We had a fun little snatch clinic today. We started with with a set of Tabata Overhead Squats. Then did some snatch grip deadlifts. Then we reviewed the basics of the snatch using the PVC pipe. We finished up with some practice lifts with 75lbs.

I think we need days like this sometimes to keep everyone's form sharp.

In an effort to keep things short this morning, we blazed through the warmup and workout in just over a half hour.

Our first stop was the Jailhouse Warmup: 10 burpees, walk across the room, 9 burpees, walk back, 8 burpees, etc.

On top of hangovers and sleep deprivation, that 'warmup' starts feeling a bit like a workout itself by the end, especially as we jumped without rest directly into:

21 DB Thrusters
21 DB Swings
Run 400m
15 DB Thrusters
15 DB Swings
Run 400m
9 DB Thrusters
9 DB Swings
Run 400m

Marshall finished up in 14:31 with 30# DB's, I dragged in just behind him at 14:42 with 35#'s and a nasty calf ramp that left me walking rather than running the final 400 (still getting used to these Nike Free's), followed by Scott at 17:02 with 35#'s and near-brushes with Pukie at two points along the way.

As Marshall emailed to say, "that was one hell of a way to start the am."

As several people have commented that Thursday evening classes collide dangerously with prime NYC boozing time, we're switching Tuesday and Thursday around:

Now, Tuesday classes are at 7:00pm, while Thursday's are shifted to 7:00am. Tuesday night, Thursday morning. Re-pencil that in to your planner.

Also, because working out is far more fun when you can drag your friends in to share the pain, we're instituting a 'bring one, get one free' policy: bring someone with you, and your class is on us.

See you tomorrow morning.

Court and I, a bit mentally fatigued, dove head first into one of the hardest crossfit workouts in existence. It went like this:

1 mile run
100 pullups
200 pushups
300 air squats
1 mile run

About 1/3rd of the way through we were feeling better. The grit required to rip through these gargantuan sets cures ailments, physical and mental. We cheered each other through 10+ minutes of calf cramps on the last mile leg to finish in just under 1 hour.

Very rejuvenating.

Warmed up with:
Max time in L-hold
0.5 mile run

Worked out with: 21-15-9 reps of:
20 lb. medicine ball sit-ups
Pullups
1.5 pood (55lb) Kettle bell swing
double-under jump rope

Warmed-down with:
0.5 mile run.
21 box jumps, 24 inches
30 second L-hold

We all finished this workout in 25-28 minutes. Keith posted the best performances on the L-holds, beginning and end. I am betting this has something to do with his Yogag training.

(see http://www.crossfit.com/cf-info/excercise.html for what an L-hold is supposed to look like)

None of us hit the minute mark on the L-hold. Something to work on. L-hold were at least 4x shorter for everyone in the warm down; most of us had to have assistance to make it to 30 seconds.

It is amazing to watch a crossfit workout. I came in with this idea for a workout to put the guys through today. I had put some clients through a similar workout a few days ago and thought I had some idea of how it would go when attacked by more seasoned crossfitters. However, I was blown away by the fury with which Scott & Josh attacked this WOD.

Run 800m
65# Overhead Squats, Front Squats, Backsquats*
21 Knees to Elbows
65# Overhead Squats, Front Squats, Backsquats*
Run 800m

* You do as many overhead squats as you can then switch to front squats. Then when you can't do anymore front squats, you put the bar on your back and do back squats to failure. Of course, putting the bar down is not an option.

I had originally thought that scoring this might look something like load x reps / time in seconds = score, but it became apparent that today was not going to be a particularly "fast" day for Josh & Scott. The whole workout took approximately 28 minutes.

The best part was watching Scott do 100 squats in the first pass. I am thinking he should change his name from Scott to Squat. Truly impressive. Less impressive was Josh who was having a personal battle with his hangover. After 12 overhead squats he spent more time fighting off pukie and trying not to drop the bar than he spent squatting. Eventually he banged out approximately 50 squats in the first pass. However, we're not really sure because he totally lost count. After doing the knees to the elbows they came back to the bars and agreed that 50 squats on the second pass would be a good number to shoot for. Scott made it to 45 before collapsing. Josh came back more focused (i.e. his hat turned inside out) and banged out the 50 with good form. They hit the treadmills for the final run/shuffle.

