Back to heavy weights

Wednesday was all about body-weight movements in the gym. Well, we used a pull-up bar and we used rowers, but we didn't lift anything other than our own weight. Thursday's workout should have been called "Revenge of the Barbells".

After our warm-up, we did 5 sets of 10 deadlifts, with a goal of setting a 10 rep max PR. I hadn't done sets of 10 on deadlifts for so long that I am pretty sure every set was my best ever. After a warm-up, I did one set at 225 pounds, then 245, 265, 275 and 275. After the fourth set, I knew that it wouldn't be in my best interest to add any weight for the last set.

Then, the main workout was as follows:

5 rounds, as quickly as possible:

10 barbell thrusters

10 sumo deadlift high pulls

The prescribed weight was 135 pounds, but that was not even an option for me. The level 1 weight was 95 pounds, and before we started the deadlifts, I decided I'd go with that. But, after the deadlifts, I wasn't so sure. I started the workout with 95 pounds, but after one set of thrusters, I knew I had to drop the weight, and I went down to 75 pounds. At that weight, the workout was still a challenge, and I finished in 11:36.

We had been told before we started that at an appropriately heavy weight, the workout should take 10-12 minutes. So, dropping to 75 was a good idea.

I'm planning to go to CF again tonight, and I hope that I don't regret that decision tomorrow while skiing. I'll definitely scale the workout to an easier level tonight. And, after the workout, I'll be going to the state championships for junior high gymnastics, where my daughter is competing on the balance beam.

As soon as I get home, I'm sure I'll go straight to sleep. This will be a very busy and very crowded weekend at the mountain. Regretfully, I think the mountain has had a net loss of snow since last weekend, but we will have warmer temperatures for skiing, for Saturday at least.

Tabata This

Once again, I seem to be fighting a cold. The symptoms aren't too bad, but I think my insane winter schedule is just not letting me recover. I took Monday and Tuesday as rest days. My wife and I are both so tired from life in general that our Valentine's Day consisted of us eating pizza for dinner and falling asleep on the couch while watching TV. This was our 29th Valentine's Day as a couple, so I guess we're "tired" of each other. Or just tired.

Anyway, after two rest days, I made it back to CrossFit last night. After the warm-up, we worked on pull-ups for 15 minutes. This surprised me, as I thought we'd be doing back squats yesterday, but the coach mixed up the weekly schedule this week. I still use assistance bands for pull-ups most of the time, so I started the fifteen minutes by doing 2 strict pull-ups (without bands) every minute on the minute for seven minutes. After that, I did negatives - I'd start at the chin-over-bar position and basically lower myself as slowly as possible. Well, it's not really lowering myself; it's more like a slow motion muscular failing. I hold on as long as I can, but my strength fails bit by bit. I did 5 or 6 negatives with about 45 seconds rest before the 15 minutes was done.

Then, we had a really fun 25 minutes, doing mostly bodyweight work in Tabata style intervals. Basically, the Tabata protocol is 8 rounds, where you go all out for 20 seconds and rest for 10. It's easy to find out more about the protocol through Google, if you want. We did 5 different exercises, Tabata style, with a one minute break between each movement:

Pull-ups (band assisted)

Push-ups

Abmat sit-ups

Air squats

Rowing

Our score for the workout was total reps for the first four movements, plus calories burned for the rowing. With the pull-ups, I started out with 8 for my first round and gradually dropped to 5 by the last round, for a total of 47. For push-ups, I started with 10, but eventually, I was only doing 5 or 6, and I did some as knee push-ups. My score was 62 here, with about 2/3 of them as strict push-ups and the rest as knee push-ups. For sit-ups, I was fairly consistent and did 66. I was amazed by my friend Tanya, who was working out right beside me as she hit 99. We use mini whiteboards to track our workout scores sometimes, and thanks to a shortage of the dry erase pens, I kept score for both of us. So, Tanya was calling out her scores to me every five minutes. (We are short of dry erase pens, because our gym mascot, Hawks the dog, likes to eat them.)

Next was air squats, and I started slowly with 13 in the first round. I eventually pushed this as high as 16 and did a total of 117. Lastly, I accumulated 51 calories during the rowing, for a score of 343. Tanya had a very impressive 371.

At lunchtime, someone had posted a score over 500. I guess being the old guy in the gym (they're going to start calling me Grandpa one of these days) means I'll never post the top scores. But, I'm there to improve myself, not "win" anything, and it was a good workout. I'll be back at CF as soon as the workday is done.

