I'm still here.

This past week has passed me by. I've been meaning to post, I've been busy with the kids while Michelle was at the 2012 Weston A. Price Foundation Conference. Blogging is fun and all, but so is running around the house playing Batman versus Iron Man and singing Weird Al Yankovic tunes at the top of our lungs.

Anyway, here's the latest rundown on my gym activities.

Friday

Strength Skill:

• Bottoms Up Kettlebell Cleans (5-5-5-5-5-5, one set every 3 minutes)

The rest of the class continued working on barbell cleans, and I wish I could've joined 'em. I've been feeling sharp pangs of envy whenever I watch other people practice cleans. So I did my bottoms-up kettlebell cleans in the back of the gym, and tried my best not to watch my classmates heave their barbells around.


Metcon:

• "Jackie" - for time:
• Row 1,000 meters
• 50 thrusters (45lbs / 35lbs)
• 30 pull-ups

It's only been a few months since we last did "Jackie," though this time around, I wasn't able to do the thrusters with a barbell. Instead, to ease the pressure on my wrist, I did double kettlebell cleans and presses, which approximated -- but didn't equal -- the experience of thrusting the barbell overhead.

Jackie still wrecked me (per usual). But the first squat after getting off the erg is the hardest, and once I pushed through the KB cleans and presses, the pull-ups went fairly quickly.

Result: 8:22 -- significantly faster than my 9:51 from June, but I did it RXed that time.

Monday

Strength Skill:

• Back Squats (3-2-1-1-1-1)

I was happy to hit a new PR at 245 pounds -- though I suspect I had some left in the tank.

Metcon:

• 21 burpees
• 21 overhead kettlebell swings (32kg / 24kg)
• 21 Abmat sit-ups
• 15 burpees
• 15 overhead kettlebell swings (32kg / 24kg)
• 15 Abmat sit-ups
• 9 burpees
• 9 overhead kettlebell swings (32kg / 24kg)
• 9 Abmat sit-ups

Pretty straightforward stuff -- and a workout I didn't have to modify to accommodate my wrist injury! (Well, I did have to do the push-up portion of the burpees from my fists, but that doesn't really count, does it?)

The overhead kettlebell swings slowed me down a bit. Seventy pounds is half my bodyweight, and every time I swung that iron ball, it threatened to pull me off my feet.

On the plus side: No Abmat ass-crack rash!

7:49 RXed

Why did I hold off on posting about yesterday's workout?

I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon mashed into an uncomfortable chair in an auditorium, watching my six-year-old (and dozens of others) perform at his martial arts studio's annual black belt show. My kid was onstage for two short segments, each lasting about a minute. Those couple of minutes were fantastic; I love watching my little man confidently punch and kick his way across a stage. But for the remaining 118 minutes of the kung fu recital, my mind was focused on the fact that the ache in my injured lower back was worsening. The longer I was scrunched in that chair (with my three-year-old squirming on my lap), the more miserable I got.


Interestingly, my back didn't feel better until 5 a.m. this morning, when I staggered into the gym, rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, and started foam-rollering the hell out of my back muscles. Finally, I felt the tension ease, and after joining the rest of the class for a low-impact warm-up (no awkward cartwheels today!), my back started to feel a whole lot looser.

Strength Skill:

• Turkish Get-Ups (1-2-3-1-2-3)

No point in (further) destroying myself today. I stuck with a 1 pood kettlebell for my TGUs. They felt pretty solid, and even with a few minutes of rest between sets, I finished relatively quickly.

Metcon:


"Jackie" - For time:

• Row 1,000 meters
• 50 barbell thrusters (45lbs / 35lbs)
• 30 pull-ups

I've done Jackie twice before, but the last time was over a year ago, and frankly, I have no recollection of these previous attempts. Tim asked me my PR on Jackie, and I shrugged.

This didn't look too bad, I thought as I scrutinized the whiteboard. The rowing would be miserable, but if I paced myself, I'd be fine. Doing thrusters with an empty bar seemed easy enough. And pull-ups are fun! If I pulled a leisurely 4-minute 1K row, I figured I'd need just another 4 minutes -- tops! -- to get through the light thrusters and pull-ups.

I was wrong. As usual. The only one of us at 5 a.m. who finished in less than 8 minutes was the Terminator (of course).

If I'd consulted my blog archives (see? they come in handy!), I would have seen that in July of last year, I finished Jackie in 10:03, and in September, I finished in 9:28. And perhaps I would have remembered how my legs turned to jelly right after stumbling off the erg, and how even 45-pound thrusters feel horrible when my thighs are on fire. Or, for that matter, how the thrusters were more than enough to fry my arms and make 30 unbroken pull-ups nothing more than a pipe dream.

On the plus side:

• I managed a new PR (I finished in 9:07 as RXed), and
• During the workout -- and for about two hours afterwards -- my back felt awesome. I didn't even need to spray Old School Horse Rub on it.

Despite the lingering soreness in my throat, I felt more than good enough for class this morning.


Strength Skill:

• Strict Weighted Pull-Ups (2 sets of 5, 3 sets of 3)

It feels like I've lost some strength since the last time we did weighted pull-ups. Even without throwing much weight in the weight vest, I had trouble clearing the bar on my last couple of reps. Looks like I gotta start greasin' the groove again.

Metcon:

5 rounds:

• 30 seconds of overhead kettlebell swings
• 30 seconds of rest
• 30 seconds of burpees
• 30 seconds of rest

The folks who showed up at CrossFit Palo Alto yesterday did "Jackie," so in comparison, this workout looked (on the whiteboard, anyway), like a lark. After all, today's WOD requires only five minutes of work. How hard could it be?

Pretty hard, actually. This was a maximum-effort, all-out sprint, and it involves two of the best full-body exercises around: kettlebell swings (a.k.a. the "brutal distillation of everything ketttlebell training is about: power, explosiveness, flexibility and lung searing 'cardio'”) and burpees ("the one exercise to rule them all"). The 30-second rest intervals gave us just enough time to catch our breath, scrawl down the number of reps we just cranked out, and hustle back into position for the next round of work.

My goal: To squeeze in 15 swings and 12 burpees in each round, for a total of 135 total reps.

Result: 132 reps, using a 53-pound kettlebell. I managed to hit my targeted number of swings each round, but towards the end, my burpees got slower and more awkward-looking, and I missed my goal by 3 reps. Still, I'm pretty happy with my performance today -- it was a great (read: ass-kicking) way to launch into the weekend.

(Final note: XFitMama is super-hardcore. After the WOD was done and the rest of us were splayed on the floor, she wanted to keep going. And she's five months pregnant.)

Strength Skill:

Handstand Push-Ups

I did 30, in sets of 5. What's odd is that I always manage to do more at the gym than at home. They feel easier, too.

Metcon:

"Jackie"

• 1000-meter row
• 50 45-pound barbell thrusters
• 30 pull-ups

Result: 9:28. The row was (surprisingly) quick and easy, and I got through the first 25 thrusters just fine, but thereafter, I kept taking a few seconds to catch my breath after every five or six reps. I could (and should) have done better on my pull-up time, too. I'm happy I shaved 35 seconds off my previous Jackie attempt, but I'm determined to kill this the next time around.

I'm hooked on muscle-ups -- because while I can't get do a real one yet, I'm getting damn close, and I'm confident (probably foolishly so) that I'll soon accomplish my goal of cranking one out. In a way, this is kind of a pathetic goal