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.