CrossFit Wednesday

I got to the gym early and spent about 20 minutes with a foam roller, working on my quads and hamstrings. By the time we started our warm-up, my legs felt better, but not great.

The strength work was our Wendler strict press work:

5 strict presses at 95#

5 at 105#

max at 115# - I got three

The coach was watching closely on the rep where I failed. She said she could see that it was right shoulder (the one that I injured) that was causing me to fail. I'm not surprised that the right shoulder is weaker right now, but at least I'm healthy enough that I'm building it back up.

Next was 5x10 of bench presses. We were supposed to use the regular (wider) grip, but I did close grip to protect the shoulder.

Then, 3x10 of chin-ups, bringing my three day chin-up/pull-up total to 170 (all band-assisted, but still a lot of work).

The Metcon was pretty easy:

5 rounds, as quickly as possible:

30 air squats

50 double unders

If you can't do double-unders, you are supposed to do 50 single-unders and then 25 tuck-jumps per round. But, given my sore quads, I thought the tuck jumps would be somewhat risky or painful, so I substituted 100 single unders instead in each round. My total time was 9:41.

Today, I realize that 150 air squats, as easy as they are, can exacerbate soreness from "real" squats. I'm more sore now than I was 24 hours ago.

So, should I rest today? Tomorrow? Or when I'm dead?

Last night, we were talking at the gym about being sore, about injuries, and about modifying workouts. The owner and primary coach is absolutely fine with people modifying workouts to protect their health. In that respect, he sees CrossFit as training. But, there is also the competitive side of CrossFit. We have a big white board that contains the best results posted in the gym for 30 or so standard workouts. To make that list, you need to do the workout as prescribed and all reps should be legal. To compete at the CrossFit games, you have to do each rep of each workout correctly and as prescribed.

I'm on the side of using CrossFit as a goal to help with other things. I do like the workouts themselves, and I like the group workout aspect, but I also see CrossFit as something that helps with body composition, strength, mobility, endurance, balance, etc. These things help me with my running, my cycling, and my skiing - activities that I enjoy outside the gym. So, I use CrossFit to improve other things, and not just to improve or even compete at CrossFit. Others have a different approach and see CrossFit as a competitive sport rather than just a training method. Luckily, it seems to work for all of us.

But, back to the conversation we had about training and injuries last night. One of things I said was that the only thing worse than being tortured by these workouts would be an injury that prevents me from doing the workouts. So, I'll continue to scale or adapt the workouts or even skip workouts as necessary. I'm not sure of the logic there. I'm trying to be sure to avoid injury so that I can train hard enough to feel like I'm on the edge of going too far and getting injured.