The games

This time I am going to blame my quietness on me spending too much time watching the games. And we are going to forget that the games ended a week ago for the purpose of my excuse. I am also a bit short on pictures. Not sure what I can blame that on.

Anyways, the games were a lot of fun to watch despite almost complete lack of excitement regarding winners in men's and teams divisions after the the first 2 days. Because of the games most of our wods during the week were games-inspired.

Monday

Adios Amigos. I had to scale down a lot since a) I can't do muscle ups yet, b) The weights were way too heavy for me. 50-55-60 and chest to bars felt reasonable so that's what I went with. Since I managed to finish just under the time cap that seemed like a good decision. It was also just the second time I had an opportunity to do this many chest to bars in a wod and it felt reasonably good.

I finished Monday with gymnatics where we got a lot of great tips on how to manage standard gymnastics movements better.

Tuesday

Feel the Berm. I am reasonably fast at burpees, but I am fairly slow at box jumps and I am not that fast at running so it was no great surprise that I was among the last after the first run and even managed to drop a couple of places after the first round of burpee box jumps. Due to the burpee tips the day before I was not that tired and started passing people on the second run. The trend continued and in the end my position was much better than I would normally expect from a workout with a complete lack of strength component.

The day ended with a fun swim Wod. 2 and 2 - 6 k row, 600 DU (we did 1200 SU) and 600m swim. A lot of fun and great weather as always

Wednesday

Double DT. We did it in pairs since it would take way too long otherwise. We went with 60kg and managed to finish just a few seconds slower than the top male competitor which feels pretty good. At the same time I have absolutely no idea how Katrin and a lot of other girls managed to go 2 minutes faster since we had reasonably fast transitions and didn't really rest anywhere

Thursday

Deuce-deuce, Mini Chipper and 100%. That's right, we got 3 events, slightly modified in one. The only thing that worked well was toes to bar. Nothing else worked as normal....

The day ended with a running wod which was horrible as always. Run to Hästhagen, 8x(400m + 5 burpees) and then run back. The run back and burpees actually felt ok. Everything else was awful.

Friday

Despite spending most of the week waiting for Murph I let my guard down by Friday since it was supposed to be a team wod. Well, I was wrong and we did Murph (same format as 2016 games). The good thing is that my elbows survived 100 pullups so now I am completely convinced that I am all good from the rope climbs a few weeks back. I am also fairly happy that I actually finished. The time(50:25) has some room for improvement....

Saturday

Saturday's workout consisted of a lot of on the minute work with the minute ending with collecting various bodyweight movements. We started by collecting 150 wallballs, then 200 squats and then 100 burpees. Nothing really heavy but horrible all the time...

In the afternoon I joined the oly wod where we did a lot of snatching...

Sunday

Sunday workout consisted of 20-18-16-14-12-10 deadlifts@100kg with roughly 100m walking lunges followed by roughly 200m run between every set. The deadlifts were the rest portion of the workout while lunges were the horrible portion. My ass will hurt tomorrow...

Elbows

The main event of the past 2 weeks was the competition this weekend (more on that later) and the fact that I managed to screw up my elbows again (more on that later as well) (spoiler, they appear to be back in a normallish state). Some days will be skipped despite training

This is what happens when I am involved in WOD selection. I still have no clue where the 20 wallballs came from. Anyways, I managed to do it in 5 sets leading to 80 wallballs. Yuck.

Civil war days are usually fun. This time we had a bunch of running which sucked as always, but lifting worked. Did 80 at hang clean, 85 at front squat and push jerk and 70 at Lunges. I probably could've done slightly better at lunges.....

On Monday we did DT which was my first time doing it RX. My main issue was the grip leading to singles on hang power clean for the last 3 rounds. I might've gained some time by doing singles on HPC all the way. On the other hand, my Push Jerks were unbroken all the way which I am fairly happy about

Tuesday started with a hellish combo of Farmers Walk, Pullups, HSPU and pistols and ended with the workout posted next to this text.

