Heavy kettlebells are fun

Took Tuesday as a rest day, cause I was pretty sore from my heavy squats and (somewhat) heavy power cleans.

Wednesday it was back to the fun times. I kinda sand-bagged the deadlift portion of the WOD -- still kinda antsy about reintroducing heavy deadlifts, but I went for it on the heavy kb swings, cause I love those. :)

Strength: deadlift 3x5 at 80-85% 1RM

Results: 95-105-125

I've been working on hip position on my return, and am feeling a lot more confident. My natural lordosis (forward hip inclination / "booty pop") has made it a long process for me to learn how to "flatten" my back, instead of hyperextending my lumbar spine. The "stick your butt out" cue is basically over-kill to someone like me -- it's out all the time already!! hehe

All I can say is, thank god for my wonderful coach Doug who is so patient with me, and gives me so much great advice and guidance. With him helping me, I finally have hope that someday I will make it to that 1.5 x bodyweight deadlift. :)

WOD

KB SWINGS 32/24 KG

30 REPS FIRST MINUTE- NEXT MINUTE OFF- FIVE TIMES

GOES DOWN LIKE THIS: YOU MUST DO 30 REPS THE FIRST MINUTE, REST THE SECOND MINUTE, 30 REPS THE THIRD MINUTE, REST THE FOURTH MINUTE, AND SO ON FOR FIVE WORK SETS TOTAL. KEEP TRACK OF ANY MISSED REPS AND PERFORM BURPEES AS A GROUP AT THE END OF THE WOD.

ANY MISSED REP EQUALS A PENALTY OF 3 BURPEES...

Results: using the 24kg kettlebell, and swinging it American-style, I completed 85 total swings: 20-20-15-15-15

So my penalty should've been 195 burpees. I did 40-ish. We ended up capping the burpee penalty for some, especially those who can gone outside their comfort zone with a truly heavy kb.

The hardest part of this WOD for me was just hanging onto the kettlebell at the bottom. Especially swinging overhead, holy crap did that thing pick up speed on it's way down.

After doing this WOD in the morning, I coached in the afternoon, and was messing around with my athletes. I swung the 32kg twice in a row to eye-level, and did about 5 1-armed swings of the 24kg on each arm, also eye-level. Now that was fun! I know, I know -- it is messed up to get some much enjoyment out of swinging giant cannonballs with handles. :-p

2-a-days

It wasn't my original intention to do two WODs today, but what the hell, I did anyway. :-D

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AM WOD
 
This morning I did a makeup of yesterday's WOD between coaching the 0630 and 0830 classes. My back was just so tight yesterday, I couldn't get myself to the box to get the WOD done.

WOD: 150 kettlebell swing (32k/24) Every time you drop the kb, run 150m.

Results: 23:59 (sets of: 20-20-14-16-20-15-15-15-15)

I have to admit this one intimidated me. I feel pretty confident with the 45#/20kg bell, but the 53#/24kg bell is just BIG. After the 3rd set of swings, when I only got 14, I wanted to just cry and give up. I'm proud of myself for finishing.

And I also must admit to resting a bit too much, and wearing gloves. I had wussy grip today, ew.

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PM WOD

This WOD was created by one of my best buds at our box, Allie. She is amazing and inspires me every day. She was the winner of our Paleo challenge, and in addition to some other not-so-great prizes, she got to make up her own WOD! I think she did a great job coming up with something challenging but fun. :)

"Allie"
For time:
400m run
20 pullups
400m run
15 wall balls (20/14)
400m run
10 burpees
400m run
5 tire flips

Results: 14:49

Um... in a word -- SLOW. I came out of the gate pretty fast, but my runs were just sucking by the 3rd and 4th 400's.

And can I just say the wussy hands factor came into play majorly in how long it took me to do my pullups. I was back down to sets of 2 and 3. BOOOOOOOOO. I know it was my 2nd WOD, but seriously! I need to be doing a minimum of 3 pullups every time I get on the bar.

Coming soon -- tire flips video. Our tire is only ~100#'s, so it's not that hard to flip, but it still *looks* badass. :-D

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With WODs covered, here are some links I've seen the last day or two. The first one I'd really like your comments on.

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Lisbeth yet again provides some very meaty food for thought, this time the subject is females scaling pushups, a topic that I have actually spent a lot of time thinking about and researching. This, to me, is a breath of fresh air. I have a hatred of knee-pushups.

Get Off Your Knees

"Do tire push-ups, bench push-ups, ring push-ups, wall push-ups. If you don’t have real honest-to-God, chest-to-deck push-ups, then do whatever you have to do in order to get the push-ups done. Tire, rings, wall. But NEVER knee push-ups. 

Seriously. Simply decide that you would rather eat glass than ever go to your knees again."

Post thoughts to comments. How did your own pushups progress? Do you think putting down your knees to scale, rather than changing the angle, hampered your progress to "the real deal"?

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Stop Being Content and Become Great

"No matter what happens in life or in your training, if you live outside your comfort zone then nothing can knock you off your game.  Sure things might knock you back a step or two, but you are the type of person in which problems and other negative things just bounce right off of because you are used to being outside your comfort level."

I really need to cultivate this type of thing in my life, because I definitely get too set in my ways, and too upset when things suddenly change.

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I haven't been gainfully employed in over 1 year now, and that still feels really... strange. Reading this article about what "work" really means was good for me. It's hard to uncouple your self-esteem from job performance and salary, and instead derive self-worth from things you accomplish on your own.

Some quotes:

"My definition of work now is that it’s an activity which is undertaken for a productive outcome."

"This turns work into something more like a state of mind than a set of particular activities."

"Work isn’t a place which I go to, or a certain portion of the day; it’s the meaningful stuff which I do, the contributions which I make in the world."