Core Strength

Not Swiss balls, not crunches, not anything that you see advertised on television. Your abs are designed to stabilize your trunk and you should train them as such. There's nothing wrong with a little flex sometimes (the occasional GHD sit-up or ab mat sit-up) though I like those more as metcon exercises. But I can guarantee that if you get good at the overhead squat, the clean, the deadlift, and the jerk you will have a strong core. You've got to practice these regularly, and the beauty is that this kind of training improves your other workouts. This is how you keep a strong core during your runs and even your pull-ups! So practice!

Now, there are two ways to go about this. The first is the longer higher rep version that I'm doing. Take a moderate weight that you can do for at least 20 reps in a row and throw them into a workout as part of a couplet (OHS and Runs or OHS and pull-ups).

The second strategy is actually a better test of core strength than a way to build it, though I think it is valuable for both. Jack up the weight to something you can only do a few times, or even once. The big goal is to get to your bodyweight. And then your bodyweight x15. I am FAAAAAAAAAAR from this, but it is something to shoot for. Check this guy out to see what it really looks like.

http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/CrossFit_BWx15OHS.mov

Backsliding

It takes some effort to not freak out when you have a couple of bad workouts. I have recently had two workouts that were significantly slower than my previous efforts. In both cases it was my lower back that went on me. It was strange. My metcon was good, but I just had trouble lifting and holding the weight because of the burning/spasming in the lower back.

But I am not going to overreact and change everything because I had two bad workouts. I am going to take my rest days like I should, do some lower back conditioning exercises (lower weight/higher rep), and just keep at it. I'll let you know (and by you I mean the two people who read this) how it goes.

This is not my sob story though. I want to make a larger point. Progress is very rarely linear. There are injuries, set backs, bad performances. We will not set PR's every time we train. If you freak out and give up/change everything every time something feels a little off you will not make progress. Stick with it and ride out the bumpy patch. If you notice a steady decline, start making smaller changes.

This of course assume that you are already doing CrossFit, eating right, sleeping right, and resting enough ... but I am sure we are all doing that ... right?

If not, scratch everything I just said, stop what you're doing, and CrossFit/eat Zone paleo/sleep. What are you waiting for? Don't be one of those posers who waits and then makes it a New Years Resolution. No one can take that seriously! If you start today it will be much more legit. Trust me.

Another Test Approaches

I began writing this yesterday before I got distracted. Since I started, I actually finished the workout I was writing about preparing for. I'll leave what I wrote yesterday in quotes, maybe add some of what I was planning to write, and then give you the post-mortem on the whole thing.

Yesterday I wrote:

"I haven't done Fran for several months. It consists of 21-15-9 Thursters (95lbs) and pull-ups. For those unfamiliar with crossfit it is the "whatcha bench" of our community. It is less meaningful than we make it, but serves as a convenient ranking mechanism amongst crossfit athletes. I have a better than average, but far from elite Fran time at 3:57."

What I was going to go on to write:

I was completely wiped the last time I did this workout. Like on the floor in a puddle for a good 40 minutes. And it was a PR. I didn't see a lot of improvement ahead. Combine that with the fact that I was going in on the heels of a couple sub-par performances, a sore back, and torn up hands, and I figured I would be happy to get under 4 minutes this time around. I'd change some things up so I had a pocket full of excuses for why this wasn't the big PR (hands, back, tired, 3rd day on, first time in lifting shoes, first time with tape on my hands).

And here is what happened:

Pretty big PR. I went down to 3:28, which, when you are already under 4:00, is a fairly significant drop. I think it can really be attributed to getting stronger. The thrusters didn't hurt me as bad as usual. Possibly unrelated, possibly not, I also took fewer breaks on pull-ups. I think that was just a product of having been doing a lot more of them a lot more consistently. Since I figured out how to change my grip and save my shoulder some agony, I have had months of uninterrupted pull-ups. In the past I would feel good, hurt my shoulder, and stop doing them for a month. Not a surprise that this came on the heels of a 1 set max reps pull-up PR of 32.

