I got owned yesterday. It was so bad, I don’t think I can even blog about. The day started at 5am. Woke up, prepared my meals and had my 4 block breakfast. Such a bad idea by the way. Headed to the academy, had what I thought was a pretty tiring warmup, then proceeded to have my body get the living crap beat out of me. Eric’s message of the day was about squats and how it is one of the most powerful, basic movements we use in our every day life. Most of our every functioning movement of our body involves using all the muscles associated with the squat. For our warmup we had the big block run where at each corner we did squats. For each corner we incremented the amount of squats by five. So at the end of the warmup, we’ve done 50 squats plus the lap around the block. I was tired by then already. So yea, I got the message… be strong in the squats. The workout for the day I thought was pretty rough. My body is still getting used to being pushed this hard so I’m having a hard time with all the movements. It was in teams of 4 doing 3 rounds of: rows, 25 pushups, 25 ball slams, 25 straight leg raises on the hanging bars. It was fun to work as a team, it really did push me even harder knowing I had team members waiting on me. My rowing has been getting better, I can tell I’m generating a lot more power with less work. On two of the rounds on the row, Eric stood behind me and watched and cheered me on. I was pretty motivated when he told me I had a really good race on the row. The pushups in the first round were easy, I wish I could say the same for the latter. I noticed when I got tired, I took a wider stance as far as my arms go. This is bad, I need to maintain form and keep my abs and core tight moving as one all the way to the ground. You get more power when the hands are in the correct position, just around your chest and not too far wide. The ball slams owned me sick. One thing I have to learn is to stop being inefficient with my movements and take advantage of the natural physics involved in the movement. So with the ball slams, using the downward motion to rest my arms as I slam the ball down and using the ball’s momentum coming back up to help me thrust and push the ball all the way to the top from the squat position. I don’t think it was the weight of the ball being a problem, nor the form of the movement being so off, but more so just not having that core strength to do the movement efficiently and effectively. In time we’ll see if I get better with them. The last part of the set were the leg raises on the bars. From a stable starting position we had to move our ankles/feet all the way to the top of the bar as high as we could. This for me was so hard. My abs have never been so sore. I probably had maybe two good attempts and the rest of the movements became a swinging leg lift. I have to work on my core and abs so I can keep my body stable and do the movement correctly. So yea, 3 rounds of each one of these exercises owned me sick. Lesson learned? Don’t have a 4 block meal an hour before crossfit.
My 2nd workout for the day were 20x100m sprints with 45 second rest intervals. I think I nearly died, no joke. My breathing was a problem throughout the whole exercise. Yes, I’m sprinting but I need to have a breathing rhythm to make sure my body is a lean clean running machine as I sprint. I made sure I had running shoes for the workout, I think this helped a little. I was averaging 16.5-17s at the start of the heat, but by the time I reached 10, might have been even sooner, my times dropped to the 20+ second range. I think I had a 23 second 100m in there. This needs to improve. If I want to smoke people down the basketball court, I need to get quicker. I was a little surprised that I endured 20 rounds of this, and it has given me a little motivation knowing that I can do it. It sure wasn’t easy though.
Diet:
Breakfast: 4 blocks oatmeal (roughly 3/4 cups oatmeal according to the charting), 1 block protient powder in oatmeal (1/4 scoop ), 2 eggs, 1 string cheese, 4 blocks almonds (roughly 16 almonds with the nuts I had)
Lunch: Salad(w/tomato, broccoli, mushrooms, avacado), left over salmon.
Dinner: Zelo’s Pizza and salad! (I’m pretty sure I went over my block schedule here, I felt completly filled more than usual)
Recap:
* Push-up form needs to be more stabalized. I have to check for the correct hand posisiton to generate the most power out of the movement.
* Ball slams need to be a more fluid movement. I need to use the natural physics of the movement to generate greater efficiency.
* A stronger core will help with straight leg raises. If I begin to swing, I need to stop myself and do it all over.
* Get into a breathing rhythm when running, breathe and pump the arms for momentum and push hard with my legs all the way through.
** PS: My body is sooooo efffin sore
