roots in between. Every step of the way felt energetic and strong. I had lots of energy left over once we made camp at Payzant to wander the rocks on the beach in search of some beautiful photos. I have to say having a stable deep squat position is very handy for taking photographs!

This winter’s ski touring trips will be the ultimate test of the usefulness of CrossFit for human-powered outdoor sports. Slogging through wet powder uphill for hours to turn around and rip down a hill dodging trees while maintaining the ability to stop makes my legs muscles and lungs scream like no other. I’ll report on that result as soon as I can.

Your Comments

If anyone else has had great results from CrossFit, I’d love to hear them! And completely unrelated, what’s everyone up to for their last summer trips? I’ve got a few short hikes and mountain bikes coming up and possibly a good weekender for the end of September. Oh, and waiting for it to snow so I can ski tour. Is it time to ski yet?!

The post CrossFit Challenge Week 5: Strength Test first appeared on Pack & Trail.

I’m pretty stoked with this week. Back at Nanaimo CrossFit with Katie whipping us into shape.

The heat started to cool down a bit so we could think without overheating (not that I’m complaining about the heat, it finally arrived for our 2 week summer! It just makes it a little hard to do anything strenuous… like CrossFit). My ideal conditions are sunny and cool.

This weeks WODS were crazy endurance tests.

This is part of the reason why I love the idea behind CrossFit. There’s a nice mix between endurance (not that it’s marathon-like, just longer sustained workouts) and strength. I always love finding my one rep max one some workout but in real life it’s not that useful. For those that don’t know your one rep max is the heaviest weight you can do once for an exercise. It’s basically the highest weight you can lift for that exercise. It’s a nice number to work with when you’re trying to improve your workouts. The endurance part to thinks makes it more useful. If you’re carrying some weight during the day during any tasks it’s most likely going to take longer than 4 seconds. Most of what we do takes longer than one rep of an exercise would.

With that said, the higher the reps on an exercise you have to do, the more tiring it is. For example in our Tuesday WOD, we had to do Air Squats and Shoulder to Overhead. Normally Air Squats are easy to do. This time we had to do 180 of them.

Air Squats are a squat with no weight. Think of sitting down on a chair with no chair underneath. You hold your hands out in front of you to keep you balanced. Your knees shouldn’t go past your toes and your weight should be on your heels. Try one now if you want. It’s a great exercise to do when you don’t have weights and have a limited amount of room. Crazy workout experimenter Tim Ferriss has a story I read somewhere about doing air squats in a bathroom stall during a concert because that was his scheduled workout time, damned if he was going to miss it. So you can do them anywhere, anytime.

So back to numbers. 1 Air Squat is easy. 180 of them? Not so easy. We had them broken up into 90, then 60, then 30. In between those we had to do 9, then 6, then 3 Shoulder to Overhead. Totally different muscle groups right? Wrong.

With lower weights, it’s not that hard to just muscle up the bar from your shoulders to overhead. When you have a heavier weight on the bar, there’s no muscling that thing up, you need a more efficient method. Bringing the bar above your head is a move called a snatch and there is the Squat Snatch and the Split Snatch.

Before we get into any more details, these are tough moves to perform properly on your own and it’s a really good idea to head into a gym and have a trainer watch your form with these. The whole idea is that the weight is too heavy to lift on your own so you need special techniques to get it above your head. That means if you do it wrong, you can really hurt yourself.

The Squat Snatch starts with the bar on your chest and then in a smooth, quick movement, you bring the bar above your head at the same time you squat down, basically putting yourself under the bar without having to move it much. The Split Snatch is similar but requires your legs to drop into a lunge position with one foot in front of the other. Once you stand back up straight again, you’ve completed a Shoulder to Overhead. Fun right?!

So:90 air squats9 shoulder to overheads60 air squats6 shoulder to overheads30 air squats3 shoulder to overheadsI thought the Shoulder to Overheads were going to be the tough part (they were tough), but the really hard one was all those air squats. Do something enough times and it’s really hard!

