Been a while, I know, but I've been busy and haven't really had a ton of time to blog. However, it's Sunday afternoon and I have nothing better to do sooooo I thought I'd go ahead and catch you all up on things. I think I'm gonna break sessions 8,9 and 10 up into separate posts to make it a bit more manageable for you all, so here we goooooo
Pre-Session 8
Session 8 I worked with Steve. To refresh your memories, he's the former army dude who calls me Josh. I am not a huge fan of his because of this. As a side note, if you would like for me to hate you forever, a surefire way to accomplish that is to forget my name. Seriously, not that hard to remember names, I learned like 150 each semester of teaching. And if you don't remember someones name, DON'T SAY ONE! Call me buddy, bro, dude, homie, whatever floats your boat, but NOT Josh.
Sorry about that, got a little fired up. Moving on...before the session I told Steve about my wrist (quick update, still numb, hurting quite a bit), I kind of expected him to say something like "Oh, you poor thing, it was so brave of you to come here and try to work out in your condition, but why don't you go home and rest for a few weeks until it's fully healed, then we can try this again." On the contrary, Steve was completely unconcerned by my wrist, and basically said "Sack up Josh, don't be a bitch." Awesomeeeeee.
We worked through the same lifts I had been doing previously. I kind of surprised myself at how many of them I was able to do without much pain in my wrist. If anything the injured wrist forces me to engage my core and improve my technique on most lifts, although it does make front squats and overhead squats much harder.
After going through the standard lifts, Steve showed me how to do CrossFit Pull-ups (aka Kipping Pull-up for those of you concerned with proper terminology). Basically, these are pull-ups where you swing your legs opposite your body and use all of you body and your momentum to achieve the pull-up . These are considerably easier than regular dead-hang pull-ups, but getting the rhythm of it is pretty difficult. I can certainly do more kipping pull-ups than regular pull-ups, but I feel like this will for sure be an area of growth for me. After messing around with a few different grips, Steve said it was time to start class...
Sesh 8:
Session 8 started out pretty standard, 400 meter run followed by 30-20-30 warm-up. As always I scouted out the group for talent and this time I was sorely disappointed. There were only about 10 people in the group so the pickings were slim. There was one tall girl who was decent looking. Not even in the same zip code as Kansas shorts, lame sauceeeee.
The owner of the gym, Doug, was running the session. A bit about Doug: He's awesome. I think the best way to describe Doug to you is to construct a hypothetical dating profile for him, so I have done so below.
Name: Doug the Trainer
Age: about 35
Height: 6'
Weight: 270
Favorite Exercise Regimen: Circuit Training: 1 rep max bench, 1 rep max squat, drink 5 bud diesels...repeat 5 times at high intensity.
Favorite Song: Ozzy-Crazy Train
A Perfect Saturday Night for me is: Kicking the shit out of hippies then chugging Wild Turkey like it's gatorade.
So basically Doug is a boss. No joke I could see him putting down a 30 rack of bud and not being phased a bit. But I digress...
The WOD (Workout of the Day) was 7 pull-ups, 7 burpees and a 400m run, do as many rounds as you can in 20 minutes. This actually seemed to suit my strengths pretty well, so I was cautiously optimistic about it. Doug cued up some Black Sabbath and yelled for us to start.
I started with pull-ups. I was still not terribly comfortable doing the kipping ones so I just did dead hang pull-ups. I did seven without too much trouble, then jogged 400 meters. After the 400 I powered through the burpees fairly easily and returned to pull-ups.
The thing about pull-ups for me is I can do a fair number for one set, but after I am tired I get to failure real quick. By my second set I was battling to get up for numbers 6 and 7, and I knew the third set was going to be even worse. After I finished pull-ups I jogged the 400, then battled through burpees again. When I returned to the pull-up bar I knew there was no way I'd make 7, so I decided to do the kipping ones. This made it significantly easier, but I still struggled to finish. I made it to 7...barely.
Quick side note: during all of this Doug was yelling encouragement/threatening us with bodily harm if we stopped, and also snapping pictures at an alarming rate. Below is a pic of me finishing up one of my 400's...I'm a champion.
You'll notice I'm rocking ankle socks...this is unusual for me as I generally rock no-shows, so I'd love to get some feedback...thoughts? Feelings? Good move? Brutal move? You tell me. Also, notice my neon green kicks...those of you who have been watching the Olympics have probably seen team USA rocking similar kicks...you should know I've been doing that shit since a year ago. #trendsetter
I continued the cycle and eventually had to switch to jumping pull-ups (like a bitch). In all I did 8 rounds of the 7/7/400, 4 were real pull-ups, 4 were jumping. Just an FYI, working out at high intensity for 20 minutes straight is hard as fuck...I was absolutely dead tired afterwards and just kind of laid on the pavement for a few mins. After I got my wits about me I got up and jogged over to grab water. Then Doug yelled for us to head over to the squat racks. Well shit.
I went over to the racks and partnered up with Tim, a pretty nice guy I'd never seen before. We were doing 2 reps of squats every minute. I decided to not do too much weight since I was tired as hell and worried about getting hurt again. Tim had no such fear and did significantly more than me. I was surprisingly not phased by this, I guess I'd grown used to being one-upped. Maybe a good thing, maybe a bad thing, who knows.
Midway through the squats I scratched my head and felt a piece of something on my scalp. "Oh fuck" I thought, "I must have lice." I was immediately back in 2nd grade where all the kids got checked by the fat old lady with the latex gloves...basically any chance I had of making friends with these CrossFit peeps would be ruined if it got out that I was the lice dude. I felt around a bit longer and to my relief I realized it was a bunch of gravel from the pavement I'd been laying on....still makes me a straight up dirtball but at least I didn't need to buy special shampoo.
The squats went pretty quickly and Tim and I made some small talk, which was nice. He encouraged me and said my form looked pretty good for a newbie. I appreciated his positivity. After the session I did some stretches for my ankle and wrist, then took off. All in all it was a good workout and I left with a positive attitude. Alright, that's all, thanks for reading, I'm probably gonna throw up a few more posts soon, so keep an eye out!
John
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