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!

Is it possible to set too many PRs in a week?

Too much travel this week due to work leading to less training and therefore lack of posts.

Sunday started with this workout which was 40 minutes 1 rest/ run where resting consisted of a bunch of exercises. 40 minutes running is way too much for my legs in Nanos.

Monday's workout was a lot of fun with 1 work, 1 static hold. We had to scale down the weights quite a but and I had to replace running with assault bike since my legs really disliked all that running.

After the workout I got an opportunity to try out some lifting shoes so I worked up to a heavy overhead squat making 65 my new PR.

Later that day I dropped by gymnastics where the gymnastics guy made us do a bunch of weird things with rings. I think I am getting more comfortable with those things.

Tuesday's workout generated a bunch of PRs for me. I reached 57.5 in strict press for the first time and did 3 of those, then I went for 75 in push press which was my new 3RM and 4RM followed by push jerk where I got 5x80 followed by 4x85(failed on last one). So that gives a 3,4 and 5 rm which makes it 8 PRs in total. Nice!

Wednesday was hard. I had to scale down to 75 and it still was really hard (and I felt it in my shoulders during Thursday and Friday). On the other hand rowing felt OK and the scaled down version of pistols felt great.





















I got back from Italy around 13 on Sunday and went straight to the box (4 rest days in a row felt a bit too dangerous). I started with working up to a heavy overhead squat which felt like a good idea since I just bought my lifting shoes and managed to set a new PR (70!). After that I decided it was time to try out Isabel at RX and managed to finish it at 12:38 which is not fast, but considering that even trying Isabel felt like an insane idea just a few months ago I am very happy.

Mikkeller's Stick in the Ear is yet another variation on west coast IPA with a great combination of fruitiness and hoppiness. Not too special, but high quality as always from Mikkeller

Some exercises have really long names

I like this type of workouts with good minutes interchanging with horrible ones. I opted to follow the advice on the whiteboard and did 60+15. 60 kg snatches felt fairly easy, at least in the beginning and 15 wallballs felt doable. Prior to the main wod, I worked up to a heavy snatch setting a new, 67.5 PR.




















Thursday's wod consisted of front squats, box jumps and rowing(a minute of each, 4 rounds, 1 minute rest in between) preceded by 5s of front squat. I worked up to 80 which is really good considering I suck at squats.

Friday started with an opportunity to meet most of the girls. To make the workout doable we scaled it down to 50. I still had to do more than half of the snatches, but on the other hand I gave away a bunch of wallballs and other body weight stuff so it all evened out in the end. We expected to end somewhere mid-Elizabeth, but we got all the way to mid-Barbara so I guess we should be happy, but I think we could've managed better with bigger sets on easy stuff and "less fair" division of other exercises, letting people who suck the least at each exercise do the most of it. That doesn't matter much now, but it will once we are competing.

Saturday started with clusters which is a combination of a squat clean and a thruster, 2 movements I don't particularly like so i had to lower the weights a bit and went 70-50-40 which resulted in 8-16-17 thrusters which I am fairly happy with.

After some food (eggs&bacon of course) and some rest I noticed that there was room at the oly pass so I decided to join that one.  Today was snatch day so after the warmup we worked up to a heavy snatch where I managed to get 70 over my head. That's a 10 kg increase since Christmas, much more than my other lifts. On the other hand I was stuck at 60 from August until January while my other lifts were progressing nicely. It's interesting how differently different lifts develop....

After that we did a snatch/snatch balance/overhead squat complex where I managed to work up to 52.5, but the snatch balance was really really ugly. Simply "falling" with that many kilos above you is scary....

Snatch deadlift went fine working up to 100 kg. Having hands that wide screws up the grip when it's the barbell is heavy. Snatch grip behind the neck strict press is the longest name for an exercise I've seen so far. It's also really hard. I only managed to do 47.5. I wasn't able to lift 50 once....

Thursday evening I dropped by Bishops Arms Savoy where I found this awesome smoky Imperial Stout. Chocolate, coffee and smokiness are an awesome combination. Brouwerij de Molen never disappoints.

Mango Magnifico is a really good description of this beer. Sweetness from Mango and spiciness from habanero create something truly wonderful. Buy it while supplies last (that's one of the news from Friday's beer release at Systembolaget)

It's too cold to be running outside

Saturday started with this "fun" little workout with a little bit of everything and way too much running. Luckily (or maybe not since bad weather sometimes means we get to skip running) the weather was good. I scaled the first 3 rope climbs to save my elbows, but I did the last one without any elbow pain afterwards! I suppose I can do some more experimenting with that

Sunday's WOD involved a lot of farmer walks which isn't one of my strongest areas and that of course affected my performance in the parts I normally do reasonably well, like clean and jerk and back squat. I guess more grip work is needed....




















Monday's WOD was the first non-Open-related Monday wod in a long time which was nice. Working in pairs we did 75 squats-50 pullups-25 push presses. First round squats were back and weight 60, second front and 45 and it ended with overhead and 30. The hardest part was pullups, mostly due to weight staying the same and not dropping as for the other exercises. The last round of pullups had us at 2s and 3s, but 75 pullups in a WOD is way more than I thought I would be capable of even half a year ago so I am reasonably happy. Also, 30kg push presses are easy:)

Tuesday sucked for me. Double KB C&J overloads my coordination and OH lunges suck more or less the same no matter the weight. On the other hand, both burpees and toes to bar went fairly well. It feels weird when the body weight parts of the workout feel better than the parts with weights....