Now, I am perfectly aware of what usually happens to my elbows when I do high rep row climbs so a reasonable person could argue that I should've scaled rope climbs to something more reasonable. On the other hand, I really wanted to try and see what would happen. Well, I did manage to come all the way up the rope 9 out of 10 times so I am reasonably satisfied.

There was no pain during the WOD, but the elbows did feel a bit sore....

Wednesday started with this which is at least partially my fault (I suggested something slightly more reasonable) which was a fun workout. Unfortunately, right after the start my elbows started reminding me of their existence as usual. The pain grew worse during the day as mostly expected but subsided slightly by Thursday which is better than normal.


















I skipped the regular WOD on Thursday and did some front squatting instead. 10@55-9@60-...-1@100 which is a new PR (I also managed new 2 and 3 Rep maxes on the way) which feels really nice... Now, if I could get my clean and jerk past 100 as well....

In the evening I joined the running WOD (now that I think of it, heavy squats and running on the same day is probably a bad idea (running is always a bad idea, but that's beside the point), but people rarely accuse me of sanity). We did short intervals which was extremely exhausting.

Saturday was box competition day which was a lot of fun. Even my elbows cooperated. There was some pain, but I was able to perform at a reasonable level in the events where we had to use elbows. The only exception was the rope climb event where I simply didn't dare to risk an acute injury.

Karin was awesome as expected. I sucked in running events, but performed reasonably well in everything else. The results I am most happy with are 85 kilos in squat clean (probably my cleanest squat clean at such a heavy weight ever) - back squat - front squat complex (of course, now I am wondering if I could've managed 90 which would've given us an event win) and my 30 unbroken toes to bar (if I counted correctly, and of course I am wondering if I could've managed 5 more which would've given us a win as well)









Sunday was my "being stupid" day since I opted not to take a rest day and not to quite the workout when I realised that my elbows actually hurt from the movements (KB C&J mostly)

Having learned my lesson I didn't do the regular WOD on Monday and did some back squatting (10x10x60kg) instead. In the evening I joined the gymnastics WOD which was supposed to involve running, but was rings instead due to weather. No pain in elbows despite (or maybe due to) a lot of hanging.

 I decided to continue letting my elbows rest and decided to do 3 (was supposed to be 5, but I realised it was way too much in the middle of second round) rounds of 400m run, 100 situps, 100 air squats and 10 double unders (was supposed to be 100 single unders, but I was told it was silly).

In the evening I joined the swim wod where my elbows had to do some work. No pain! Thrusters and pull ups felt horrible, and I scaled down both, but I blame the assault bike. It's evil.

The most interesting beer of the past few weeks is neither an IPA nor a stout. And there is no chocolate or coffee anywhere. This is a wit (belgian style wheat beer) with chili. A lot of chili. I love chili. This is a must try.

Too much rest is dangerous

Last week contained 4 rest days. All of them for travel reasons. I am surprised I was actually able to train normally this week.

Last week also contained 3 training days:

Monday started with deadlifts + Diane. I managed to tie my PRs for both which should be viewed as OK results since I haven't done much deadlifting this spring. Also, the quality of my HSPU has improved. Last time I did Diane I had a fairly wide stance, but this time I was much narrower.

Tuesday's WOD was strength work followed by a heavy Bring Sally Up. Front Squats worked fairly well and were only slightly more complicated with the pause, but push presses felt almost impossible which felt really weird. Bring Sally Up was horrible, pretty much as expected.

In the evening we did a fun swimwod with slamball GTOH and walking lunges. Lunges suck. A lot. Everything else was fun (including burpees. Weird....)

On Wednesday we tabataed (a fun feature of English language is that it's perfectly acceptable to turn a noun into a verb) with row, slamball GTOH, burpees and pullups. Stupidly enough I opted to do pullups last which resulted in me barely able to do any due to complete lack of grip (really sweaty hands). Will try not to make that mistake next time...

When I woke up this Monday and saw this week's Masters qualifier I was really happy that I am too young for that. Imagine my dismay when I got into the box and saw that we were supposed to do the same, but with higher jumps and heavier clusters... So Monday's WOD was 12-9-6-3 of burpee box(70) jump overs and 60 kilo (I did 55) clusters. I suck at box jumps, especially when they are that high and I am not fast at clusters leading to me hitting the time cap.

