5/22 – Crossfit CBD Melbourne

While in Melbourne Cam and I checked out a second crossfit box.  I knew from following Liz’s blog that Crossfit CBD had a pretty unique set up.  They are located on the rooftop of a building in the heart of Chinatown in Melbourne’s CBD (central business district).  We had to pre-register for their class which meant that we couldn’t make it Tuesday (full) and instead caught Wednesday’s session.  I think I’m thankful for that as Tuesday had 800m runs in it which meant also running down their 100 odd stairs (it’s kind of mean that they have signs on the way up that tell you ‘how many more to go’ – like you need the reminder… haha).

It was another different class model.  The warm-up was listed on the board and it was up to you to get it done when you got there.  I think you had 10 minutes or so to do it (from the start of class time).

Warm-up

2 rounds

45 double unders

30 walking lunges

15 push-ups

The we went through the WOD movements and started it off.

WOD

EMOM21

Cycle through

22 One arm KB Swings (11 each arm alternating Russian swings) (24/16kg)

11 Box Jumps (32/24”)

11 Ring Dips

Rx/Rx/Red Band

This was a fun one.  It was similar to a longer tabata as the movements took from 30-40 seconds to finish then you had a little rest and moved on.  I enjoyed the KB swings as we do this often enough at Southern and the box jumps were solid.  I managed to rebound most of them and it wasn’t until the last round that the cold weather caught up to me and I tweaked my calf a little.  It didn’t stop me however which in hindsight and painful walking the next two days was probably not a smart idea.

I scaled the ring dips quick significantly as these quite often screw up my shoulder.  I also think I kept the rings a bit further away from my sides as a way to compensate for my shoulder issues (I know, not the best idea but still).  I think it was for this reason that my biceps hurt so much afterward and not my triceps.  It was a great session though.  Fun to roll through with a new crowd of people on an outdoor roof in the heart of Melbourne during the working week.

As I mentioned, Crossfit CBD is on the roof of a building.  It’s half sheltered and half exposed and completely open to the elements.  It was a little bit wet and mostly cold when we were there though there was daylight creeping through the grey sky.  I can’t imagine the dedication it would take for some to get there for the early morning or late night classes when it’s dark in the middle of winter.  It adds to the atmosphere though and definitely makes you stronger. 

Some photos from Crossfit CBD.

And some drunken Birtday Handstands just for fun... at least these were against a wall unlike my attempt to handstand walk in the middle of the city street that was more like a crash and burn...

5/20-5/21 - Crossfit Victoria

Catching up…

The second half of May was a bit of a blur with a trip to Melbourne, Regionals action and Cam moving out.  Training took a bit of a backseat but it was necessary and was a good break to just indulge – in food – namely bacon and beer and too many carbs.  Good times.

There were however a few WODs during the trip.  Two visits to Crossfit Victoria It was great to get different coaching perspectives – sometimes even the same cues but with different words and to see how different boxes operate.

Cam and I attended to sessions at Crossfit Victoria and both were WODs that were more lifting focused than metcons.  As a group we warmed up and then on both occasions had a set period of time to go through some movements on our own in a bit of a rotation to get us ready for the WODs.

5/20 – Push Presses at Crossfit Victoria

I don’t remember in detail all the dynamic stretching that we did on this one but I do remember at the end of it all that we partnered up and for 1 minute had to be on all fours – knees could not touch the ground and in essentially what was a chaotic bear crawl we faced off with our partners and tried to slap their hands.  Every touch resulted in an immediate pushup penalty for our partner.  It was really hard not to laugh while doing this – I think it’d make a great addition to fun time Fridays. 

Pre-WOD was a 5 minute cycle of 10 Russian KB swings at a heavy weight (I think I picked 24kg as this was the only ‘heavy’ option once everyone else had grabbed theirs) followed by 30 seconds of our choice of active rest (box jumps, burpees, running on the spot, skipping).  The clock just ticked away.  It was good fun and a different approach. 

WOD

Push Press 5 x 2

I *think* I got up to 42.5 for a few rounds though I can’t quite remember as it’s been a while.  I do remember a new PR so that was exciting.  It was also good practice to not re-dip a la push jerk too.  I enjoyed it and it was fun partnering up with a couple of girls that I just met and seeing them push their limits too. 

5/21 – Backsquats and Burpees at Crossfit Victoria

It was a last minute decision to rush over and catch this class at noon.  Thankfully Cam’s cousin Christian lives a minute from the box so a quick change and a dash over and we were set.  Unfortunately though we arrived 2 minutes after the class had started and were taxed with the burpee penalty.  Now at Southern it’s a fair 3 burpees per minute but here we got the West Coast inflated amount of 25.  Ouch.  So off Cam and I went with our burpees.  I’m not sure if the Coach was serious when he threw them at us but was probably impressed that we got right to it.  We laughed.

