The Chief

Last night at CFNZ I finally got to try this one.

'The Chief'
5 rounds of
AMRAP 3
3 Power Cleans (40kg)
6 Pushups
9 Squats
Rest 1 minute between rounds

3 + 1 clean, 2 + 5 push-ups, 3+ something, 2 + push-ups, 2 + 3 push-ups

The push-ups killed me. The time is coming when I'll have to put some effort into bringing them up.
Cleans were OK. I had a practise session working on jumping from the hang with long arms and now I finally understand that it really is about jumping and landing, well the jumping part anyway. A biiiig jump. I put that into practise as much as possible which is why I stayed on 40kg. Going to 50 or 60 wouldn't have slowed my time down much, but it would have forced me into my patented "panicked scramble to get the weight up at all costs" clean technique.
Push-ups were just dreadful. Down to doubles and singles at the end and seriously fighting not to have to go to my knees. Pathetic.
Squats were pretty OK. I've been working since I got back from Brand X to engage my hamstrings when I squat and I cracked it a few months back. Since then the connection has been getting stronger and stronger. Jeff told me in mid workout "keep those hamstrings engaged " and I didn't have the foggiest idea what the hell that should feel like. Last night I fell into quad dominant squats many times, but was able to get my hamstrings into it again and get some pop back into the movement. I'll probably be working for the rest of my life to make hamstring powered squats my default technique, but to prove that I can consciously do it when I'm under duress is extremely pleasing.

After leaving a very nice sweat angel on the floor (something I admit to peer in doing) I peeled myself off to help with the next class. That introduced another dynamic I have to master, how to coach people when you've just finished a WOD. Afterwards Kaz (there were two Karens so I'll use the abbreviation to distinguish between them even though I don't like it) said that she got quite angry doing the workout because it was so hard and said "and he (me) was mumbling something at me about my form but I was ignoring him" She also said if I'd got closer she would have paid more attention, I told her I was too scared to. It was all post WOD fun, or at least I intended it to be so I hope that's how she took it. Her problem was incomplete hip extension in her squats and cleans as she got tired. Next time 'round I'll get in her face more, but with the small number of cleans there isn't much opportunity to do much to correct technique.
I'm seeing more and more the importance of setting your cues both in the athlete's introductory training sessions and in the pre-WOD explanation. Walking up to someone who's tired you can't give a long explanation of what you want them to change, you have to be able to give them a short cue that re-inforces something that has already been explained and demonstrated earlier.
Tamaryn and Darren have been trying to organise a trainer's meeting to start setting some standard practises and I can see that standard cues we all use need to be part of this.
Tamaryn gave a good run-down of the exercises beforehand, but didn't emphasise specific cues and didn't cover off squats and push-ups in detail, so people weren't getting chest to ground on the push-ups as they tired or completely extending hips on the squats and cleans. Understandably she focussed on the most complex movement, the clean and got some really good results tidying form up there.
Something she did that I thought was brilliant (which I am so stealing) is tell people "you're not using a heavier weight until I see those elbows coming up". Several people had their egos bruised by using weights they thought were "beneath" them. Their technique as they tired proved it wasn't. Damn good idea.
One woman asked me for some help with her clean afterwards and that was when post-WOD coaching really hit. I got her jumping from the hang very nicely. Her elbows needed to be more consistently fast, but they were right erratically. It came unglued when I had her deadlift to the hang and then jump. She'd get to the jumping position and know she had to do something different and pretty much panic. I was too fuzzy to think of the approach Charles Poliquin uses where you start from the hang, but lower each time until the athlete is cleaning from the floor. I think that would have worked well for her. In the process of setting her up to clean I'd brought her deadlift stance in quite significantly and that change threw her a bit. I needed to rebuild her deadlift and working down from the hang would have worked I think. I won't see her for a bit, we're away next week, but I hope I get to work with her some more. She was heading toward a very nice clean indeed.

