Hey Guys
The Blog is now at www.reefbeefandbeards.com
cheers
Muzz
House keeping
Haven’t had an update in a while.
Just in the process of changing the domain name and getting the worlds best web geek designer and Crossfitter (must only be one so I feel safe making this claim) to give the blog a makeover on the weekend.
the new web address will be www.reefbeeefandbeards.com I know, dumb name but it pretty much covers it ATM.
And no, the current colour train wreak isn’t what it will look like.
Training
This has been ok. The new OLY program has been taxing and juggling with metcons has been a little tough to adjust to. I will be posting the program and a journal once the new site is up.
The is also rampant speculation…mostly in my head…about following the Outlaw Way programming. I am trying to con Tim into doing it with me given he has mad crossfitting skills and one of us…Tim… really should be able to do the workouts. Also give they can sometimes take up to 2 hours including the Oly work, there is going to be a “when” issue that needs to be resolved. Anyways…Powerball should sort that out.
So hopefully it will be up Sunday night. there will be the usual jibber jabber but some more serious nerdy CrossFit stuff too.
I know I said I wasn’t going to do an update…more out of fear of my own demise after doing 100 Thrusters for time.
But I survived and did ok.
Tim and I had a little strategy after he used himself as a guinea pig in the morning.
Based on his effort we decided to break it into 6 reps every 30 seconds and with 20 reps to left go as hard as possible to finish.
I nearly blew the strategy by going for extra reps too early, but managed to right the ship and get back on track.
LIv’s thruster form was so good it was distracting and a little demoralising. I was dying and trying to keep on schedule and she looked like she was cruising. I needed to get on an angle so I couldn’t see her.
The result: 100 x 40kg thrusters in 8:40.
Fucking glad that is over.
Oh, by the way Tim, expect Kill Bill levels of revenge. You’ve been warned.
Wow. Day 1 of the Program and I was bent.
I was in full blown Grampsmode by 8:30pm. Lights out at 9pm. Asleep by 9:01pm.
This program is going to take some adjusting to and some decent planning around recovery and refueling. I may need to leave Nat and marry my roller.
But it has already paid some dividends.
First of all Tim’s morning class was structured in such a way that I am now power snatching like a pro. Instead of noticing the rare great rep, I am noticing the crappy one. I managed to smash the morning WOD due to the snatch. I ended up being relatively well rested for the burpees. Piece of cake when you do it efficiently…it was a wonderful experience…probably will never happen again.
Some people find God in moments of perfection or beauty, during those snatches I found Froning….well maybe not this much:
Yes, he actually said this after smashing Day 1 of the Regionals…it isn’t made up. On behalf of mortals everywhere: you arsehole!
But I did two rounds more than everyone else. Jacks, Liv and I are always within spitting distance of each other, but yesterday, was vastly different. The only explanation is the snatches. The were on the money and at no stage did I try to go too fast with them. Smooth as possible as fast as possible. Not one ounce of WOD drunkeness.
Those burpees on the other hand…
In the evening OLY session, I told Tim at length about my gammy shoulders and how I can’t snap the lock out on a jerk….long story short we did a gnarly split jerk warm up and BOOM! Perfect jerk! One after the other. I was stunned.
He was so nonplussed about it while I was nearly peeing myself with excitement. The feet still need some work and by the end of the C&J I was getting that right too.
Add to that my clean (ie squat clean) is now a clean and not a reverse curl with a front squat attached and Day 1 was a raging success.
No OLY tonight, but back into it tomorrow. Snatches galore.
Tonight’s METCON is 100 thrusters for time. Thus proving once and for all there is no God. There will be no post about it, suffice to say it sucked arse and I hate my coach.
New box. New Coach. New ideas.
New World Order!
Not the weirdo Freemason conspiracy theory…unless…wait one god damned second.
I think I have seen this before…
OMFG!!!!
Anyway, Freemason’s controlling our thoughts aside, the change of scenery has reignited my love of finding ways to break myself while drowning in pools of my own vomit.
On Saturday Tim and I had a broad ranging chat about programing. The gist of it was: whose programming we like, whose we don’t, who in their right mind supports the Buffalo Bills? …..Screw you Tim!!
Buffalo Bills – Destroying my NFL seasons for 20 years….one of the reasons I CrossFit angry.
The conversation meandered to “what is the big goal?”
As silly as it still sounds to admit out loud because it is such a big goal, but going to the Regionals as a 45-50 Masters athlete is still the dream.
Tim didn’t even blink. In brief, his assessment (and probably Jojo’s and Pickles’s) was that work capacity is pretty good, but skills and OLY lifting need work. I can muscle through WODs were skills are in small bunches, but big technical efforts catch me out…big time.
