Do the open they said. It will be fun they said

Saturday started like Saturdays normally do, with a WOD. 70 kg would've been too heavy for us, so we scaled down to 50 on STOH and Front Squats and 40 on Snatches. That enabled us to finish in a reasonable time and even the burpees felt ok. We might've been able to handle a heavier weight, but I wanted to take it easy the day before doing the open.

The good thing about 16.1 is that I managed to do 32 chest to bars making the total number of chest to bars I've done in my crossfit career to something around 50.
The bad part is that my legs died. On the last round I failed a couple of lunges because I simply didn't have the strength to stand up from the lunge. I feel much better now, but I wonder if I'll be able to walk tomorrow....
In hindsight it might've been better to think less about my weight and more about energy level. Chest to bars felt great (well, I could do them which is much better than expected), but my legs felt like crap. I'll try to draw the appropriate conclusions for the next workout. Maybe replace water with energy drink? Or maybe actually lose some fat from my waist instead of cutting down on food and drink the day before the workout (which does sound like a stupid idea now that I think of it)?

A few months ago I thought Lagunitas was an IPA only brewery, but then I was introduced to both Sucks and Brown Shugga so now I am completely willing to believe in their ability to produce interesting things in most styles. The Hairy Eyeball is a heavy ale with a slight chocolate taste (and as we all know, chocolate is almost as good as bacon at making everything better). This beer is in many, if not all, ways like a Belgian Tripel being fairly strong (9.1%) but managing to hide the alcohol behind the maltiness and sweetness. That's very different from strong lagers (that can't hide the strong alcohol taste), strong IPAs (that hide alcohol behind hoppiness) and stouts (that usually hide it behind strong chocolate or coffee taste). While I am not really a fan of this style I find this, and other American attempts to create this kind of beer much better than Belgian originals (probably because Americans aren't afraid to add at least some hops).

Note: the bottle is big and the beer is strong (both in taste and alcohol) so it's probably a good idea to share it (unless you are like me in which case you don't need my advice)

Buck Furpees

Let's start with the good part: 16.1 has no muscleups (which would've forced me to scale), no double unders (which would've been very slow), no thrusters and no wallballs (these 2 are more or less the same thing).

And the bad part is of course: overhead lunges, chest to bar pullups. and the 20 minutes. And of course we have burpees, but since "buck furpees" is a general sentiment everywhere I am not going to complain about that part.

The lunges are bad because mostly because if I practice them at that amount, my legs will be dead the day after killing my original plan (walkthrough the WOD on Saturday). Therefore Saturday will be regular wodding followed by 16.1 on Sunday. Otherwise I don't really mind it. While lunges generally suck for me, it's mostly because my legs aren't that strong and not because of mobility. I think I'll be able to do them reasonably well at that weight especially since I will need to keep a fairly slow pace to be able to handle the other parts.

Chest to bars are going to suck big time, I've been barely able to do singles before and I weight slightly more now than I did back then. So I think I am due some time in the sauna tomorrow to drop a kilo of water or 2. Plus no beer (water in it is too heavy) and limited food. Anyway, this is going to be the limiting factor. Will I be able to do chest to bars? Will I be able to keep my hands from sweating too much so that I can keep the grip?

20 minutes is a long time for me so I'll have to go slow to ensure I don't burn out. I think 4 minute rounds should be doable assuming chest to bars work. And slooooow burpees. Burpees suck. I think it might be a good thing for me that the burpees are bar facing since that'll force me to go slow on them....

This morning started with a lot of minutes of suck. No barbells, a lot of wallballs(fortunately mostly low rep), pullups (which stopped working on the last round), toes to bar (which didn't work at all due to lack of grip) and KB step-ups (where being of reasonable height really really sucks)

Preparing for the open

Monday started with a workout that consisted of (pullups, burpees), (KB swings, squats), (slamballs G2OH, wallballs) and rowing with every part being done for 5 minutes. My legs weren't feeling that good after Saturday's broadjumps and I am not a big fan of most of these exercises anyway so this was a hard day for me.

