16:5

Most of the Friday was spent watching 16:5. Some of the results were great and some were much more modest. I did it in 18:59 which I am reasonably happy with, but I think that there is a lot of room for improvement. I can probably go slightly faster on the burpees and split 15 in 2 instead of 3 saving some time. Also, not having a cold might help. I'll see how other people perform and depending on the others' numbers I might redo it on Monday

This morning's WOD was in teams of 3. We rowed 120 cal,  followed by 45 thrusters, 60 pushups, 45 front squats, 120 wallballs, 45 hang power snatches, 60 pullups and 45 clean and jerks followed by an 800 meter run with a slamball. We also had a slamball that we had to keep in the air for the entire workout. Rowing felt much better than it normally does, but the barbell (we went for 50kg) felt really heavy on thrusters and front squats. My legs didn't enjoy being subjected to that kind of work such a short time after 16:5

After all those thrusters I decided I needed to get back into my comfort zone. Hobo Chic is an Imperial IPA from Dry&Bitter. While it's a very nice beer, I feel that much more can be done with this beer style. We need more hops!

Omnipollo is one of the most interesting Swedish breweries and this time they've outdone themselves with this Chocolate Ice Cream Brown Ale which both tastes and smells just as you would expect given the name. Sometimes we get our just desserts:)

Death by thrusters?

I am writing this just over 6 hours before 16.5 is announced. That announcement fills me with no small amount of dread since it's almost guaranteed to include thrusters which is one of my greatest weaknesses (together with wallballs). My only hope is that it will be heavy low rep thrusters. While those still suck for me, they suck much more for most other people.

The thrusters are unlikely to be alone. They will probably be combined with something. Maybe boxjumps or overhead squats or SDHP? We'll know in a few hours.

This week's training volume was lower than usual due to a cold. Monday started with me skipping the morning wod (I've done enough wallballs during the preceding 4 days) and opting for gymnastics instead. Gymnastics was a lot of work in the rings where we spent some time upside down (which I didn't find at all comfortable) and where I got to use a lot of muscles I normally don't use, mostly in my shoulders (the left one still hurts from my muscle up attempts).

Tuesday  was a hard day with a tripple wod. 3-6-9-12-9-6-3 of first thrusters/boxjumps, followed by overhead squats/boxjumps and in the end front rack lunges/boxjumps. The weight was 45. Both squats and lunges worked reasonably well given the weight, but thrusters went really slow.

Wednesday was a Clean and Jerk Day. 90 went up fairly easily. I think I even push pressed it, but 92.5 (which also became my new power clean PR) refused to move from my shoulders. I need to do some split jerking at lower weights to get some confidence in that movement.
Grace went badly. I was hoping to go under 3 minutes, but failed miserably. I blame the cold.

The beer results are mixed. Wednesday I got an opportunity to taste some Finnish beers(pictures withheld to protect the guilty). None of them were exactly bad, but all of them were fairly boring.

On the other hand, Pango Feber IPA is a very nice fruity IPA from Brewski who are known for their fruity IPAs. This time they mixed Passion fruit, ananas and mango which I find a bit of an overkill. The single fruit IPAs were nicer. Next week is promising much more interesting beer consumption due to Malmö Beer Week

I still hate wallballs

Well, after 2 attempts at 16.4, I think I am done (I will probably be tempted to redo it one more time tomorrow, but right now it feels like a horrible idea).

Both attempts went more or less according to plan. On Saturday I started out by taking it easy on the deadlifts. I was done slightly earlier than expected (3.17 rather than 3.30) and felt fairly good. Wall balls went slightly worse than expected. I had I think 6 noreps, all of them due to missing the wall. All of my wallballs were also way above the line so I was wasting a lot of effort all the time. It took me another 5 minutes. Rowing went great and I was done with it at 11:36 which gave me around 20 more seconds for HSPU than expected. HSPU is not one of my strengths so I was really happy with 6.

Since my original plan was working and my back was feeling no repercussions of Saturday's deadlifts I decided to redo the workout on Sunday. This time I went faster on the deadlifts and was done by 2.57, but much more tired than the previous time. Wallballs sucked as they always do and I norepped more than I normally do (missing the wall again), but due to pacing from my judge I still finished wallballs faster than the first time(4:43). When I started rowing I realized I had absolutely no strength left so I tried not to go too fast and just get through it. I t took me 16 seconds longer than the first time, but I was still ahead of my previous pace by 20 seconds which enabled me to do 3 hspus extra.

