Sectionals WOD #2

Today we continued with our post-sectionals workouts by completing the second workout of day one: clean and jerks for five minutes. A great day at CF MPLS overall!


First, there's the warm-up:

3 rounds of 5 reps of Deadlifts
10 Front Lever attempts

The deadlifts were no problem, my form felt really good and I went from 95# to 115#, increasing by 10# on each round. The front levers were another story. I had trouble inverting myself on the bar, but I think it was a mental thing more than anything else because I was "afraid" of falling over or something like that. I was able to attempt one front lever, with Tyler's help of getting my feet over head on the rings. Definitely something to be working on in the future.

Next, we continued with the sectionals WOD:

AMRepAP in 5 minutes - Clean and jerks

The women's prescribed weight on this one was 105#, but I've had trouble just cleaning 65# before, so I knew I'd have to scale this quite a bit. The goal was to try and get in at least 20 or reps, not attempt for one rep in the 5 minutes. I probably could have done 105#, but I would have failed several times first. So, instead I put 75# on the bar (a little step up from my 65# cleans) and actually completed 24 reps. My shoulders started to fatigue fairly quickly, and I feel like I put the bar down a lot and just rested quite a bit. Definitely a strength WOD for me. But my cleans felt extremely good in terms of techniques. The jerk I'm still working on because I tend to push press instead of jumping under the bar.

Then, we got the "icing on the cake" after we rested from the WOD for about 45 seconds:

AMRepAP in 3 minutes - Push press without putting the bar down (can rest in rack position)

Tyler said if we put the bar to the floor, we'd owe him 10 burpees. I hate burpees, so I rested in the rack, which is actually not resting at all since it still kind of engages your shoulders and puts a lot of strain on your wrists! I still managed 52 reps, but I will admit that I probably could have done more if I had pushed myself a little harder. That's one thing I'm trying to overcome - the mental barrier of "this is too hard for me! I'm tired!"

I kept working on my kipping pull-ups before and after class and got another 10 or so in today. Now that I've finally gotten the hang (pardon the pun!) of that, I've decided it's time to start working on a few other skills I'm lacking. Here are some of my ideas on lifts and skills that I want to improve:

*Ring dips - then eventually I can add this to the pull-up and maybe get a muscle-up! I also just really like ring dips, even though Tyler argues they're not all that widely used of a skill in WODs
*OHS - my wimpiest lift. Definitely want to work on midline stability and active shoulders
*Handstand push-ups - I'm really close to getting all the way down and up to full lockout, I just have to have about 2 inches of padding since I can't go all the way down to the floor. I think this in concert with the OHS will help me build shoulder strength

I noticed that these all have to do with upper body, and yes I realize that those are the "small muscles" that are secondary in Crossfit. But as a dancer of 15 years, I've built up a lot of leg strength and I really want to improve my upper body strength and definition. So there you have it - new Crossfit goals for 2010!