Much better kali class today; I felt like I got a handle on pretty much everything (the one exception being the windmill, which I really need to practice), and humiliation was kept to a minimum.
Afterwards, the sun was shining, so I did a one mile time trial. I finished in 8:06, which is a new PR, almost a minute faster than my last such attempt, and even faster than the 0.9 miles I ran to start out my 90% Murph a week or so back. All in all, a damn fine day.
I seem to have done dedicated front squat work all of three times this year, and that just ain’t right. So, since CF Ithaca programmed a 5×5 back squat day, and I’ve kinda had my fill of that, I did 5×5 front squats instead.
115 x 5
130 x 5
145 x 5
160 x 5
175 x 5
That last one’s a new 5RM. Sadly, my three sets of max dead-hang pull-ups didn’t go as well: 6-7-5. I was pretty strict with my form, but that’s still somewhat disappointing.
Hello, back squat, my old friend. I’ve come to grunt at you again.
Back Squats
90% of max x 1 x 5
235 x 1
235 x 1
235 x 1
235 x 1
235 x 1
That went quite well. Need to go for a new PR soon.
AMRAP in 10 minutes of:
10 dumbbell clean & jerk (25lbs)
5 dead-hang pull-ups
Got through five rounds, plus seven more DB C&Js. Today went much better than yesterday.
Posted in WODs
Tagged back squats, dead-hang pull-ups, dumbbell clean and jerk, pull-ups, squats
Does the title of this post sound like a couple of horror movies? Good, because today was kind of a horror show.
I knew I was going to miss two kali classes because of my vacation, but I didn’t know until Monday that I’d miss a third due to a mandatory staff meeting. So I stumbled back into class having gone to two sessions and missed three, and ended up feeling bad to the poor kids who had to partner up with me for drills. I got the stuff we were working on down reasonably well by the end of class, but it was not a lot of fun.
The not fun continued when I hit the gym to do a heavily scaled-back version of a WOD from CF Ithaca.
“Freddy’s Revenge” (scaled WAY back)
Four rounds for time of:
115lbs shoulders to overhead x 5
burpees x 10
And I do mean scaled WAY back: the load for the overhead work is Rx’d at 185lbs, which is beyond any 1RM I have for any overhead movement. Turns out I should’ve scaled the weight back even more: as Rx’d this workout is five rounds for time; I finished four in 9:49 and called it a day to avoid losing my lunch. First time I’ve had to do that in a while, and the fact that it was after I’d scaled the workout back so far just left me shaking my head. (And by shaking my head I mean lying on the ground trying not to get sick.)
I’ve had much better days.
Back to the barbells! I did a variation on this workout, once again following CF Ithaca programming. This time, it was 85% of max x 1 x 5.
Snatch
65 x 2
65 x 2
90 x 1 x 5
Clean & Jerk
65 x 2
65 x 2
140 x 1 x 5
I didn’t do as many warm-up reps as last time, but this still felt good. The snatch form actually felt better than C&J: landing in a full squat felt much more natural. Glad to report that I really didn’t have any trouble completing the sets for either exercise.
Last week I was on vacation, and aside from practicing a bit with the kali sticks, my exercise was limited to swimming in the ocean and taking walks on the beach. I told myself I needed to give my body that kind of rest, even as I was similarly resting my mind… and it turned out to be more than just a rationalization, as evidenced by my return to the Summer of Murph.
“Murph” (90%)
Run 0.9 miles
90 pull-ups
180 push-ups
270 squats
Run 0.9 miles
I finished this up in 41:52, which gave me a theoretical Murph time of 46:31 (my fastest yet). I’m closing in on this thing.
Today’s class covered more strikes, and gave us a bunch of patterns to practice alone and with a partner. I’m still not sure how to talk about class on this blog, but with vacation coming up I’ve got a week to figure it out.
After class, I did some running: 400m x 4, with two minutes of recovery between runs.
1:30
1:37
1:44
1:49
Both the first and second times were faster than my previous PR, the first by 9 seconds. I’m sort of amazed by that. That first run just felt on.
Visited with the Olympic lifts today, with an unusual twist (for me): building up to doing 80% of max x 1 x 8.
Snatch
45 x 5
65 x 3
85 x 1 x 8
Clean & Jerk
65 x 5
95 x 3
135 x 1 x 8
The loads I used were slightly under 80% of max for the snatch, and slightly over for the clean & jerk. Felt pretty solid on both, and got full squats in on all the snatches and most of the C&Js. Interesting to hit both on one day.
Posted in WODs
Tagged clean, clean and jerk, Olympic lifts, overhead, push jerk, snatch
Today was my first Filipino kali class. It was pretty basic: attendance, administrative issues, buying sticks, swinging sticks. But also some awesome foundational information from Kevin Seaman. I’m thrilled to be taking one of his classes again.
Afterwards, I slipped into Teagle and ended up meeting the final session of my back squat linear progression summer.
210 x 5
210 x 5
210 x 5
210 x 5
210 x 0
I knew this week was gonna be rough, with 210lbs being a new 5RM. But I thought around sets three and four that I might have one more week in me. When I came down on set five, though, I simply could not bring the weight back up.
The disappointment is minor. I wanted to get four months of this in, and I pretty much did: this was the 16th workout. I’m taking a week off from barbells in general next week while I’m on vacation, so maybe I’ll come back and see if this’ll let me get a new back squat PR the week after.
Posted in Other exercise, WODs
Tagged back squats, kali, linear progression, squats
Some backsliding on this one.
“Murph” (85%)
Run 0.85 miles
85 pull-ups
170 push-ups
255 squats
Run 0.85 miles
So I decided to get my Murph on two weekends in a row, on account that I’ll be traveling next weekend. I’d say that, plus the fact that I haven’t been getting enough sleep this week, contributed to this workout feeling even more miserable than usual right from the start.
I finished in 41:02, which gives a theoretical Murph time of 48:16. That’s my worst since I did the 65% version. I can try to rationalize it (see above), or just say that I had an off day, but it’s still frustrating.
Honestly, this week had a lot of these kind of frustrations. I need to get more sleep.