Saturday afternoon was spent at Malmö Beer and Whisky Festival. Let's start with the bad:

• There were way too many people. Malmömässan was full and they even stopped selling tickets. Let's hope they find a bigger venue next year. Maybe Swedbank Stadion?
• I was too late to taste Tactical Nuclear Penguin (formerly the world's strongest beer). Since it's a rarity, my last hope is probably that the new Brewdog bar in Malmö will serve it.

Otherwise, it was awesome. I got to taste a huge amount of interesting beers. A couple of highlights:

• A truffle beer from Skeppsgossen. Really weird with a strong garlic taste and aroma. I happen to like garlic so  I liked it, but it's not for weak-hearted.
• Tasted Nerdbrewing's Chipotle Stout again. It's still awesome.
• I've never heard of Pax brewery before the festival, but their ginger saison was very nice and I don't normally like saisons.
• Charlis' Imperial Raspberry Chocostout. No comments needed.

I'll be back next year!

This post is too long

So the open is over now which means that it's time to draw some conclusions. The most important parts for me are how did I perform compared to how I would've performed a year ago and lessons learned from the past few weeks. Since we don't have an older version of me available for comparison, we'll have to make some guesses, but here it goes anyway a wod at a time:

• 16.1 resulted in 4.5 rounds. A year ago pullups felt hard and chest to bars felt impossible making a full round unlikely. Also I am not too sure about my ability to do lunges with 43 kilos overhead back then... So all in all I am happy with my development, but less happy with my score. Doing it on Saturday and then redoing it on Monday would've probably been better and focusing on endurance for lunges than weight for chest to bars would've made more sense.
• 16.2 sucked for me since I suck at double unders, but a year ago, I found toes to bar to be hard. I would've managed to do 25, but it would've taken much longer time leaving me much less time for double unders. Also, I sucked much more at those back then than I do now making 30 a much more likely score than the actual 49..
• 16.3 would've been the same then and now (but less shoulder pain afterwards since I wouldn't even have tried muscle ups).
• 16.4 started out great for me this year since I like deadlifts and am reasonably good at heavy weights. A year ago my deadlift PR was 110 kg (compared to 180 now) making 105 scary. I would've probably managed to get through them, but it would've screwed up my back making getting through wallballs complicated and a second attempt the day after impossible. On the other hand, doing it with a day's rest in between might've been a good idea.
• 16.5 sucked for everybody, but I still managed to finish it and get a fairly good score (which makes my statement that I under performed on 16.1 much more believable). Today, 43kg thrusters feel hard, but not at all scary, even at high reps. A year ago I would've scaled it or it would've taken me close to an hour.

So overall it's pretty clear that my fitness is much better now than a year ago. It's also clear that the strength component is the one I need to worry the least about. Technique (double unders, muscle ups, wallballs) and endurance are much more real issues for me to worry about. And that creates a dilemma. The strength part is much more fun to train, mostly because the results (or lack of such) are obvious and the progress is much easier to see. Technique and endurance would, on the other hand, enable me to perform better in competitions and the endurance part would also improve health and other parts of life creating the classical "long term" vs "short term" discrepancy. Well, we'll see what happens...

Sunday wod was a variation on the seven where we managed  5 rounds of the thing in the pic. My legs worked surprisingly well considering all the thrusters during the preceding days....

I've been bad at taking pics of workouts these last few days, so there will be fewer of those than normal. Monday's WOD was a variation of 16:5 so I skipped it and did endurance and gymnastics instead. Endurance was fun, but getting home for it is not doable most days. Gymnastics worked better than it usually does so I feel I am learning stuff. Surprising, isn't it?

Tuesday and Wednesday were conditioning days with high amounts of fairly easy movements while Thursday was a squat clean day. My max of the day was 85 (90 was power clean + frontsquat) which I am reasonably happy with, but I need to do more of that. During the wod, 70 kg squat cleans stopped working as well, so I spent some time doing power clean + front squats. I really need to get the technique working.

Friday was an actual team workout with the entire class being scored as a team. The conditioning part didn't really work for me with a possible exception of cycling since my cold refuses to go away. The strength part had mixed results. On one hand, I am happy with my 8 back squats @ 85 and am satisfied with my 10 deadlifts @ 120 (my grip felt like it would fail in the end so 130 would've probably been too hard). On the other hand, I only managed 5 bench presses @ 80 due to running out of time. I need to get better at those estimates....

This week is Malmö Beer Week. That's basically like Malmöfestivalen, but for adults. It's also part of the explanation for lateness and length of this post. On Tuesday I visited Bishops' Gustav Adolfs that had Release Party for NerdBrewing. Their most interesting beer that day was the beer seen in my right hand, an Else If Imperial Stout with Chipotle. I really miss their Lemongrass IPA....

Wednesday was the day of Danish invasion to Taproom(Malmö Brygghus). Since Danes are good at IPAs I had to taste some of them. My favorite of the day was Cascade hvede ipa (the right one on the left picture) which, as the name would imply is a wheat IPA. I really enjoy that combination....

Friday gave me an opportunity to taste this mystery beer at Bishop's Savoy. Really interesting Xmas ale. And drinking those in April is cool:)