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....