So, what did I learn?

• I am good at deadlifting, even when it's a moderate weight and high reps. Most people who did the wod around same time, even some that are normally much better than me at everything else, had significantly slower times than me. 
• I really really suck at wallballs. I think I had by far the slowest wallball time. 
• I can row even when I am really tired
• HSPU are doable even at the end of a hard workout and when done toa fairly high standard.

Since wallballs have been my bane for a while now, I think it's time to do some work there. I should probably start with actually hitting the wall every time and then making sure I don't throw too high. Yet another thing on my todo list for after the open.

Systembolaget released new beers on Friday and yours truly had to perform the hard work of tasting some of them. 

Sierra Nevada's Beer Camp is one of their seasonal beers with different versions delivered every year. This time they decided to go for something much tamer than what I would normally expect from them and while there is nothing exactly wrong with the beer and I might even recommend it to a beginner, there is nothing cool or special either.

I rarely buy English beer since they generally try to stay traditional and I prefer experimenters, but this one caught my eye. Old Freddy Walker is an Ale that in my opinion is very close to a porter with a lot of toffee and coffee taste. Overall an interesting and fun beer.

The purpose of Grapefruit is a fruity IPA that I previously tried on tap. My evaluation hasn't really changed. While I applaud the effort, it's still too much of a fruit beer for my taste.

Handshake is a collaboration between 2 great breweries, All-In and West coast. Despite both breweries featuring a hop cone in their logos this beer is fairly low on hops which is understandable given that it's an Imperial Stout. I happen to enjoy that style of beer with it's sweet tastes and this one is no exception with it's strong coconutty taste.

Deadlifts!

I was planning to write this post Thursday evening and then it would've started with a 16.4 prediction and the words would've been "deadlifts + hspu + maybe something else". Unfortunately I was a bit too busy that day and no post was written. Well, now we know that 16.4 is deadlifts, wallballs, rowing and hspu. Since I am able to perform all these movements I find this to be a much better workout for me than 16.2 or 16.3, but I would've preferred heavier deadlifts since that happens to be my favorite technique. My main issue here will be wallballs since it's fairly easy to norep and I always suffer on high rep wallballs.
That generates a simple plan: Do the workout twice. First time, go slow on on deadlifts (goal around 3.5 minutes) followed by as fast as possible on wallballs(4.30 feels doable), followed by going fairly slow on the rower to recover a bit and get the pulse down(4 minutes?). That gives me a minute to try to get some hspus.... Second run will start out with pedal to the metal on deadlifts followed by same plan as the first run. Let's see how it goes....


This week's training was mostly fun.

Tuesday was a back squat and row day. Since I always find it hard to figure out what max I would have at high rep amount I started easy and did 60-70-90. 60 and 70 felt easy. 90 felt hard, but I might've managed an extra rep/kilo.
Rowing sucks, especially when done for a long time. Therefore my 40 cal time sucked, but the later ones were much more reasonable.

Wednesday started with an early meeting at work so I couldn't do my standard pass. I was planning a rest day, but then I was told that it was 1 rep max HPC followed by HPCs and T2R. Since I enjoy both movements I dropped by one of the evening passes. HPCs went great despite my shoulder still complaining about my bar muscle up attempts. My 1Rm went up from 85 to 92.5 which is according to plan, but still very nice.  The AMRAP went fine as well, althogh I got a bit tired on the 30 rep round.

Thursday was a hell day consisting a Karen split into 3 parts with runs in between the wallball sets. Pure hell, but at least I go reminded of how bad it can be,

Friday was an already familiar workout, with amraps followed by X rep max. It's always hard to know how heavy you should go and I really didn't want to do multiple attempts, so I went slightly easier than I probably should. This time I did 70-75-80-75. I would've probably managed something like 75-80-82-76 although thrusters were really hard.