Strange skiing weekend - fickle winter weather

As I'd planned, I took a rest day on Friday before skiing for the weekend. And, that turned out to be a very good decision. A week before, I'd joked to my ski group that if our fastest skier was ever the only person to show up, I'd be in trouble. My fastest skier is a talented 14-year old girl and she likes to ski fast. With a forecast for very cold temperatures and no new snow, and a holiday week coming up a week from now, many families stayed home for the weekend. Plus, one of my students is skiing in Utah and a couple of them were sick.

It's obvious how this played out. At 9:30 on Saturday morning, only my fastest skier had showed up. I kind of felt bad for her. What 14 year old girl wants to spend an entire day hanging out solo with her 50 year old ski coach? I offered to let her ski with a different group or coach for the day. She suggested that we ski together for the morning and then meet up with another group for the afternoon. This seemed reasonable to me, and we were off. I had already done 3 runs with other instructors for some training, so I was warmed up and ready to go. We did one more easy run and then it was time to ski. The conditions weren't great - somewhat fast and firm - but we found a lot of enjoyable snow. In about 2 hours, we skied about 8 runs of single or double black diamond terrain, most of it moguls, although one double black had been groomed and was fairly easy. It was easily the toughest morning of skiing I'd done all year - tough but fun. We did every run non-stop - no taking a rest partway down.

At lunch, we met up with another group and headed to Sugarbush's "other" peak - Mt. Ellen. We immediately headed for a tree run beside a double black diamond run. This trail sits at the edge of the resort boundary, so we had to be careful not to push too far away from the trail, in case the snow in the trees wasn't in very good condition. We did one run fairly close to the trail and it was a blast. Then, we did a second run in the same area, but we pushed farther away from the trail. The snow was still solid, so we did a third, pushing even farther away from the trail. Again, the snow was solid, although we did encounter one section where we needed to take off our skis to get past an ugly drop-off. After a fourth tree run in a different location, we headed back to the main mountain, arriving just in time to meet parents at 3:00. It had been a great but tiring day - close to 30,000 vertical feet of skiing for me from 8:00 until 3:00. Before I became an instructor, 30K vertical feet was sort of my benchmark for a good day of skiing. Teaching children, I rarely get above 22K or so in a day. Saturday, doing almost 30K in tough terrain made for really fun day.

On the way home, I knew that Sunday would not be as kind to us. The temperature had started to plunge late Saturday afternoon, and the Sunday forecast was for single digit temperatures at the base lodge, colder up high, and lots of wind. Two of my students showed up on Sunday, and we spent most of our time focusing on staying warm. We would ski one or two runs and then head inside to warm up. We tried one natural snow bump run and found it to be rock hard ice, for the most part. At one point, I planted my pole and it simply bounced off the ice rather than grabbing the surface.

By lunchtime, the father of one student called it a day and he and his daughter headed home. Suddenly, the same student I'd had the day before was stuck with me again.

We had an interesting conversation about running at lunchtime. I'm not sure how the topic came up, but she found out that I've run a handful of 100 mile trail races in the past. She said that was a stupid thing to do. Then she asked how long it took me to complete the races. When I gave her the numbers (26 to 45+ hours), she said it was even more stupid. She demanded an explanation - why would I do something like that? I didn't have an answer that satisfied her, cementing the opinion that I'm simply stupid. I had a good laugh about it though.

After lunch, we hooked up with the same group as the day before and skied some easier tree runs for the afternoon. At about 1:50 or so, my remaining student had had enough, and asked for permission to head for her nearby condo. I have permission to release her on her own, so I let her go. She'd been stuck with me and none of her friends for too much of the weekend.

So, Saturday was a great ski day. Sunday was one of the worst ski days of the year. Considering how little snow we've had this year, a day like Saturday is a gift. And, we actually have a chance of a storm late this week, just before the holiday weekend.

Today is a rest day, and then it's back to CrossFit the next three days.

Some skiing, some workouts, some random thoughts

In the past 8 days, I've PR'd at the deadlift, the overhead squat and the strict press. If I had any shoulder mobility at all, my overhead squat, and consequently, my snatch, would be much better. But, three lifting PRs in a week at age 50 is the kind of progress that keeps me going.

After my deadlift PR last week, I woke up sore on Thursday. I took two rest days before skiing over the weekend. And, I felt pretty good while skiing. Overall, it was a fun weekend with my students, but it was marred by the death of a skier at Sugarbush. I know that skiing can be a dangerous sport, but when someone that you know dies on a fairly easy trail, it hits home a lot harder. On Sunday, I was extra cautious with the children that I teach, paying attention for out of control skiers or riders, rough conditions, etc. It turned out to be a fairly relaxed day compared to many recent days. It seems that everyone who skis at Sugarbush is a Patriots or Giants fan, and the mountain was fairly empty by late morning, as people headed home to watch the Super Bowl.

