Press 3 x 5

60#/60#/60#

12-9-6 reps press with 1:00 rest between sets 

50#

So the last few months have not been great for me. I hurt my knee, tore my calf muscle, had my elbow messed up with an arm bar in judo, had a horrible cold that knocked me out for about a week, and to top it all of I gained about ten pounds.

Not good.

My plan is to get back on CrossFit Strength Bias with some good CrossFit Football-ish metcons and to clean up my diet. I’ve missed my last three tests in judo because of work and/or injury and I’m beyond frustrated with it. If I can test in February I’ll be ready to test for black belt in October, which I’d love to do because then I could test with two other people from our school.

That being said, here is the plan of action:

1. Diet: Low carb Paleo. Alternating days will be lower calorie (i.e. Monday 900-1000 calories, Tuesday 1800-2000 calories.) I’ve used this approach before and had great success with it. Most importantly: NO GRAINS, NO SUGAR!

2. Weight: Lose 15 pounds by February.

3. Fitness: Get stronger, get my pull-ups and dips back. Actually, at this point there is virtually nothing that I can’t improve as my fitness has slid quite a bit.

4. And the most important thing I need to do: STAY CONSISTENT. For crying out loud, just because I slip and eat an Oreo doesn’t mean I have to take a three week binge on the Ben and Jerry’s wagon. I swear, sometimes I just want to slap myself.

(As a not-so-interesting aside, I actually HAVE slapped myself after I did something stupid. It didn’t help, in case you were wondering.)

So that is the grand plan. The hardest part is going to be the first three weeks as my body adapts to the low-carb diet and gets back into the workout routine.

Today’s food:

This morning was squat day at CrossFit. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do traditional back squats due to my knees. I tried a few and got the usual screeching and cracking noises so I put the kabosh on that. Instead I worked on some box squats – which I am able to do with no knee pain whatsoever. I only did 72# x 5 for three or four sets. It’s a lot harder than it looks to pop up off that box, especially with a bar on your back.

After that we hit a metcon that was supposed to be 21-15-9 reps of overhead squat and pull-ups. Ixnay on the squats, so I did swings instead with a 25# dumbbell. I could have gone a LOT heavier on the swings – they were cake. I finished in 5:38.

I finally made it to Kyuki-do tonight, and it was heavy bag night (Yay!) We went through the breakfalling form about three times and then hung the bag up and worked on elbow strikes, hammer strikes and spinning backfists. Fun stuff!

Whenever we hit the heavy bag I always try to channel Lucia Rijker. I wish I could hit like her. Holy smokes!

If you are looking to kill some time in an entertaining fashion check out FitQuest. It’s the blog of elite CrossFitter Blair Morrison, who is currently studying in Europe. The blog is chock full of great workout videos, including the lovely Farmhouse chipper posted below.

“Farms, they’re hard living.”

Amen, brother.

Work up to a strict press 5RM

67# x 4

I tried for that fifth one twice, but once it got to about eye level it was like it was chained to the floor or something. Bah!

Press 12-9-6 with 1:00 min. rest between sets with 42#

Metcon:

10 – 9 – 8 – 7 – 6 – 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1  Pushups
1 -  2 – 3 – 4 – 5 – 6 - 7 – 8 – 9 – 10   Pullups

9:57

All push-ups strict, pull-ups with the blue band.

My arms were fried after this. Actually my arms were fried before this due to the presses and benches/dips/K2E on Wednesday. At the beginning I had trouble getting my stinkin’ foot in the band to do the pull-ups so that slowed me down a bit. I did this one with Steve, and after the presses I think we were both filled with an inner sense of doom while considering what lay ahead. He got some pennies out to help keep track of rounds and spent a good amount of time arranging them just so before we started. Then he rearranged them for good measure. He admitted he was procrastinating – but I was procrastinating by watching him procrastinate, so I can’t really say much.

Workout:

Row for 3:00 minutes
Rest 1:30
Row 2:00
Rest 1:30
Row 1:00

Total meters: 1,482

I’ve been considering purchasing a rower for my home gym on the ranch. After today’s workout, uuuuuuuuhhhh – no.

It seems I had forgotten that rowing sucks.

It’s just as well, it will save me $900 and lots of mental anguish.

My legs feel much better after the long layoff. I was worried for a while I’d have to go in for a full leg transplant, what with the torn ligaments, plantar facitis, and the torn calf muscle. Hopefully not. I don’t think that’s covered under my insurance.

Today I tried out one of the workouts from OPT’s site.

It was odd, to say the least, but odd in an intriguing sort of way:

A1. bench press @ 50X1; 6-8 x 4; rest 90 sec
A2. snatch grip dead lift with straps @ 41X1; 5-7 x 4; rest 90 sec
B1. dips @ 4010; 6-8 x 3; rest 75 sec
B2. GHD Raises @ 2020; 10-15 x 3; rest 75 sec
C1. db ext rot @ 3010; 8-10/arm x 3; rest 60 sec
C2. toes to bar; 12 reps x 3; rest 60 sec

As you can deduce, you pretty much need a Magic Decoder Ring to even figure the workout out. And I can see why the deadlifts were rx’d with straps, they were a grip killer.

