I've been meaning to get back into tracking my workouts, and everything else, for a while now. Luckily, I'm a bit laid up at the moment, so I have a ton of free time.
Here's a little note, kids. Don't pull on your rower harder than you should, even if you're sprinting for 200m bursts. Because you will pull something, like I did. I think I just went a little too hard on the rower with some bad form and ended up loosening up something in my rib cage. The next day's session had me doing some weird lateral movements which caused that loosened up rib stabilizer to tighten up.
And here I am, on the couch, prepping a workout blog. Lucky me.
I'll be back in the gym on Monday, should be good by then. Which is necessary, as I have a competition in 30 days. I really need to get back into a micro-cycle for my weightlifting.
Showing posts with label backstory. Show all posts
Showing posts with label backstory. Show all posts
Saturday, June 14, 2014
Drinking That Koolaid
Yeah, I know. Crossfit gets either a bad rap nowadays, or it's praised as the second coming of sliced bread. Either way you look at it, I'm a part of it now and have been for a year.
It was a year ago, almost exactly, when I started. Since then, I've taken two strongman seminars, two weightlifting seminars, a rowing seminar, I've competed in three events now, I've placed on the podium of two of those events(both scaled), and I've run more than I care to mention.
I've ripped both my hands open. I've accidentally dropped 165 lbs on my back when missing a snatch. I've puked twice. I've lost the ability to walk after trying to deadlift too fast with poor form and I've matched every single one of my lifts from my powerlifting days.
People want to talk about the cult like community of Crossfit and that's fine. They're right. I hang out with my gym friends a lot more than other people and I'm okay with that. I also hang out with people who give zero fucks about the gym, so I don't talk about it with them. No problem.
I'm enjoying it. I really am. And I'm going to keep at it. I've entered my first RX competition in August and my first weightlifting competition in July. I'm going to keep lifting the way I want to and following the advice of my dedicated coaching staff. And I'm going to love every second of it.
It was a year ago, almost exactly, when I started. Since then, I've taken two strongman seminars, two weightlifting seminars, a rowing seminar, I've competed in three events now, I've placed on the podium of two of those events(both scaled), and I've run more than I care to mention.
I've ripped both my hands open. I've accidentally dropped 165 lbs on my back when missing a snatch. I've puked twice. I've lost the ability to walk after trying to deadlift too fast with poor form and I've matched every single one of my lifts from my powerlifting days.
People want to talk about the cult like community of Crossfit and that's fine. They're right. I hang out with my gym friends a lot more than other people and I'm okay with that. I also hang out with people who give zero fucks about the gym, so I don't talk about it with them. No problem.
I'm enjoying it. I really am. And I'm going to keep at it. I've entered my first RX competition in August and my first weightlifting competition in July. I'm going to keep lifting the way I want to and following the advice of my dedicated coaching staff. And I'm going to love every second of it.
You Can't Do That Here
What happened next was a bit of a twist. I fell in love with the Olympic lifts. Snatching and Clean -n- Jerking are just two amazing movements. They're so incredibly beautiful to watch and so incredibly frustrating to master.
So here I am, in my globo gym, throwing around this bar with iron weights on it, trying to figure out form from videos on the internets. As a side goal, I was trying not to kill someone. Nailed it.
After about a month, I realized I had to move on. I started looking around for a gym that would let me train the way I wanted to. I live in a metropolitan area, should be easy to find a weightlifting club, right? Well, you'd be surprised.
I ended up at a Crossfit gym, because they have bumpy plates and a weightlifting coach. I needed both of those things. I went there with the whole idea of just getting deeper into the Olympic lifts, but I kind of went in a different direction.
So here I am, in my globo gym, throwing around this bar with iron weights on it, trying to figure out form from videos on the internets. As a side goal, I was trying not to kill someone. Nailed it.
After about a month, I realized I had to move on. I started looking around for a gym that would let me train the way I wanted to. I live in a metropolitan area, should be easy to find a weightlifting club, right? Well, you'd be surprised.
I ended up at a Crossfit gym, because they have bumpy plates and a weightlifting coach. I needed both of those things. I went there with the whole idea of just getting deeper into the Olympic lifts, but I kind of went in a different direction.
Powerlifting Beginnings
I lift things up.
I started training as a power lifter sometime in 2011. I say "training as a power lifter", but what I really mean is that I started lifting with a purpose. Rather than just do whatever I felt like at the gym, I started following a program. Starting Strength to be specific.
I was in doing Squat/Bench/Deadlift 3x a week, following that linear progression until it would run out on me. I kept chasing that dragon until I stopped seeing that progression follow the straight line, which took about a year. Then I switched to a Texas Method cycle for about 4 months.
In the course of about a year and a half, I worked from weights something like:
Squats : 225 x5 -> 345 x5
Bench : 155 x5 -> 225 x5
Deadlift : 225 x5 -> 385 x5
I topped out as a power lifter at my last "meet" with friends at a bodyweight of 202 pounds with a 385 squat, 255 bench, and a 455 deadlift. A 1095 total was about as far as I was going to get. I just missed my 405 squat at that meet, I wanted it but it didn't come to me. That would have put me over 1100, but it wasn't meant to be.
I started training as a power lifter sometime in 2011. I say "training as a power lifter", but what I really mean is that I started lifting with a purpose. Rather than just do whatever I felt like at the gym, I started following a program. Starting Strength to be specific.
I was in doing Squat/Bench/Deadlift 3x a week, following that linear progression until it would run out on me. I kept chasing that dragon until I stopped seeing that progression follow the straight line, which took about a year. Then I switched to a Texas Method cycle for about 4 months.
In the course of about a year and a half, I worked from weights something like:
Squats : 225 x5 -> 345 x5
Bench : 155 x5 -> 225 x5
Deadlift : 225 x5 -> 385 x5
I topped out as a power lifter at my last "meet" with friends at a bodyweight of 202 pounds with a 385 squat, 255 bench, and a 455 deadlift. A 1095 total was about as far as I was going to get. I just missed my 405 squat at that meet, I wanted it but it didn't come to me. That would have put me over 1100, but it wasn't meant to be.
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