Pre-WOD

5 or 10 minutes (can’t recall) of squat holds and leg swings and hip stretches – basically rotating through the movements that would get us limbered up to start squatting.

WOD

For 15 minutes (10 rounds)

Every 90 seconds complete one round of:

3 back squats (at approx. 5RM)

6 burpees

45kg

I partnered up with Laura on this one and she was going with 45kg.  Given that I hadn’t worked out much and was exhausted from the weekends escapades of excessive drinking and not sleeping, staying out til the sun (almost) came up and hours of endless walking through the days I was cool with this.  I knew it was light for me but a good time to focus on form.

I enjoyed this format.  The burpees were quick but also left your heart racing – or perhaps that was just because I was trying to race Cam on them each and every time – I would beat him off of the squats and he would catch me on the burpees.  I think I managed to finish just fractions in front of him until the last round where he *finally* realized it was a competition (it really wasn’t) and kicked my ass.  Ha!

Enjoyed our time here and met a lot of cool people that I’m happily going to keep in touch with.  It’s reasons like this that I love the Crossfit world, it truly is an international and welcoming community.

5/13 – Oly Monday

Decided to skip the all rowing WOD tonight and just focus on Oly as normally I try and squeeze in the 4:30 WOD then oly following which leads to one of two things:

1. I skip Oly because I’m too destroyed from pushing hard in the WOD or

2. I go lighter at Oly because I’m too destroyed from pushing hard in the WOD

So Oly only was the deal for tonight.

Barbell Club

Oly

Clean and Jerk

5 x (2+1) – two cleans one jerk

Warm-up 35-40-45

Working 50-50-50(fx 2 cleans)-50-50-50

Clean Pulls

3x3

Working 55-55-55

Back Squats

3x5

Warmup 10x20kg-5x 40kg

Working – 55-55-55

First day using my new knee sleeves and love them.  I’m not sure if it’s because my knees are toasty warm, if they remind me that my knees are there and need to be kept strong and from collapsing in, if it’s because they add some support or a combination of all of the above.  Regardless, it’s love.

The cleans and jerks felt really good.  It was nice to be a bit heavier on them.  I wanted to go up closer to my 1RM but it’s been a while since I’ve been up there and wanted to get some solid reps in so didn’t push it too much.  The only comment Coach Claire gave was that I wasn’t being solid on my jerk which reflects what Coach Jono said to me a while back about just having confidence in the jerk, just going for it so something to focus on.  In the third set I spectacularly failed both cleans.  Claire had told me to focus on keeping my knees out and I think I was doing this to the detriment of every other part of the movement and the first one I collapsed forward and the second over compensated and ended up on my ass.  Oops.  I shook it off then got back to good reps.

The clean pulls were good.  I probably should have gone heavier but my lower back was feeling a little sore so instead of pushing the weight I focused on the movement.

Struggled through the back squats, not necessarily because they were hard but because I just didn’t really want to do them/ don’t love them.  Felt solid though throughout.   Again, should have gone heavier but honestly I was being quite lazy.  Time to step it up though, primal isn’t too far off.

Glad to have the solid focus on Oly though.  Love it.

5/10 - A whole lotta stuff

Friday was another day back at the box though I was hurting everywhere from ‘Jackie’ – seriously, she’s a bit of a b@#$%... Biceps, triceps, hamstrings, abs… ouch.

Since it was “Friday Fun Day” we were split into two teams for a longer version of the burpee leap frog game that was part of one of the WODs at Affiliate Cup.  The first person lays down and then the next jumps over them (sideways) and then lays parallel about an arms length apart then each subsequent person does burpees in between each pair until they are at the end and lay down.  The next person goes when the previous one is lying on the ground.  Once everyone is on the ground then the first person gets up and goes down the line until everyone has gone through everyone else.  It went quite fast and since I was the second person on the ground I had the entire group mostly to burpee over.  The trick I find with this one is to not get very high when you stand up – basically just enough to ‘superman’ over the person and they hit the floor again.  I went fast, didn’t get high at all and laughed my ass off.  It was great – everyone else found it funny too but it worked.

We then jumped right into the days WODs.

Strength

Dead Lift

Every 2nd minute for 10 minutes complete 3 Deadlifts @ 85% of your 1RM.