A1. 70# on all sets, 6 reps
A2. 133# on all sets, 6 reps
B1. Red band, ring dips
B2. Forgot to do it.
C1. 10#, 8 reps each arm
C2. 10 knees to elbows

My legs feel pretty good (knock on wood), my calf is still a little tight but on the road to recovery. I can’t run yet (oh darn!) or do many ballistic movements.

Patience, grasshopper.

“Pop, Snap, Riiiiiip”

Those were the sounds I heard and the sensations I felt yesterday as my calf muscle tore. Yes, I tore my freaking calf muscle.

I’d like to say I was doing something cool, like running down an antelope or jerking 200 pounds. Unfortunately, I was having a skipping relay race with my four year old cousin in the local Dairy Queen parking lot. 

I guess that will teach me to act my age.

No, you’re right. Probably not.

Anyway, my amateur internet diagnosis says it will take about 4-6 weeks to heal itself. So that means I will miss my judo test for the third straight time. I am going to be a brown belt for infinity.

We got our calves sold yesterday. It wasn’t a complete disaster, but not nearly as good as it should have been. Such is life.

Today we sorted out our yearling and two year old heifers and vaccinated and poured them. (“Pouring” means to douse them with de-lousing solution.) As a result, half of my day was spent sprinting up and down a manure-slicked alleyway clapping my hands together furiously and begging about sixty five energetic heifers to please just go through one more gate.

Then we moved them to their winter pasture, which wasn’t too bad because the two year olds knew where to go so there wasn’t much crying, cursing and beseeching involved.

Then I drove 90 miles back to town to make judo class because I thought there was a test next weekend. Turns out it was switched to the weekend after that, so I have more time than I thought. Whew.

We did all left sided throws tonight, which was great because my left knee is the one that’s currently blown out so it spent most of the night hanging in the air instead of supporting all of my (substantially growing) body weight like it does on right side throws.

I did really bad on my eating yesterday. Yesterday was the number one most stressful day of the year, and I tend to drown my stress in food. Lots of cookies were consumed. On top of that, the sale barn cafe has one of the best bacon cheeseburgers in the state. With about 4.5 million pounds of prime beef going through there every sale day they ought to have good burgers. Then the sale barn pays for dinner at the steak house of your choice, and we had filet mingon. Yummy.

Today’s food: Breakfast: sausage and scrambled eggs. Lunch: 2 beef brats, almond butter. Snack: Zone dark chocolate bar, chocolate peanut butter, cheese, mixed nuts. Supper: cheese, mixed nuts, apple.

My view for most of the day.

A very, very long day. We sell our calves tomorrow so we spent all day rounding up the cows and calves from our various pastures. 

Sale day is stressful. Just imagine getting paid only one time per year, and then your wages are determined not by the quality of your product or your work but by some trading board and market prices in a city two thousand miles away. Yeah, that’s stress!

However, the day before sale day is also stressful. Riding, running, jumping, screaming. LOTS of screaming. People screaming at cows, people screaming at people, cows screaming at people. Even with very tame, very experienced cows (which ours are) there are always a few that won’t cooperate, hence the screaming. I’ve seen very calm, peaceful, gentle people have an absolute nuclear meltdown on sale just because one cow went through a gate she wasn’t supposed to go through. No lie.

So, I didn’t want to work out tonight when we finally got home. But I did.

Deadlift

• Warm up with some DLs at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 153#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (138#)

Press

• Warm up with some presses at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 60#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (54#)

I was also cursing my decision to start the clean eating program today. I really, really, REALLY wanted to have a bowl of ice cream tonight. But I didn’t.

Today’s Food: Breakfast – almond butter, deli sliced turkey. Lunch – 2 beef brats, almond butter, 3 slices cheese. Supper – 1 ham steak, scrambled eggs. Snack – apple, sliced turkey.

Deadlift

• Warm up with some DLs at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 148#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (133#)

Press

• Warm up with some presses at lighter weight
• Set 1: 5 reps @ 55#
• Set 2: 90% of Set 1, 5 reps (50#)

Metcon:

7 rounds for time:

7 hang power clean, 63#
7 push-ups
7 sit-ups

6:55

The push-ups were what held me back today. They’ve really gotten weak from where I was at this summer. Chop-chop. Time to hit the goats.

My knee has felt much better the last two days. I tried a tiny, TINY bit of jump rope today and it felt ok. I don’t think I’m ready to start doing squats or 30″ box jumps or anything, but I can work on some of my goats, like pull-ups, push-ups, maybe GHD sit-ups.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to try to start Melissa Urban’s Whole30 eating challenge. Thanksgiving will fall right at the end of the fourth week, so I don’t know how that will work out. I need to do something, I’m miserable eating the way I am. Also, my eight-year old cousin told me I’m fat and have a big butt. Ouch. The truth hurts, especially when it comes from an eight year old (who claims to love you.)