300 - Day 18

Crossfit321 beat me into the ground. It was good.

We started out with a warm-up that borders on a workout in itself:
1000m row
20 bodyweight squats
20 second Samson stretch, each leg
20 sit-ups
25 push-ups
15 pull-ups
20 back-extensions

After this, Shawn (the owner) asked me what experience I had, if any with the Dead Lift and Snatch. I told him that I incorporated them into my workout, but that I had never been taught proper form. So we spent probably 20 minutes or so going over proper form for the dead lift and snatch.

After that, Shawn introduced me to Linda. I had a lot of fun with Linda - I was worn out by the end of it. Linda consists of the following:

10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Repetitions of
1.5x Bodyweight Deadlift
Bodyweight BenchPress
3/4 Bodyweight Clean

Total 55 repetitions for each exercise.

We ended up modifying this workout for those that did it. I used:

Bodyweight Deadlift (185)
Bodyweight Benchpress (185)
about 50% bodyweight Clean (95)

It took me about 43 minutes - I might have finished earlier, but there was some chit-chatting and stuff mixed in.

Today though, I am sore. Real sore. Certainly toward the end of the workout I was having a little bit of trouble with the benchpress making my reps - but my forearms were killing me. On my set of 5, I had to drop my deadlift at set 3, because I physically could not hang on.

This workout is a challenge, even modified. I don't think I would have been able to complete it with the specified weights (This would have been about a 275 Deadlift, 185 Benchpress and 140 clean) because my forearms would have given out for sure.

Today, my forearms, shoulders, lower back and the part of my pecs connecting my arms to my body are sore. I would say it is one of the more effective crossfit workouts I have done to date. I'll definitely be going back to get a membership of some sort - even if I can only make it in once a week, the expertise among the members and trainers there will greatly improve my technique for exercises across the board, making my exercises more effective and less dangerous.

I learned a lot just about the dead lift. The reason I didn't do dead lifts for a while was because I hurt my back doing them - because when I looked the exercise up online, I found the straight leg variation - and my lower back was weak at the time.

I fixed this by finding a new variation that someone described as a squat with the bar hanging down in front, instead of on your shoulders. This was less dangerous and never resulted in injury - but apparently was still bad form. By the end of yesterday, I had good form for the dead-lift - and I was "getting" the clean - which consists of a partial dead-lift.

So I'm certainly happy with the experience and would suggest the Crossfit321 to anyone interested in CrossFit training - or anyone looking to dramatically increase their fitness level.