Lazy Saturday

Warm-up:
dynamic squat stretching

3x3 deadlift (5x135, 5x185, 3x225, 1x375 then 3x3x315)

3 rounds:
5 hamstring curls (per leg, 35)
5 calf raises (50)

Easy but heavy session at Coles after a day of (partially) catching up at the office. Switching over to 3x3 from 1x5 since my form starts to drop at the end of sets at heavy loads. Threw in a little bit of climbing-oriented leg work.

Pain heals. Chicks dig scars. Glory lasts forever.

- Shane Falco (played by the inestimable Keanu Reeves)

Warm-up:
dynamic squat stretching

1x5 deadlift (135x5, 185x5, 225x3, 275x2 then 1x295)
3x5 bench press (45x5, 75x5, 105x3, 125x2 then 3x140)

Burgener warmup, then:
1 hang power snatch + 7 OHS (45)
20 decline situps
1 hang power snatch + 7 OHS (65)
20 decline situps
1 hang power snatch + 7 OHS (75)

Wanted to squat and DL but rack taken today, think it would have been too much for me anyways. Will stick to 2xsquat/1xDL per week and see how it goes. Grip burnt from climbing yesterday, tough to hold on for the last few reps (normal grip). And 295 felt heavy too - try 300 next go. Bench felt solid but the weight is getting heavier, no stall yet but close - up to 145 next session. Have to remember to bench first, then deadlift next time.

Need to speed up my workouts, taking way too long - was in there for a good 90 min today. Been going without a watch and likely resting more than needed. Going to rotate in more accessory overhead work to strengthen the shoulder girdle: DB snatches, TGUs, overhead lunges, OHS, etc.

For my own record-keeping, some near-future goals (@BW 180 lb):
DL - 2xBW (360)
BS - 1.5xBW (270)
BP - 1xBW (180)
SP - 0.75xBW (135)

Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience.

- Paulo Coelho

Oldies but goodies

We were rocking primo 70s tunes tonight on the way to TRC (The Clash on the way there, Blondie for the return), but the title applies equally well to the 30ish crew we wrangled together: G, David, and myself. Really nice to get back to some tall routes, especially on a rare quiet night in the gym, and give David his first exposure to the joy of lactic acid and endurance-crux moves.

Short but sweet night on the walls, we started with a 9+ TR up the front wall past a small overhang, balancey, a little delicate and thoughtful, before running a nice long 9 lead up the arch, traversing under the roof, and exiting on big holds up the last steep face. Clipping itself was a little fumbly, and I was pumped by the end, but no problems for G or me. David had a go at 7s and 8s, starting vertical in the front, to slightly slabby in the back, to pumpy and slightly overhung, to a corner route - a veritable smorgasborg.

Next up was an excellent 11 lead route around an arete, starting low with delicate moves and tricky clips on small holds, moving around right and straight up past an overhang to a pumpy, highstep finish. We both managed to reach the chains after a few takes (and falls - first lead fall of the season for me, small but good to get out of the way), moves are there but endurance still not up to snuff. Finished up with a 12 TR, which G was *this* close to onsighting. A sufferfest of a route if you ask me, replete with tiny crimps, ballbusting stems, smears, laybacks, awkward positioning, and a really painful looking mantle. G looked really great on it, stubbornly refusing to give up and take; I think he would have onsighted it if not for missing a hard to see hold around the arete. I never got past the bouldery moves down low.

The strength moves and technique are coming back, still lagging on endurance and grip strength. Looking forward to getting in some ice sometime soon...

When they kick out your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun?

- The Clash

Warm-up:
dynamic squat stretching

3x5 bench press (45x5, 65x5, 85x5, 95x3, 105x1 then 115/125/135 x5)

4 rounds of The Bear
7 sets of
Power Clean
Front Squat
Pushpress
Back Squat
Pushpress

Rest between rounds as needed, increase to max load.
65, 75, 85, 95

Just getting in some movement after a long day of sitting at a desk. Bench was okay, warmed up at lighter weights to get the form down and focus on basics (good reminders from Rippetoe at his SS Wiki). Started light on the Bear weights, 95 was pretty awful but pushed through. Just didn't have it in me for the last set (5 rounds as rx'ed). Managed to not drop the bar on my head, which is a win.

There is no such thing as “firming and toning.” There is only stronger and weaker.

- Mark Rippetoe

Dead and deader

Warm-up:
dynamic stretching
Burgener warm-up

3x3 deadlift
KL: 135x5, 185x5, 225x3, 275x3, 315x1 then 335/345/355(f3) x3
ED: 135x2, 185x2, 205x1, 225x1, then 275/285/295 x3

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 reps of
overhead squats (65#)
burpees

KL: 10:53
ED: 12:09

This metcon's a real sledgehammer, I was breathing hard the whole way. Planned on using 95# for the OHS but 65# was much better to keep it short and continuous. By the first set of burpees we both realized that the OHS-burpee doublet is a quad killer. OHSs unbroken but burpees in sets of 3s by halfway through, short pauses. HR 180 at the finish - down to 120s after 5 min, which is at least reassuring physiologically.