Agree 100%
So our discussion led to “what are games athletes focusing on?”. But more specifically what do I need to do now to set up long term success in comps?
Aside from goat work, the number one thing that came to mind was OLY lifting. Not being just OK, but being technically proficient and efficient as possible while developing speed strength that can be applied across most CrossFit efforts.
Recently at a CrossFit HQ love in at Colorado, Rich Froning lifted a clean and jerk and snatch combo that would have landed him fourth at the US Olympic trials. What a freak. Dan Bailey wasn’t too far behind. Crazy.
So this will be week one. The first baby step into a more structured program. 4 METCONs and 4/5 OLY sessions (depending on where we are in the month) is the basic rule of thumb. It will be tinkered with down the track. This is just stage 1. As technique gets better then OLY can be scaled back.
I was really keen to try the Outlaw Way, and I still am, but Tim convinced me to do METCONs in the morning and Greg Everett (of Catalyst Athletics fame) OLY programming at night.
The Outlaw Way strength/skill/WOD sessions are 1.5 to 2 hours long. I just can afford that time in one hit…unless I turned up to a 4:30 session and set up a base camp and worked hard for 2 hours. That may work. Or Nat could come home and say “Muzz I think you should train full time, because I love you and want you to succeed” (and monkeys might fly out of my butt).
The OLY component is fairly basic to start with but should dial in technique and improve lift weights.
I have now done the first 4 weeks up in a spreadsheet and it looks full. Hopefully I am not biting off more than I can chew.
So the next month is early morning METCONs (yukko!!!) and evening OLY lifting (yay!!!).
I expect the METCONs to suffer a little. But we will have to wait and see. Should be an interesting month.
But if my snatching looks half as good as this I will be more than happy.
Just a gentle reminder about how much work a lot of us have to do
ATTACK OF THE GOATS
Going to start a new section to the blog. We all have them and we all work to fix them. Probably the best things in CrossFit is that first moment when “we get it”…whatever “it” may be.
Getting fit is cool. But mastering, or at the very least managing to get a few good reps, of a skill that once seemed impossible is the ducks nuts. I mean a giant set of feathered clangers, if you will.
I recently sent a pretty big list through to Tim. After we talk it through I will post it here…and we all can have a laugh.
Toes to Bar
One of my goats has been toes to bar. Not so much getting my toes to the bar, but to do it with the kip in an efficient manner. A real kip and not one that looks like an electrocuted fruit bat swinging on the bar.
That horrible swing with no control. Reps only can go as fast as the swing and last until the grip pops.
One of the best guys I have seen to T2B is Matty Abs. Under control, fast and done in big bunches.
A week ago I had a horror WOD that included of 3 rounds of 20 T2B. First set I muscled and “swung” through. The next 2 sets were awful and took me the best part of 4 days to complete.
So naturally, I stewed on it for a week.
Then yesterday we had 50 T2B in a Chipper…oh fuckski (that is Russian for “fuck” ). So in front of the class Tim puts me on the spot to practice said vile movement…rep 1 = shit, rep 2 = kip, rep 3= kip, rep 4 =kip….hey WTF is happening? I quickly did 5 and got off the bar before I ran out of good reps.
It was later I realised the warm up bar work Tim had us do had really set up my controlled kip. He has a particluar warm up we do to get our shoulders mobile. The pass through component set up this breakthrough.
During the WOD I got 20 great reps out before it went to crap. But I am now on my way. Now I know what a good rep feels like and now I can slowly build these suckers up.
Tim has given me a strategy for practicing them now to really dial them in. So hopefully in a few weeks these won’t be Goats, rather just a god awful movement.
It was amazing what it did to the METCON time. I was dreading it. Instead I finished in 17:26…instead of the 25-30 I was expecting before the WOD.
The Silver Back Gorilla in it’s natural habitat
Dead Goat: Handstand Pushup Kip
Here is one buried goat…more of a mosquito. But I couldn’t really get the kip going consistently on HSPUs.
Well no more. Ripped through 25 HSPUs last night. The kip is working. Thanks Tim.
Now it is time to dial in the virtuosity…and hopefully meet hot chicks with tatts while doing them.
It has been a few days since my last update.
Since then there have been 4 WODs following the toes to bar shit blizzard.
I have had a pretty good run with these suckers. There has been a “holy shitballs, did I just do that” moment with a benchmark WOD and then tonight’s lung buster. There was the Saturday Crippler that I smash and wondered what the fuss was about…then about 4 hours later passed out on the couch.
The highlights. 9:01 for the Crippler (30x100kg squats followed by a 1.6km run), and tonight’s 10:42 for 5 rounds of 200m sprint and 7 power cleans with 1min rest after each completed round.
