Crossfit Blog 2 by James Wright
Its been an eventful few weeks of crossfitting for me. The 1st of the weeks my time was taken up by doing the Crossfit Central Manchester Games Qualifiers. The top 60 men and women would qualify on their own right and then teams of 2 men and 2 women would also compete.
There were 3 workouts that needed to be done to qualify, I did them Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
The 1st Workout was a 6min AMRAP (As Many Rounds As Possible) 10x35kg Snatch, 10xBurpees, 10x24” Box Jumps. I completed 4 rounds and 1 Burpee or 131 reps. This was the best male score in the gym and within the top 10 off all male qualifiers.
The 2nd Workout as a 12min AMRAP 6x50kg Power Clean 4x50kg Push Press and 10xToes to Bar (Hang off Pull up frame and touch toes to the bar). At 6mins I had completed 5Rounds and was heading towards 9/10 rounds for the entire workout but on the 6th round I ripped a Callous off my right hand making it incredibly painful to hang off the bar and perform toes to bar. I ended up coming short on 7Rounds and 2 Toes to bar or 151 Reps this was disappointing considering the speed I was going at but I'm still a rookie cross-fitter lacking experience and in hindsight I should have wrapped my hands before the workout as doing such volume of T2B would have put anyone’s hands in danger of ripping.
The 3rd Workout was 12min AMRAP of 150 Double Unders (Skip where rope passes underneath your feet twice) and 150 10kg Wall Balls. (Med Ball held in front of body squat past 90degrees and then throw Med Ball to 10ft target on the wall) This Workout was what caused me a lot of problems. I have picked up all the movements of crossfit except double under's so far and I only managed 141 Double Under's or 141 Reps. This destroyed any chance of me qualifying for the Games but proved a great learning experience for me. In-fact the following day I spend 30mins of drilling the double under's and managed to crack the movement.
Back on the track I did a running session on the Sunday of 3x300m off 10min rest and ran 36.5, 37.5, 39.5 which continues to prove how Crossfit has helped me on the track. Those times are as good or better then when I was a good level 400m hurdler.
The next week was a very tough few workouts. Monday was on of the members birthday and Crossfit has a great Community and usually celebrate birthdays by putting on a particularly painful workout. “Rachel” was to do the following as fast as possible: 1200m Run (200m Turnabouts) 5 Rounds of 5xWall Climbs (Chest to floor facing away from the wall in press up position to chest against the wall in a handstand) 15x80kg Dead-lifts and 30 Sit Ups then 1200m run after the 5rounds are complete. This Workout was incredibly painful, I got cramp in both quads at 600m on the last 1200m run! I did this in 24.02mins
Wednesday was “Cindy” which is one of the benchmark workouts. It was to be performed as a partner workout this time to mix it up and keep the intensity from dropping off . Cindy is normally 20min AMRAP of 5 Pull Ups, 10 Press Ups, 15 Body Weight Squats. So it was alternating rounds with your partner. There was and odd number in the class so it was suggested I did the workout on my own as you would normally do it. I have only done Cindy once before in early Feb and I did 17 Rounds that time. This time I did 20 Rounds and actually scored higher than a few of the partners did! This workout reminds me everytime that I must continue to work on the press ups and they get really nasty at around 10mins and slow the rounds right down.
That was my week of crossfit cut short as on Friday I was in London supporting my Dad who was running the Virgin London Marathon. He ran 3.49.06 which isn't bad for a 49year old on his Marathon debut!
I will blog again in a fortnight, keep training hard
