July 2014 - Page 4 of 5 - Solidarity Crossfit

Friday 2014.07.11

Jul 10, 2014

Strength

Fitness: Back Squat, 3×5 (+0-5 lbs)

Performance: Back Squat, 1 repetition maximum

Once you reach the 80-90% range, take 2 minutes rest then perform a “Walkout” (simply set up like you’re going to squat, walk out of the rack, and hold the weight on your back for 5 seconds – DO NOT attempt to squat – belts are recommended for this movement) with 5-10% more than your projected maximal Squat. If you are projecting 400#, walk out with approximately 425#. After your “Walkout”, rest 2 minutes then begin your near maximal and maximal attempts. If you have not missed an attempt you may go slightly over the time limitation.

Conditioning

16 Front Rack Walking Lunges (135/95)
16 Strict Pull Ups
15 Wall Ball (20/14)

Rest 90 Seconds

12 Front Rack Walking Lunges
12 Strict Pull Ups
25 Wall Ball

Rest 90 Seconds

8 Front Rack Walking Lunges
8 Strict Pull Ups
35 Wall Ball

Working out while Traveling part 1, “The Hotel Gym MetCon”

Jul 10, 2014

This time of year we receive a lot of questions about working out while traveling or on vacation. I hope to share some ideas to help you make the most of your vacation training. We’ll cover three workouts we did on a recent vacation to provide some inspiration.

Before we start throwing out travel workouts, the first thing we want to do is ask whether you could use a break. For many CrossFit athletes, the lack of a clear “off season” can make over-training a possibility. Most of our members are so busy with life outside the gym and other commitments that they usually have enough planned–and unplanned–down time to prevent over-training.

But, it is worth remembering that even the highest level professional athletes’ strength and conditioning coaches program periods of light activity with orders to stay out of the gym. This doesn’t mean to vegetate, but a couple of weeks of hiking, walking, cycling, or other leisurely activity might be good for you periodically.

What if you don’t need or want the time off? If, for example, you are on a strength cycle that is important to you, doing no lifting of any sort for a couple of week may entail another couple of weeks post-vacation getting back into the groove.

Or, you might value doing some fun workouts outside the gym. In any case, with a little creativity you can turn your week away from home into a ‘light’ week rather than an ‘off’ week and gain a constructive but active deload.

CrossFit BHI Vacation WOD #1, “The Hotel Gym MetCon”

Becky and I spent a week on an island with no access to a barbell, let alone a CrossFit affiliate. We got in four fun workouts in addition to lots of active play on the beach. The story began when my sister Tracey, also an avid CrossFitter, sent me a text asking me what I had programmed for “CrossFit BHI”(Bald Head Island) during our family vacation.

I made sure to pack a toy or two, but for our first workout we utilized the fitness center at the island beach club. The facility was typical hotel-gym fare: treadmills and other less functional cardio machines, oversized inflated balls, dumbbells, and no squat rack in sight. It wasn’t ideal for serious training, but we were lucky for a few clutch amenities it did have: a pull up bar of sorts (an assortment of odd angle handles attached to a cable pulley station), dumbbells up to 60 pounds (this is pretty heavy for a hotel-gym), and a concept 2 rowing machine.

Our first workout was on Tuesday morning. We were interested in getting in a full body MetCon that all three of could do at once. Where to start? When in doubt, look to early CrossFit.com (2003-2008) staples. When I get writers block programming for Solidarity, this is often where I look for inspiration. You aren’t going to find better or more effective metabolic conditioning than the classic CrossFit couplet or triplet a la Helen and Fran. Simple is usually better–if 4 movements are good, 3 are better. I like to think writing MetCons is like cooking Italian: start with a few excellent, complimentary ingredients and let them shine.

Being three of us, and having 3 treadmills, I decided to go with a triplet consisting of 3 rounds of:

400m Run
Dumbbell Thrusters
Behind the Neck Weighted Sit-Ups

I find it best to work backwards when designing MetCons-IE., what is the stimulus you want? What is the best weight, repetition, and time scheme to achieve this stimulus? If I want the workout to serve as assistance work for previous strength training, I try to keep repetitions lower and heavier, perhaps with some rest programmed in. If muscular or aerobic endurance is the goal, things get lighter and longer, but I still first think of how many total reps I want, then work backwards to program that. You don’t ever want to surprise yourself or others with way more reps than you anticipated in a poorly designed AMRAP. Sure, 200 air squats will make you sore, but what is it accomplishing, and is it going to hurt your top end strength adaptation?

Since I knew we were going to be short on strength training for the week, I shot to have this workout be moderately heavy. Typical body-builder training often consists of sets of 8-12 reps at 50-75% across a few sets. Great, how about 3 sets of 12? Sound old-school and boring? Old school is not necessarily bad, and, remember, the stopwatch and addition of a 400m run brings the dish together.

The final formulation:

400m Run
12 Dumbbell Thrusters (AHAP while going unbroken first set)
10 Behind the Neck Weighted Sit-Ups (AHAP while maintaining a reasonable pace)

Following the scaling guidelines above set me up with some dumbbells that probably put me somewhere near the 50% range. How did the workout go? It was a fun! We quickly figured out that treadmills are much faster than running in the ‘real world’, especially at Solidarity with our hilly course. Becky and I were running at a ridiculously fast pace on the treadmills which was exhilarating. I managed to hit a huge ornate chandelier while doing my thrusters in the hallway outside the gym (oops). Luckily, it only looked like a giant glass orb and was actually plastic (whew). We all finished between 11 and 13 minutes, but who’s keeping score on vacation?

Tomorrow we will address working out in more austere conditions with “CrossFit BHI Vacation WOD #2, “The Beach MetCons”