Core work

I got to CFNZ early and did one of my usual warm-ups. Found my rowing is getting better, HSPU are not good and I'm not talking about my pullups until I get better than that.

5RFT
25 x 16kg KB Swings
25 Sit-ups
25 x 20kg Good Mornings
25 KTE

26 minutes and change

I scaled that badly.
There was a 25 minute cap which I blew as I had only the KTE to go in the last round.

I should have dropped a round and maybe gone with a 24kg KB. I can handle the weight, it's how much time I would have sacrificed. If I were establishing a target time for the BX forum I would have guesstimated this one as an 18-20 minute workout for the Big Dawgs. I should have aimed better.

Darren pulled me up on the swings once, my chest is dropping too much. Now I know what it feels like done properly I can work on that. I had a long session on the foam roller at home and got a few serious clunks out of my back. I've been neglecting it and hunching over more and more. There's still at least one more big one to pop back in line before I can maintain a neutral spine position under load.
Situps were blah. Always are. If I'm going ot lose count that's where I do it.
Good mornings got faster as I went on and got a rhythm going. My hamstrings were twanging something chronic on the drive home.
KTE were KTE in name only after the first 5. Hanging knee raises would be more accurate.

The night knocked me around a fair bit, workouts with a lot of core work tend to. I was shaky for quite a while afterwards.

Walk

My favourite workout.

4.1km walk from dropping the car off at the mechanics.

The un-favourite part was getting rained on, a lot.

Coaching

I helped out with the WOD last night at CFNZ and I am definitely struggling with the crowd management aspect of coaching.

Darren and I ran two stations for the front squats, I could handle the form correction, spotting and loading components of running mine, but the logistics side nearly got away from me. I need to keep a balance between setting weights for people who don't know what they should be doing and letting those who have more experience pick their own. Add in making sure that the weights people pick don't exceed their ability to handle with at least good (I was aiming for perfect) form, some ROM and flexibility issues, not knowing many people's names, having to think of diplomatic ways of telling people their form needed some work and keeping the whole thing moving at a reasonable speed and I ran out of CPU cycles some times. I think I offended one poor lady who had very sore wrists when I told her it was because her shoulders were too tight to let her get her elbows up. I hope I get a chance to show her some stretches and drills she can use to improve that.

In fact I wish I'd taken a minute at the end of the whole session to show everyone what they could do in that area dammit. 20:20 hindsight I thought of as I wrote this.
Bugger, bugger, bugger!
There wasn't anyone I worked with who was really comfortable with the rack position and a couple of takeaway stretches and drills could have helped.
Damnit!

I was happy that during the metcon after that I was able to pull a few people up for not opening their hips at the top of the box jump. Not that I was happy to catch people out, rather that muted hip function (only found out that meant incomplete hip opening the other day, *embarrassed*) is rife at CF NZ and one of the things Darren and Tamaryn want to tighten up on. Getting rid of it during box jumps will start to send the message that it's not a good thing and that will transfer to other movements as we work on it. It was good to see ROM improving from earlier sessions as I walked around the gym, people are working at improving the quality of their movements and want to be told how to do it better. Very good to see.

I took along a hearth brush and cleaned out the grills on two of the C2s, they work much better now that the fan isn't just spinning air within the enclosure. I also tried to clean up the battery contacts in one of the broken PMs. Unfortunate they're so corroded I'm just going to break them if I do so I left it. A shame. I wonder if I can buy new contacts from jaycar or someplace. They're soldered onto the board and a few minutes with a soldering iron and solder sucker (if I can find it after all of these years) should get it off quite neatly. The C2s belong to another affiliate who hasn't found premises yet so they won't stay at CFNZ, but if I can get all three working properly it will help that affiliate which boosts CrossFit in general.

Pushy half-Cindy

AMRAP 10
5 x 40kg push-jerk
10 x push-ups
15 squats

4 rounds plus the push-ups.

I was hoping for 5 and as usual the push-ups killed me. Blasted things. I don't know how come I can power them out some days and just flop to the ground like a dead fish others.
Squats were blah.
Push-jerks soft on the lockouts.