Totally screwed the pooch on the deadlifts, added weights wrong and ended up heavier than I meant to (325/330/335 or 325/335/345). Used a mixed grip starting in the middle of the 345# set, but might have been able to pull regular if I had not forgotten the chalk. On the plus side, first 2 reps at 355 felt fairly decent (compare to best 1RM at 365, 2 years ago).

Some serious foam rollering in store tonight...

The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow.

- Thomas Paine

New year, old friend: Texas week 1, volume

Warm-up:
back squat to 155

5x5 back squat (low-bar)
175, 175, 175, 175, 175

It being the new year, I thought it was time to revisit an old friend I've ignored the past few months being busy with work, travel, and climbing. That trusty friend is, of course, made of iron and has not been getting any lighter. Kept the target low and reasonable, and the squats felt pretty good. Bar position was relatively comfortable. Adductors were feeling it by the second work set, though...

I'm hoping to lift much more regularly, and going to use the Texas Method as a base. I'd like top use the volume and intensity sessions as a weekly anchor, and be flexible with the recovery sessions - maybe work in metcons and climbing-oriented workouts. Can probably go up to 185 next week.

Great topical (and previously posted) quote via Brian:

"The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds."

-Henry Rollins

Older boulder

Short (but intense!) session at TRC yesterday with Brian, Joana, and Eric. Stuck mostly to bouldering, as we got a late start out of the city. Worked mostly V4 and V5 with Brian today, with varying levels of success. We all worked a great new yellow bouldering league problem in the overhanging cave, reachy and lots of core tension repositioning - definitely the work of a +ape index setter (and definitely not a V2). Eric worked a nice V2+ (brown and pink) with a match to a big overhanded throw while horizontal, which you follow with a nice slow motion swing across to feet on the opposite arete, and we all found a different way to send a underclingy white V2+ in the back. JK cleared a nice V3 as a warmup, and then trailed a lead rope up and practiced her lead moves, and not backclipping. We're going to have two new leaders soon!

Proving once again that I'm really good at figuring out beta for climbs I can't climb, I watched Brian send a V5 up an overhanging arete - off balance throw with the left hand, reach to the right followed by cutting the feet and a very long stretch to toe a jib waay out right, tricky hand match and then up. Despite racing the closing bell, I kept missing the last catch.

Almost sent the V4 (purple) that the Brain and I have been working on, more Matrix-esque body tension moves on smaller-than-ideal hands; managed to throw out my back and pull a calf cramp in the same damn move. As for my strategy of treating back pain, see WeTheRobots above. Lesson learned, to paraphrase Kool Krack Koiller:

"Sometimes bending over backwards is just wrong" - JK

QOTD

"Those who do not recognize the physiological import of CrossFit - unprecedented increases in work capacity across broad time and modal domains - are left with no rational explanation of CrossFit's popularity and reach. For these people I am typically seen as a marketing savant whose marketing strategies curiously won't replicate. It's like a blind guy wondering why everyone hangs out under lights at night." - Greg Glassman

QOTD

"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity."

- Chris Morley

Words of wisdom from crossfit.

There's a great list of crossfit lessons on this forum page

Personal favorite:
"The impressive feat is not digging deep and pushing through pain at the end of the workout. Anyone can do that. The impressive feat is hauling ass as you reach the middle -- right after you realize what's ahead of you and how much you already hurt." - Brandon Oto

The Temple of Pain

You can have all the money in the world but you can’t buy a body. That makes me feel good. If the rich guys could buy fitness, they would buy it. They’d leave us with nothing.

-Julien Spencer

Great article in the Times today.

Three bars of death

Warm-up:
deadlifts
cleans

Crossfit WOD 030308

Linda, aka "Three bars of death"
10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1 reps of the triplet:
Deadlift: 1.5 x body weight (210 = 1.5 x BW)
Bench press: 1 x body weight (115 = 0.82 x BW)
Clean: 0.75 x body weight (115 = 0.82 x BW)

Set up three bars and storm through for time.

BL: 53:21 (4:23,7:46,6:58,7:30,7:52,6:05,4:46,3:35,3:00,1:23)

Full squat cleans. No bench available, so I did floor presses instead. I thought these might be easier but they weren't, the eccentric portion was harder cause I was trying not to smash my elbows into the floor.

I was pretty nervous beforehand given how Linda destroyed me last time. I wasn't disappointed this time around. No other workout has produced anything like the misery I feel after 2 rounds with Linda.

"Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong."

-Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, "The Light of Stars"

HT to Sean Manseau for the quote.

Superhuman

Take some time today to read about Dave Turner's first solo ascent of the east face of Cerro Escudo in the Paine region of Chilean Patagonia. He did it with style while enduring 34 days of punishing weather. There's a blurb at climbing.com, but the thread at supertopo.com is very much alive, with several posts from Dave giving firsthand accounts of the climb.

