I forgot.

I was just reminded that I met the (in)famous Jojo Carmody  quite some time ago, when she was just a CrossFit Newbie.

I'm embarrassed that I don't remember judging for her: a lot of that day was blur of stress and dehydration.
Very pleased that I knew her back then.

Man that shirt is really obvious amongst a crowd of CF T-Shirts.

CF Birkenhead

Before I had lunch with Lynette I called into CrossFit Birkenhead to try out a suspect C2 monitor on the Model Cs he has there and have a chat about equipment and a nosy at the gym.
When I saw Paul I recognized him as having met him at CFNZ, I hadn't remembered his name I'm afraid.
The monitor was fine.

We had a talk about the equipment he imports and his pricing for it. He's substantially cheaper than the place I had been buying gear from, pretty much down to US prices. $450 for a GHD blew me away, The only other ones I'd seen for sale in NZ were over $1000.
All of the gear is excellent quality, more than good enough for a home gym and he's using it in his gym and it doesn't look like he has problems with it folding up on him. At $300 I would have bought a pair of squat stands instead of making mine. I can see my home made jobs being replaced in the future.
I bought 2 bands to give me a full set of light, medium and strong (which I already had). Total cost $50. I could have bought all 3 off him and paid half what I did for my strong band. Now that annoys me.
I'll be talking to Paul before I buy any other equipment.

I liked his gym too. Nice feel to it. Fun to see kids running around a CF gym again.

Trainer no more

Lynette couldn't see any way to make it happen either so I had to send Darren and Tamaryn an email saying I couldn't live up to my end of the deal as one of their trainers.

I'm bitterly disappointed. Becoming a good trainer was something that was and is very important to me and the experience I had told me I could do it. Running group classes were a huge leap for me and I did a very poor job of it, mainly through being too self-conscious. If I stopped trying too hard it started to come together, but it was going to be a long slog until I could get myself out of the way of myself. I know that means, it's my blog, anyone else can go figure it out for themselves. One-on-one I'm reasonably happy with where I'm at. In that I know enough and can teach it well enough so that people can learn movements from me, be safe and get well on the way to being good CrossFitters. Am I as good as I want to be? Hell no! I still compare myself to Jeff and will always hold him as my gold standard for coaching CrossFit. I'm frustratingly deficient in drills to teach the movements, the olympic lifts in particular and that's something I want to address. Doing so was one of the things I enjoyed most about training.
I really loved working with complete beginners and teaching them the fundamentals. That's enormous fun.

So I'm out.
I'll still be involved with CFNZ where and when I can. Once I get past this effing cold and have established some sort of base fitness I'll have time to train there some of the time now.
I don't blame Darren and Tamaryn at all for the requirements they've implemented. They're very sensible and they're part of a really excellent program for developing their trainers that will set CFNZ up very well and that's good for CF in NZ. Hopefully there will be ways I can help them with that.

For now I'm thinking about how I can structure my training when I'm up to it. Thinking about things I want to include in my warm-ups/buy-ins and picking movements from Ido's Blog for cash outs. He has lots of great bodyweight movements that don't require equipment and excellent progressions to learn them. And I like capoeira, so this gives me a chance to pretend I'm learning some of the elements. If you want to humble yourself, try that Shrimp movement of his. http://idoportal.blogspot.com/2009/08/explosive-leg-workout.html

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.

Australiasian qualifier workout, scaled!

WOD at CFNZ.

Workout #1 from the Australasian qualifier.

3RFT
10 C&J 40kg
15 Ring dips
20 KB swings 24kg
15 minute cap

I messed up the timing and stopped after 2 rounds and the C&Js at 10:30
I had my watch set to count down the cap, but I though Tamaryn was saying my group only had 40 seconds to go and I figured I'd messed up the watch somewhere along the line and pulled the pin. I might have made it if I'd kept going.

C&J. 40kg was the women's weight and about right I thought. Heavy enough that I couldn't muscle the weight up, light enough to let me keep the pace up. I could have improved my cycle time by thrustering out of the power cleans, but decided to follow Jeff's rules and make it two distinct movements. When I have my C&Js as tidy as I want them I'll take liberties. I didn't hurt my back on the jerks! First time in ages. 50kg seems to be the danger point, below that I'm safe even when I get tired.
Dips. I had to go to using a band. I haven't done them in so long and they were never a strong point, I knew they'd be the sticking point. The time cap was my decider to go to the lightest band for assistance and it was the right move. I should have done it earlier is all.
KB swings. I ah let my ego get away with me. I planned to use the women's weight (16kg) there too, but when Tamaryn said that head height swings were OK I didn't struggle to secure a popular 16kg KB and grabbed one of the several 24kgs that were not being used. I was OK with them, but I should have gone 16kg and full overhead swings. Lesson learned.

Fun. Wish I'd trusted my watch though and come closer to finishing.

Not sure the birthday deadlifts were the best prep for this. :-)

Press and CF NZ

Press
5 x 37.5kg
5 x 40kg
5 x 42.5kg

Something a bit weird with my plates I think. 37.5kg felt heavier than 40kg. This is the last time I'll be starting with less than 40 so it will work itself out anyway.
12-9-6 x 30kg

Then metcon at CF NZ
Outdoor
1 minute each of:
Lunges - count laps between two cones
Tyre drags - count laps between two cones
Tyre flips - count flips
Farmers walk - count laps between two cones

Rest about 30 milliseconds, 2 minutes in real time I think
Then
Indoor
1 minute each of:
Pull-ups
Squats
Situps
Push-ups

Then
6 round tabata burpees

I honestly don't know for sure what my score was. The others in my team cottoned onto accumulating the score as the went. I was trying to remember the count for each exercise while I counted for the next one and then add them up afterwards.
Not the best way to do it at all.

I was rather unhappy with my pull-ups.
I was happy with the way taking my wedding ring of and hanging it on a band around my neck saved me from building that callous up more. Definitely the way to go in future.

Tamaryn and Darren from CrossFit NZ

See Jeff? Cargos!