Recovery Day

Im doing the last Sectional competition workout tomorrow and I'm hoping to finish this feeling great to give me some confidence going into the next month before Regionals.

Today I was feeling a little tired and sore.  Yesterday I did a run where I think I felt the best I have ever felt running.  The workout was:

Jog for 10 min
+
3 sets of:
30 sec tough run
30 sec sprint
then 3 min jog; repeat 5 times
+
Jog for 10 min

Hopefully this feeling persists through the weekend when I test my 2 mile run on the track.

Since my legs were tired today I focused on some recovery.  I worked 5 hours today so this is what I fit in throughout the day:

AM: 
45min massage and stretch - lacrosse ball mobility between shoulder blades, ball in glutes, and ball in VMO.  Trigger point foam roller on calves and hip flexors.  Shoulder extension stretch with band, hip flexor stretch on wall, hamstring stretch with strap, and pigeon stretch on box.  I felt a lot better after this session.

Noon: 
Ice batch - 10 min in then 3 sets of out for 2 min/in for 2 min

Late afternoon:
1 hour nap-  This felt needed and I was refreshed afterward.

Dinner:
I finished the day with a great healthy meal in preparation for my early morning competition.

I roasted a whole chicken with garlic, lemon, and herbs along with some sweet potatoes.  The side salad was a broccoli salad that I made from a lady who puts out a great blog www.everydaypaleo.com.  The salad turned out fantastic.  I diced up a bunch of broccoli and threw in bacon (which makes EVERYTHING better), apple, carrots, green onions, fresh dill, olive oil, vinegar, and mustard.  I added some walnuts which weren't on the recipe.  Check out the full recipe here.   This salad turned out great and I will enjoy it all week as there were tons leftover.

It was a great way to wrap up my day and Im feeling prepared to go give it my all in the morning, then wrap up the competition and gear up for the month of May!

Hill Sprints

I think my most feared workout is hill sprints.  Not quite as much as "Fran" and "Fight Gone Bad", but those are testers with a score which makes them even more nerve racking.

But as far as training workouts go, the most painful ones are hill sprints as I have a "killer" hill right around the corner from my house.  These pics are from a couple of the hills I run in Los Gatos, California.  There is an even larger one but that is further down the trail and I only sometimes make it there.

My workout was:
Jog 5 min
+
 5 sets of:
Hill Sprint 30 sec up
walk down
+
then Jog 5 min

These intervals will increase as I get closer to competition.

Sectional WOD #5

I felt the best yet out of all the Sectional competition wods in this one.  One of the areas I wanted improvement on in 2011 was 20min workouts.  I hate them, as I think most "crossfitters" do because it is just 20 min of pain.  So I was nervous going into this one for this reason but also because I needed to test myself to see where I stand in these longer wods.  The only part that was reassuring to me was that all three movements I like.  During the entire workout I felt good and had a great push at the end, and afterward I recovered quickly.  My score turned out to be very good throughout the world as well, so I was definitely happy with this.  It was a big relief because this was a confidence booster and it shows that my training has improved my aerobic capacity over the course of this year.  One more Sectional WOD to go, then Regionals will be here before I know it.

Crossfit Southbay Open 11.4

The competition for WOD 11.4 at Crossfit Cadence was great.  I hit 154 reps which was 16th place worldwide so I was happy with that.  The food afterward was also fantastic.  More people in my gym are doing Paleo so there were some great and creative recipes that I munched on.  Check out our gym Paleo page for some of the recipes.  The best was the eggplant filled with ground walnuts and herbs.

Here is a vid one of our members, Angie, put together:

Back In Action Chiropractic

When I really turn up the intensity and volume of my training, it is more crucial than ever to stay proactive with muscle therapy to remain healthy and operating at 110%.  I have worked with a chiropractor, Dr. Tony Coats, for the past 3 years on mobility, muscle therapy, rehabilitative practices, and everything else that promotes recovery and healing.

 We have really dialed what I need to do to stay healthy.  He knows what it means to be an athlete as he played in the NFL on the offensive line for a few years after playing at University of Washington.  Talk about your body taking some abuse.  Now he does Crossfit at our gym and has experience what it means to push the intensity while living a healthy lifestyle.  This in conjunction with working with me, where I have to constantly be taking care of my body, has allowed him to be very familiar with Crossfit and recovery practices.  This has helped me compete at the highest level of Crossfit for the past 3 years.  Staying healthy requires being proactive, so I go to him once a week when I'm healthy.  I don't think there is a better Doctor that knows how to deal with athletes than him, and I would recommend him to any athlete.

Power endurance

I'm trying not to let this 6 week Sectional process break me down too much, but I'm starting to feel it.  I think it's mainly because I'm continuing with my normal training while trying to fit in these brutal competition WODs.  But I also think the anxiety of the competition and comparing to the rest of the world is taking its toll on me.  I'm really trying to not get to stressed with these, but I have to do a better job.  It's not the right time to be getting too engrossed in the worldwide competition, I need to make it trhough another couple months.