The holy fuck moment was 18:01 for Angie. That was 100 pull ups, 100 push ups, 100 sit ups and 100 squats in order. Tim and Jo had given me a few tips to attack it as well as a really cracking tip a few days earlier for the pull ups. I moved through at a pretty solid pace. Pretty much on the limit for most of it, like when everything cramped when with 10 push ups to go. Or the leg cramps with 20 squats to go. But a smarter, steadier approach paid off. I didn’t get WOD drunk and had a good one.
It left me a little ruined for tonight, but still went full retard. Tonight was a bit of a Beastmode night and got a bit of the competitive fire going again. Had MBM blowing snot everywhere chasing me so it had to kick in sooner or later. Seems to be a bit of a intensity building around our little group.
Nat is going to Melbourne for a medical conference for a week, so I will be cuddleing up to this floosey over the next few days
well hello sexy lady
I am a WOD away from being physically destroyed…roller time will be upped.
Zoning
Also the Zone diet (pretty much zoned paleo) gets really dialled in this week. My training intensity has gone up a notch and I just need to eat…a lot. Not sure about the Zone quantities of broccoli, and the veges can get a bit on the massive side so some serious planning needs to be done. So with the Boss away, it is a good chance to lock this down. T-Bone and Barra until I puke!!
I will try to journal it a bit here. I promise not to put to many food pics up…that is what Facebook is for.
A Declaration of Shenanigans!!!
Liv was pipped by Jacks by a few seconds tonight. ”Ok” you may say. Jacks is mental and can go flat out on lifts. But two days ago Liv came 3rd in her category and was the 4th overall woman in a half ironman Triathlon. ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?! I would still be shitting blood. That is bullshit Liv, and I declare SHENANIGANS on you !!!!
TAKE THAT!!
I have no idea what this means, but I feel fucking better for declaring it.
Shit!!! Breaking Bad is on gotta go……
Had a good one tonight…but here is the catch with CrossFit, I feel more hammered than I did when I had a shocker last night.
Coach set me a target of 16min…finished in 13:02…thought my way through it…7 rounds, hit most of my time targets. Yay!
The catch is I flew and now I am paying for it, so I will try to do the combo update after the “Crippler” tomorrow…it maybe Sunday.
So as an apology here is a couple of pics of one of my new fave CrossFitter Canadian Champ Lucas Parker.
Great Beard. Check.
Ranga. Check.
Wax free. Check.
Built like a tank. Check
And an arse kicker!!
The Anti JAST Inmate…100% wax free
Lucky fish!
I was introduced to a new phrase by Tim tonight,
“WOD Drunk”.
Apparently I get a little tipsy once the WOD starts.
3-2-1 Go!…and I have all the critical think ability of a drunken uni student…just enough brains to realise I am fucking up but too pissed to do anything about it.
Ok, let’s think this WOD through….3-2-1, go!….I am soooooo pissed, bitches!!!!
Sometimes I can get away with it on shorter WODs or ones with quick turn overs of exercises. But I have been a bit exposed with some of these WODs with serious chunks of reps.
This is not some much about being fit or not fit. I know I am fit, but this is about going up a notch.
Tonight’s WOD was a classic example. Not a good WOD to get pissy and loose. The longer it went the deeper the hole got.
I think the thing I take away from tonight is slow it down a touch, preserve form and be more efficient..settle down Gramps.
Strength
12 mins to find 3 rep max Push Press – 80kg. Was more about good form, rather than absolute max. Not too bad.
METCON
21-15-9 of 50kg Power Cleans and 50kg Thrusters
Thrusters after Power Cleans. Up yours Tim, seriously dude. WTF? Where you beaten as a child? This was uncalled for!
So I was stinking, blind WOD drunk from about rep 2 of the power cleans with a fierce bent over row going…”I had no idea I was doing it, officer”…that is the classic drunks excuse. Tim was quick to pencil me in for some drills…not sure if they will be before or after the toes to bar clinic.
My jump was good but too much reverse curl.
Yeah Bro, nice lift.
Then after hitting the cleans here come the heavy thruster. I don’t think anything needs to be said about heavy thrusters.
8:45. Not sure where that sits. I tried to hold onto the bar as long as I could, but that extra thruster weight and having them second just made this as unpleasant as finding a fly in your earl grey tea….yeah that fucking bad!
I say old chum, how about you fuck off out of my beverage!
Oh well, Tim will post tomorrow’s WOD tonight…time to strap on a nappy and grab some tissues.
This pit stop is unscheduled but Coach induced and very much needed. Don’t want to end up like this guy…
7:30 last night this was me…
The smashings resume Thursday.