On Sunday, I got an invitation to the Pinterest web site. I'd requested it a week or so earlier. And, I've been playing with it some this week. But so far, I have to admit that I'm not really sure what it is. Whose stuff am I seeing? What I am supposed to put on my pinboards? What's the point? I used my Facebook login to set up my account, so I have lots of friends and followers, but I remain a bit confused. Maybe I'll take a picture of all the stuff "pinned" to my refrigerator door and post that.

It's been really busy at work, with a new product in its final days of testing, and we are preparing to release the product within a week or so. I've been glad that I've been able to still get to the gym this week, despite the craziness at work. I'm guessing it will be April or so before things really calm down, and I'll probably need to log on to our systems on Saturday and Sunday evenings after skiing for a month or more. But, it's what pays the bills.

Tonight, I'll do CrossFit for the third day in a row and I'll probably take a rest day tomorrow before the weekend. I've definitely been feeling a bit run down and under the weather recently, but I've been doing well in the gym.

As we approach the mid-point of February, it would be nice to get some real snow this winter. This has been one of the poorest snow years in quite a while. Right now, we have 9 days until the start of the final holiday weekend/week of the ski season, and if it wasn't for man-made snow, we'd have fairly limited terrain. There is one potential storm about a week away, but some shifts in the Arctic Oscillation are putting us at risk for rain rather than snow in that storm.

There certainly won't be any rain this coming weekend. It's probably going to be the coldest weekend of the winter so far, which means hard, fast, mid-winter east coast skiing.

Another deadlift PR and some thoughts about CrossFit

After a rest day Monday, and a moderately tough CF workout on Tuesday night (snatch complexes, and 100 reps each of pull-ups and box jumps), I woke up feeling tired this morning. Because of an obligation after work today, I either had to work out this morning or not at all. So, I drank a cup of really poor quality hotel coffee and headed to CrossFit.

After our warm-up, which cruelly contained more pull-ups, the strength work today was deadlifts. I was expecting deadlifts next Wednesday and strict presses today, so this caught me a bit off guard. I was hoping to structure my training a bit to go for a deadlift PR next week. Our rep pattern this morning was 5-5-3-3-1-max, starting at about 65% of our one rep max. This is not an ideal rep pattern to get a PR and I felt tired from last night, so I decided to just concentrate on the lifts as programmed.

Here are my first four rounds:
5x255#
5x275#
3x305# (math error - should have been 295)
3x315#

At this point, I felt pretty good, so rather than finishing at 335 and 355, I decided to jump up a bit. I did one rep at 365# and I struggled a bit. But, I was now committed to at least taking a shot at my PR, which stood at 385#. I'd failed at 405# a few weeks ago, so I opted for an attempt at 395# this morning. I took about four minutes rest after my 365 rep, and I also removed my shoes - a trick that allows you to pull the bar a little bit less distance.

With the gym owner/coach cheering me on, I nailed the lift, and I'm sure I could have done 405# today.

From there, we did a main workout of power cleans and hand-stand push-ups (I do an easier variation on these), but my deadlift PR had me thinking about something I'd read recently on a web forum devoted to lifting as much weight as possible.

First, to be honest, a deadlift of 395 is barely entry level for a serious male lifter, especially the guys who focus purely on power. But, for a 50 year old male who has been lifting about 5 years, it's a respectable lift.

On the forums I was reading, I found an anti-CrossFit thread. Basically, the summary of the thread was as follows:

CrossFit makes women lean, strong and really good looking
CrossFit makes men skinny and they never get strong
CrossFit injures everyone over the age of 35 who tries it

I won't disagree with the first point at all.

I don't even want to discuss the last point.

It's the second point that is interesting to me.

First of all, after a year-plus of CF, I am not skinny (the people on that forum consider skinny to be an insult - a crime against the gigantic muscles that lifters want to have). But, it's the strong part that surprises me.

Before I started CrossFit, I was doing lots of strength-focused work on the primary power-lifts - squats, deadlifts, and bench presses.

