I'm sick

AMRAP until I get better

1. Watching TV
2. Napping
3. Sneezing
4. Coughing up things the human body should not be capable of producing
5. Feeling sorry for myself

So far I'm on track for a stellar score.

CFNZ Thursday

Front Squats
3 x 55kg
3 x 60kg
3 x 65kg
The weight felt so light on my shoulders but I lacked power out of the hole and my back was rounding on the last two sets.
I'm happy with that for now and my knees feel OK the next day

alternated with L-Chinups
3
3
4

Then:

30 x 24" box jumps
400m "sprint"
30 burpees

7:41

First time using a 24" box I think. More comfortable than I thought.
Run was hard, left hamstring not at all happy.
Burpees were OK.

CFNZ Tuesday

Hang Clean 3 x 5
40kg
45kg
45kg
I'm still jumping too high so Darren had me lessen my dip. It helped, but I'm still overdoing it. I should have talked to him about it instead of the other things we discussed afterwards.

I only recently cottoned on to jumping the weight up to get full extension and leave my arms out of it and I don't know how to do that and not leave the floor very much. I know more weight would keep me down but my front squat lets me down. Long legs and a short back puts me at a disadvantageous position there so I can power clean more than I can front squat. I can't assume a very knees forward position to get my back more vertical or my knees are very unhappy with me for several days afterwards. I know I need to work my squat more, but I suspect that will always be the case.

Then:
5RFT
10 x 30kg Thrusters
10 x 16kg KB Swings
100m "sprint"

9:22

I got a new battery in my pulse watch, planned on recording my splits and I set the timer going, then on my first thruster I heard a weird series of beeps from overhead and when I stopped the whole watch had reset to the default date and time. It works fine now, but something is weird.

Thrusters; I wanted to use 25kg for the thrusters, but all of the 2.5kg plates were gone. 30 was a wee bit much. I kept my knees out of it and hamstrings engaged, so I can do that for front squats, yay! Hip pop was inconsistent and so were lockouts. Room for improvement.
KB swings; Too light. I wasn't sure if I was up to 24kg and opted for discretion. They were alomost a break after the thrusters and I was pulling the KB down to speed things up. I got pulled up for swinging too high. I was doing games standard, which is how I've always done them and that's more than is required. It's no strain on my shoulders and currently harder for me to judge if I've hit the required height so I'm not sure I like that yet. I think I'l aim to master both variations so I can switch between them as needed.
100m; Not a sprint. Nearly a stagger. On the last round I decided this was stupid and got my act together and Posed some of it (as best I could).

I spent some serious time on the roller at home and my knees are much happier this moring. Now of course I don't know if that was becuase of the roller or because I woked squats last night. I'm going to credit the roller and must spend more time on it.
My back is a little off from a couple of badly received hang cleans.

Then I helped with the second session, coughing my way through a burnt throat.
Great progress on the hang cleans by several people.

Biltong/Jerky batch 4

Really close now.

Preparation

• I used fast fry rump steak, cut back the sugar (left it out of several layers actually, I forgot) and upped the salt.
• I also didn't bother with laying any coriander between the meat in the bowl to marinade, it all washes out when you slop the worcester sauce and vinegar on so I can't see the point.
• I rubbed some dried coriander on the meat after I dried it out after the marinading step and liberally sprinkled cracked black pepper on, then pressed them in before slicing the meat into strips to put it in the dehydrator.

Results

• Upping the salt was a mistake. The salt:sugar ratio was wrong the last time, but the fix was to drop the amount of sugar, not up the salt. It's wound up extremely salty.
• I probably don't need to slice fast fry steak into strips before drying it, it's kind of hard and brittle. Some people like it that way, I like it a little moist.
• Liberal application of cracked pepper is not good.
  Hot!

Next time

• Less salt or a thicker cut of meat to offset the intensity of the extra salt. Probably the latter and keep slicing it.
• Less cracked pepper!

Saturday at CFNZ

Darren can't quite make it to the gym after the session in the park so I opened up.
Checked where everything was, wiped down the outside pull-up bar, wrote the workout up on the board (a partner Murph), pretty much twice with all my erasures trying to make sure the handwriting looked nothing my often illegible whiteboard scrawl.

I researched Murph's story using my phone so I could write a little note up there too and so I could tell it in case anyone asked.

The 0800 class barely needed any help to get started, I just had to explain how the partner aspect worked and stop them gossiping. In fact they told me how the 800ms normally worked at CFNZ. Thanks ladies.

