Twelve days with out a post, that is Christmas for you. It has been a busy couple of weeks

Christmas Party
The Crossfit Canberra Christmas party was a lot of fun. The day started with 'Fight Gone Bad.' Due to numbers we went in two groups, the first group was staggered to fit everyone in and at the end there was only Doug and I. Now we have the new rower it was possible for Doug and I to go head to head, what joy. I had beaten Doug the last time through but this time he was determined to win. I looked at my last FGB break down to calculate my averages on each station and then added one more rep per station, this was my target. But the pressure of competition was to much for me and I ended up adding 25 more reps to my total. Doug is a lot stronger than me, that is just the way it is. we kept very close on all stations except for the push press and the rowing machine. I believe that my size gave me an advantage on both of these. Doug had also smashed his PR but was a little disappointed that he did not beat me, that is the beauty of competition. Doug wants the highest FGB score in the gym and I want the largest total in the gym, we will be able to spur each other on.


First Work out back
I have always been plagued with back problems. Never really serious but enough to cause some limitation and major inconvenience at times. I am tall, fat and rather lazy, that must be the trifector for chronic back pain. Ever since I have been working out it has gotten a lot better, but when I have a small break the pain seams to return. This was just the case over the last two weeks.

On Sunday I hit the gym for a strength session, I new that I would have to take it easy and work back up to my prevoius weights. I have been told that doing squats with in an hour of waking is not good for you spine, So to work in with my Christmas sleep schedule we started with bench press as I had just rolled out of bed. Bench went well, I took it easy and had 80kg as my work set. Next I moved on to the squat. I only got to my third warm up set when I had to stop. The back was already giving me some signals. This time i listened and thank full i did, I am now ready to get back into the gym to night.

Feats of Strength
A couple of gym records and PR were broken on the weekend.

First, My Girlfriend really stepped up. Due to me not being able to complete the session she decided to play with the deadlift. New to deadlifting, my girlfriend who is extremely fit was used to RDLs before we started to work out together. To see how far she could go we just kept adding weight on to the bar for x5. Her final round was at 90kg and I believe that she still has a lot to go, at the end of the lift she shugs the bar, and this was were her weakness was. With a little bit of training and removing the arms from the lift she will be doing 110kg x5 in no time. Then again she does have great definition in her shoulders, maybe we should just let her do what works.

Arjang the Record Assassin
On Sunday i had a good friend of mine visit from Sydney and I took him straight out to the shed. Arjang and I have been friends since school and is the fittest guy I know. . Some of his feats on the weekend included 2x40kg chin ups on the rings and 56 kettlebell swings in 2 min. This was his fist attempted with the KB, his technique was not perfect but it was still an amazing display of strength/fitness.

Arjang, is not only a good friend but my original crossfit inspiration. Arang has never been involved with the Crossfit program, it is his workout philosophy that is aligned with crossfit.

Extremely fit and a little bit crazy (In a good way) Arjang has always been an inspiration to me. One of my first attempts at the lifting weights was going to the Police Boys club in Turner with the boys. I would work my way around the gym equipment with no real plan or idea. Every now and then you would hear yelling echoing across the gym, the cry would transitions from vengeful warrior to wounded animal and back again. At its source you would find Arjang. He had found some equipment that he liked and then proceeded to smash him self with it. At the end of his workout he would fall to the ground the wasted husk of a man. lying spread on the floor, his belly and chest almost exploding as he sucked in as much air as possible. All the time with a smile.

Of course, most of the people would look at this as a little crazy, but isnt this the same look us crossfitters receive from the Joe Average at the gym?

Some things I have learned from Arjang.

1. If you cant visualize a real life application to the exercise you are doing, don't do it, its not natural.

2. Goal of strength and fitness should be to move your own body weight not to be the guy with the biggest biceps.

3. It helps to be a little crazy, people that are 'normal' will never be anything more than Joe Average.

Now all this happened almost twenty years ago. Over these years I prevailed with the norm, each attempt to hit the gym was with a strict program with traditional sets. I never enjoyed it, i would then quit, rinse and repeat. If I had just learnt from Arjang, afterall, he is "the fittest guy i know".