And this time I was not in a puddle ... well, that's not true, but I wasn't there for very long. I feel like I can improve in a couple of places. First, move to NO breaks on pull-ups. This time I took one break in the second round and one in the third. That's two less than last time, so I'm moving in the right direction. Second, butterfly kip. Not sure I'll ever be able to do this because of my shoulder, but I'll try. Third, shorter or no breaks on thrusters. As it is I don't put the bar down, but I'll take a couple of rests in the rack. Maybe more important is maintaining my turnover rate. My first 21 reps were in 40 seconds. We had people go faster, but our fastest through the first 21 in 9 inches shorter than me, squats over 400lbs, and presses 225. So I was happy with a 10 second difference. But in later rounds I do slow way down.

All in all I'd say 3:00 is in reach, but it will be hard. Still, after emerging from the haze of my last Fran I thought there was nowhere else to go. This time I see a light at the end of the tunnel.

That was a long, slow, boring recitation of one workout. Sorry about that. I'll try to be more interesting in the future. On the bright side I should at least get some video out of this one eventually that I can post.

Data

One quick data point: I hate bench pressing.

But that's not really the point. The larger issue is that I don't bench press very much. My numbers show it. They are pretty average. That said, not having benched in about a year, I managed the same numbers I had when I was doing it a bit more consistently. That, combined with improved pull-ups, got me a PR on Lynne (max weight body weight bench plus max pull-ups).

The short version of this analysis is that my bench press stayed the same without benching largely from overhead pressing, push-ups, and dips. My pull-ups improved. That is bigger news since I spent the last month doing lots of low rep barbell work and not a lot of body weight work. I also gained 5-10 pounds and still managed to PR with a first set of 32. And I never dropped below 20. Now we'll see if my bench actually gets better if I devote some time to it.

Feats of strength month still seems to produced improvements across broad times and modal domains despite working mostly in the short duration/high weight range. Nice to know. I'll let you know when I find chinks in that programming strategy.

More Data

We spent the last month at Potomac CrossFit doing feats of strength. The hypothesis was that higher levels of limit strength (as measured by heavier weights done at low reps with ample rest) would translate to increased max limit strength, but would also carry over to improved metcon and performance on non strength dominant workouts. Or at least it would not hurt metcon and would allow people to approach doing workouts as RXd.

Since I can do most workouts as RX'd , I took the opportunity to see if I could increase my limit strength without hurting my metcon. I also want it to improve my times on some of the WODs that I can do as RX'd but that feel heavy to me. Grace (30 reps clean and jerk 135lbs for time) will be a perfect test. I haven't done many workouts since we ended feats of strength month, though I set several PR's in metcon workouts DURING feats of strength month. I will try to collect the data over the next month and let you know.

So far I can tell you that my CrossFit Total went from 900 to 920. I did, however, feel weaker on push-ups than before we did feats of strength month. I think it is because I just didn't do them very much and they are something I improve on by doing them a lot. We'll see.

Topics to come:

Why Aaron can't gain weight?

Can Aaron get better at push-ups and thus improve his Cindy score from it's 1 year plateau?

Did Aaron spell plateau correctly?

That last one might be kind of slow.

Wow!

It's been forever since I posted. Since I want to make sure I don't deter myself from posting more often, I will keep some of these posts pretty short in the hopes of getting new content up with some regularity.

First, I managed to pass the big test!!!! The goal was to run a competitive time in a distance race without training for distance. With only one run per week, almost all of which were interval repeats and only two or three of which were long slow distance (by long I mean 3-5 miles when the race was 10). My PR for this was 65 minutes in great conditions on an easy course with few people around. That's 6:35 per mile. This one was less than perfect weather, tons of people and a slightly harder course. I did it 68 minutes or about 6:52 per mile. So there you have it. The difference between pounding pavement 5 days a week and losing all your strength and power and not doing that but doing CrossFit instead is about 3.5 minutes over 10 miles. Good times. And for proof look here (that's me in 54th place) and here (that's me in 786th place ... it was a much bigger field).

All that while I have improved pretty much every score I have gotten in all of the CrossFit benchmarks, most importantly setting a CrossFit Total PR of 920lbs. That's the accumulated weight of my one rep max for the squats (350lbs), overhead press (155lbs), and deadlift (415lbs). If I had just been running, I might have gotten 65 minutes, but I bet my CFT would have been between 700-800. And I would look skinny and soft rather than having some muscle mass and not looking sickly.

Exciting.

For future posts, I also want to putting up more pictures. the real reason for my lateness in posting has been working at the Potomac CrossFit. It takes up some time, but mostly it takes my attention. I want to do a better job combining the two efforts (this blog and PCF). Wish me luck!