Thursday WOD

Thursday’s WOD was another endurance workout. I like them not so much because they’re easy but they’re easier to figure out. The heavy weights require a lot of technique to get it right and the consequences of mishandling 200 to 300 pounds on a bar can be bad. Jumping over a box many times with 25 pounds in your hands? Can’t do much damage there. Do As Many Reps As Possible (AMRAP) for 7 minutes though and you’ve got yourself a hell of a workout.

So this workout was 7 minutes of 7 over the box situps, 7 Sots presses, and 7 knees to elbows. After that was done it was 30 deadlifts.

The whole 7,7,7 setup was new to me. Over the box situps is a fun one but really gets you breathing. Grab a box you can jump on top of and down the other side. Mine was about 2 feet high. For an Over the Box Situp, take the weight if you have one step up and over the box and then do a situp on the other side. When you do the situp hold the weight above your head the whole way up. Pretty solid weighted situp. Sots presses take some explanation too.

Sots presses are basically holding the weight on your head, doing a squat, then doing 7 presses above your head with the weight, staying in the squat position the whole time. Once you’ve done the 7 presses, you can stand up and you’re done.

After the Over the Box Situps and the Sots Presses, it’s on to the Chinup Bars for some Knees to Elbows. They’re exactly how they sound. You swing your knees up and touch them to your elbows. Don’t knee yourself in the face doing this.  That would hurt. If you need to, it makes it easier to make grunting noises when you’re getting tired. It helps you do more. At least that’s what I was doing.

After all our breathing came down to a semi-normal level we moved into the deadlift portion of the workout. 30 deadlifts is a solid workout on it’s own. I’m always debating how heavy to go because you want to push yourself but you want to finish the workout as well. Being the last person to finish the workout does have it’s perks though. Often when we’re doing something that is timed and there are only a couple people left, the people already finished cheer them on. I’ve seen it in competitions too. Pretty cool way to finish off a workout. Pays to be last?

I felt great after this week and I’m hoping that’s going to continue into the weeks to come. I’ve just started tracking all my weights and times in a book at the shop and at home. One of my goals in these 3 months is to see how much I can push myself. So many of the workouts will be just to learn how it’s done but the more I do, the more I can push myself for Personal Records or Personal Bests. Beating those are what keeps everyone going. I’m excited to smash some of my own in the next few weeks.

Throw your comments down below or shoot me an email if you have questions about CrossFit. I’m sure you have some lurking somewhere!

Happy CrossFitting,

Ross

The post CrossFit Challenge Week 3: Endurance Tests first appeared on Pack & Trail.

Walk Out Planks

These were a new part of the buy-in that I hadn’t done yet. They’re a great warm-up and a nice core workout. Here’s what you do:

You get into a push-up position with your back nice and straight. For the plank part walk your hands out as far as you can go in front of you without breaking form. When you get as far as you can go, walk your hands back to the pushup position. Do that as many times as prescribed in the workout or till you can’t do any more without breaking your from. You don’t want to hurt your back. That’s a walk out plank.

Getting Closer to Skinning the Cat

I touched on a move in my first post called Skin the Cat. I’m still not sure why it’s called Skin the Cat but it’s an impressive looking move. As part of the buy-in we hop up on the rings and work your way from hanging right side up to upside-down with your knees tucked in.  So at this point you’re hanging upside down in a ball off the rings. Sometimes we throw in a Candle for fun where you are hanging from the rings and you put your legs straight up in the air. It was pretty unnerving the first few times as it feels like you’re going to fall on your head. Going back to a tucked ball to finish off skinning the cat, you let your legs hang down in front of your face hanging upside down. Check out the video link above to see what I mean because that probably didn’t make any sense.

I can’t go that deep on it yet, but I’m getting there. I got my legs right around and hanging down a bit for the first time and I was pretty stoked with that. I feel like my arms are going to pop out of their sockets if I go to far so it’s just seeing how far I can go with it from here. Every day it’s a little bit more.

