Its PR week again at my crossfit. I have not been keeping up a good diet and it is showing. Stopped taking my inhaler before WODs because it seems to decrease my ability to breath... PR'd OHS at 125 and snatch at 95, also 3 muscle ups lol. I'll take a few days off for Thanksgiving since I get to go back home to CA for a while. I'm sure my diet will deteriorate even more. I'm making myself spend a little less time at crossfit during the week to make time to stay in the library, it had to be done. Nonetheless I'm getting stronger.

2nd Med school block exam this friday

Been taking some time off out of the box to study and also to give my body some rest. Seems my asthma symptoms have come back a bit. Its become a problem in a few of the WODs. I did the 300 WOD, and could not catch my breath for a long time. I went very hard on the first half of that workout and paid for it. Did another workout that was designed like FGB with some less conventional exercises such as tire pounds with a hammer and sandbag get ups, lungs closed up on me again. I'm not making excuses, I'll still go in with time permitting, just gotta make sure I don't die. Frustrating. At least I'm still getting stronger.

Post Chicago Urbanathlon, Post Block Test

So here's a little update on how the Urbanathlon went. I finished that beast up on Saturday. I did better then I thought I was going to. I pretty much kept the same pace the whole time, or at least it felt like that. If I took a rest it would only be for a few seconds after an obstacle. At about mile 3 my feet both went completely numb, I had the same problem when I did the warrior dash and I'm sure it will happen again when I do Tough Mudder next year. That was somewhat bothersome but not a real problem and sensation returned around mile 5. At around mile 6 my knee started to really hurt, but I convinced myself to keep going or it would hurt worse. I finished the Race in 2:00:58. About one minute slower then my goal (well the real goal was just to finish, and I did). It was a ton of fun and a great challenge.

After that I went defcon 5 and studied my ass off for my cell and molecular biology block test for medical school. Hopefully I passed.

Ok, back to Crossfit. Monday was the gyms rest day so I decided it would be fun to do a gymnastics WOD using just the rings. Did muscle ups, V outs, front levers (with band), back levers (w/ band), ring push ups, ring planche push ups, and an iron cross progression.

I took Tuesday off to go to a trampolining place. Got to do some flips into a foam pit which was as fun as it sounds. Decided to take the day off from crossfit since my knee was still sore from urbanathlon and trampolining didn't seem to make it better.

Today I did the full workout. For strength we did max Clean. I was able to work up to #180 which is my body weight, maybe a few lbs more so I was stoked about that. I did it as a power clean so I guess that technically means I can do more if my form gets better. Then for the Met-con WOD it was 60 seconds of double unders with 20 seconds rest for 8 rounds. I did shitty. It was tabata scoring and I ended up with 8. I hate double unders. Hopefully I get them soon.

Alright back to studying.

WOD one week from finals

Strength:

3×10 Bench press

Metcon:

2 Rounds of:

3 min Row (for calories)

1 min Wallball (reps)

1 min deadlift bodyweight (reps)

1 min ghd (reps)

1 min rest

*score by adding total reps and calories

Me:

Strength: 135 - 155(6) - 145 (7) Gotta do this more on my own.

188 reps 175#, order: GHD, DL, WB, Row. DL felt good, by WB my legs were sapped.

Then about 10 mins of GWOD goodness: kick into split handstand, V-outs (w/ false grip), band assisted front lever (could actually get back into inverted hang this time).

Crossfit is keeping the stress down for my final that is looming. Urbanathlon is coming up on Saturday, still not sure if I am running in it. Did no running training, hip flexor got strained, shin pain whenever I run, but I still want to run it since I paid and I like the challenge. Skipping training today because I am hosting a med student interviewee. I'll train on Wednesday then take Thursday and Friday off. I might try and run 2 miles on Thursday just to see if I can do it, I figure if I can run 2 miles straight I can at least walk-run the urbanathlon since it gets broken up by the obstacles anyways. We'll see.

49" Box Jump video

Hey guys (Bruce and Kelly) here's a little video of one of my trainers/coaches and me jumping a 49" box. I figured I would post a video since I've been too busy to write lately. My jump is around :30 so enjoy.

Been Busy

Hello, sorry that I haven't written on the blog in a while. I've been very busy with school and all the socializing and what have you. It has been hard managing all of my hours. Sleep usually gets sacrificed, but not crossfit. :P

I'm not going to list all of the WODs that I haven't been putting up but I'll give some quick highlights.

Murph: 54:00

FGB: 235

Did a few WODs where I had to Clean or Clean and Jerk 135, which is phenomenal to me.

Muscle up PR:1!

I'm seeing huge strength gains in my major lifts. The last few cycles have yielded me new PRs pretty much everyday.