In the evening I went for gymnastics which was much scarier than usual. Most gymnastics WODs are very technique heavy with some strength/conditioning work in the end. This time we worked almost all the time leading to all muscles being really really tired by the end of the WOD.

Tuesday started with a combination of Cindy, heavyish Clean and Jerks and some running. Everything mostly worked and I am very happy with my 75 pullups within a WOD. I finished in 34:14 without scaling any of the movements or weights....

Tuesday evenings are for swimming, weather permitting. This evening we did a variant of the Beach event from 2014 Games with shorter swim and, in my case, lighter kettlebells(12x2). I lost huge amounts of time on thrusters and a little on burpees but I managed to do some catching up on the swim....

Back to slightly less irregular posting

The week started like weeks normally do with a Monday which started with a WOD that consisted of rowing, ground to overhead(35kg) and HSPU. Ground to overhead was done right after rowing which means that the legs were full of lactic acid. That resulted in my shoulder to overhead going from snatch to clean and jerk to muscle clean and strict press ending in stiff legged narrow grip snatch. Yes, it looked like crap. And I've never received that many complaints about my technique. But it worked...

The day ended with gymnastics where we did a lot of hanging from the bar and ended with 14 minutes of the horror seen next to this pic....

I went with 80 kilos which felt heavier than normal probably because of the gymnastics the day before. I finished in 19.07.

In the evening we did a swim-wod: run 800, swim 100, run 300, 40 slamball(30kg) ground to overhead, run 300, 40 burpees and swim 100. I would've preferred more swimming and less running, but this was fun.

30 minutes of OTM work. None of the things were really heavy but, due to too many people in the box, the transitions took a lot of time creating a lot of stress.

Did some squatting afterwards. First attempt at 100kg front squat. Miserable failure.

Ended the day with some mobility training. First time I managed to get my palms to the floor without bending legs...

I replaced T2B with T2R to preserve some semblance of grip. I started with 50kg barbell, but had to lower it to 40 halfway. Lunges is probably my weakest barbell technique. I guess I need to do more of those...

Ended the day with a running wod. First we "jogged" to Hästhagen and then we did 15 100 meter sprints. My legs still(3 days later) haven't recovered...

Midsummer-WOD contained a bit of everything including some swimming. We scaled the weights (60 for HPC and 50 for everything else) and scaled some of the gymnastics and it still took an hour but it was a lot of fun... I am becoming a fan of those really long wods.




















The weekend started with some snatching. I worked up to a max (which didn't go that well) and then did Isabel which went fairly well. 9.44 is 2.5 minutes faster than last time.

First competition!

A week ago I participated in my first competition (well, actually third, but this one was the first "public"one) and I opted to have my birthday on the same day.

The good news is that we didn't come last. The bad news is that we came 27th out of 30. It was also a great learning experience.

Things I learned:

• I have a tendency to not extend my hips all the way. That happens both when squatting and when lunging. That gave us a couple of no reps. 
• I have a tendency to leave my elbows too far back when doing hang power cleans. That gave us some no reps as well.
• Buck furpies is a completely valid emotion.
• I can do thrusters @40kilos at a reasonable speed. That makes me feel like doing Fran which implies that something is seriously wrong with me
• I would've felt better if weights were heavier and events longer...

I also learned that there is a lot of room for improvement in most areas

In other news:

I went with 55. Unfortunately Squat snatch deteriorated into a power snatch followed by overhead squat after a few reps which sucks since if I was going to do that I could've gone with 60. 

I am much happier with the second part where we went with 45 and managed to get done with less than 10 seconds to spare which is awesome.

This was actually a lot of fun despite presence of burpee pullups. Somehow I feel that burpee pullups is a less horrible movement than a simple burpee since the addition of pullups slows it down and makes the life easier.

Later that day I did running WOD(running sucks). The wod was 4x800 with 1 minute rest in between. My time was 17:34 including rest which is reasonably good for me. We will be redoing this in a couple of months. Let's see if I can go sub-17....

