Monday, January 27, 2014

CrossFit Training Week 11

Pain

My left shoulder continues to hurt.  I've found that I can usually mobilize it enough so that it doesn't hurt during a workout (which John says is ok), but it doesn't really feel like it's getting any better.  I guess I'll just keep pushing through it, but I'd really like to be pain free by the time the Open starts.

I had a long pull-up/muscle-up session with John and unfortunately ripped my hands pretty bad.  I was using Rogue gloves and thought they were protecting my, but when I took them off I saw this:


Lesson: callus maintenance is non-negotiable.

Diet

I'm getting really lazy on diet.  I've gotten my water and sleep game together, but I keep cheating at night.  I'm concerned that I'm going lose my sweet abs.  I mean, what are we working for here?!  Seriously though, I need to drop as much fat as possible.  My performance will only get better if tighten it up.

PRs

I got a couple PRs this week.  I added 40# to my front squat 1RM.  I hadn't tested it for over a year; so it made sense to have a pretty big jump.  I got up to 245 pounds.

During my session with John, I got a new Clean and Jerk 1RM of 200 pounds!  That's actually a PR for the separate Clean and Jerk movements as well.  John is confident that I can get a lot more gains by fixing some glaring technique issues.

Friday, January 17, 2014

CrossFit Training Week 10

Level 2

I'm now taking Level 2 classes exclusively.  This has been great for me.  All of the athletes are great in Level 2; so, I'm always pushing myself hard.  Additionally, I can learn by watching any of them because they're proficient at just about everything.  It's humbling being toward the back of the pack, but I know that's the fastest way to get better.

Overtraining vs Bad Training

When I tell folks that I'm going to the gym for the second time, they're often concerned that I'm overtraining.  This week, I started having some serious pain in my left shoulder.  It's been messing up my training, because my workouts are weak, and I've had to skip doing extra stuff.  I would not attribute my shoulder issues to overtraining.  I think it was from poor training.  My suspicion is that it has more to do with not focusing on quality positions and movements during the intense workouts.  If it was overtraining, I imagine that my muscles would be fatigued all the time, which is not the case.

In any case, incorporating recovery in all of it's forms needs to be part of my focus going forward so that I can keep my training intensity high.  At this point in my training, I think intensity is more important than volume anyway.  I probably have a number of months until I would maximize the value of additional volume.

Highlights

Last week I redid 13.2.  I got 232 vs 210 last year.  That's pretty good.  I think I could have done a lot better had I been fresh (I just completed a 1 hour session with John), my quads not smoked from the previous day's workout, and in competition.

I also got a chance to find my new back squat 1RM.  I got up to 295 (+20#).

Wednesday, January 8, 2014

CrossFit Training Weeks 6-9

Conditioning & Strength

The most obvious improvement over the last month has been my increased work capacity and strength.  I'm consistently getting great times in WODs and my chin-ups and dips are noticeably better.  I don't see a much difference in technique to account for this other than having the capacity to maintain better technique for longer and using butterfly pull-ups whenever possible.  The exclamation point on this whole thing is my new Fran time of 4:50.

Eating/Sleeping


My daily recovery has been held back by poor sleep and sub-par eating.  I usually know as soon as I start warming up how the workout is going to go.  If I started getting fatigued on double-unders or something, it's going to be a rough one.  I apparently have a kidney stone that enjoys becoming extremely painful while I'm sleeping so that I wake up all night.  I've also been slacking on eating perfectly the last couple weeks.  Ain't nobody got time for that!

1:1 - Snatching & Muscle-ups

A few weeks ago, I had a 1:1 with John Post on the snatch.  This was largely embarrassing.  I already knew that I wasn't good at snatching, but I performed much worse than what I thought I could do.  Of course, this is all part of the deal.  I got some really great coaching on position, equipment, and what to work on.  At the time it was extremely demotivating, but in retrospect it was exactly what I needed.

I spent a bunch of extra time on snatching in off-class time that I think was useful, but I ended up hurting my hook grip-thumbs and exacerbating my lower back issues.  It has paid off in workouts for the lower weights, but nothing impressive on anything heavy.

My last 1:1 with John was on muscle-ups.  I've tried to do a bar muscle-up before, but didn't get anywhere; so, this was basically my first attempt at muscle-ups.  John lead me through all of the muscle-up progressions which I thought went well.  I could immediately see the benefit of the chin-ups and dips I'd been doing.  Eventually we got to work on the full thing.  I never got one, but I was so close a couple times I just assumed that the next time I worked on them it would happen right away.

Unfortunately that was not the case.  I've begun to take only Level 2 classes.  In the last class, I had a pretty embarrassing session working on muscle-up stuff.  This was demotivating, but it is what it is.  It's definitely just technique, but that doesn't mean I'm going to have them tomorrow.

Mental

As the CrossFit Games Open approaches, my mental game has been suffering.  I'm realizing more and more athletes that are as good or better than me in any number of areas.  The time left to improve gets shorter and shorter.  The easy gains seem to be slipping away.  I worry that I'm wasting my time, money, focus, etc on a goal that becomes less attainable every day.

This coupled with my focus being pulled in every direction by work, friends, side projects, real estate, life...  The determination to stay the course is difficult to find when it seems like I'm making the wrong decisions.

I've been in this situation before.  Doubts lead to poor diet, work ethic, focus, bad attitude etc. which just leads to lower likelihood of success.  I've decided not to do that.  Here comes a big speech about motivation and self-confidence or other such hippy crap.  Instead I'll just say, I need to stop being a pussy and get to work.