6 Miler + CrossFit

Saturday was quite the day.

I woke up bright and early and headed out for my long run with my friend Julie. I needed to do 6 miles and Julie said that the trail we would run from her house would be about that. Well, we hit 3 miles and still had a 1.65 mile loop around the local YMCA before we would head back for the final 3 miles.

I tried to do what I could and around mile 5 I was experiencing some discomfort in my stomach and my ankle, so I stopped and walked for a little bit. After a while, I started to feel better so I ran the remaining 1.95 miles back to her house. Overall, and not including the walking part, I completed 6.95 miles in 69:39 for an average pace of 9:58.

5 Mile Stretch

Shortly after my run, I headed to a local CrossFit box for their guest days workout. I met up with my friend Justin and was surprised to see his sister Kaitlyn had decided to try it out too! (Side note - I used to babysit these two and their younger brother back in the day.)

The workout for the day was actually a group workout made up of 3 members, which just so happened to work out perfectly for us!

Musical Medicine Balls
100 Kettle Bell Swings
100 Burpees
100 Goblet Lunges
100 Toes to Bar, Knees to Elbow, or Crunches

Team "TooPhit": Kaitlyn, me, and Justin

The workout could be divided among the members in anyway, as long as 100 reps were completed before moving on to the next exercise. While one member was doing the work out, another member would be at rest, and the other would be holding a medicine ball overhead. If the medicine ball would be set down, the workout also had to stop.

KB Swings

Our idea was to do 10 reps each and then rotate. I didn't make any adjustments to the kettle bell swings and I think that we would have sped up our time if we had done as many as we could before we switched members but we didn't have that much time to talk about a game plan so we just went with it.

Burpees

Burpees. Oh how I hate burpees. First of all, with (what I believe to be carpel tunnel) my wrist problems, it's really had to put weight on my wrist when it is bent. Secondly, I have no upper body strength. Thirdly, on this fine day, I had thought it would be a great idea to run 7 miles before going to CrossFit so my legs were very sluggish. I did what I could, but I could tell I was slowing the team down. So I did what I could before I felt like death and then passed it to the next member. I felt terrible, but you gotta do what you gotta do.

Kaitlyn doing goblet lunges

The goblet lunges are lunges where you knee comes to the ground each time, alternating legs. Each leg counted as 1 so we each did 20 before passing it on. No adjustments were made here and I ended up with some nice bruises on my knees. I love me some battle wounds!

Crunches instead of toes to bar

The last exercise was toes to bar. Toes to bar are done by hanging from a bar and bringing your toes to the bar. You can alter this by just bringing your knees to your elbows. Originally, I planned on trying to do knees to elbows from the bar because I thought I would be okay with it; however, by time we got to this my arms were jello and decided I would just pound out the reps doing the least difficult move: crunches.

Team "TooPhit" (as I am dubbing us as it's Justin's nickname around the box) finished the workout in 22:40.

We completed the work out with a few minutes of stretching. Even though the workout had it's challenges, I still enjoyed it and wish that they did guest days once a month!

Justin "TooPhit", Kaitlyn, and me.

What did you do Saturday morning? ;)

Attempting CrossFit

If you are not familiar with or haven't heard about CrossFit yet, let me tell you a little bit about what I know. It may lot be a lot right now, considering Saturday was my first CrossFit workout at Guerilla CrossFit, but I will share what I have figured out thus far.

CrossFit is described as a strength conditioning program that is constantly varied, functional movement, at high intensity. I believe that most workouts are 20 minutes in length that repeat a series of workouts to complete a round - generally called Workout of the Day (WODs). You will do as many rounds as you can in the time allowed to complete your WOD. At the end you say how many rounds you completed. This number is shared among the group but is good for motivation and/or competition if you are driven that way. It is also good to keep track of your growth. Oh - and I should tell you, before moving on, that most of the WODs are named after women or fallen heroes.

Warm Up

We started with a 400 meter jog that was followed by a 7 minute warm up. It was 15 seconds of each set for 4 rounds of:

• plank
• super man
• right side plank
• left side plank
• mountain climbers
• jumping jacks
• jump squats

WOD - Cindy

Cindy was set at 20 minutes and looked like this:

• 5 pull-ups
• 10 push-ups
• 15 squats

The good thing about CrossFit is that most of it can be modified so that you can grow. I will be the first to tell you that I have very little upper body strength and, on top of that, I believe I have carpel tunnel in my right wrist. So you can see the problem I face when it comes to the pull ups and push ups. Thankfully, I was able to modify both so that I could complete them and work up to doing them the correct way. 

I used rings instead of doing actual pull ups. The rings are like the ones that male gymnasts would use. This rings were strapped to the bar, feet placed the ground and out to the front. I laid back and extended my arms straight out from chest and then pulled the rings toward my body, elevating my back further from the ground.

When it comes to push ups, I can't even do one "lady" style because my wrist will immediately shoot pain up my arm. The pain is so bad that people can't even give me a solid high-five. So to modify, I used a weighted bar that was set on a rack. Because my grip to the bar will keep my wrist in a straight position, it doesn't cause any pain and I was able to do the push-ups. 

When it came to squats, there is no modification. I just needed to work on my form. 

Scoring

As I stated above, you count the number of rounds completed. If you aren't able to complete a full round but was in the middle of a round when the time was up, you just count the number of movements completed in that last round. For example, when the 20 minute WOD was done, I had a score of 7.8 which breaks down to: 7 full rounds with 5 pull-ups and 3 push-ups completed.

I really enjoyed the workout and am considering joining so I can add some weight training to my workouts as, at this time, I mainly do cardio (Zumba and spin).

Have you tried CrossFit before? Did you like it or hate it? Tell me about your experience below in the comment section. :)