Sunday, December 30, 2007

2007-12-30

Early afternoon:


Volume 2 of the Iron Core kettlebell DVD with Wifey. I used my brand spankin' new 35 pounder (that's 16kg = 1 pood)... I'd played around with Wifey's 10 pounder, and didn't think the workout would be that taxing.

I was wrong. It worked me hard. My arms are bruised from bad form, and some of the snatches towards the end were actually very difficult to do. The intensity isn't Crossfit, but the sheer volume makes up for it by the end. My grip was fried, compounded by the fact that my hands sweat bigtime. I'm a big fan of the Kettlebells now!

My favorite part of the workout: Wifey doesn't like Turkish Get-Ups, so she doesn't do them. I reasoned with her as calmly as I could, and we settled on her doing them without any weight at all. We had the most wonderfully nonsensical debate about it, too.

"I don't think they are good exercises, so I don't do them" she said.

"Is that because you can't do them?"

"I just think you'd hurt yourself if you did them wrong." What, like dropping the KB on your head? Yep, that would hurt.

"Well, you could do them without any weight, just to work on form."

"But then it wouldn't be an exercise, because there's no weight. What's the point in doing that?"

*groan* She had me there, with her impeccable logic. :)

I cajoled her into doing them, though, and she did very well. I can see why she doesn't like them- her hips aren't happy with her as far as range of motion goes, especially in the transition between sitting up and getting your feet underneath you. You could see where they limited her movements. She did great on the other exercises- I think they will help her get there flexibility-wise.

Training with her is fun when we can do it unencumbered. For a while there we were swinging the weights in sync, side by side. Most of my workouts are pretty lonely and lacking external motivation, this was nicely different. It's also fascinating to watch how somebody else learns something. She's good at totally different things than me.

We also did this workout parent style. Not only were we juggling kettlebells and rewinding the DVD, we were juggling Owen. For a while, we had him upstairs in his favorite swing, so you had to sprint upstairs to check on him after doing your segment.

After that, it was time for some light Crossfit. You know, just to work out the kinks. I had the idea that I could maybe do this one in under 20 minutes.

5 rounds for time of:
500 meter Row
50 Squats
30 Back extensions

Turns out, I was right, but not by much. It was brutal, and I couldn't afford any rests or to let the performance drop off at all. The pacing worked out pretty well:

As Rx'ed:

Round/Time
1/3:49.76
2/3:58.77
3/4:03.41
4/4:00.59
5/3:50.66

Total: 19:43.19

Rowing at 1:48-1:50 pace, 28-30 strokes/minute
All squats unbroken. Need to work on form here- could have been deeper.
Most back extensions broken 15/15 or 20/10.

I really do need to work on my squats some more though. I'm fighting a minor groin pull from the 150 burpee workout on Christmas, so that's a bit of a limitation as to how low I can go, but I'll keep working it. We don't have anything the right height at the gym to get my legs parallel to the ground, so I have to stack things on Plyo boxes. Hard things that, er... hurt when you land too hard. Since the workout didn't say "Smash your balls against a 25-pound weight 250 times, for time", I skipped that bit and did it freestyle.



Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Christmas Day Workout

First of all, good job to Joanne, who is coming a long with her pushups nicely!

http://jehr.blogspot.com/2007/12/really-thats-all.html

So I'm at my parents, which means that all I have access to is a flat, cool basement floor and some woefully outdated Weider cable pull machines.

Thankfully, Crossfit yesterday was brutally simple:

150 Burpees.

So I did them: 20:40.96

Owie. That suxx0r3d pretty hard. To make up for it, I had one of my Mom's excellent home-cooked meals. All is right with the world.

Tomorrow is Crossfit Total. I suppose I could go to the local gym and try it (haven't seen what they have for free weights yet.)

That, or Joanne and I discussed this alternative, since she has access to two (count 'em!) 8-lb dumbbells.

21-15-9 of
Dumbbell Thrusters
Dumbbell Swings.

I'll see what I can find for heavy things in the basement. If I could find one heavy thing to use that would probably be enough... perhaps a partially disassembled Weider cable machine could be useful after all?

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

ouuuuuch.

So Joanne redid the 400m walking lunge thing:

Red Shoes.: Legs no workie

Sounds like she recovered pretty quickly. Good job!

Me, I'm still in very bad shape. But that's because *all* of me hurts. Owen got something, then Megan got it and got over it, and now I have it and Megan has it again. It's a tummy upset thing, but it packs a wallop... full body ache. The roots of my hair hurt.

So that, on top of being sore all the way through my legs... well. It's no fun.

But my time improved. I had to estimate distance, so it looks like I did about 370m instead of 400m. Corrected for 400m my time was 10:40 something, down from 14:02 last time.

That was an evil one.

Saturday, December 08, 2007

British Ad Awards

2007:

YouTube - Honda Choir Spoofed

"Elvis" Commercial


Honda - The Power of Dreams

Squeezy Marmite #1 (This wasn't included, but it should have been.)

