Killer Workout

Day 1 of my little 7-day goal of eating primally and working out hard:

Food was dead-on. Coffee in the morning, a salad with some tuna at lunch, bacon, eggs and salad for dinner, and some walnuts and blue cheese for a snack.

The CrossFit workout yesterday was a killer. We warmed up doing some form work with medicine balls. Then, we did ten minutes of rope jumping, trying to focus on "double unders", where the rope crosses under the feet twice per jump. I was able to get into a decent rhythm of 1-2-1-2-1-2, and 1-1-1-1-1-1, but not 2-2-2-2-2-2-2. The number means the number of times the rope crossed under each jump. It seems odd to me that 1-2-1-2 would be easier than 2-2-2-2 but that's how it worked last night.

Then came the main workout. We did 10 thrusters followed by 10 push-ups. We did this 10 times, as quickly as possible. A thruster is essentially a front squat followed by a push-press, finishing with the barbell overhead. With a total of 100 thrusters, I kept the weight fairly low. The push-ups were harder than the thrusters by the end of the workout. This workout was more of a muscle failure workout (for me) than our typical main part of the workout. Typically, I'm limited by my ability to go very hard - my heart rate and breathing rather than muscular ability. Last night, I got to points where I simply had to rest before I could do more push-ups. The very last finisher (he did a harder variation of the workout than I did) was reduced to a single push-up at a time as we cheered him to a finish.

My time was 17:15, but I didn't do the workout exactly as prescribed. Each day on the board, there are four variations on the workout - Rx'd, Level 1, Level 2, and Level 3. As you move farther from the prescribed workout, the amount of weight will drop, the height of a box for jumping will drop, or the type of push-up you do might change. Right now, I am mostly doing Level 2. Until I get more of these workouts under my belt and I drop some weight, I'm not going to be doing the prescribed workout. When we do workouts for strength, I'm one of the stronger guys in the group, but add in the speed and high number of reps, and I'm one of the least fit people there.

Today, after skiing over the weekend and the workout last night, I pretty much hurt everywhere, but the shoulders and triceps are the worst. If tonight's workout hits the shoulders much, people will be yelling at the coach!