The east face of Cerro Escudo. Source: Climbing.com

"The urge to heroism is natural, and to admit it honest. For everyone to admit it would probably release such pent-up force as to be devastating to society."
-Ernest Becker

“It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”

News today: Sir Edmund Hillary, the gangly New Zealand beekeeper turned mountaineer and adventurer and the first man to scale Mount Everest, has died at the age of 88.

Hillary gained everlasting fame in 1953, when he joined a nine member British team attempting to summit the then-unclimbed Everest, at 29,028 ft the highest peak in the world. The north face of Everest lay in Chinese-controlled Tibet, so the expedition approached via the now-popular southeast ridge via Nepal. Hillary was actually not part of the initial summit team, who turned back from the south summit, a mere 100 m below the top, due to oxygen equipment failure. Hillary and his teammate, the Sherpa Tenzing Norgay, were then directed to attempt the summit. After an overnight bivy at 27,900 ft, Hillary and Tenzing summited the next day after negotiating the infamous Hilary Step, a 40 ft high vertical rock and snow band that is the last obstacle barring access to the gentle angling summit slopes above.

Afterwards, he continued his adventures, which included many other peaks in the Himalayas as well as the first overland crossing of Antarctica (the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition). Hillary was extremely generous to the Sherpa community, and played a large role in raising money to build schools, establish hospitals, rebuild monasteries, and better conditions in the Khumbu region via his Himalayan Trust. In more recent years, he was outspokenly critical about commercial expeditions and what he saw as the decline in the alpinist ethos (particularly after the 1996 diasaster chronicled by David Krakauer in Into Thin Air and the 2006 incident where David Sharp was left to die on Everest by ascending climbers).

"People do not decide to become extraordinary. They decide to accomplish extraordinary things."
- Sir Edmund Hillary

Additional info:
Supertopo thread
Time 100 Heroes and Icon profile (Hillary and Tenzing)
BBC report



Tenzing Norgay at the summit of Mount Everest, 1953


Climbers ascending and above the Hillary Step

BQOTD (Bruce Quote of the Day)

“All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.”
- Bruce Lee

Interesting post over at Straight to the Bar about Bruce and his training regimens, with some focus on the back injury he sustained while doing bodyweight good mornings. Apparently he was a strong proponent of weight training as well as his well-known core strength routines.

Don't bug me

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, design a building, conn a ship, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve an equation, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects."
-Robert Heinlein

ME Upper, crossfit WOD

warmup:
3x5 pullups, dips
barbell complex, 55#
shoulder press up to 85#

WOD 070822:
5x5 shoulder press

SS: 2x95, 95 (last rep push press), 90 (last rep push press), 85

cooldown:
10x sprint intervals, 1/18 mi, rest 1/36 mi (sprint the long part of the track and walk/jog the short part)

I took some advice of some folks on the crossfit board today and dropped weight at form failure instead of muscle failure.

" 'Failure' is lack of correct form, it is not muscle failure. You would be hurting every subsequent set by going to muscle failure. One does not need to train to muscle failure to achieve strength gains. In fact doing it is going to hurt progression in most cases."

As far as the sprints, I was only going to do 8 rounds but the track was kind of slippery so I couldn't go as fast, hence 10.

QOTD

"I train every day of my life as they have never trained a day in theirs."
- Alexander Karelin


Karelin is the 6'4" 285 lb former super-heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestler who dominated international competition throughout his career: 12 European Championships, 9 World Championships, and 3 Olympic gold medals. Not only did the Russian win every match he entered over 13 years, he went 10 years without giving up a single point. He was noted for being a poet, an opera buff, a Ph.D., an army officer, and a member of parliament.

Among many nicknames, one of the more famous was "The Experiment". Asked why he thought people called him that, a name more evocative of Russian science institutions and physiological manipulation than hard work and training, he responded with the above quote.

The application of extension, as Brian noted: Karelin was famed and feared for his "Karelin lift", a reverse body lift and suplex which entailed him getting his 250#-plus opponent from flat on his stomach up in the air - often upside down - then throwing him up and over, often onto his head.

QOTD

"I think risk is important. I don't care if it's a great financial risk or a physical risk. You only get out of something what you put into it and the fact that you are willing to risk something means that you are going to get a lot more out of it."
- Yvon Chouinard (founder of Chouinard Equipment - now Black Diamond - and Patagonia)


Hanging bivouac in the Black Cave during the first ascent of the North America Wall on El Capitan in October, 1964. Tom Frost is on the top, Royal Robbins in the middle, and poor Yvon Chouinard is on the bottom.


Fitz Roy 3405m in Southern Patagoni, Argentina: (1) Californian Route, 5.11, 55˚, 650m + 300m, Yvon Chouinard, Dick Darworth, Lito Tejada-Flores, Doug Tompkins, Chris Jones, 1968

Who do you want to be?

“I just want to see how long I can keep this thing going. The easiest thing is dying. Living is a a pain in the butt.”
- Jack LaLanne