I was just reading an article on the BBC website. The title of the article got my attention 'Obesity set before age of five.' The article talks about children already have their excess body weight before school age and that percentage staying with them as they get older. I have always had a little extra around the waist but at this point in time i am determined to get the weight down.

article in question BBC.co.uk

There have also been some good studies on how people who hang around with over weight people begin to gain weight, one theory is that there idea of normal body weight changes to what is around them. Well good news for me, The new ball and chain defiantly does not fall into the over weight category and is a work out machine. Now if I like it or not, (I have to admit I like it) she is the person I spend most of my time with. So this should give me added support to loose weight. Plus there is two other incentives, I enjoy working out with her and her obsession with Jason Statham's six pack gives me fuel to work harder

Last nights workout changed a little from the planed program. One of the guys I work out with had a crook knee so we changed things to fit him him. our emphasis was still on the 3x5 program, just starting with upper body work first then hitting the legs.

Starting with Bench I over anticipated my work out put. Warm up was good but I put my work sets as 110kg. I have not lifted that weight for a while and I cant now. I only got 2 reps out at that range, I then moved down to 105kg, I completed on set at this weight but there was nothing left in the tank for the third set and I had to finish on 100kg.

Next we worked on our chins. My program was as follows.

2x5 Black Band
1x5 Green Band
1x3 Green Band
1x1 No Band.

Every thing went well but still could not punch out that one unassisted rep at the end. To complete that rep i still needed some assistance from Shaza holding my feet. I am slowly getting stronger and look forward to freeing my self from the bands.

Shaza and Nick hit the bar with weighted chins. Nicks progress is amazing but that is what beginners do.

Next i just worked in with shaza when she was doing squats. I just used the same weight as her but working on my front squat. my work set ended up being 2x5 @ 70kg. Really concentrating on depth and abb control.

To finish things off i did some kettlebell work. My goal is to see how many snatches I can do in two minutes. But in stead of hitting hell for leather like I did with the bench, i am going to work up to it. My plan is to work on a running clock for two minutes but setting a certain number of reps per 30sec cycle. There was a little bit of miss communication between my time keeper and I but that was quickly sorted out. I ended up doing 15/10/10/10 I will next time just sit on 12 for each set.

This morning we hit the WOD posted on Crossfit HQ for 15th.

Five rounds for time of:
125 Kg Deadlift, 5 reps
10 Burpees

I was not able to do the rx and scaled down to 90kg on the bar. What can I say? It hurt, burpees and me still haven't made nice. What made it worse, after the first round every time I bent over to deadlift I thought I would see breakfast on the mat. Despite that, this was a workout that i really enjoyed. Not many workouts allow me to push my self to the near pukie levels. I look forward to doing this work out again. Looking at the times posted on Crossfit HQ i have a lot of room for improvement.

Doug hit the workout full steam and with full weight. He did a great job and surely paid the price afterwards calling for the bucket, good work Doug.

I want to work more olymipc lifting into my workouts. After some research on implementing O lifting into the crossfit program i cam across a bio page for Josh Everet. Josh came second in 2008 crossfit games and trains out of Mikes Gym so you would expect him to do a lot of O lifting and he does, three times a week. Im not quite up to that being I am still working on core items but would like to fit in one O lifting session a week.

We have canned the Monday morning strength session as I have been instructed that heavy squats so close to waking up isnt good for your spine. A revised look at my program looks like this

Tuesday WOD
Wednesday Strenght 3x5
Thursday Olympic Lifting
Friday WOD
Sunday Strenght 3x5

I would prefer to not have 4 days straight but there is not much I can do about due to other commitments.

I have added chin ups to my 3x5 program. As i am not yet able to complete 'sets' of chins I have introduced them similar to the rest of the program.

2x5 Black Band
1x5 Green Band
3x5 Blue Band

It was good to get some bench press done on the weekend. I am really having trouble fitting it all in.

On Friday I sent a merry Christmas email to Lon Kilgore, Lon is some one who works close to Mark Rippetoe and co author of barbell Bible 'Starting Strength.' I have never met any one that comes close to Lon in actually knowing the facts behind strength training, he is a walking encyclopedia of information and was always able to answers my questions not only with a sensible and coherent answer, but also able to back up his answer with case studies. quite amazing.

