Post from Chad Dougherty

WHAT'S THE POINT?
Chad Dougherty, CFAI Trainer


It's hard. It's heavy. It's 5 am and the alarm is letting you know the suck fest is about to start all over. The last six months have been a blur. It started with your best friend from college calling about his new fitness program and how you had to get on board. "Remember college, when we could both run a 23 minute 5k? He said, "This stuff will bring you back. Plus, it will make you look like a stud again". So you sign up at your local "CrossFit" gym. It's been a good six months. Your "Fran" time has gone from 13:49 with the bar and jumping pull-ups, to 8:30 as Rx'd. Pretty cool. You can dead lift your bodyweight and look and feel great, but don't realize it. You've started to wonder why you go. What's the point? Your not 21 again, your still carrying around half of your old gut. You work this hard and you're still not ripped? You feel like hitting the snooze button and going back to bed. Stop, and take inventory. You've forgotten about the heartburn, it's gone. Winded at the top of the stairs? No. You're picking the kids up and throwing them around like the "good old days". Your blood pressure has dropped a bit, and you can play basketball with the kids until they want to stop. Health happens when you're not looking. It sneaks up on you because you've already forgotten what it was like before. You felt dull, slow, and weak, with unexplained physical ailments. But now you've become a "CrossFitter". You're already better than college, because now you have a 21 minute 5k, and you can do 20 pull ups. You've discovered it's about more than looks, it's about longevity. It's about the daily tasks that have become easy. It's about your perception of life, it's curiously better. You continue for all the things you want to have happen, but haven't. You've tapped into the unforeseen, or better yet, you understand the possibilities. You are one of the fortunate few. Now it's up to you. You're strong. You're fast. You've already changed your life, and the lives around you. You can continue at the current pace and get a little fitter, stronger, and faster each day. Or you can step it up and realize changes you only hoped for. A little more pain, a little more tolerance to that pain. You change your diet. You get enough rest. You fill the holes in your technique. This is your world. Go get it. Is 60% enough? Maybe. Is 80% better? Yes. Have you given enough? You tell me. Let's light it up.

Deadlifts

"There is no such thing as a self-made man. We are made up of thousands of others. Every one who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success."
- George Matthew Adams

Last week's DL set
3 x 3
155/175/185

This week's DL set
3 x 5
175/185 (2 rep-fail)/175

Hmm... looks like some tweaking needs to be done.

One tip I want to remember is from Coach Zach. During the 3x3 set he said I need to lead with my shoulders, and not have the first body part to move be my rear. Shoulders bring the rest of the body up. I hope I have that tip right. I tried to think of that during the 3x5 set.

Angie 3/29

I've been blogging more over at

www.thosecrazygirls.wordpress.com

so you should check out TeamLLcoolJ when "Lory's Adventures" runs really dry. Linds wrote a great post about her Angie experience and I didn't want to double team that hoe (Angie, that is, not Linds) so I'm going to record my benchmark over here just so I can look back as needed.

My previous January Angie:
75 kipping pull ups
40 push ups on toes
60 push ups on knees
100 sit ups
100 squats

This time around I started with sit ups and got through those unbroken. Then, it was 100 squats and I wanted to speed through these because I knew I would need a lot of time for pull ups. Squats weren't unbroken, I think I stopped around 50 and then at 80 to shake it out. Next time I'm shooting for unbroken squats to go along with my sit ups (that'll be a nice pair).

100 pull ups!! I've heard horror stories of the rips we acquire from pull ups with Angie so going into it I was worried about my hands. But I taped up and was strategizing for sets of 5. I ended up with the beginning sets being of 7, then did a bunch at 5, and then pull ups in reps of 2, then 1... The ones at the end were questionable about my chin getting over the bar but all in all they felt pretty good. Ended up with a little blood and 2 blisters but not close to some bad tears I've gotten in the past.

As Barbara mentioned in a recent post, a lot times in CrossFit we experience 2 steps forward, 1 step back. As good as my pull ups felt, I had expired so much energy on them that my push ups were lacking. I reeeeeally wanted to stay on my toes so I could officially say that I did Angie as prescribed but I wasn't getting full range of motion and I was just failing at every push up when I got to around the 50 rep mark. The new coach, Lauren (who is awesome!) talked to me afterwards about core strength and how if I keep everything tight then the power will come from my core and not my arms so plank holds are definitely in order! My arms were just absolutely cashed.

In summary, my March Angie was:
100 kipping pull ups
60 push ups on toes
40 push ups on knees
100 sit ups
100 squats
20:52