Computer hands don’t like pull ups

Apparently I have little baby-like hands that spend all day typing on a computer. Try putting scraping those hands on a rough, metal bar for 15 deadlifts and then 35 kipping pull-ups. They don’t stand up well, to say the least. I haven’t developed the necessary grip and callouses to get through the pull-ups unscathed but it’s coming. I could only do a few when I started and I’m up to 35 in less than 20 minutes. The recommended workout was 70 pullups but I had to drop to Zone 1 this workout to get it done.

Alright, on to Thursday’s WOD.

Easy at first glance

So we did Cindy. Yup that sounds terrible doesn’t it? It’s actually a workout called Cindy that a lot of CrossFit locations do. It’s pretty standard across the board. 20 minute AMRAP of 5 Pullups, 10 Pushups, and 15 Squats. Remember, AMRAP stands for As Many Reps/Rounds As Possible. That means you get a time limit to do as many rounds of the workout as you can. The squats weren’t weighted but that doesn’t mean their not hard. It just means you have to go faster and do more. It seemed easy until my arms were toast and I was doing 1 pushup at a time.

I ended up doing 8 rounds, so 40 pull ups, 80 pushups, and 120 squats. That was officially most pullups, pushups and squats I’ve ever done in a day. My hands from the pull-ups were once again ragged but the rest of me felt stellar. Another awesome workout to add to the books.

60 km August Challenge – I’m at 20km

Every month there’s a challenge. Last month, it was working on your Goat. Your Goat is that thing that you just can’t get. I was trying to get double-unders where the skipping rope goes around twice for every jump. So far I’m at 2 or 3 and then the rope catches and I can’t get past that. It’s all about timing and I definitely don’t have that yet. My Goat now is pull-ups. Getting the rhythm down for my kipping pullups will let me do a lot more pullups for those exercises. They totally kill me right now. Kipping means that you use momentum to bring your body up to the bar. If you have the rhythm down you can use the momentum from one to go straight into the next. I can get up for one but then I get stuck and have to start over. Definitely a huge energy sap.

This months challenge is to run 60km, or 2km a day. I don’t think I’ve made 20 km yet and I’m supposed to be over 30. I have some catching up to do. My routine the first 2 nights was to hit up CrossFit and then head out for a 6k run. The runs weren’t too long but doable and a nice length for after a workout. I broke my routine the last workout by not going out for a run so this week I’ll be getting back into it. Every habit needs a trigger so I’m making CrossFit my running trigger. I suppose I could just go out and do two 30km runs but I think that would hurt more than it would do good!

Humbling experience

One thing I have to constantly remind myself of when I go to the CrossFit WODs is that I’m almost certainly going to be humbled. I’m not going to be the fittest person there. In fact there’s a really good chance that I might be the least fit person there. I’m probably not going to be able to do all the workouts right away. I’m going to have troubles with things and have to practice them to be able to get them right. But that’s the whole idea. If I already knew how to do all the workouts and could do them easily, what’s the point of going to CrossFit and learning something new.

I’ve read so much about failure and persistence. I’ve learned that grit is possibly the most important thing at determining your success in life.  This is what that feels like. This is what it’s like in real life. This is what walking the walk is. No more talking. Time for action. Time to fail, get back up and keep on going. If you can’t fall, get up and try again, what can you possibly accomplish?

Beginner’s Mind

The experience so far has been humbling but I know I will get better. Every class I get learn something new. Every class I get better technique that lets me lift more and do things faster. Every week I get stronger. But, no matter how much I go, I’ll never know it all. But that’s not my job. Katie at CrossFit Nanaimo, that’s her job. She knows CrossFit inside and out. That’s what she does. My job? I’m to be the best student there is. I’m the sponge that wants to learn how to skin the cat, do double-unders and nail multiple kipping pull-ups. I have to remind myself sometimes to think like a beginner but it can be so valuable. Even if you are the expert in what you’re doing, what happens when you start thinking like it’s your first day?

Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop

Katie has a shirt that says “Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop. ” She says it once in a while. I love the saying. It’s saying whether you quit or not is up to you. It’s all in your head and it’s your decision. When you hit that edge and you feel like you can’t pump up even half another rep, you probably can do another one. You just have to want it bad enough. Do you want it as much as you want to breathe?

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