Now that I have muscle ups my goals will shift. I'll keep working Cleans until I hit body weight, I almost power cleaned 175, which is close enough to my body weight... could not quite get it. With my one muscle up I will now work until I can do 10 in a row. Those ring straps gave me some gnarly bruises on my triceps area. I will also keep working my Deadlift. It is at 275 right now, which is a big jump from a month ago. I'd like to get 300 and then eventually work towards 350.

I've done crossfit regularly for a bit over a month and am seeing definite results. I have more energy during the day, fall asleep faster at night, and don't feel that stressed considering the stress I'm under living this far from home, my family, and my lovely lady.... Oh yeah, and medical school. I plan on training hard through fall and winter, so that when I come home for the holidays everyone can see the changes. My confidence is hugely improved, I mean if I can get through WODs I can get through anything.

Ok, now I'm sore

Tuesday

20 Kipping Pullups

20 Band assisted Ring Dips

Sprint Length of gym and back

18 Kipping Pullups... etc

16...

down to 2...

Holy damn... I'm calling this one a hard ass workout. The planned workout was to do 10,9,8... muscle-ups, so naturally I thought we would have to do 10 pull-ups to start with. Nope. This workout was absolutely brutal. The good news is that I started to get a pretty nice flow, and some good power into my kipping pull-ups. By the second or third round I think I saw Jesus. Joking aside, this workout was no joke, hard all the way through. When I got to the round with 10 I started believing that I could finish. The sprints just sucked all the extra energy out of me each time. Somehow I got through the WOD. I was very proud of myself, I have never done that many kipping pull-ups in my life.

Time: 23:05

Wednesday

400M of Burpee Broad Jumps!!!!

Had to go to the park to do this WOD. F*** this one. Even though it doesn't seem that hard it was. Had to do normal burpees and broad jump to progress forward. I figure I'd average like a 2M long broad jump each burpee that I did and maybe gained 1M each time I layed down. So that's well over 100 burpees. You can do the math. I had god-awful form the entire time. Somehow I made it to the finish and laid face down in the grass for a while. I was actually so tired walking home that I made wrong turn and got kinda lost. Pretty sad, I know. I woke up this morning with epic quad soreness.

Time: 24:10

Thursday

20 GHD sit-ups

20 Wall-balls #20

20 Kipping Pull-ups

20 BW squats

20 Kettle bell swings (1.5 Pood)

Done as Rx'd!!! (first time not scaling down with a weighted WOD)

*also, every minute on the minute we had to stop what we were doing and drop and do 4 burpees. So I did 24 with my time.

I was pretty happy with my time here. Still room to improve, but I did it as Rx'd!!! Huge deal for me. I wanted to make sure I got off that GHD before the first minute hit. I also made sure to get a good rhythm on my pull-ups. I started getting tired on the squats due to all of the burpees. I banged out the Kettle bell swings with a good rhythm, minus one interruption of burpees to finish out the WOD.

Time: 6:52

Tomorrow (Friday) is my recovery day. My quads are still super sore and I'm pretty sure the rest of my body needs the recovery as well. I might do some swimming tomorrow since my roommate has a friend with a pool that we can hit up tomorrow. I'll take it easy though. So much lactic acid is in my legs right now still.

My creatine came in the mail today so I took some of that after my workout. We'll see how that works. Also, even more exciting, my mom sent me her old commercial blender for smoothies. I've been making green smoothies with kale, spinach, broccoli, and anything else that's green. I think I might over do it on those since I end up making about 40 ounces each time. I put some fruit in there to make it taste better.

Weekend WODs

Saturday

WOD:

"Elizabeth"

21-15-9

95# Cleans (135# would have been what was Rx'd)

Ring Dips (first 5 ring, then went to regular... I'll get there soon :D)

This work out was a bit harder than I thought it would be, I feel like I used up a lot of energy putting the bar back down, since I am still a bit of a noob at cleans. The first 21cleans were pretty slow going, just because I was worried about my form, but the 15 and 9 was slow too because I got pretty exhausted fast. Dips were dips, I started out on the rings until the lack of stability was too much for me. Also, I did like 10 ring dips before the WOD, which might be my PR--so I was pretty tired. I felt good to get through that WOD, maybe by the next WOD with Olympic lifts comes around I'll be able to run on through.

Time: 9:30

Sunday

WOD

First 3X5 Bench Press (warm up 135#)

165, 165, 165 (assisted- could not move that bar :$)

then

3RFT:

4 Hand Stand Push Ups

8 Box Jumps (shorter box, not sure of the height)

12 Push Press (95#)

16 Tuck Jumps

I felt good about this one. It was a really good workout and I felt like I pushed myself through the finish. I had to take a few rests with the Push Presses. Also, tuck jumps were substituted for double unders which I cannot do efficiently yet; I am getting there.

