The pushups challenge is coming to a close. Monday is day 56. The final event will be announced in the coming days.
The Plank Challenge has started. Sunday is 50 seconds, order Monday is 60 seconds.
Tuesday will have Muscleups in the WOD. The Muscleups will be easily scaled to ring dips, malady jumping ring dips or banded ring dips.
Wednesday’s benchmark WOD is “Helen.”
Thursday at 7:30pm will be a CrossFit Express class.
CrossFit Total – Brag Time
We had 14 CFO athletes tackle the CrossFit Total on Saturday (13 at the gym, order Bill W. did it at home). By my count, CFO athletes had 41 PRs. Read that again. 41 f’ing PRs! We saw huge lifts across the board. Louis pulled 500#, hitting a lifetime goal on a lift that has, literally, eluded his grasp for years. Bob pulled 455#, and Paul just missed it after pulling 435# easy. Prior to this lift, Paul had never pulled anything over 400#. Crazy. Alison and Tricia are in striking distance of pulling 300#. Strong, strong ladies.
We had 6 athletes (Adele, Jake, Scott, Lindsay, Gloria and Bill W) set PRs on ALL 4 PARTS OF THE TOTAL!!! This isn’t supposed to happen folks – I think you got greedy on the deadlift – normally you miss somewhere. Haha. Outstanding work!
We saw multiple PRs on the deadlift and the shoulder press. You know what’s crazy? WE NEVER DO THESE LIFTS!!! Yes, we work the HELL out of the squat. You may see the deadlift here or there, and we shoulder press, maybe 4 times a year. In my opinion, all these advancements have come from working perfect positioning, squatting heavy regularly, and hitting the Olympic lifts regularly. The speed of the Olympic lifts, and regularly working from the hang, has made you strong as hell – able to move hundreds of pounds safely and efficiently.
One other note on the Total.
It is just plain fun. Lifting heavy, talking trash, having a good time is the best way to spend a Saturday morning. We will do another Total on August 3. It will be “The Other Total” – Clean, Bench Press and Overhead Squat from the rack. Yes, I said Bench Press. If you want to improve your chesticles in the coming weeks, get it done. I’m going Viking style, and benching for the first time on 8/3.
A Work to the Wise (post DL)
For those of you that PR’ed your deadlift, especially big PRs of 50# or more or pulled close to 400/300, be smart in the coming weeks. I have experienced 3 setbacks in CrossFit. I tore my pectoral muscle training for Regionals last year, which slowed me down, but I was able to train. I have locked up my back twice since 2012, once causing a week long shutdown, the second time causing a two week shutdown. On both occasions, these setbacks were shortly after I pulled a major deadlift (for me). I feel like both these occasions were avoidable. Once I aggravated my back on another heavy deadlift 7 days after setting a lifetime PR of 465# at the OC Throwdown. The second time was on a high box jump/heavy thruster WOD where I was really taxing my posterior chain shortly after a painstorm with a bunch of 315# deads. If you PR’ed your deadlift, really be conscious of your positioning in the coming days. Extra foam rolling, tissue recovery, salt baths, even a visit to your body work spe#t of choice would be really smart to do this week. From experience, both for myself and athletes we’ve trained, I find you can recovery very quickly from max effort Olympic lifts (24-48 hours), pretty quickly from max effort squats (48-72 hours) but max effort deadlift taxes not only the muscles but the central nervous system for 7-10 days. Be smart and, I freaking hate this saying, but listen to your body. You may have really listen, like with a stethoscope.
Scott and Lindsay. Father and daughter – lifting heavy, cheering each other on, 8 PRs between the 2 of them. I’m not sure there’s anything cooler than this.
Workout of the Day
Strength
Clean and Jerk
Build to a heavy single in 20 minutes
Conditining
Use 70% of your heavy single and perform
As many Cleans as possible in 3 minutes
Rest 2 minutes
As many Cleans as possible in 2 minutes
Rest 1 minute
As many Cleans as possible in 1 minutes
Rest 1 minutes
As many doubleunders as possible in 2 minutes
Your score is your total number of cleans and DU (31 cleans/175 DU)
Do not feel compelled to “touch and go” your reps. In fact, I would prefer you ensure perfect set up each time using 1 and dumps.