Here is a WOD I did early this week which is a heavy breather and involves some good power.

Week Recap

I did the Sectional WOD #4 in a competition that our gym, Crossfit Cadence, was hosting.  It was a fun environment and I did pretty well on this one.  I'm happy with this performance, finally!  Though, I think I should do well at this one since it is 3 lifts that I like and am good at.  I just got to keep pushing from here and keep getting better.  I did not get a video of it because there were too many people around to setup a camera but I think a couple people filmed it so I will try to get my hands on that.

The next day I was actually pretty sore in the shoulders, but I loosened up and did "Helen".  This is mostly pulling and another good breather and not too long.  I thought it was a good one to get used to working out while sore, especially since I better get used to that at Regionals.  My time was 7:26.  Everything felt fast and was unbroken except my runs were just too slow.

Here are a couple videos of workouts I did prior to the Sectional WOD #4:

115lb Pullup


Crossfit Style Sprint intervals - I wanted to get used to doing the burpees over the bar, but during the competition WOD none of them turned out to looked like this, they were much, much slower.  The first set of 60 I paced myself pretty slowly, and the second set I was way too tired to hop quickly over the bar.
5 sets:
10 Jerks @ 155lb
15 KBS 70lb
15 CTB pullups
10 bar facing burpees
rest 5 min

OPT competition WOD

I have done this workout which is from an OPT competition a few times.  I got my best score here but not by much; I was hoping for more.  Seeing how good some people's double unders are from the first Sectional WOD, I think mine could use some improvement.  Here is the link to the post of the first time I did this in an OPT competition.

Sectional WOD #3

Here is the video of Sectional WOD #3.  Unfortunately my camera was full and it did not record, so my buddy Matt picked up his recorder about half way through and got it on film.  More unfortunate is the music he put on the video, I know I can choose pretty bad music but that is atrocious.


I wanted a few more reps on this but I had nothing left in my legs to squat or to power the bar overhead. I might have came out of the gates a little fast doing 11 reps in the first minute and I think about 24 in 2:45.  As you can see I was barely hanging on at the end.  But who knows what would have happened if I tried to pace, I could have failed at the same rep only with less time ending up with a lower score.  Sometimes when the muscles want to do turn off, they will do just that no matter how you slice it.  So even though I wanted a few more, I will take this performance for now!

Speed is King

I'm working on speed and quickness, this has to improve.

Putting it all together

Crossfit is so difficult because just when you start to feel good at one thing you get your butt kicked by something totally different.  It's hard to put it all together:

a long run, a short sprint, a heavy lift, moving fast with light weights for a long time, lifting heavy weight after a long metcon.

I have been focusing on my conditioning since I was hurting with lighter weight in the first 2 Sectional WODs.  Just when my focus has shifted toward moving consistently in longer wods, I have to switch my mentality and go hard for 5 minutes with a heavier load.  It's hard to put it all together to where no matter what you do you feel good.  That is a product of proper training and programming.  I think I am on the proper path to feeling good at whatever is thrown at me.  In this workout from a couple days ago, I was surprised at how good I felt throughout.

Sectional WOD #2

The Sectional WOD #3 was announced and it's a little shorter in duration and involves more power.  I tend to like these ones more, but that may be because I just hate 15+ min ones.  We will see how I stack up when the rest of the world does this one.

Here is the Sectional WOD #2 video.  I fast forward in the middle because the video would be a little long otherwise.  All the reps were legit, especially since they were so slow, no cheating the standards here.  I have been working on quickness on box jumps since this workout.  Things like depth jumps and bounding over hurdles, these will get better.


Sectional wod #2 from joeywarren on Vimeo.

Recovery Day

There's something so tranquil about the ocean.  I couldn't ask for a better rest day in 80 degree weather at the beach.  Afterward my girlfriend and I walked around watching everyone play in the sun and ate dinner on the water at sunset.  Ready to go back to work!

Weekend part 2

I will post the video of the Sectional Wod #2 early this week, so you can see how slow my box jumps really are.  In the meantime here is the 2nd workout I did over the weekend.  Its good to get some more power involved after these lighter based wods.

Just took an ice bath, and now I'm heading over to the beach to enjoy this beautiful weather and get some Vitamin D.  This is will be a good recovery day.

Weekend

I did the Sectionals WOD #2 during the middle of the week, and learned a lot.  Not as good as I would have liked but I'm starting to feel better during these brutal metcons.  First my conditioning is still not where it should be.  Second pushups were the easiest part of it. The hardest was the leg burn from the deadlift box jump combo.  Lastly I am slow right now, I have no pop or quickness on the box jumps.  I will be working on all these.

I will have a lot of good workouts coming up so I will try to keep this blog updated with the wods and my thoughts.  They will be more Crossfit style metcon burners.  It is going to get fun the next couple months!

Here is a wod I did today:

4 rope climbs
15 squat cleans 155lb
4 rope climbs
12 squat cleans
4 rope climbs
9 squat cleans
time=6:03


OPT WOD 4/2 from joeywarren on Vimeo.