The day ended with swimming WOD which was 5 rounds of 15 meter HS-walk(I did bear crawl), 15 slamball GTOH, 15 burpees  and 50 m swim. That felt surprisingly good despite all the workouts earlier that day.

Tuesday started with a bunch of strict work: 20 minute AMRAP of 2-4-6.... of strict pullups, strict one arm KB press(24kg) and squat clean and roll over shoulder slamball(30 kg). Strict pullups are hard so I am very happy with almost finishing the round of 12. Tuesday ended with another swim-WOD: 2&2 - row 3000, 60 burpee over rower, 60 KB-swings, farmers walk to scania-badet followed by 10 rounds kb step-ups each (1 work, 1 swim) followed by walk back, 1500m row, 30 burpees over rower, 30 swings. All that work took around an hour. The only parts that felt really hard were the step ups since my grip sucks, but swimming made it all better....

It's always nice to repeat a workout. I believe last time I did was during winter or maybe even last fall. This time we scaled the weight the same way and were 4 minutes faster. I guess we'll go with a heavier weight next time....

Summer is a time when a lot of brewers deliver session IPAs since the low alcohol content enables people to stay better hydrated in hot weather while drinking something tasty. This IPA is a bit special since it uses Swedish hops. A good beer, but I would've preferred more hops.

No good excuse this time

Forgive me readers for I have sinned. It has been almost 3 weeks since my last blog post and unlike previous time I took way too long between posts I have no good excuse this time except for watching regionals and good weather (although I am perfectly capable of typing and sitting outside at the same time).

Covering all of those 3 weeks would be tedious so let's do some highlights!

Murph is evil. Team Murph is worse since sharing enables us to do harder stuff (as if Murph itself is too easy). The hardest part, at least for me, was the farmers walk.

Due to summer arriving we had to go outside and play which resulted in this obstacle course which we did last year as well. This time it included bear walk which made everything much much worse.... On the other hand I managed to do 20 swing with a 28 kg kettlebell (last year I was swinging a 20 kg kb)

This was horrible, pretty much as expected considering complete lack of barbells and presence of wallballs. Despite that we almost made the timecap and went for a swim afterwards.

This looks like a nice and friendly workout, but it's not. Both swings and toes to bar tax the grip which stops being fun after a few rounds. But I survived....

In the evening I decided to do some gymnastics. That day we practiced acrobatics which is a fancy word for weird stuff like standing on each other's shoulders and jumping up on your partner's shoulders (I didn't do the jumping, but I managed to provide a good enough base). Lots of fun....

Heavy hang squat cleans and strict HSPU are 2 things I suck at so having both of them in the same workout kind of sucked. I did hang squat cleans (singles all the way) as prescribed and did HSPU with 15 kg under my head to shorten the range of motion. It was still horrible. But I did manage to finish with a few minutes to spare. But it was still horrible.

First we run and then we snatch. Running is still horrible, but my speed is improving. I didn't feel too good but I still managed around 1:30 every time with 1:25 as my best time. It's not that long ago that 1:40 was a good time when I was feeling great. I also managed on average 5 snatches at 60 every round which was much better than expected as well.

In the evening we did some running (hill intervalls suck especially when you have somebody on your back) followed by some swimming (first swimming wod of the year!) which felt great.

We went RX on that one which probably was a bit too much. Lunges felt really heavy and went really slow. Front squats sucked as well. We were at the final round of front squats when the time cap hit us.

I don't have much of a problem doing 4 backsquats at 90. I do have a problem repeating it for many rounds especially when the "rest" is assault bike and high boxjumps (I went with 70). Not sure how many rounds we did, but it started sucking a lot after 3 or 4. Lunges sucked as well, not because they were hard as such, but because bare knees to tarmac is a bad idea. Maybe I should get knee sleeves?