Squeezy Marmite #2

Tango



2006:

http://www.dane101.com/arts/2007/04/15/wisfilmfest2007_british_television_advertising_awards

Red Shoes.

So Sumo Me.

2007-12-06
Yeesh. Joanne had about as much "fun" with this one as I did. "Fun" in this instance is defined in the usual Crossfit way... "It doesn't have to be fun to be fun."

So... let's see how it went.

5 Rounds for Time. Yes, 5. Ow.

Run 400m.
75lb Sumo Deadlift High Pull x 21
75lb Thruster

I knew this was going to be a beeyotch and a half. I wasn't wrong. My buddy at work wondered aloud if the first round could be done unbroken: go directly from the run to the SDLHP, and then to the Thrusters without putting the bar down.

I decided to test this theory.

I shouldn't have.

Round 1
Run was at 8mph/7.5 minute mile. I'm happy how this is coming along for me. When I started Crossfit, I couldn't run these at much faster than a 9:30 pace. My previous training had mostly been long, slow, boring, soul-crushing distance. I was not used to running quickly. In fact, I used to define "quickly" as "faster than 10 minutes/mile" pace and it didn't count if it was for less than 5 miles. My 5k time was around 30 minutes.

SDLHP. Did all of these in one go. I don't find them to be particularly taxing from an aerobic standpoint, but after a while my hands start to give out.

Thrusters. Without putting the bar down. These weren't so bad for the first half. Then by about rep 12 I was wondering why I was doing this, and on the first round of a 5-round workout. By about the 15th rep I was questioning my own sanity. Amnesia set in at rep 18. I came to about halfway through the run on round 2.

Round 1: 4:00.3

Round 2 was a lot slower (more than 6:30) and it went downhill from there. Last round was torture, but I survived the whole thing in 36:20 something.

Ouch.

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Teddy Bear Uproar

Ya know, all it would take is some joker doing a cartoon about a teddy bear named Mohammed wearing a suicide bomb vest, and things could get mighty sticky around some parts.

The Blasphemous Teddy Bear - TIME

Wow. Clearly parts of Sudan are lacking a sense of humor. Oh well, scratch that off the list of places to go on vacation.

Thankfully, the rest of the world more than makes up for this lack. While researching something else (which I swear has nothing to do with Photoshop, teddy bears, or suicide bombers,) I came across this:

Sunday, November 18, 2007

My side of the story

Red Shoes.: Oh My, Michael

My darling sister just posted an account of her latest experiences with Crossfit. I thought I would post my side of the story.

She calls me today to chat and set up plans for Thanksgiving. While we're talking, it comes up that neither of us did yesterday's workout. Since we didn't have plans, either, it worked out well to make up the workout together.

I love the gym Joanne goes to. It's got everything you need (except a good solid place to do kipping pullups), and they don't mind grunting, sweating, or chalk.

So we drive on over. I go through her journal, and am honestly impressed at her commitment. I remember what starting Crossfit was like, and I remember how sore I was from the brutality I was beginning to subject myself to. I also remember coming from a much fitter background than Joanne probably did, so I can't really imagine what it must feel like to be doing this sort of thing for the first time. Color me impressed.

We do the warmup. Her pushups are coming along nicely. I'm amazed that she's already progressed to the point where she's not having to assist from her knees any more. She's definitely taking the right approach- instead of banging out halfhearted reps with an arched back, she's forcing herself to do them as well as possible. Form wasn't bad at all. Her arms are definitely strong enough- it's just the rest of her that's getting used to doing this sort of thing. Great progress in a short amount of time.

After that, we do the workout. She posted the details on her blog (link at the top of this post) so I won't repeat.

She gave a pretty accurate description of how it went, including teasing me when she was ahead. It really made a difference. Just knowing the person next to you knows what you're supposed to be doing and how hard you should be working is great motivation. She paced herself a little slower than she needed to - I could tell she was done with the runs before I was, but who was I to begrudge her a little extra breathing time between exercises? I think she could easily take 3 minutes off her total next time she does this one. I think I could easily make myself puke trying to do that.

My runs went well to begin with, then sort of fell apart. I'm not blaming the back extensions or the situps, but rather my habit of not counting an hour of soccer or flag football at lunch as a workout (it counts as a rest day, right?) The fatigue built up from a couple of weeks of this is getting to me. I should be able to slow down soon and just do Crossfit. that, coupled with better sleep habits should get me back to setting PR's in no time.

I did the workout in about 24:46, about a minute faster than last time but still a minute off my PR set in March. My first lap was 30 seconds faster than I've ever managed before, but after that the fatigue set in pretty hard and the running got harder and harder. I may have set too fast a pace early on.

Better luck next time. No, better conditioning.

Oh, and one more thing: On the way to the gym, we'd halfheartedly discussed doubling up and doing today's workout after Michael. After I'd finished and was panting like a fish that had just run the 100 yard dash, I rolled over and asked "Okay, so, do you want to do the Filthy 50 now?"

She wisely declined.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

What hell sounds like...

