So today I went through a temporary uplift in my mood...only to be crashed right back down to the floor.
Been feeling great these past few days. I'm fairly sore and I can tell my muscles are tired, but we're still going strong and I know I'll be acclimated to the extra workouts in no time.
Yesterday I went to the gym to find another grueling workout.
Strength
5 x 5 weighted pull-ups (or just working on strict pull-ups)
AMRAP (20 min.)
300 m row
30 box jumps
30 Kettlebell sumo deadlift high pulls
Obviously I can't do unassisted pull-ups yet so I grabbed my usual assistance band and worked on form. I noticed about the 3rd set in that I wasn't struggling nearly as horribly as usual, so on the last set I used a smaller assistance band. I couldn't do the full pull-up, but I could get myself past halfway, which is huge for me. The AMRAP...don't even get me started. The rowing and the deadlifts weren't bad, but my legs were just so tired. After Monday's workout they were shot. So truly jumping on that box was hard. Especially 30 times. I'm getting better at it though which is good. It still takes some effort considering the fatigue I was in, but I have a lot more power than I did when I first started using a 16" box. I finished 2 rounds plus 334 reps into my 3rd round. My goal was to finish 3 full rounds so I was so close! Grrr
Which leads me to my next point. I am so pissed at that box. Back when I started crossfit on my dinky little 12" box, I wasn't in any rush. The 20" box looked like freaking Mount Everest. Now I'd do anything to be able to jump my ass onto that thing. Why haven't I you say? Well because box jumps are about 70% fear. What person looks at a tall box and says Sure, I'll potentially sacrifice my shins and maybe a little blood just to say I can hop on top of that wooden box. Maybe people that aren't so gravitationally challenged, but still, just looking at that thing is terrifying. I'm sure if I tried hard enough I could find the physical ability. It's the fear factor. One day (hopefully soon).
I literally spent the rest of the day in bed. I got home so exhausted. I had some lunch and crawled (literally) back into bed. It's partially because I had no motivation to sit at my desk and get a bunch of stuff done, but yeah.
Today I went back for more torture. Luckily I think they decided to take it easy on us today. This week has been a high rep/moderate weight kind of week, but since I've outgrown the weights I was originally using, it's ended up being a high rep/higher weight kind of week for me. I'm sure I could have stayed at my usual weights for things like kettlebells, but the 26 pound kettlebell is way too easy for me now, so I've almost been forced into moving up to a 35. The workouts we've been doing prescribes a 53 pound kettlebell for women so I'm definitely not overdoing it by any means.
Skill/Strength ("Snatch Bear" - working up to a max load or technique practice)
1 snatch grip deadlift
1 power snatch
1 OH squat
1 snatch balance
1 behind the neck snatch grip push press
Midline (3 rounds)
10 toes to bar
10 back extensions
20 hollow rocks
10 barbell good mornings
So grateful for the easy day. The snatch bear sequence is one of those sequences where each exercise ends in a way that segways into the next exercise. The big idea behind this sequence in particular was to use a snatch grip, which is a wide grip. I find that I have less strength in the wider grip exercises than the narrow grip ones. With this sequence, you start with your standard deadlift, put the barbell back down then do a power snatch (floor to overhead in one step), from there do an overhead squat, bring the barbell down to your shoulders and do a snatch balance (jump into a squat position while bringing the bar above your head), bring the weight back down and do a push press. Really wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the snatch grip. I think I got the hang of it though. Ended up using 65 pounds. I could feel how shot my quads were when I was trying to do the squats. Eesh. Midline didn't go too badly. I'd like to be able to get my toes to the bar but for now I'm just trying to make it so that I can pull my knees up a little further.
I'm really debating whether or not I should go tomorrow. We'll be doing WOD 13.3, which starts off with 150 wall balls. Yeah...about that. If I wasn't planning on going Saturday morning for the last WOD challenge I would totally just suck it up, but I feel like if I go tomorrow I won't make it Saturday. Such a frustrating feeling. I think the most wall balls I've done at any one time is 40 soooo 150 would be very interesting.
Just out of curiosity because I was befuddled why it feels like I've taken such a physical beating this week, I looked back on the calendar since the beginning of the challenge. This entire time, I haven't been able to get to the gym more than twice in a week. THAT explains it! Now that I know about these shenanigans it amazes me that I've even been improving at all. Well I certainly will after this week!
Today after getting home I showered really quick and relaxed the rest of the day. I eventually had to go to a meeting, which meant putting on jeans for the first time in awhile. I honestly have to say, I don't know what the hell happened. I don't know if it's because I ran them through the dryer twice or what, but those jeans just didn't want to fit me the way I wanted them to. They were just tight in all the wrong places. Now I know it's not because I'm not losing the weight because I've been wearing smaller EMT pants and all my sweatpants now look like I stole them off of my imaginary boyfriend. I just don't know what it was about those jeans today. Is it possible to have a bad-jean day?
I brought the scale out of retirement a couple days ago and now it needs to go back in because I got obsessive again. I made my goal weight finally, so I did what any human being would do and told myself to lose 5 more. Well since then I've become a little obsessive over it so the scale needs to go back into hiding. I know I've been drinking a little more water this week because of the intense workouts, on top of retaining a little bit of it. My eating hasn't been too bad, I still may be under eating Cheated a couple times, but it wasn't anything unreasonable or something that was truly a game changer. So bye bye scale. See ya in a week. Same thing with you Mr. Tape Measure. Once the weekend hits, life will slow down a little and I'll have a little break from the gym to just let things balance out again. I feel like that's really when I see the body changes. Not the middle of the week in between workouts.
It's been a crazy week so far for me in the paleo world. I guess people have started noticing that I've been toning up and then they look confused when I tell them I've lost 12 pounds. With my body, 12 pounds in itself isn't noticeable simply because I've got a lot more than 12 to lose. But the true test is going to come when we do body fat testing again. I hope to have dropped a couple percentage points, but we'll see. Other than that I'm just trying to keep this body fueled up since I'm doubling the number of times I've been going to the gym. If I'd known that sooner I would have kicked my ass 4 weeks ago...
Time for bed! G'night all!
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