I started lifting regularly early in 2007. Late in 2009, I got my deadlift to 355. And, 10 months later, when I started CrossFit, I'd actually regressed somewhat in the deadlift. My squat was stuck at 275#. My bench press was stuck at 185#. It took a while to re-gain my strength, but here is how my deadlift has progressed since I started CF:

10/2010 - Started CF, deadlift max below 355 and 335 was tough
5/2011 - 365#
6/2011 - Repeated 365#
8/2011 - 375#
9/2011 - 385#
1/2012 - new 3-rep max of 355#, missed 405#
2/2012 - new PR of 395# and 405# is imminent

Since joining CF, my squat has gone to 320# from 275#. We don't do bench presses very often, so I have no idea where I am on that list. In just over a year of CF, my deadlift has increased 40 pounds - over 11%. During the 50th (and now 51st) of my years on this planet.

So, while I'm not going to be winning any power-lifting meets, I have definitely gotten stronger while doing CF. Now, if only I could get skinnier...

Catch-up

Late last week, we had some really nasty weather - a mix of rain and snow and wind and warm temperatures that seemed certain to derail any quality skiing for the weekend. So, rather than taking it easy at CrossFit on Friday night, like I typically would, I worked out hard.

And then, I got to the mountain on Saturday morning and discovered a couple inches of new snow on top of a base that had been softened by rain and the warmer temperatures. I spent all of Saturday on natural snow trails with my students - steep runs, tree runs, bump runs - non-stop. What a great day it turned out to be. As the temperatures dropped during the day, things got a bit firmer, but it wasn't a big deal.

Sunday, we had at most 1/2" of new snow. The base was firm. Nonetheless, we found all kinds of fun places to ski. We warmed up on an intermediate bump run on natural snow, and every run for the rest of the day was on expert terrain - either on or off trail. By the time Sunday afternoon rolled around, I was exhausted. I believe my students were exhausted as well.

After three straight days of CrossFit, I had not expected to ski so hard over the weekend. Sunday night, I dragged myself home, cooked dinner, ate, and fell asleep on the couch fairly early. I woke up briefly and went straight to bed.

Yesterday morning, I was still dragging, and a rest day was clearly needed. Right now, I think the ideal schedule for me during ski season would be to rest on Monday, do CrossFit the next three days, rest on Friday, and then ski on the weekends. Perhaps I could squeeze in some rowing or easy running on an occasional Monday or Friday. But, five consecutive days seems like too much at the moment.

Today, I'm feeling much better and I'll be at CF tonight. And, most likely, the next two nights. We've had some snow since Sunday, but it's supposed to be warm and rainy tomorrow and then dry for a few days. So, next weekend's skiing could be a bit on the firm side. But, that's the life of a New England skier.

Sugarbush should be kind of crazy this coming weekend. The two most popular football teams in the northeast will be playing in the Super Bowl. So, many skiers will be skiing in their jerseys, and yelling at each other over beers in the bar. I think I'll just stay away from that mayhem. By lunchtime or so, most of the out of state skiers will be leaving to head home to watch the game, and the mountain will be fairly deserted. I love skiing on New Year's Day (no crowds due to hangovers) and Super Bowl Sunday.

If anyone in the New York or New England area wants a decent deal on a lift ticket, Sugarbush is charging $46 on Sunday (Super Bowl XLVI?). It tends to be a low crowd day on the mountain and that's almost half off the normal ticket price.

A couple PRs in the gym

I took both Monday and Tuesday as rest days and I felt ready to go last night in the gym. After our warm-up, we worked on back squats using a 5-5-3-3-1-max rep scheme, starting at about 65% of one rep max. This is not an ideal scheme to hit a new PR, but I felt pretty good as I progressed through the workout. I started at 225, then 240, 255, 275 and 295. Even at 295, I felt pretty good. So, I decided to try for 320, which is five pounds heavier than my PR. I first hit 315 in May of last year, and then repeated that weight twice more last year.

I was very happy with my single rep at 320 - decent depth, I stayed upright, and it was never in doubt. I'm sure that with a proper warm-up, I can go 5-15 pounds higher than I did last night.

After the squats, the main workout was rowing 2K as fast as possible. In some ways, I'd rather row 5K, because the intensity at 2K is brutal. I knew when I sat down that I wanted to go sub-8, which I'd never done before. Despite being warned about not going out too hard, I managed to do it anyway, although not too badly. I hit the first 500 in about 1:55, the second in 1:57, and the last two were each just over 2 minutes. The last 250 meters was really tough, but I hung on for a 7:57.

My total "working" time in the gym was less than 12 minutes last night, lifting and rowing combined. In that time, I got two PRs and a great workout. I'm ready for more at CrossFit tonight.