Tuesday was the day of the bear complex (no, not beer complex. That would've been much more fun). I haven't done it in a while so I expected a new PR. The bear complex felt easy until 70, but 80 was barely manageable. I was going to stop there, but after some cheering on, I tried 82.5 which I managed to do at second attempt!
What followed was much worse. While the weights were manageable, the amount of reps and almost complete lack of rest in between (Robin is a beast so he went unbroken), almost killed me. All in all a fun workout:)

Wednesday's workout was a chipper which didn't make me chipper at all. Rowing felt ok, deadlifts felt good and boxovers were manageable. I had to scale dips and then I more or less died on wallballs making burpees much more painful than they usually are. The run actually felt quite nice since it cooled me down after the workout.


















Tomorrow (Friday) is the first day of the open. To increase chances of good performance I am increasing the number of rest days per week (that's fairly easy since I am doing 0 right now). The plan is to rest Thursdays, go through the movements of the open workout on Saturday instead of wodding and then do the open workout on Sunday. Let's see how that goes...
Another plan is to try to get slightly lighter to make body weight movements easier to handle. I wonder how I'll manage that....

Work is what you do to rest between weekends

This weekend I managed 2 workouts on Saturday and 1 on Sunday. Together with the party on Saturday it was really hard work.

Saturday started with the regular WoD which consisted of 50 KB SDHP, 50 KBT Thrusters, 50 pushups, 50 situps, 50 KB Swings and 50 Goblet Squats. If that doesn't sound  hard enough every 2 minutes we had to do 6 broadjumps which completely killed the legs. Thrusters were pure hell, just as always while Swings were manageable even that late in the WoD.

After some food and a nap I felt much better. Since I saw that the Oly pass wasn't full I dropped by. The word of the day was "snatches" which felt great. I worked up to 3*50 for snatch balance which is great since my 1RM was 50 last time I tried to max it.

The snatch complex that followed was hard mostly due to the squat in the middle part since I have trouble getting into a squat while moving a barbell. Despite that 55 worked reasonably well. The power snatch at 60 felt ok, but I was unable to do a hang squat snatch. Since 60 felt good I tried for a new PR(65). I failed, but the bar was pretty high up so I am pretty sure it will work next time I try it if I not as tired as I was then.

Surprisingly enough I didn't feel like doing burpees so I chose the right version of the workout. I lowered the weights 5 kg compared to RX and it felt like a good decision afterwards.

When I got into the box on Sunday I was met with the sight to the right.

We decided to scale down Isabel and Elisabeth to 50 which turned out to be a good decision. Isabel took just over 6 minutes while Elisabeth took just over 8.

We probably should've scaled Fran as well, but I think it wouldn't have helped much since, at least for me, most of the suckiness from thrusters comes from having to move my ass up and down while keeping my upper body straight. Anyway, we ran into the timecap roughly halfway through the 18 thrusters.

It all ended with Karen. And not regular Karen, but heavy Karen with a 15 kg ball. Well, that was 10 minuted of pure suck, but we did manage to finish it. I might get me a "I hate wallballs tattoo"....

By Sunday evening, the broad jumps caught up to me. Walking when lower legs hurt is hard...

After tasting Day of The Dead I had to do something I very rarely do and try their regular Lager. It didn't really disappoint with the chili taste, but that kind of thing is much better for dark lagers.

I am not a big fan of fruit beers, but when Japanese try to make one I have to try it. The Carpenter's Mikan Ale is less sweet, less sour and more hoppy than most other fruit beers I've tried which suits me just fine, but I am not sure if fans of the style will be as happy.

PRs and new releases

This morning started, as Friday mornings usually do, with a team WoD. Today it consisted of burpeeBarbell(4 different), body weight work(4 different) and a lot of wallballs and lunges. While I am usually reasonably happy when holding on to a barbell, doing that while performing a burpee made me significantly less happy. On the other hand, pullups worked much better than expected and I didn't die on wallballs so I guess it all evens out...

I got home from the office at a reasonable time today so the box was still open. I felt good and since I haven't made any PRs this week I decided to drop by the box and max out my front squat. I warmed up with 10x20 and then started with 10x45 and went down 1 rep and up 5kg every set ending at 1x90 which is a 2kg PR for me making my front squat equal my Clean & Jerk for the first time since November's Battle of the Month.





Today was also release day for Systembolaget with a bunch of new interesting beer. I was at Hansa at 10 together with a large number of other beer aficionados, some wine fans and a couple of local drunks. A bunch of fun stuff was bought today some of which will be documented lower in this post and some in coming days.

I wasn't planning to buy this since I am rarely impressed by lagers and I am often extremely underwhelmed by black lagers, but then I saw the can and I just had to. Well, my instinct turned out to be correct. Day of the Dead is a Black Lager with Chili and Cacao where both of them can be clearly felt putting this lager in the must try category.

