Saturday Free WOD

I randomly looked through my "followers", which to be honest I'm not sure if that means you've added me to your google reader or if there's some other mechanism for following me (besides twitter, and you know, life) and noticed that one of my buddies from high school who now is an officer in the marines and is hopefully moving to Houston this summer to train marines heading to bootcamp follows me. This is both an honor and a curse, as I'm sure he is laughing at what I call "working hard", so now he can read this and know I am seeking his approval. I also hope to show up to one of his workouts to see where I stand, all in due time.

Every Saturday (well most every) Pinup Crossfit (the gym I will call my own starting in June) holds a free workout at 9am. It's a great way to come experience what I have come to love with the guidance of one of the coaches to make sure you don't kill yourself, also when I know i'm going (such as when I arrange for friends to come so I know have to attend) it keeps me in check on Friday nights, which I discovered that Hans Bier Haus, a Houston bar with supposedly the best selection of beer in the city does not carry any gluten free beers. Very disappointing, but I had a glass of wine and called it a night (its all about making those little choices, and switching wine for beer to keep myself gluten free was one of those). All are welcome to come, even if you haven't set foot in a gym in years (and frankly, I might never set foot in a traditional gym ever again).

This week my friend Hart who has been trying to replicate crossfit workouts at home decided to show up and give it whirl. The Saturday WODs are more fitness endurance based, without any of the technical lifts that require great form (what a nightmare for someone to show up having never done a power clean or snatch before and being thrown into the fire), but will still give you a great workout that will leave you exhausted.

Warmup:

20 Body Squats

20 Situps

20 Mountain Climbers

Main WOD (with a partner):

1200m run

64 kb swings (53lbs / 35lbs) <-- this is the prescribed weight for men / women

64 pushups

900m run

42 kb swings

42 pushups

600m run

22 kb swings

22 pushups

The rules of this WOD, both partners had to run together, and then divide up the swings and pushups between them. For instance, partner 1 could do 30 swings and partner 2 do 34, or any combination. For his first time doing full American kettlebell swings (over your head whereas many people perform half swings where they lift to about face level) Hart performed really well. We started off by crushing the run, lapping many of the groups and maintained a great pace on the kb swings and the pushups. I really need to work on my pushup endurance, as I was shot after the first set, but the best thing about partner workouts is having a partner to push you through. All in all we did really well and placed 1st (among the guy teams) with a time of 23:32 doing the workout as prescribed (my first one to not scale!).

There was a team of girls that came out of nowhere to beat us by about 20 seconds, though I THINK (cannot confirm) they were doing their pushups at the same time (teams were supposed to perform the exercises one at a time, so one partner knocked out as many pushups as possible while the other rested then switch), because our initial lead after the run on every group seemed insurmountable, but I commend them none the less as this was a particularly tough WOD (especially since we were pushing to win). The runs were much longer than what I was used to and lifting that kettlebell started to feel like 100lbs in my hand by the 3rd set. I was absolutely exhausted, but feels great to know I've already knocked out my workout this weekend and can relax the rest of the weekend.