This week was much more fun beer wise than the previous ones since Wednesday was Amager tap takeover at Bishops' Savoy. Tap taker means that a brewery arrives with a bunch of kegs and takes over most of the taps in a pub. Since Amager is one of the most well known Danish breweries I was really excited.
A lot of beer was consumed, but the best one was Vaskerelven IPA with it's high hoppiness that was very nicely combined with fruitiness without going overboard with alcohol. This was the most pure IPA in the bunch

I hate being right

So, I was right about muscle ups. Unfortunately this didn't bring me any joy since my first muscle up is still in the future. I did 3 attempts on 16.3 and despite all the cheering from everyone all I have to how for it is a bunch of bruises, and pain in my left shoulder and right elbow (all of those are minor and manageable). Oh well, that just means that I'll be adding bar muscle ups next to double unders to my big 5 for 2016.

Rest of the weekend's training went fairly well. Friday was a team pass that consisted of 100 each of wallballs, overhead squats, pushups, snatches, pullups, hang power cleans, T2B and thrusters. Every drop was rewarded with 2 burpee-squats. We hit the time cap in the middle of T2B. As usual for the past few weeks, I was pleasantly surprised by my pullups working reasonably well this late in the workout (I guess it's time to stop being surprised) and that I was actually able to do T2b this late as well.

Saturday consisted of wall climbs, front squats, burpees, thrusters, box jump overs and snatches. Working in pairs we did 20 wall climbs and 50 of the others. We were supposed to do 3 rounds, but we managed only 2. It was a very interesting experience where I go extremely tired during burpees and thrusters followed by slight recovery during box jump overs and much more during snatches(we did 5s there. My first round was always singles, and I ended with 5 touch and go that felt easy).

On Sunday I decided I needed to do something that I like and makes me feel good so I decided to do some deadlifts. The first few rounds felt easy, but when I tried 170 it felt heavy and then I failed a couple of times on 180. Since I still needed a win I decided to do some front squats and worked up to a new PR(91). That also marks the first time in almost a year that my front squat PR is above my power clean PR.

Muscle Ups are coming?

I am writing this post just a few hours prior to 16.3 announcement. While I am hoping for something fairly doable, the main goal for me is to not to do a repeat of 16.2 (more on this in next paragraph) and accept my limitations at a sufficiently early stage (which would be extremely untypical behaviour) so that if I get a horrible score, I would get it without spending hours stressing out about the 16.3 equivalent of double unders (the likely candidates are pistols and muscle ups) in the box. At the same time muscle ups are coming sooner or later and if they are coming, it would be nice to have them combined with other things I hate like wallballs/rowing/light thrusters (heavy thrusters are a completely different thing)...

Monday morning WOD was a 16.2 variation where we scaled double unders to singles and went with a slightly lower weight. It felt fairly good and now I think I feel mostly comfortable with toes to bar when tired and sweaty. The technique deteriorates, but I can still deliver. On the other hand, I feel that I need to do much more squat training. Most of my heavier "squat cleans" were power clean + front squat. Better technique would waste much less energy.

My original evening plan (well, it started out as morning plan, but I didn't feel like following through with it either) was to try to redo 16.2, but when I showed up in the box and tried double unders it worked horribly and my mind wasn't in it so I decided to visit the evil gymnastics guy instead. The main part (parallel bar work) was a lot of fun and reasonably easy, but the short WOD in the end was a killer. It seemed fairly easy(20-18-... -2 situps and box stepups with 1 legged jump in between),  but then we were told that we had to hold our arms parallel to the floor (making the body resemble a T) which basically killed the shoulders.

Tuesday was a Shoulder to Overhead day with us working up to a max in strict press, push press and jerk. Since it was less than 12 hours after the gymnastics, my shoulders weren't in the best shape so I feel I underperformed by quite a lot. That was followed by an unplanned rest day (work has a tendency to interfere with my training now and then), but that might've been a good thing.

Thursday was a body weight + farmer's walk WOD with us having to do 100 pullups, 200 pushups and 300 squats. Each event was followed by 400 meters farmer's walk. Since we were 3 instead of 2 we had to increase both number of body weight movements and farmer's walk distance. The hardest part was the first one since pullups is not one of my strengths which feels very weird to write. 50 pullups in a couple of minutes is not a huge amount, but considering that I was barely able to do 1 just over a year ago, I think I should be reasonably satisfied.  Farmer's walk wasn't a picnic either(we were doing 32 kg kettlebells), but I see a clear improvement there as well.