Modern times delivers new beer quite often and most of it sounds very interesting. Unfortunately, in my view the contents doesn't quite match the hype. This beer was marketed as a hoppy tropical double IPA. While I am very willing to accept that this beer is tropical, it's definitely not hoppy. I don't want to say it's bad, but it's not quite my taste.

To øl is one of the best Danish breweries so when they release something new, I just have to try it. Black Malts & Body Salts is marketed as a Black Coffee Imperial IPA. I completely agree with the first part. This beer is definitely black. There is some coffee taste, but nothing special and I feel nothing IPAish there. I would be willing to accept this as a Stout, or even an Imperial Stout, but it's definitely not an IPA. As a stout it's not bad, but nothing special. Don't see any reason to buy this since there are both better and cheaper options in that style.

Oscar Blues are world renown for Dale's Pale Ale which was considered to be the world best beer in a can. While they lost that position a while ago (which is debatable. While I consider Modus Hoperandi to be a better beer, there are people who are not completely incompetent who prefer Dale's) they still produce a lot of interesting beers. This one is no exception. Death by Coconut provides chocolaty goodness together with a nice coconut aroma making it an awesome dessert beer.

Fight, strength and core

Tuesday started with yet another variation on the fight gone bad theme. This one was fight gone skilled with exercises becoming slightly more complicated, but no wallballs (yay!). I had to slightly scale the weights and replace strict HSPU with the kipped variety. The worst part was burpee box jump since I find both parts fairly hard. I also somehow managed to increase the number of reps through the entire workout 37-43-47.

Wednesday was a strength day with backsquat-deadlift-high boxjumps every 2.5 minutes with increasing weight. I normally like that kind of workouts, but my back stopped liking back squats in the end. I really need to work on my core...

And that makes today a good day for me since this morning work was 25-20-15-10-5 of back extensions, situps and T2R. Our team finished with more than half a minutes lead!

This evening I dropped by Bishops' Savoy and got an opportunity to taste these 2. The first one is Onda from Omnipollo. Onda is an American Pale Ale with a fruity aroma and slightly citrusy taste. Definitely recommended if you like that kind of thing.

The seconds one is Double Daddy Imperial IPA. The taste is more or less what one would expect from an Imperial IPA, but while I failed to find anything wrong with it, there wasn't anything special about it either. There are much better options...

Tomorrow, Systembolaget is releasing yet another batch of new stuff. Let's see if there is anything fun there....

Monday Funday

The best thing about the word Funday is that it rhymes with any day of the week.

This morning started with some heavy clean and jerks working up to a 3RM. I managed 80 which is exactly as expected considering that my 1RM is 90.

Then we went on to 5 Clean and Jerks + 8 burpees every 2 minutes. The hard part was choosing the weight. Since the instruction said "heavy" I went with 70. I realized it was a bad idea when I saw that Philip went with 80 since there are no workouts where a reasonable weight for him is only 10 kilos above a reasonable weight for me. Well, it was a horrible idea and the lifts were getting harder and harder and rest shorter and shorter. But I did manage all 8 rounds.

I felt reasonably well in the evening so I decided to drop by the gymnastics pass (Yes, Saturday's workout was painful, but the rule is: if it hurts, do it more often). The workout consisted of muscle downs, boxjumps, strict toes to bar, hand stands and some more weird stuff. I assume it means pain in unexpected places tomorrow.

No beer today. It appears that crossfit is interfering with my drinking. Does that mean I have a crossfit problem? Nah, I can quit whenever I want. I just don't want to.

It's PR time

This morning we did some running, KB-swings followed by some strength work. Running sucked, but that's mostly because running always sucks and all that changing directions doesn't make things any better.

KB-swings felt OK; but my back wasn't that happy with all that swinging. I probably should work more with my stomach muscles so that they get to support a larger part of my weight during swings.

Strength work consisted of working up to 1RM deadlift. It felt easy up to 160. 170 felt OK. 180 felt horrible and I was barely able to straighten completely. But it did come up making 180 my new PR!

Strict press, team wod and the evil gymnastics guy

Thursday was painful. We started with working up to 1RM strict press which is surprisingly hard. 55 felt ok, but 60 was completely impossible. After that we did AMRAP jumprope and HSPU. My back didn't like the HSPU so they both looked and felt awful.