I was very stoked to get an email back from Lon. I look forward to meeting and learning from him again.

This morning I was back out in the shed. A big portion of the morning was working on Kettlebell basics. I dont do enough kettlebell work, it was fun. main event for the day was tabata kettlebell sing. I set and maintained a target of 10 with a 16kg bell. 10 was a good foundation and look forward to increasing this in the future.

This is the longest break I have had from exercise for the last few months, the question is, why do i hurt so much. Everything is aching. The most interesting thing is that my back is starting to play up again. To me it doesn't make sense. To night I will not be able to hit the shed due to family commitments. First work out this week will be on Friday morning. I think that my body is actually having withdrawals.

Well, I have just been looking through some old paper work. Have found some old work out sheets. this is from 11th December 2007.

3x5 Squat 40/60/60
3x5 Deadlift 40/60/60
3x5 Push Press 40/60/60

Man how that has changed. I also had trouble then even hitting full depth in the squat.

I was such a fat bastard then, at least now I am a stronger fat bastard. I just wish that I started to take crossfit workouts and fitness in general more seriously back then. Were would I be now?

Last week we received our new Concept2 rowing machine. The gym now has two model D machines. To start our workout off on Sunday under Dougs suggestion we did a 4x500m row relay. Teams were of two people and it was brutal. My first leg of 500m went well with a time of 1:40 but after that there was nothing left. When we hit the WOD for the day there was no way I was going to completed it, my legs were smashed.

I think with rowing warm up drills that would have been enough for a WOD. But there was still more to come.

Sundays WOD was
5 Rounds with 60kg weight
15 Deadlift
12 Hang Powercleans
9 Front squats
6 Push jerks.

I only managed two rounds and that was with missing the second set of front squats, I just did not have the control in my legs.

Overall it was a great plan for a work out but it looked much better on paper than reality.

Well done to the girls as they completed the workout Shaza with 40kg on the bar.

Doug will be away this week and i might use this opportunity to rest up both today and tomorrow and get back into it with the 3x5 on Wednesday.

This morning we hit the crossfit work out Fran. What Joy. I posted what looks like a really good time but I still needs to use a band for Chins. I am going to address this by adding chins to the 3x5 Work outs and really work on getting some decent chins out.

The other problem I had this morning was depth in the Thrusters, I just have not recovered from Wednesdays squat session. I put this down to two things. 1) that was my first real squat session in over a week so I am sorer that usual. 2) I need to look unfortunately at diet, as this can really influence ones recovery.

My Girlfriend always has a Protein shake and work out partner Steve has his own supplements after his workouts. Now these two are easily the fittest people I work out with but this is not the way I want to go. Coach Greg Glassman promotes the Zone diet for crossfitters as he believe that in helps with recovery times. I have looked into the 'Eating plan' and have spoken to people that are very keen on it. It is a very strict program and will take a lot of effort to adapt my eating habits to be zone friendly.

Fran 4:46 (Blue Band)

I broke and had a soft drink, and it was good. I believe that a lot of the temptation started with the hamburger I was eating, somethings just go mighty good together.

Great to be back under the bar. Last night work out was a killer. It also took me a while to get through. Squats were hard but rewarding.

Started off pressing with 65 for the first set, thought it was to easy and went up to 70 for the second, mistake, I got through the second set but there was just no way I had it in me for the third set so finished with push presses. I will record that as a 65. Might go up to 67.5 for the next weeks work set. What is amazing is 70kg was my previous 1rm. It good to be a beginner and make these large gains. long way off catching up to my nemesis but I am on my way.

Power cleans were fun at 80. Bit of competition starting from the new guy in the gym so I am really going to have to work on form. Cant let these young fellers catch up.

3x5 Squat 135
3x5 Press 65
5x3 P.Clean 70

I have just spoken to my girlfriend and 3x5 training partner. The old ball and chain has suggested that we complete the 3 times a week that the program is designed for. So now it will be Saturday, Monday a.m. and Wednesday p.m. The only problem is Mondays have to be the hardest morning to get up early. I am sure that I can manage.

I am also encouraging my girl to have her own blog. Stay tuned.