85kg

Then

5 x 5 Bent Over Rows

30kg

Then;

12, 9, 6

Wallball 20/14lb

Plyo Push Up

3:49 (14lb wall ball to 10’, no clap on push-up just up off of floor)

Was supposed to go with 90kg on the deadlifts but working up to that got hard quite quickly and I figured I’d rather stay with good form at 85kg than push it.  Turns out it was a good idea for a few reasons – my back still felt it all on Saturday and also because (as Calen pointed out to Steph and I after we’d finished) that we actually had the fat bar and therefore it was harder on us.  Figures.  Made us better though so there’s that.

The bent over rows were just awkward.  We decided to go lighter on them as neither of us had ever done them before so that worked.  Not a huge fan of them though.

The WOD was fun, super fast though I decided I’d aim for the men’s target rather than the women’s so that when I have to do wall balls in competition they (might) feel easier.  I ate a wall ball in the round of 12 and thought I had a bleeding lip, turns out I only had a scrape on my chin.  My biceps (that were already killing from ‘Jackie’) definitely felt the brunt of this WOD again between the high wall balls and the push-ups.  I didn’t give up though nor change the target or the push-ups I’d started with (on my toes but just getting my hands off the ground – no clap).  It was nice to have Cam there cheering me on/ counting for me after most people were finished.  I needed it as I was doing sets of 2 push-ups on the round of 9 and 6.

Skills

Before class (having been inspired by Brendo’s effort the night before on ‘Jackie’) I got to playing around with butterfly pull-ups again.  I managed about 4 sets of 4 which made me quite happy.  Need to work on switching the rhythm in my to keep the flow but definitely a solid effort.  I’m in that phase right now where I am (getting) stronger but don’t actually feel like it.  A weird place but still.

5/9 – ‘Jackie’

What better place to start back into this lovely neglected blog than with my namesake(ish) WOD.  I have never done myself before but man I am a b@#$%!  Only felt slightly horrible during but after and today.  Wow, the level of aches is enormous

WOD

‘Jackie’

Row 1000m

50 thrusters (20/15kg)

30 pullups

9:53 Rx

Rowing hurts me – I can go hard and hang on for 500m but usually anything longer is a killer but, but…  last night it was good.  I had a plan to hold a steady 2:10/500m pace through the 1000m keeping nice and relaxed and calm.  I think this took most of the pressure off and made things easier – I wasn’t trying to go fast and hold on through the distance.  Funny thing was I started off and quickly got down to a 2:00/500m pace and it felt nice and relaxed so I figured I’d stay there relaxed and breathing and monitor how I was feeling and then backing off if it started to hurt too much.  It didn’t.  I remember about 300m or so in Coach Tara peeked around at my screen to see my pace because I felt and likely looked relaxed – I kept about 29-30 strokes per minute at this rate – it was a solid pace for me and I liked it.  I held the 2:00/500m pace throughout the 1000m dipping to just below around the 500 mark.  I got off the rower at 4:01.  My 1000m PR is 3:54 and I remember how much that hurt me (March 21, 2013) and I remember how much that hurt so this is definite improvement and the best part of this WOD for me overall.

The thrusters were… interesting.  I started off thinking I’d do 5 sets of 10 and managed to get the first 15 unbroken.  Shook out my legs a bit as my glutes were definitely not happy with me and then went 10-10-10-5 to finish.  Brendo was my partner for this WOD so he was counting/ cheering and tried to get me to do the second 25 as 15-10 and I just couldn’t do it.  Even as it was I think I closed my eyes tight and struggled to push through the last 5.  Ouch!

I was happy with the pull-ups.  I’m down 1.5kg over the past month or so (happy) and I think this definitely helped.  My kip also felt solid.  I was aiming to break them up into 6 sets of 5 but then managed a solid 6 on the first go and realized that if I kept with 6 I’d have to do one less set than with 5’s.  Yes, it’s all about math to me.  My legs almost didn’t hold me as I dropped down the first time – oops, but I shook them and my arms out – tried to breath and got back up for two more sets of 6.  They started to hurt.  It was about this time that I noticed that I could probably get in under 10 minutes if I pushed it.  I had 12 reps left and Brendo was telling me to just do sets of 3.  I jumped up and said screw it to that and did 4.  I then pushed through two more sets of 4 just to get them done. 

I didn’t realize it at the time but Cam was also doing the WOD at the same time.  I saw his last pull-up seconds after I’d finished.  Wayne later told me that he was gaining ground on me on the pull-ups as he was doing sets of 10 but I just squeaked out the finish in front of him.  I then wanted to vomit (note – Thai food for lunch before ‘Jackie’ is not recommended).  Took me a bit to recover but overall I was really happy with how this went given that the 1000m row was scaring me and it felt really good. 

I’m feeling like my training is getting back on track lately and I’m getting back to who I am overall which is good.  Bring it.