Friday was the Team Wod where we had to do a bunch of different exercises (see below) for 40 minutes. The hardest part was the first one since I suck at lunges. The positive surprise is that pull-ups worked reasonably well (I am usually unable to keep hold of the bar due to sweaty hands) this late in the wod. I guess my grip is improving.

And this morning we learned why Jonas is only allowed to hold one pass a week most weeks. If he was around he would kill us off one muscle at a time. While every single exercise appears reasonable the amount and the combination with static holds while "resting" completely killed my shoulders and core. I have absolutely no idea how we managed to finish it 1.5 minutes before time cap

Yesterday I also managed to find time to drop by Bishops Arms Gustav Adolfs Torg where they had a couple of new things. The first 2  are new beers from Sibbarps Husbryggeri, a relatively new brewery in Malmö. The first one is Rye IPA and the second one is Citra IPA. I generally view Rye IPA as having a lot of potential, but frequently I find it too sweet and not hoppy enough. This time I would say they succeeded. Citra hops are always nice and this IPA was no exception.

I also had Hoppy Birthday from Alpine Beer which is a very nice and hoppy IPA.

You only live twice...

... is the title of an old James Bond movie. Well, they are wrong since today we did a triple Death by Snatches and I appear to be still alive which implies that you live at least 4 times.

The deaths by trying to find today's' 1RM which I approached with some apprehension. Last time I did it I wasn't even close at succeeding at 60 which has been my PR since summer and was my oldest PR. Well, today 60 went up easily so I tried 62.5 which also felt really good. I decided that that's enough for today and moved on to Deaths which I did at 50(7), 45(8) and 40(10). Yes, my math is a bit off, but getting exact numbers felt like too much work with too many tiny weights.

After work I dropped by Taphouse which is one of the few advantages of working in Copenhagen. The plan was two beers(pictured, first one is Gamma Uncle Jack(12 in the list), a very nice session IPA, second is Flying Couch Hop Myrtle(16), a slightly too sour double IPA) and go home, but then I saw that They had an Imperial Coffee Stout (pure awesomeness) at happy hour prices (large for the price of small) and just had to have it. Unfortunately I forgot to take a picture:(

A WOD a day keeps the doctor away...

... even if you do stupid shit and screw up your back. Well, not really screw up, but there was at least some pain after Saturday's deadlifts. But I'll probably live.

The most interesting crossfit for the past 3 days was Monday's Jackie which was harder than I thought. I kinda died on the thrusters (I expect weird pictures to appear at Fabriken's webpage in a few days) and then I had no grip for pullups. So I finished at 11:30 which is really really bad. It might've been much more fun if we did it in reverse order... The other 2 wods (Sunday(which was pure hell) then Tuesday) are pictured below.

Today I dropped by Bishops' Gustav on my way home and got to taste these 2:

Handshake IPA is a very nice IPA from Green Flash. It's as good as most other things from that brewery.  At least if you like hops in your beer.

Sahtipaja's Mosaic is marketed as an IPA, but it's a bit too more sour than you normally expect from an IPA. I don't really recommend it unless you really like sour beer.

Back in the box

So I survived a week's rest. Today's wod was preparation for the open preceded by some strength work. I am reasonably happy with my 3RM deadlift(160), but I am not at all happy with my result on the 15.1 My grip went away due to sweat after 3 rounds so my toes to bar stopped working:( I should also be able to snatch faster than I did today

Yesterday I dropped by Bishops Arms Savoy and found this beauty. Modus Hoperandi has been my goto beer for the last few years and this is a slightly more citrusy variation on the same theme. Also available at selected Systembolagets.

BotM and rest

Since I am forbidden to sweat this week (well, last Friday to this Friday) I've been a bit quiet here, but I did make a couple of visits to the box.

On Saturday the Battle of the Month was held. This time it was newbie (i.e. people who haven't competed before) only (some of them have trained for ages) so I wouldn't have been allowed to participate even if I was able to. 10 girls and 8 guys participated and were awesome. Always great to see people competing for the first time.

The competitors

That same evening I dropped by Jukka for dinner and beers with a couple of friends. The most interesting beer of the day was probably the Chocolate Manifesto, a a chocolate milk stout from the Flying Monkeys Brewery with it's wonderful Chocolaty taste. This is a desert beer that should be eaten with a nice sweet desert (chocolate cake?) and should be shared by 4-8 people.