I need a rest day!

Last night at CrossFit, I arrived sore and tired. Luckily, the warm-up plus some additional foam rolling was just what I needed, and by the time the main workout hit, I felt a lot better.

We started out with heavy singles of split jerks. This is a fairly complex Olympic lifting movement, and I don't get to practice it very often. Basically, it's a technique for finishing a Clean and Jerk, and a proper split jerk allows many lifters to jerk more weight than by any other jerk method. But, if you don't do it fast and really drop under the weight, it can be a frustrating movement. Before I picked the link above, I looked at a number of videos that showed pretty poor form. It's not that I'm better than the people in the videos, but there were clear form issues in many of the videos out there.

Anyway, my C&J PR is 165#, so I should be able to split jerk more than 165#, if my technique is correct. But, before last night, my best had been 125#, done more than 6 months ago. Part of the lack of progress had been my shoulder injury, but my shoulder feels pretty good these days, so I'm more willing to try heavy overhead lifts right now versus a few months ago.

After warming up, starting at 45 pounds, I easily got to 125, 135, 145 and even 155. I struggled at 165, just missing twice. The misses were all about form - I was not fast enough and didn't commit hard enough to dropping under the bar. But, I got a big PR and I know I can go even heavier.

After the split jerks, we had a 13 minute MetCon. Some of our workouts start with a task that is called a "buy-in". A buy-in is a task that needs to be completed to start the workout, but doesn't count towards your score for the workout. The goal is to complete the buy-in quickly, so you have plenty of time to accumulate whatever the "scoring" task is.

So, last night, we had a 1200 meter run as a buy-in, and for the rest of the 13 minutes, we did Turkish Get-Ups. Our score for the workout was the total number of TGUs completed. Our 400 m loop is long - by as much as 20% or so. We actually ran about 0.85 miles, and it took me 6:54 to complete that task - about an 8mpm pace. Then, in the 6+ minutes that remained, I managed to perform 15 TGUs with a 26 pound kettlebell.

Today is a rest day. I'm hoping I feel less sore and beat up tomorrow. I'm planning to do a 3 hour or so run tomorrow, given that I have a marathon in 3 weeks.