The beer situation is mostly depressing. As we wall know, it's almost easter and, since easter is almost the same thing as Christmas, Easter beer was released this Monday. Easter beer can be very different, but usually it's a less fun version of Christmas beer. After going through all of the potentially interesting ones, my verdict is "don't buy any of them".

Don't mention the Double Unders

So the last 3 days have been spent stressing about double unders which turned out to not be very helpful.  They worked reasonably well Friday evening when I was able to do 10 single-double-single-double. They also worked OK Saturday morning when I was able to do 7 like that. Saturday afternoon they went to shit and didn't recover for Sunday afternoon when I was doing 16.2. So my 16.2 was roughly 50 seconds of toes to bar followed by 24 double unders in 3 minutes which is extremely annoying. I got some useful tips so maybe I'll do less badly tomorrow when I'll be trying this again...

This weeks WODs were fun to various degrees.

Wednesday was the deadlift (9@100kg even minutes) + pull up(9 on odd minutes) day (16 minutes in total). I was very happily surprised by me being able to do pullups for all the rounds although I had to break them up in multiple sets after a few rounds.

Thursday was a Tabata(20 seconds work, 10 seconds rest) day. 5 exercises, 8 rounds each, lowest round gives the score. I managed 10 pushups, 4 cals row, 6 slamball G2OH, 10 dips and 5 wallballs. I should've gone harder on rowing, but first round was kind of fail since getting into the rowing machine is slow....

Friday was the team day with a little of everything, but mostly body weight stuff with some balls and kettlebells thrown in. A hard but fun workout although I was missing barbells...

Saturday consisted of jumprope(I did singles), KB Swings and Cindy. Singles take a long time, but they were the rest portion of this workout. Swings at 32kg work, but they are heavy so I needed some rest between them. The part that I am most happy about is that pullups worked reasonably well for all 15 rounds. I think I am getting a hang of that.

This was the 3rd straight barbell-less workout and since I didn't reach the squat cleans for 16.2  Sunday was barbell-less for me as well:( Let's hope I reach squat cleans tomorrow or I'll be up to 5 days in a row without working with a barbell. That can't be good for me.

On Thursday I dropped by Bishops at Gustav Adolfs Torg on my way to see Deadpool (no, this is not and never will be a movie blog, but go see it, it's awesome!) and got to taste the very appropriately named Stone Delicious IPA. This beer manages to be both citrusy and hoppy creating a wonderful experience. Although more hops would make it even better.

STFU and snatch

Monday's wod was a variation of 16.1 and since I've already done that and it sucked I am really happy I skipped the regular wod. Instead I went to the gymnastics wod which was muscle up training. The muscle up preparation part was fun and I think I learned something. Whether it's something useful is something that time will tell. The wod ended with an attempt by the evil gymnastics guy to kill our shoulders (1work 1 rest right part of the picture + rest=l-sit). My shoulders were dead by the time cap and I was severely scaling both l-sit and pushups.

After the wod I cheered on/judged the final 16.1 competitors which was a lot of fun so I guess I know what I will be doing for next 4 Monday evenings (and probably most of Saturdays and Sundays).

Looking at the final 16.1 result I am pretty happy. All of the people who beat me by a lot are actually much better than me at crossfit and I think I beat most of the people I usually compare myself with. And this didn't feel like my type of workout (of course, now that I've written it, the rest of workouts will be wallballs + doubleunders making this the easiest workout for me)

Tuesday started with this which felt like a horrible idea since my legs were dead after Sunday's lunges (it usually take my legs 30+ hours to get DOMS) and my grip after Monday's gymnastics. We scaled the barbell to 40 and kettlebell to 28 and moved fairly fast. In hindsight I would've probably enjoyed RX slightly more since it would've significantly lowered the number of reps and ensured that my legs survived. But mostly I am happy that T2B worked all the way.


I was driven home by a fellow box member. In the car we talked crossfit and he pointed out that my 1RM  snatch is too low given my other lifts. I was blaming it on my technique but he was having none of it. So, when I go home I dropped by the box and worked up to a 65kg snatch(new pr)

Ring your mother is a weird beer. While quite tasty I felt nothing special at any point. I guess that's what they call balanced. I find absolutely nothing to complain about and the beer is extremely well made. But I find nothing to recommend either. I guess balance is not my thing