CrossFit Uncensored - My Journey Days 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7

Day 3:
400m run w/ 45lb weight
20 power clean w/ thrust
400m run backwards
7 wall-ups
400m run
25 crickets
25 parrallel thrust
25 ghd sit-ups
20 squat arm lifts
130m lunge

Day 4:
Fran (name of this workout)
5 sets for time (10:52)
Thrusters (75lb)
Pull-ups (assisted with a band)

Day 5:
5 sets for time (9:41)
12 Wall Ball (15lb)
12 Toe To Bar (I had to do most of these at the beginner level)

Day 6:
Cindy (name of this workout)
AMRAP 20 minutes to complete as many sets as you can (12)
5 Pull-ups (assisted w/band)
10 Push-ups
15 Air Squats

Day 7:
Open Gym or makeup class. Since I didn't miss any classes I'm going to work on skills. I'm thinking pull-ups and rows for cardio since tomorrow we have a 5K run.

So I've listed my classes and scores for the past few classes. My starting date for CrossFit couldn't have really been any better (of course now I wish I would have started this much sooner) as I had no Softball games to get in the way of my training and no baseball games for the kids.

Day 3 was a killer, the lunges at the end were extremely hard to finish. The teamed up Saturdays are really fun.

Day 4 I felt great about my time and the thrusters (which are a front squat to the bar over your head) but I am bad on pull-ups.

Day 5 again I felt great about the wall ball tosses but the toe to bars require good form and more flexibility than I currently have. I hurt my shoulder in the first or second set and had to finish them off with more of knees to my chest. My shoulder gets thrown out often in softball and that's what it felt like I did, hanging from a bar with a shoulder feeling that way and trying to pull yourself upside down to touch toes to bar was painful to say the least.

Day 6 was really tiring. 20 minutes of working straight does not sound like much from the outside looking in but my 2 classes prior I completed in approx 10 minutes and I was hurting from those. I felt like I maintained a good pace, having assistance on the pull-ups helped me a lot with my shoulder but since I'm also new I just can't physically do 60 pull-ups yet. This is how you get there though. The push-ups proved to be the hardest for me, on my last set it took me about 1:30 to do 10 push-ups. I felt good with the air squats throughout the workout. At the end I couldn't do any more, I felt I gave a Max effort on this one and was happy with a 12 round score.

Friday is a 5k run which I'll have to do from home. I'll use a trusty Android app called Endomondo Pro to track my run, it maps it out, gives me my time, distance and anything else you would need. I don't think I've ever ran this far which is something like 3.1 miles.

A few things to add I picked up an app called Xercise which logs all my workouts and backs them up to my dropbox account. It's a CrossFit app with lots of cool things the iPhone version is iXercise and is due any day according to their website www.strike-labs.com. Another cool app I found is FitRadio, think Pandora but for the gym. It's free, many choices, no breaks. They claim to keep the bpm (beats per minute) high to push you through your workouts. Yes I'm a tech nerd so I dig this kind of stuff.

Lastly yesterday I posted about a new acronym I came across PMA (positive mental attitude) and it's something I'm going to strive for with the things I do in life. So far the CrossFit journey at www.crossfituncensored.com has been very fun and painful. Can't wait for my next class to begin.

CrossFit Uncensored - My Journey Day 2

So today I headed over to CrossFit Uncensored for my first official class of CrossFit (this is my 2nd full class but now I am foundation approved). I knew talking to the guys and girls on Thursday that today's class was going to be a tiring one. The class was pretty much a cardio intensive class and what way to start off your CrossFit journey than to see how out of shape you really are, LOL. So the class was setup of a warm up jog (my least favorite thing to do is just pure running) then we followed my a nice stretch routine. After the stretching we had some fun, played a game of musical medicine balls (think musical chairs). We walked, bear crawled, crab walked, skipped etc... all the way down to the winner. It was fun to do something unique like this but we all got a pretty decent little workout from it.

Now for today's class, it was called Tabata This: Row, Squat, Pull-up, Push-up and Sit-ups. The way it works is you have 8 rounds per station of the five things I just listed. You go as hard and as fast as you can for 20 seconds per round, you rest for 10 seconds in between rounds and then 1 minute while changing stations. So when it's all said and done your workout (actual time working not the rest periods) is 13 minutes and 33 to 34 seconds. Now this does not sound like it's hard but this is really 25 minutes of pure busting your ass as hard as your body will allow you too. When we were done my arms completely felt like jelly, I could barely lift them, I was dead tired. To score this workout you take your lowest score from each round and add the score from each workout together. I am sad to say I scored the lowest in my class but hey I'm new and cardio is not my strength and that's what I want to build more than anything else in my journey.

