so yesterday was Day 12. I was running around going to my nutritionist, chiropractor (threw out my neck SLEEPING – OMG!), walk with my friend Francine (about an hour), then Crossfit.
The guy who was the coach is the guy who I was going back and forth on email with, when I was trying to decide which box to start at. (Then there was the Living Social coupon which made it a “fait accompli.”) I’m not sure if he’s the owner, or a “head coach” or whatever.
The warmup was 500 m row, and then 2x a ton of stuff – kip, pull up, push ups, a shoulder “roll” (PVC pipe held in front, then you keep your arms straight and put it up and over your head so that it’s now held with your arms straight, behind your back like against the small of your back), wall squats (which is facing a wall and doing a squat, which keeps your body in an upright position – I just didn’t have to go down that far), etc. I can’t remember all the things, but Bo (the coach) had to basically show me how to do them all.
And NO, of COURSE I couldn’t do a pull up or a push up. So he gave me different ones to do – for example, they have parallel bars (like the men use at the Olympics?) and “my” pushup was against one of those bars, with my feet up on a mat.
The key to the whole enterprise is doing it with the right FORM. I think that has to be the hallmark of Crossfit. For example, when we’re doing “calesthenics” at Wednesday night LLS workouts, it doesn’t matter “how” you do a pushup, you just have to do it. So I’m on my knees, and my elbows are winged way out from my body. That’s just not “allowed” here – the idea is to keep your elbows close to your body, and you just have to change your position (as I said, I was almost standing up – !) until you can “do it” with the right form.
That’s like the squats the first day – where I had to do it “right” and keep my heels down, so I had to climb up and down a vertical stanchion.
The workout was
8 RFT – Row 300M / 10 DL 80/55KG / 12 Box Jump 24/20″
In “words” this is 8 “rounds for time” (I was pretty right on what RFT stands for), you do 300M row, then 10 dead lifts, then 12 box jumps.
I think the “Rx” (meaning “Prescription” in Crossfit-speak..or the amount you are “supposed” to do) is what the number is after the exercise – so for example I think that “12 box jump 24/20” means 24 inch box for men, 20 inch box for women. I don’t think I have to worry about that for a LONG TIME LOL!
Bo showed me how to “use” the rowing machine, how to do a dead lift (butt out…butt back…arms straight…), how to box jump (2 feet up, step down).
The thing about the rowing machine that was interesting is it has a numbered “wheel” on the right side where the “Fan” is. 10 means that it’s harder to pull, but you “go farther” with each pull (think like on a bike). 1 means that it’s easier to pull, but you go “shorter distance” per pull. I started at 6, and worked up so that the last 2 rounds I was doing it at 10. It was hard but it was so much better that you go farther per pull! Bo said that usually somehow who is shorter/more fast twitch does the lower number and the taller/more slow twitch does a higher number.
I did the dead lift with 10 lbs on the bar – which was actually super surprising to me. I’m not sure why but I didn’t think I was going to even be able to lift the barbell.
The best part was the box jump though.
There was no way that I could jump up to a box-box – this girl don’t got jump. So Bo set me up so that I was jumping “up onto” 4 gymnastics “squishy mats” (you know the kind – from high school – they fold up onto each other and have a velcro strip at the end to attach them?). It looked super duper stupid low but that was high enough for me. HOWEVER, the BEST PART was in showing me “how” to do a box jump, Bo caught his foot on the edge, and nearly tripped on his face. I started laughing so hard (way too hard – because I was nervous)! I couldn’t do the jump for like 30 seconds because I was laughing so hard. I told Bo that OBVIOUSLY he’d done that on purpose to make me feel okay. Then he started to laugh which made me laugh harder.
I even posted on Twitter and Facebook that “obviously this was the box for me” because of that.
This group of folks had one gal (Eileen) who was SUPER nice. She said that everyone who does that class is or has been hurt, and they’re not competitive. I asked her about the 9:00 class, and she said that they have all been together since the beginning, so it’s likely kinda weird to start in that one because though they’re super friendly they have literally been working out for years and years together.
So who came in first (granted I wasn’t doing the Rx, but…) – me! By a few seconds – Eileen came in 2nd doing the Rx. That was super cool. I can’t tell you how “long it took me” because it didn’t really matter – it’s not like this is one of the WODs that people “know” it’s just a conditioning WOD. I asked Eileen what happens to the names/times on the board, etc. and she said that every week they actually take a photo of it and will send it to you if you want.