It was truly an inspiration to see such grit and determination. This was a real fight. Negotiating the load definitely takes its toll on the system since "resting" is difficult at best.

Two on One

Why do one Workout Of The Day when you can do two? Today we warmed up with weighted tabata squats and 150 sit ups. We had to introduce our newest members, Stan & Bin, to the joys of tabatas! I'm ashamed that I got dusted by someone that walked in off the street. I'm going to be plotting my revenge against Stan while I work on my weighted tabatas.

Name/Weight/Score
David 45# 13
Josh 45# 12
Stan 45# 10
Keith 45# 9
Marshall 35# 12
Joe 35# 12
Bin 25# 12

I (and everyone except David) would have been happy stopping there, but we thought it would be "fun" to try another challenging workout from the annals of the Crossfit message boards.

5 Rounds for time of:
10 Power cleans
15 pushups

Name/Weight/Time
David 135# 7:30
Josh 135# *
Stan 95# 7:10
Keith 95# 10:28**
Marshall 95# *
Bin ***

* Josh and Marshall both experience equipment malfunctions that rendered their bars useless for about 10 minutes. They were cruising at a sub 15 minute pace.

** We staggered this workout because there were only 2 bars. I started just after David and I was content to quit after 3 rounds. I took a seat and was sucking wind while I watched David do his last two rounds. After David finished in stunning fashion I was totally inspired to get back up and finish my last two rounds. If I hadn't taken that extended rest, I'm certain I would have had a much better time and would have suffered only a mild heart attack.

*** Bin got to work on front squats and cleans with me and David coaching him. We'll have him heaving some big weights around next time.

Today we had a marathon workout-20 minute warmup, ~1.2hrs of high intensity training, 20 minutes of warmdown.

I led the first two parts and our newest member, Sylvia, led the yoga-style warmdown.

The workout consisted of three rounds of:

overhead weighted lunges (35lbs) 3 lenghts of the studio (~65ft),
pullups
hill climb on the stationary bike (level 15, min. 100 rpm)
overhead squats, 95 lbs
(failure on any station could be subbed with 40 box jumps (20")

Scores were (should be) based on reps per station where the time limiting station was lunges. The fatigue hit quickly though and stations were long from round one. The average sprint on the bike was ~3.5 minutes! We were all so exhausted at the end of it all that nobody even thought about posting scores. Let's just say that there were plenty of box jumps.

Finally, we worked a bit on the kipping pull up before departing. The focus was on opposing pendular motions pivoting around the hip and the shoulders. These motions result in forward-backward movements of the head and feet, respectively in opposite directions. Videos of the kip can be seen at the following links:

http://www.crossfit.com/cf-video/Josh_Greg-Fran.wmv
http://www.crossfit.com/mt-archive2/000531.html

(Pay particular attention to Cil-the woman on the left in the second video)

More questions came from the other trainers in the gym. It's clear how fun they think it looks as we shock and awe them with our intensity.

Today, after three rounds of the CF warmup, we strung together a couple of different exercises into a single beastly compound:

Dumbbell burpee to squat clean and jerk to two overhead lunges

Repeat, repeat and repeat, as you traverse back and forth across the length of the space.

Scott and Keith rocked 35# db's, while I pansied along with 30#. (Insert whining excuses about percentage of bodyweight, etc.)

We made three there-and-back laps of the inside studio, then spent the next five or ten minutes on a workout Keith kindly named after me:

Joshua
For time: lie on the floor gasping for breath.

We're also toying around with taking this Sunday's workout outdoors, heading either to Central or Riverside Park, for a repeat of the workout that first put CFNYC on the map: Mugging Gone Bad. Details soon.