Brewdog is one of the most well known craft breweries. They also have a chain of pubs. Most of them are in UK, but a month ago Malmö branch was opened. The place is a bit too hipster for my taste and their food appears to be a bit expensive but they do have a great selection of beers on tap including a large part of Brewdog's range

Mikkeller's K:rlek is rereleased every spring in slightly different versions. While it started out as one of my favourite summer beers this year it appears that they cut down on hops making it much less interesting:(

Back!

The plan was to make a post as soon as I got back from Fuengirola, but work happened, then I opted to watch the regionals all weekend and then more work happened. The only reason I am actually writing this post is that I can't sleep(clowns will eat me).

Fuengirola was awesome and I would definitely do it again given the option. The best parts were the "rest day" when we went up La Concha without having any clue(most of us survived) and the beach WOD where we made an attempt to drown(we failed miserably). The only improvement I would suggest is more training!

After the trip I got right back to training since rest is dangerous and should be avoided.

Thursday started with 3x7minutes AMRAP. Pullups and HSPU didn't feel too good due to my elbows not liking some of the stuff we did in Fuengirola, but Ring Dips worked better than usual. Weird.

I got home reasonably early so I decided to join the running WOD. The WOD was 1 work / 1 rest, 300 meters run with slamball, 300 meters running backwards. 7 rounds of that. Surprisingly enough running with slamball got easier (or at least more comfortable) over time and there was no weird pain in my shins afterwards....







Friday's team WOD included a lot of running as well which felt reasonably good despite Thursday's activities. The wod was an AMRAP cash in(a dozen different options) followed by a run. I managed 12 runs over the 40 minutes which is slightly better than I expected.

Saturday's WOD included a lot of lunges which suck, a lot of gymnastics (that my elbows didn't like) and some wallballs where we hit the time cap....

Bear complex is fun. It was even more fun that I managed to PR it this Sunday (85 kg). The WOD was a lot of fun, but high rep bear complex is really hard (who'd'a' thunk it ).

Hang squat snatch is highly technical. I can do technical things when my heart rate is low, but when it goes up technique goes out the window. So my hang squat snatches turned into hang power followed by overhead squat which required a bit more work...

Tuesday included some weird stuff like weighted plank which turned out to be as hard as expected. The hard part was getting to 3 minutes. Our first interval was 50 seconds, but after that we could only do 20 seconds at a time which demanded quite a few sets...



















Wednesday we got to practice our max lifts. This time it was BTN Split Jerk which I really enjoy. I did a double at 85 and followed up by a single at 95 (new PR). 100 doesn't feel that far away....

When we got into the box Thursday morning we thought that somebody forgot to clean the whiteboard after Wednesday's Competition group but it turned out that we were the ones that were supposed to do it. Surprisingly enough we managed and we didn't even have to scale anything.

While in Fuengirola I missed Systembolaget's latest beer release that I had to catch up to. Unfortunately the only interesting beer was Death From Above and while the idea was great (a fruity IPA with chili) the implementation is lacking. This beer would be much better with more hops and more chili

Off to Fuengirola

Longer time than usual since last post and a bit shorter than it normally would be after such a long hiatus for reasons. It also has fewer pictures than you would normally expect. That's for reasons as well.

Sunday started with 7 rounds of 7 reps of 5 (7 would've been more interesting) movements. I managed first round unbroken but then I got a bit tired. Used lifting shoes. Not sure if it was a good idea since I feel they slowed me down on burpees.

Wallballs and barbells were the Tuesday treat. Wallballs felt better than usual. I was still barely able to do the last 25, but normally I reach that same state much earlier. Barbell movement felt OK. I have trouble with my grip with snatch grip deadlift and I was almost too sweaty to hold on to the bar during snatches in the end but I managed....



















Wednesday's wod consisted of 8 rounds of 200 m run  3 C2B, 5 pullups and 7 T2B which felt surprisingly good despite complete lack of barbell movements. I was still able to do C2B for the last round.

Friday's Team WOD was an oldie but a goodie. Ropeclimbs, partner deadlifts, partner pushups, wallclimbs, medball over bar, sync pullups and burpees. I had to scale ropeclimbs since I want to have working elbows in Fuengirola, but the rest of the stuff felt great. I even managed to get the medball over bar most times.

