Overdoing it at CrossFit

After missing CrossFit all of last week, I made up for it last night.  And, I'm likely to be sore for days.

I like to do squats every week.  I think it's a lift that all lifters, and many other athletes (skiers, for example) should do at least weekly.  To really improve in the squat, I think I need to squat 2-3 times per week.  This year, our gym has been on a fairly fixed schedule.  Monday has been squat day.  Tuesday is Olympic lifting.  Wednesday is a pressing day.  Thursday is "work your weakness".  And Friday is a wild card, but I rest on Fridays during ski season.

I also take Mondays as a rest day after I've skied all weekend.  So, I've been missing the squat days.  Recently, I decided that I would modify my Tuesday workouts, and do the Monday squat work instead of Olympic work on Tuesdays.  We have a back room at the gym where I can squat without disrupting the main workout.  The schedule for Monday was back squats - 5 sets of 3, followed by barbell lunges - 3 sets of 8 per side.

I wasn't sure how heavy I could go on squats, given that my heaviest squats since my surgery have been 155 or so.  But, before surgery, I would have built to 3 x 315 on the 5x3 workout.  So, I decided to start at 135 last night and increase the weights until I hit a safe max for the day.  I ended up doing sets at the following weights:

135
155
175
185 (barbell wheels come in weights that make pure linear increments more difficult)
205
225
235
245

So, I did 8 sets rather than 5 and it was difficult.  Then, I did the lunges with 65, 75, and 75 pounds on my back.  That was plenty.

Luckily, the metabolic conditioning was short (but painful):

40 seconds of max thrusters (start in the bottom front squat position and end with the bar overhead)
Rest 20 seconds
40 seconds of max burpees to target (jumping at the end of the burpee to a target 6" above your reach)
Rest 20 seconds

Do this three times.  I got 61 total reps, and most of them were from the thrusters.  I'm pathetically slow at burpees.

Today, I'm amazingly sore, but I'll be back at Crossfit at 5:30.