Man this log is way overdue. I've been super busy since leaving my job at Metaweb, taking a short break, and starting up at Snaptic. While I was on my break between jobs, I got a few days of awesome, tough hiking in at Henry Coe State Park and some solid training too.
I'm about a month and a half behind in logging all my workouts so I'm not going to bother doing that for this final post before the NorCal Sectionals. If you are interested in all the gory details, they're all posted on the CrossFit KMSF blog in any case. Instead I'll give a few highlights and talk about where I'm at after three months of very intense training, and how I think the competition will go.
Weight & diet
I weighed myself first thing this morning and I'm just over 171lbs. Thats a gain of about 6lbs since my first training entry 3 months ago - and if anything I'm a fair bit leaner now. So I've definitely gained some functional mass. This despite eating what feels like a huge amount of food - after starting with Paleo Zone I switched to basically un-measured Paleo. I'm proud to say I cheated very little on the dietary front and am feeling great!
Strength & power
I'm definitely feeling a lot stronger, especially in the back squat and Olympic lifts. I mentioned in my last post that I'd done some Oly-lifting coaching down at Catalyst Athletics. That session was focused on the Snatch, and I subsequently went down and did a second session focusing on the Clean and Jerk. I'm still a complete novice weightlifter, but relative to where I was 3 months ago, I've improved a huge amount in form. I got a 135# snatch (squat, not power) the other day, a very modest weight, but I don't think I could've even managed a proper snatch three months ago. Similarly my clean has gotten much better - 185# used to be maxing out my horrible power clean but now a 185# clean with a reasonable squat technique is fairly comfortable.
Most importantly of all I'm really enjoying practicing the Olympic lifts now and am looking forward to continuing to improve at them after the Sectionals!
Conditioning
We've been working a lot of short sprints, and stuff like kettlebell swings - and I feel pretty good here. Pretty fast, with decent endurance and recovery. On the day of the competition, a lot of it is going to be mental, to just keep pushing!
Workout A
In Workout A you have 6 minutes to run 800m and then get as many reps of over head squats @ 115# as possible. Score is based on reps.
We've run through this a few times and its a very interesting workout. Over head squats are not a particular weakness of mine, neither is an 800m sprint - so it should be fine. I feel that this will come down to concentration and sheer will power. How many reps can you knock out before you have to drop the bar? I have a number in my head and I'm going to do my damndest. That bar gets HEAVY after 10-15 reps, and you really have to fight to hold on! This will be a fun challenge.
I feel it will be key to stay calm and not to overdo it on the 800m too.
Workout B
In Workout B you have 10 minutes to do as many rounds as possible of: 7 thrusters @ 115#, 12 KB swings @ 1.5 pood, 7 chest-to-bar pull-ups. Score is number of rounds completed.
Thrusters are not a strength of mine, not least because of my shoulder flexibility, but I actually feel good about them at this weight. 115# is not too bad, and 7 reps should be fine. Kettlebell swings are rest. The chest-to-bar pull-ups are tough. I wish I had known about the standard earlier so I could have locked it in more, but oh well. Past few weeks I've been focusing a lot on keeping the technique solid. 7 reps should be ok for the first few rounds, hopefully my form won't break down too badly towards the end. They will definitely be the toughest component.
A great team
It has been awesome training with all the folks at Crossfit KMSF. Thanks to coaches Kat, Lake and Cip for their dedication. Of course I've been lucky to have such a cool group of friends at the gym, a big shout out in particular to David, Robert, Tadhg, Zac, John and Matt who are also competing. We are going to kick some ass!
After the Sectionals
I'm really looking forward to the contest. Its been a great motivation for my training and I've improved a lot. I am positive about how I'm going to perform and I plan to do my best and have fun too.
A week after the sectionals, I'll actually be going to China for a month to visit my girlfriend Frances Wang who is doing field work with the UN in Beijing. I won't be training super hard while I'm there but I do plan to stay active and hit the gym at least a few times a week. But mostly I plan to enjoy my awesome trip and eat great Chinese food!
Niall O'Higgins is an author and software developer. He wrote the O'Reilly book MongoDB and Python. He is the co-founder of BeyondFog, Inc which makes Strider Brilliant Continuous Deployment. Strider is a hosted Continuous Integration & Deployment service for Node.JS and Python.