I have some work to do. Like I didn't know that!

Michael

At CFNZ
3RFT
600m run
35 x 20kg Good-mornings
35 situps

18:04

Scaled it deliberately and kept a good pace going throughout. If I hadn't the sit-ups would have degenerated to a slog quite quickly and dropped the intensity. The time is almost exactly where I wanted to be on this, 15-20 minutes. Perfect for this stage of things.

I was quite happy with my running. I stayed off my heels and didn't drop to my usual plod. I know I'm still barely getting my heels up and my pace is slow. Overall, if you squint, you could probably see something that in another 20-30 years might look a little like Pose running.

Today however I couldn't repeat the effort. My hamstrings are beyond tight and even when I walked about 4k at lunch-time didn't loosen up. Ouch.
Very glad I scaled.

Diane

21-15-9
80kg Deadlift
HSPU Piked on a 20" box

6:36

The deadlifts were a heap better than my dismal attempt last time 'round. I struggled a little and the rounds were all broken, but not to smithereens. My back rounded a little. Within acceptable tolerance I think.
HSPU were suspiciously easy, I suspect they were decline push-ups in reality.

I'm happy with that for now.

Slight oops

The workout at CFNZ was:
Buy-in
1-1-1-1-1-1 Weighted pullups

WOD
Half Cindy (AMRAP 5)

My hands are about 3 days away from doing weighted pull-ups and at least a week from doing anything like Cindy, so I was a bit of a wallflower.

Did the warm-up, discovered that a 1 minute plank while you're a bit puffed from slam-ball is harder than I expected. Then I intended to sub push-jerks for the pull-ups, but forgot that people were still running through the Benchmark for the "I Am Crossfit" challenge which took up much of the remaining space and bars. Darren suggested a sub of sit-ups for the pull-ups and I should have gone with that. Why didn't I? No frigging idea. I heard what he said and could have repeated it back to him, but my brain didn't process it at the time. I think I was tired, I certainly slept better last night than I have in a while. Still quite broken, but not as often as usual.

Tamaryn went over how they see an intern program working and told me about the L2 cert notes. They cover the standard cues and progressions.

I downloaded them when I got home and had a look through in case I had been teaching anything incorrectly and was relieved to find that between Jeff, the other Brand X trainers and the L1 and CF Kids certs I had all of it covered. There were a few cues and progressions I couldn't have listed off the top of my head, but nothing I didn't know and with CF Kids there are quite a few aimed at kids that weren't in there. I know they also work well for adults, well, they worked well for me :-), so they'll be useful too. I'm pretty confident of my ability to teach and correct most exercises, it's the running a class stuff I'm not so certain of yet.

"My" WOD

CFNZ had an invitational WOD week.
Members were invited to submit suggestions for workouts for the last week in April. Lou's was a monster on Monday.

Friday's was a combination of 2 of the 3 I suggested.

Lynette and I went along for the 0600 class morning because it didn't seem right to provide the workout and then not do it.

So:
10RFT
10 x 60kg deadlifts
5 Pull-up/TTB combos

A bit over 20 minutes. I forgot to note my time. I'll update when Taz or Darren post them.

I ripped my hands big time, doing an especially good number on the nearly healed one from two weeks ago. Mr Elastoplast must love me.

I got to round 4 and didn't think I was going to make it, but I kept slogging on.

An interesting observation on the pull-ups. When I did whatever I did to myself Monday before last my right side was much worse then my lift. Today I noticed that I tend not to open my left armpit when I do pull-ups. The few times I did the difference in the movement was enormous. Something to work on.
I actually got a few pull-ups/TTB combos as one movement! Woohoo! Not as smooth as Adam and I couldn't string two together, but they're coming.

After Lynette and I had breakfast together at a cafe and she dropped me at work where I sent half an hour trimming bits of skin off my my hands and applying neosporin and bandages. Ouch.

Edit; 20:30