Bo was super nice in that perfect “friendly/uncaring” way. He would give me tips as I was doing the rounds – just like Anthony had, with a little tip each time. The biggest tip for me was that I was rolling my shoulders forward on the dead lift, and I had to leave them more “neutral.”
Today the workout is:
CONDITIONING
20 Min AMRAP
100M Run
7 Burpee
7 Pull Up
OK can I say one thing? Burpees are my Waterloo. I mean – sure I can’t do pull ups or push ups or anything but Burpees have ALWAYS been something that just doesn’t work for me. I’m not quite sure what to do about this. The class is in a bit less than an hour and I’m sitting here considering whether I “should go.” I just gotta go. Whoever is the coach is going to have to give me some scaling for it, that’s just going to have to be what happens. I mean, it’s 20 minutes, for goodness’ sake. For some reason the schedule doesn’t show what the Warm Up is (it has before), but we’ll see. I think it’s a different coach too, not Anthony or Bo (I think it’s Bill).
Oh – AMRAP means “as many as you can in the time” (as opposed to doing a certain number of rounds, you do as many rounds as you can in that time).
I also discovered yesterday that there is a box of chalk, and you can “chalk” whatever you want next to where you are working out. So, like, yesterday, I just kept “score” of how many rounds I had done on my way to 8. Genius. Then I don’t have to keep it in my head.
How do I feel? I thought when I got up yesterday I was pretty unscathed – my inner thighs were “sore” but not super duper sore. Okay, as the day progressed, my inner thighs got sore-er and sore-er so by the end of the day (and now), I am pretty much a freakin’ Frankenstein trying to walk. As I said to Bo yesterday, though, I noticed that I felt like I was standing taller (which is one of the biggies for H – he says I HAVE to start working on something to stop me from having “computer shoulder slump”) – HOWEVER, I couldn’t get out of the car. LOL but um not really laughing! (Maybe I should be driving the van so I step DOWN to the road instead of the lower-slung car!)
Today Melody and Leann get here tonight at about 6:00. I was supposed to do a hike with Jane M. but I have too much to do so I emailed and texted her yesterday for a raincheck – I’m sad but I just don’t have the time if I go to Crossfit, and am going to clean the house, etc. and pick up Leann and Melody at the airport. I’m not quite sure what I’m going to do about Crossfit Th and F – I think I just have to go. I will have Melody and Leann play amongst themselves (laugh). Tomorrow would be the 6:30 p.m. class, so maybe I could even get them to go walking on the bike path for the hour I’m doing it. Then on Friday (Megan’s wedding day) I would go to the 9:00-10:00 class – I think that’ll still be fine, because I think that the wedding starts at 3:00. They can loll around at home ;-)
So it’s 8:15 so I gotta jet. Short checkin – yesterday, long long fast walk with Francine, Crossfit. Today, Crossfit – but we’ll see what Bill does to fix the Burpees and pullups.
POSTSCRIPT: Leaving the house has to actually HAPPEN at 8:15 or I’m late. I was late. GRRRRRR. Note to self – that time of morning is STILL peak traffic time! (That’s why it’s such a bummer The Cave is by far the farthest Crossfit from me in Marin). HOWEVER, not only did people give me the whole good-natured “OMG you came back” thing (which was great), but I did WAY more repeats in the AMRAP than I thought I would. Anthony had me do the Burpees basically against the big “desk/box” that’s in the middle of the garage right as you walk in – but I still had to get my chest through and I had to jump up after each push. Then, for the pullups, I did a “jumping” pullup. What this means is that they take weight plates (which they have some special magic Crossfit word for, but I forget it) and stack them up until when you stand on them, the pull-up bar comes midway between your wrist and elbow if you hold your hands up. So, to do a pull-up, you stand on the stack of plates, hold onto the bar, and literally “jump” up, helping with your legs so that your chin comes over the bar. This was SO MUCH BETTER than the other way that the other box had me do it, with the resistance bands. Those were not only scary (because I had to have so many that when I released my legs they sort of shot them up, loosening my grip), but also just felt a lot more “stupid.” My stack of plates was 2 5s and 2 50s to get up to the bar at the right height. And I did NINE repeats, plus the run on the 10th in the 20 minutes! I was OVER THE MOON about this – I thought I’d do 5 MAX. I guess the best part about starting a new sport is that every day is a new PR (lol)
POSTSCRIPT 2: I asked where the bathroom was today ;-) SO BRAVE…