The funniest thing about this is, when we were done I couldn't help but think how much I wanted it to be Saturday morning already. I still can't feel my arms and I did my workout at 1:00PM today, so 10+ hours later they still are numb. I completely understand why friends of mine who have been doing this for the past weeks to years are in love with this program. I'm hooked and I just wish I would have heard about the CrossFit Box (gym) I'm going to earlier as they opened several months ago. I can't thank my friend Christy enough for telling me about it, her excitement about it sold me on giving this a go.

CrossFit Uncensored - Foundations

So this week Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday I started and completed my foundations classes for CrossFit. I think it's a very smart thing they do. The classes go through all the basic weight lifting techniques for CrossFit. They really stress on making sure you are doing the lifts correctly and even I was surprised at how I was doing some of the lifts wrong. There's very small tweaks you can do in your posture for example that completely put the strain from the front of your legs to the back of your legs where it should be. Probably the lift that concerns me the most is the overhead squats, it just looks like bad things can happen, but the idea is to do the lift correctly. The weight lifting is going to be interesting for me because I use to lift a lot of weight when I was young but have not done so in a long time. Will the strength come back quickly, will it take forever? I guess it does not really matter in the grand scheme of things as I'm not going to just try to bulk up, in fact I don't really want to bulk up all that much, really looking more forward to leaning out. So now that I'm done with my foundations classes I can officially participate in any class, I can't wait. I typically won't be able to go on Fridays as CrossFit Uncensored does not offer a late night class at this time but I happen to have tomorrow off so I am excited to get to my Day 2 of CrossFit.

Waiting for the next CrossFit Class

Since my next CrossFit class is not until Tuesday I decided I better not sit on my ass but instead get some cardio training in. So I went on a little over 2 mile run this evening. I probably  more or less jogged but my shins feel like they got ran over by a truck right now. I worked up a good sweat and tried to concentrate on my breathing. It felt good to get the heart rate up.

My next class is called the foundation classes and they teach you the various lifting techniques. I was told there are 3 classes for this and you have to finish the classes before doing any of the weights. I'm guessing those classes are fairly low impact since there really is no weights involved while learning so I'm planning on doing some running after the classses unitl I get to start back up which is looking like it will be on Saturday. 

In the meantime I'm also going to be watching a little better what I eat. Going to stay away from crappy fast food as best I can. Try to eat a lot of Veggies and Fruit and less Carbs. Will stay away from the sodas as best as I can too, I stopped drinking the leaded sodas a long time ago and switched to diet, but those are still terrible for you too.

CrossFit Uncensored

CrossFit Uncensored - My Journey Day 1

So today begins hopefully an era of change in my life. I went from being young and working out a ton holding a body weight of about 155. To getting married, having kids and ballooning up to 205, which is a lot of weight for someone with my body type.
A couple years back a friend gave me a family photo for Christmas and I was not very happy about what I saw, by what I looked like. I decided to drop some weight, which was also beneficial to the severe lower back pain I was experiencing. I got to 175 and have went up and down about 5 lbs ever since. I did this by eating a bit better and continuing to play sports. I never got back into the gym though, nor did I want too. The gym never felt right to me, over crowded, a lot of waiting, a lot of working out alone, nobody to push you, etc.

Enter CrossFit, I stopped by on Thursday to check it out, thanks to my friend Christy Linton. I could tell right away, the positive attitudes, people pushing each other, working together even though it's an individual thing. The number of people at the CrossFit gym is a manageable size and you have coaches helping you. The things that stood out right away was these people really seem to have a special bond with one another and the coaches are wonderful. They were very nice, answered all my questions and made me feel comfortable in deciding wanting to give this a go.

Today's workout started off with a 2 mile warm up run (are you f'n kidding me I was thinking) I have not ran 2 miles in a very, VERY long time. I'm committed though so no complaining. Then we did a nice stretch and warm up routine before our WOD (Workout of the Day). There were 12 of us, happened to be 6 guys and 6 girls so we split the teams boy / girl. Our workout consisted of 10 rope pull ups, 25 push ups, 30 sit ups, 20 kettle bell lifts, 30 team Burpees (belly ups), team tire flip, 10 inverted push ups, 200 meter run with a 20lb ball, team tire flip, 30 team Burpees.

I was exhausted, my partner (Kayla) was amazing and very positive, I felt great when it was all said and done. I couldn't believe I even was able to finish, I can easily say I had not worked out that hard since I was 17 and I'm 34 now. This is going to be a fun journey. I can instantly tell why many of my friends love CrossFit. It's not going to be easy (I'm sore as hell right now), but seeing the type of shape the fellow CrossFitters are in is unbelievable. I hope to make some good friends and have a great time at CrossFit Uncensored.