Or: Lifehacking the baby.

I'm babysitting tonight. Okay, taking care of my own kid, which I'm told doesn't get called babysitting but when he's six months old and has a clear preference for mama mit der big boobies, well, you get the picture. You feel a little "off the critical path" to use some work parlance. I'm only on his radar because I provide unique kinesthetic experiences (throwing him up into the air until he giggles, upchucks, or both) and can make sounds like an asthmatic Donald Duck. Apart from that, I'm a nonentity unless he's in the 20 minutes a day when he's playful and not hungry or overly tired.

Anyway, I'm sitting here at my computer with Owen on my knee, and I remember that I have Audacity on my computer. Hmm. Computer. Baby. Microphone. Audio editing software...

Hmm.

He's making the hesitant chuckles like a cry isn't far away, so I wonder what it would be like to play his sounds back to him and see what he does. I mean, do you end up with a puzzled look, or the baby equivalent of guitar feedback, or what? I'm actually hoping to get something ridiculously cute and momentous, like him saying "Daddy Rocks" or something, but all he's giving me are pre-cry chuckles. But you have to go with what you've got. That's what art is all about. I mean, we didn't give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor. Van Gogh didn't give up when he lost an ear painting the Sistine Chapel ceiling, and Beethoven sure as hell didn't give up when Syphilis made him deaf. Who's with me?

So I record for a bit. Then hit record again, and I realize that Audacity actually plays back what you just recorded. Get this: as you record the next track. Immediate feedback. Then when you do it again, it plays both of the pre-recorded tracks. Sweet! Multiple levels of feedback.

The pre-cry chuckling didn't really amount to much. It just sounds like a whole bunch of babies winding up to start crying. Big whoop. I hear that all the time at work. Sorry guys. Couldn't resist.

Anyway, then he did actually start crying. So I recorded it. Then did it again, and the crying set him off even worse. I only had the heart to do it three more times*. I ended up with a pretty good mix, and I'm fairly certain that this is what hell sounds like:

hell.

*Four would have been tantamount to waterboarding, and I don't have the legal resources the president does to redefine that sort of thing as being legal even though we used to sentence people to hard time for doing it to our guys. Really, it was different, coz, they were like, on their soil when they did it, but we were like in Guantanamo, which is next to Cuba, and worse things would have happened in Cuba if we hadn't been there. Yeah, that's the ticket. If our guys hadn't been there defending democracy from people who had been trained by Al Jazeera (a known terrorist organization) to use cameras (which are just as dangerous as guns in the wrong hands!) by waterboarding them, God knows what Castro could have been up to on that very same soil! Imagine the depravity we prevented just by building our detention facility there. So the world should thank us, because We're Better Than The Bad Guys, Really We Are.

Plus, my wife is a much more hostile adversary than Congress, particularly where Baby Safety Security and Growing Up Without Any Trauma Whatsoever is concerned. Still, my goose is cooked if she ever reads this blog. Hi, honey! I didn't really do anything to make him cry. He just did it by himself. All I did was record it instead of trying to make him stop, which would have been futile anyway. So, er... yeah, I'm really Not That Bad At Childrearing When Compared to Some People**

** Cuba. The regime-y part, not the guys who come here and start kick-ass restaurants with smoking hot waitresses.

Ever notice that? We call other governments Regimes. Ours is an Administration. It sounds so much more official that way. If only we were as precise in our language as we are at ordering our Starbucks (that's a *HALF* Caff Mochafucoccino I ordered there Sparky), then we'd probably understand the world better.

Friday, September 21, 2007

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

April 9 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

April 9 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

From the "hmm, will ya look at that" category. I share birthdays with:

Paulina Porizkova
Cynthia Nixon
Jenna Jameson
and Eric Harris (of Klebold and Harris)

Wednesday, February 14, 2007

CrossFit: Forging Elite Fitness: Comment on Wednesday 070214

CrossFit: Forging Elite Fitness: Comment on Wednesday 070214

Yet another installment from the Kool-Aid drinking fool that Crossfit has turned me into.

On April 20th, 2006, we did the workout listed in the comments. It basically boils down to 64 handstand pushups and 64 L pull-ups in various combinations, done as fast as possible.

It took me 28 minutes, 30 seconds.

Today, I did the same workout in 14 minutes, 17 seconds. Half the time. This one of the single biggest improvements I've seen so far, but there are several other workouts where I've improved by 30 and 40 percent in less time than the 10 months or so since I last did this workout. I'm pretty much expecting double-digit improvements in my time as a matter of course. This is what Crossfit teaches you to expect. I don't know of anything else where that holds true, and seems to continue to hold true for far longer than you'd think.

My HSPUs are getting better. Still not full range of motion, but I use a small medicine ball (6 lbs) and do my best to touch my forehead to it on every rep. That gets harder and harder by the end.

Kelly Moore posted 8 minutes or so. That means that I finished in less than 2KM's (if you can do a workout faster than half the speed of Kelly Moore, you're starting to get somewhere.)