CrossFit and Morrissey

As far as I know, Morrissey does not do CrossFit.  But, I saw Morrissey last night, and before the show, I left work a bit early to get to CrossFit.

I was surprised at the strength dominance of the workout after our heavy workout on Monday.  We started with 7x1 Power Cleans, with a goal of setting a single rep PR.  For a long time, due to a shoulder injury, I'd been stuck on 175# for my max in this lift.  About a month ago, I managed a shaky rep at 185.  Last night, after my warm-up, I did reps at 145, 155, 165, 175, 180, 185 and 190.  I really focused on two things.  First, I wanted to make sure the bar was moving vertically the entire time and not swinging in front of my body.  Secondly, I wanted to improve my speed getting under the bar as the bar neared its apex.  When we do squat cleans, your feet have to move during the drop under the bar, and they have to move from a neutral stance to a wider squat stance.  But, with a power clean, the feet don't need to move quite so far, and you don't need to open your stance.  So, I focused on quick feet and a quick drop.  It was interesting to do this, because just as I'd feel I was about to fail on each rep - as the bar stopped moving upwards - I was quickly underneath the bar and supporting it.  From there, I simply had to stand up from the quarter squat position to a fully upright position, and I had the rep.  I'll probably never be really great on form with the Olympic lifts, but last night was a definite improvement.

After the power cleans, we did a workout named Grace - 30 clean and jerks (any type of clean, any type of jerk allowed) as quickly as possible.  The standard weight for men is 135 pounds, but I used 115 instead.  I was able to do the 30 reps in 4:31.  I basically used power cleans with a push press for the first 15 or so reps and then transitioned to a push jerk for the later reps.

After the workout, my wife and I went to see Morrissey with some friends.  I've been a fan of the Smiths for a long, long time, but I never saw them in concert.  Morrissey was their lead singer, but he's also done a lot of solo work.  On his current tour, he's been skipping most of the Smiths' stuff (same four Smiths' songs every show) and even skipping some of his own biggest hits.  The show was pretty much as expected, until the encore.  He'd been playing a song called Still Ill as his encore every night, but last night, this song was in the main set.  This had everyone hoping for How Soon is Now, the Smiths' biggest hit, as his encore, and he delivered.  It was an amazing version of the song, and this video doesn't do it justice:



My ears are still ringing a bit this morning.