Darren arrive at about 0830 and I'd managed to figure out how to get something other than some boring talkback radio station on the stereo by then. I used the time while they were running to good effect. :-)
Amanda did the workout on her own. A full Murph, Cindy style and the first time she had run it, having rowed it following her hip surgery the last time. Gutsy effort. I really felt for her on the push-ups.

The second class I had planned to join in, but was a little worried about that much volume in my current state of (un)fitness and I really wanted to be join in with the Olympic Lifting class afterwards. Fortunately Darren needed to train so he partnered with Michelle, who was nice enough to carry him through the workout. :-) Lynette arrived partway through after catching the train, also for the O. Lifting class.

We trundled off for a coffee. I wound up with a chai lattee which turned out to have milk in it. I thought it was like the chai tea I had a while back and liked. Like I know what these fancy coffee things are!

The O. lifting. Darren ran us through an hour of snatch drills, which I sorely needed. And did sorely. I'm tight after Nancy and that hour was hitting everything that was hurting. I think I did better toward the end.
I tend to jump a little too wide and I hope I'm not pulling early any more. I tried putting little plates outside my feet to keep them closer and all I did was kick them sideways. Next time I'm using bigger plates.

Then Lynette and I had lunch and went to a movie. Fun.

Oh, the movie was Transformers 2. Sucked.
It was a good story but they had to add way too many silly bits into it. A "kid's" movie doesn't have to be childish. They need to look at JJ Abram's handling of Star Trek to see how to tell a science fiction based story.

Nancy

Nancy
1730 CFNZ WOD

5RFT
400m
15 x 20kg OHS

15:56

400m; About as good as I expected, i.e. pretty sucky. I didn't quite degenerate to a plod, stayed off my heels and didn't walk, but my stride was short and I was planting my foot in front of my hips. I did take an unseemly delight in actually passing Michelle on one lap. I'm like a foot taller than her, legs twice as long as hers and I just pass her on one lap. Yay me!
OHS; I tried 30kg before the WOD and dropped back to 20. As with other things recently. although the leg strength was there, I'm not able to stabilise the weight overhead without a lot of conscious effort and I knew that wasn't gonna happen during the WOD. I really struggled to pin my shoulder blades back, I just couldn't engage the scapular retractors, so I'd sand there with the bar overhead more or less randomly contracting muscles back there until I'd get the ones I wanted to fire. With my shoulder blades back the OHS was easy.
So 40kg would have been quite doable if I could get everything tight, but I couldn't rely on that, hence 20kg.
During the WOD Darren pulled me up for the same thing Jeff did, holding the bar too far behind me at the top. Jeff didn't get time to watch me OHS during a WOD or I'm sure I would have nailed it then, but with Darren watching and telling me when I was doing it (always my problem, establishing when I'm doing things wrong and right in the heat of the moment so I can establish a memory of what the correct groove feels like) I got it. To me it almost feels like I have to hold the bar forward and assume a hollow position to get everything to line up. That tallies with the way I've seem myself stand in videos, so I think, maybe, I might have it.

Then because I was there, Darren got to do the WOD and I ran the 1830 class. I'm very pleased when I can do that. I know how hard it is for trainers to have time to train, so if I can give them an opportunity to jump in with the class that makes me feel very good. It's like a vote of confidence? It tells me that Darren trusts me to coach him, which is a great confidence booster.

Unfortunately I couldn't actually find anything to correct him on damnit. :-) Darren's dislocated shoulder makes OHS a challenge and while I saw his left shoulder getting a bit loose in the last 2 rounds it was only the difference between being completely solid and slightly relaxed. Other than that his form was impeccable.

Afterwards dinner at Lone Star with Lynette. A very nice benefit to training at the same gym and the boy being out at a party.

CFNZ Saturday WOD

For time:
35 Sit-ups
35 Walking Lunges
35 Knees to Elbows
35 Burpees
35 Leg Raises
35 10kg Wallballs
35 Sit-ups

21:04

The KTE were the worst and so were the Burpees and the wallballs were even more worst.
I had plenty of leg oomph on the wallballs, but my shoulders tired, well I practise squats all the time even when I don't get to the gym and almost never work shoulders so hardly a suprise.
Walking lunges were easy, well that's a first! Presumably squat proactise kicking in again.

My hip flexors took the biggest hit on this.