Time: 5:45

I took Monday off to go watch a Cubs game at Wrigley field, but I am going to be back in the gym today. I also found out that I will not be able to do the Men's Health Urbanathlon this year due to my Cell Biology Block test being the Monday after. It sucks because I already paid for it and the $100 is non-refundable. First conflict between school and training, but I'll have to find ways to keep up with both of them.

Another note, I received some supplements in the mail from amazon. In addition to the whey protein I'm taking I started taking fish oil, multivitamin, and BCAAs. I am still waiting for Creatine to come sometime this week. I will most likely add a calcium supplement too since, the multivitamin doesn't have enough. I want to eventually add in Beta-Alanine, but I will see how the other stuff works on me for a week or so.

Started up Crossfit

Hello everyone, or just Bruce. I just moved to Chicago from CA to go to Medical school. I've always wanted to join a crossfit gym, but they were always so expensive. But by looking around Yelp I was able to find a place for pretty cheap, so on my first day here I checked out and I haven't looked back yet. I just completed my 3rd day of training so I get to rest tomorrow. I feel like this was one of the better decisions of my life. I've been pretty homesick, but I walk out of that gym feeling a lot better. I feel like if I can focus on this and Medical School I will end my four years in Chicago pretty successfully. I'm going to use this blog to keep notes on crossfit and map my progress. I'll probably take pictures of my physique so I can see the changes. I might even talk about medical school, but that won't start for another 2 weeks.

So I'll run through what I've done WOD(workout of Day)-wise.

Tuesday

Since I'm new they modify the workouts for me.

Five Rounds for time (RFT)

10 Deadlifts #95

15 Tuck Jumps

10 Knees to Elbows

This didn't seem like it was going to be hard, but man was I wrong. By the 3rd round I thought to myself, "Am I going to die?" But coaches kept pushing me on, and some how I got through it. I don't recall my time, but it wasn't great. It was a good first WOD.

Wednesday

Partner WOD

Me and my roommate did this together

21-15-9-9-15-21

Calorie Rowing

Wall Ball #20

Then when both partners are done, 30 burpees.

So for this WOD one person had to row while other did wall ball, after the set with 9 the partners would switch exercises. I decided to row first since I felt my cardio is the worst and do wall ball second. I found out how hard wall ball is when you have tired legs lol. That last 21 Wall balls was not fun, this was the hardest WOD of the week for me to get through. Thought that I was going to barf. Also, those 30 burpees were utter hell. It was a fun time for all. Maximum effort was definitely acheived.

Thursday

This was supposed to be the gyms rest day- typically crossfit programs run a 3 day on, 1 day off schedule. So we worked on getting the technique down for Cleaning. I've done cleans before, but I wanted to really nail the technique, so I'm glad I suggested that they teach my roommate and I the form. We ran through a Burgener warm-up with pvc while the coach (instructor, sifu?) explained to us why we do certain parts of the movement. The Warm-up basically goes over the form of a snatch which translates to the clean pretty directly. 3 parts of the warm-up are triple extension, bending elbows to keep the bar in close, and whipping it over head in the catch position while jumping down to receive the bar at a lower center of gravity. We then progressed to using a bar for cleans. The coach said I pretty much had it, so we added some more weight. Things that he noticed were wrong were my approach to the bar and my initiation of the lift. I guess I have to have the bar a bit closer to me; the bar has to intersect the foot in half. Also, when I initiate I need to sit back and start pulling the bar more gradually before actually bringing it off the floor. He said I slam into it like a freight train--I thought that's what you were supposed to do, so its good that we got that ironed out.

I have to say that after the coaching my cleans already feel, well, more clean. I'm sure over the next few months i'll really get it down.

Well after that we watched our gym mate make his way through Fran, which is 21-15-9 thrusters and kipping pull-ups. Glad I didn't have to do that.

We ended up doing a WOD after all:

21-15-9 Dips and Kipping Pull ups

I did band assisted ring dips instead of regular dips, because there weren't enough normal dip stations, but I can't do that many ring dips yet. My kipping pull ups were ok. I need to push myself away from the bar after getting to the top to keep my momentum. I'll celebrate when I can knock out 20 kipping pull-ups in a row. Right now I'll do like 3-4 lose momentum, reset, then do some more. This wasn't a "hard" WOD but my muscles were having trouble getting through all of the reps towards the end. WOD time was 7:50.

Well its been a good start, I hope I can stick with it because I know it works. I also want to tell my lady that I love and miss her. Love you Kelly!

Thanks for reading.