Grizabel was a lot of fun despite all the running. My 25 snatches@60kg is the second time I am doing more than just a couple at that weight within a WOD and this time no lifting shoes. Felt reasonably good most of the way




















Sunday was a 3 person amrap of 100 cal row, 100 front rack lunges, 100 toes through rings and 100 thrusters. Both lunges and thrusters suck. By the second round I didn't have the energy to row well and no grip for toes through rings.

Monday I went for endurance instead of the regular wod. It was an amrap of 100 deadlift, run, 100 hpc, run, 100 front squats, run, 100 jerks, run. We managed to get 80 hpc on the second round. Weights were low so I was both deadlifting and hang power cleaning with my back which is faster at those weights, but I need to make sure I don't do that when it gets heavy or bad things will happen....

Last week Hamnmästaren (the yellow building at Bagers plats) reopened for the year. It used to be one of my favourite places but now it has roughly half as many taps as before and the beer fridge is gone making it much less exciting.

On Saturday I visited Swedish home brewing championship which was a very interesting event with a lot of different beers. Some of them were good and some not so good. Some of them were normal and some of them really weird. The most weird one was the "pizza beer" where you could get extra topping as seen on the right. I went for mushroom and the beer had actual mushroom taste.

My favourite one didn't make it into pictures, but it won one of the medals. Ginger Rogers Ginger Ale is an ale with added ginger which makes it much more interesting than that kind of ales normally are.

On dangers of rest

So last week I spent some time in Italy without access to a box leading to 3 rest days. I thought it would've been manageable but looking at how I felt during this week's workouts (more on that in the following paragraphs)  it was a horrible. I guess I will need to bring at least my running shoes next time I travel.

I didn't have time for the morning Wod on Monday so I decided to do endurance in the evening instead where the guy on the left got us to do the workout on the right. The interesting part is the 100 front rack lunges. Since we did slightly over 2 rounds we managed to do over 100 lunges with 40 kilos each which in my case led to my legs being barely useable for the next 3 days. I blame the 3 rest days.

Later that evening I visited the gymnastics Wod where we did a bunch of hand standing and related stuff. The hard part for me is the mental. I actually need to accept that I will not fall on my head if I tried to do a freestanding handstand

Tuesday was a barbellless chipper which always sucks for me. The only good part was the lack of wallballs. Anyways, I felt weaker than normal and suffered on most of kettlebell stuff despite us scaling doing to 24. I blame the rest days in Italy.

Wednesday was an OHS and Nancy day. Both went fairly well. I managed to do 5 OHS@60kg which felt really good. Interestingly enough, the hard part in an OHS for me is the way down, not the way up.
Nancy resulted in a 2 minutes improvement compared to the last time I did it despite a much better running shape for me last time. I also managed to do all the 15 OHS unbroken on the last set. Next time I'll try to go unbroken all the way. That should allow me to go sub-15...

Thursday sucked. I tried going RX, completely burned out doing 50kg thrusters, started failing at 60 and went back to 50. A sane person might argue that I should've scaled, I am going to blame the rest days in Italy.

Friday started with this fun little workout. Lunges sucked (but no pain afterwards. I guess I've recovered from the rest days in Italy), but everything else worked reasonably well despite us going RX.

Saturday's WOD was a chipper, but unlike Tuesday's it included a barbell making everything better. C2B felt reasonably well and T2B worked despite me having to do strict ones (can't kip when really sweaty). We scaled down to 60kg and finished in 15:50. It might've been possible to go slightly heavier....

After the WOD I decided I had some energy left and did some extra from squats working up to a new PR. 95! 100 by midsummer feels doable.

Olympus Mons is yet another great beer from Omnipollo. Unlike most of their other beers it was brewed in Sweden, but just like all other times they didn't underspend on hops. That combination of fruity tastes with bitterness is awesome.

Human Cannonball is a rarity. It's an awesome English Imperial IPA (that style is much more likely to be from USA, Scotland or Scandinvavia). It's also a short term visitor to Bishops Arms Savoy. Get it while supplies last!