WOD 5.12.11

I've been having a lot of trouble recently with blogger, as it always seems to be down for the dreaded word "maintenance". The worst place to hear this word is at the airport, but I digress. This downtime really gets me when I've got something profound to say only to find that the entire website is down and I can't even draft a post. I assure you, its not because I'm getting tired of this blog already, far from it actually!

Another item that was brought to my attention was that I don't explain exercises or workouts enough. When I originally started this, I was writing from the perspective that my audience was my friend in Austin who already loves all things crossfit and knows all the terminology.  I'll try to do better and explain things better, but as always I enjoy the questions people have been asking me, and the support people have been blessing me with.

Todays WOD (workout of the day) was a strength WOD

Warm up:

400m run
30 box jumps
30 double unders
50 situps
30 back extensions

WOD:

1-1-1 MAX
Back Squats
Power Cleans

I'm not sure if you can tell based on excerises, but that warmup felt more like an actual workout. The back extensions were the hardest in my opinion, mainly because in all my days of working out I can safely say I neglected back extensions and those associated muscles about 99.98% of the time. The main wod was about finding your max on power cleans and back squats, which admittedly finding my max on anything isn't something that gets me excited. Sure its a great way to guage progress, and seeing how I had never officially maxed on these exercises, I was going to set a new PR (personal record). I always seem to lack the intensity needed to find my true max, as I am admittedly afraid of what will happen if I picked a weight too heavy to squat and had to escape it (escaping a squat is both exciting and terrifying, my partner for the day had to escape, since we use bumpers (weight plates designed to bounce and can be dropped without damaging everything) you just lean back and let gravity pull the weight to the floor as you then move forward away from the falling barbell) she let it slam and got out of the way.

I however need to learn how to push myself harder and not be afraid of failure. The only way to get stronger, faster, better is to continuously push myself with uncomfortable weights. That was the big lesson I learned today.

And now for the results:

Powerclean - 135
Back Squat - 235

I felt good about the powercleans as I was struggling with 95lbs just last month. I'm still working on my form with heavier weights, as I still rely too much on arm strength and not using my hips enough. The back squats I'm just okay with, it was my first time to go that heavy since high school, but I feel like I left something on the table. I didn't go hard enough to fail.