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Oh My Quads it's 15.5

30/3/2015

The last WoD of the 2015 CrossFit Games has been released - we were expecting some combination of burpees, box jumps and thrusters but only got one right, it's thrusters and rowing. CrossFit HQ seems to have started a tradition of the last workout being a psychological grinder, for time. Remember 14.5? Thrusters and bar-over burpees for time with no time cap? This is similar, but blessedly shorter. We don't have any high-skill movements in 15.5 so it will be a test of your fitness in a simpler way than the other Open workouts this year.

I did it this evening. SO happy to have it in the bag. I knew it would be a mindf**k and just wanted to get it over and done with as soon as possible. Now I can get back to being a powerlifter.

How To Do It (if You're an Average CrossFitter)

This on is a test of your stamina more than anything, so there' not much anyone can do to help you with before score submission time on Tuesday (NZ time). Rowing and thrusters are not highly technical movements, but of course can be done poorly. If yours are not efficient, spend some time with your coach and try to tidy them up at least a bit before hitting this WoD for reals.

Prepare Your Mind

It is going to hurt. This workout belongs to the fearless. The people who can suck it up and grind through the pain will have the most to be proud of at the end.

Figure out how you are going to deal with the hurt before you are in the middle of it. What has worked for you in similar situations? Reminding yourself how much fitter this will make you? Remembering our goals for this Open? Thinking about a rival/friend and trying to beat them?

I just wanted it done. When it hurt the most I reassured myself that this was the last workout, and no way in hell was I doing it again. Be sure to yell nice things at your box buddies when they hit the pain cave and they'll do the same for you. The encouragement from my mates at Remarkables CrossFit absolutely helped me get out of the mire of my own mind and get the job done.

I busted this one out opposite Rick, who was doing the scaled. He was much faster on the row than me but I had him on the thrusters, and he finished a few seconds ahead of me. Good to pace off him, thanks Rick!

Warm up

About the only nice thing about this WoD is that it has part of a warm-up in the the 27 Calorie row. You'll need to do your usual warm up routine, focusing on your hips and legs. If you have any issues with squat depth, work that hard because no-reps will suck the will to live out of you in this WoD.

Practice getting in and out of the rower at speed beforehand, and wear Oly shoes if you have them.

Row

Plan your pace, and know that the 27 and 21 cal sets are going to feel long. Whatever you do, don't start rowing as fast as you can. BREATHE, right from the start. Get a mate to remind you to breathe if you're like me and forget on the first few reps. Pace yourself to 85-90% and get a steady rhythm going. Use your whole body on the row - legs push, arms pull, then arms back, legs back.

Thrusters

Plan how you will break up the thrusters. Keep some in the tank rather than a max effort for each set, or they will all go to custard well before the end of the workout. As with the rowing, BREATHE.

Use your hip drive. Legs will be shot to pieces not long into this one and the strength in your ams are needed to get the bar all the way up, so snap those hips like when you're cleaning to boost the bar up. Take short rests in the rack position if you need to. When you do put it down, squat clean into the next rep to save time.

Pause slightly at the top to show your judge that you have full extension. If you get it all the way up but whip the bar back down it doesn't look like your arms are straight.

Mouth open? Oh good, this must mean I am remembering to breathe. Thanks for taking the photos Carly!

Recover

When you're done, cut your legs off and throw them away. Seriously, this will feel better than keeping them on for the couple of minutes after this workout.

Repeat it and try for a better score? Like bloody hell no.

I went for a short swim and hung out in the pool stretching straight after this one. Walking down the steps of the hot pool was really difficult and I was grateful for the handrails! My quads are remembering 13.3 (150 wall balls, 90 double unders, pfft muscle ups). After that one I found rolling my legs out with a rolling pin helpful in the days afterwards. See Adam rolling his quad with a barbell on the far right of the pic above? That will work too. If you can stand it.

It's over!

I'm parked up on the Lazy Boy with my laptop now, with a Fran Cough and stiffening legs. Yes, the Fran Cough is a real thing and you might get it too from 15.5.

Links

Andy from The RX Clinic shows us how to make thrusters easy
Tabata Time's Coaching Roundtable 15.5
Nicole Carroll's tips as posted by CrossFit Inc.
The Outlaw Way's video tips

Good on you, you went hard and deserve to be proud of yourself for making to the end of this Open with full effort given.
Did 15.5 give you the Fran Cough? Any tips of your own to pass on? Show us your 'after' picture? Comment below!

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The Psychopathic Beast

27/3/2015

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Number One Son is quite a writer. He is eleven and is a fairly dramatic kid. Here is a piece of descriptive writing that he did for school about learning to unicycle.
I thought it was pretty funny and thought you might enjoy it too. Reproduced with his permission.

Getting bucked off again. Over four sessions at school he didn't really get the hang of it, but he did get perhaps two meters at the most. Which is pretty good, those things are DIFFICULT.

The Psychopathic Beast

The devilish thing seemed to grin at my bloodied knees, enjoying my pain and suffering. The unicycle dared me to jump on its back, to get pummeled back to the ground. I was afraid. But there was the cry, “Come on, get on your unicycle.” No surprise there, but I hesitated, still staying back from the monstrosity I was ordered to ride. I cautiously slid to the unicycle, dreading what was to come. Blam! Now was no different. My knees, bloodied ever more, were not eager to move my legs towards the unicycle.

Suddenly I felt a rage, “How dare this thing be the master of me?” How good it would feel to tear it apart with my newly found strength. To crush it, to destroy it. But I could feel that dream would never become reality. The unicycle had the upper hand. I was doomed. “Come on get on your unicycle”. That dreaded cry. I hopped back on, you know the story. Hit the ground again. Bit the dust. The gritty, hard, now-red dust.

To think some people do it like it’s a piece of cake. I wonder if they went through the same torture as me. But worse, to go through more than I already had would drive me to sure insanity.

I stood up. Determined to conquer the terrible beast. Even though I knew I never would get it done today. I rose up seemingly stories tall over the unicycle, ready to conquer, to crush it with a touch of my fist.

I went back, happy with what I’d done. The great beast was helpless in my grasp, the beast they call a unicycle.

Number One Son looking dramatic. This dramatic landscape is Surat Bay, in the Catlins.

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"Do You Care?" Exhibition, and a Painting that is Too Vulgar to be Included

21/3/2015

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The Exhibition

Currently on at the Lakes District Museum and Art Gallery is a group exhibition by three local artists, Marion Marquand, Sue Wademan and Susan Cleaver. The artists are showing colourful, intriguing work that is well worth the trip to Arrowtown to see. But of the artwork that was submitted for this exhibition, it was one that was excluded for reasons of supposed vulgarity that I found the most interesting.

Part of the gallery showing Marion's work on the left and Susan's on the back wall.

Marion Marquand's art in this exhibition is overtly didactic. Her body of work shown in this exhibition is the most relevant to the title "Do You Care?" Almost all of her paintings include text written directly to the viewer that details the subject matter of the work. She addresses a wide variety of subjects, including ecological destruction, religion, feminism, the oppression of the poor by the greedy and urban development around Queenstown. Marion's paintings use a wide range of technique and style to suit the message that she communicates.

Marion has lived and traveled in many places all over the world. Her first hand experience of local histories and cultures and the industrialisation that inexorably changes them informs the subject matter of her work. Pictured here is "The Demise of the Divine Feminine", a large 3D multimedia work. Here she uses her direct, vivid style to illustrate goddess of creation from ancient cultures. The goddesses have been built like a relief sculptures, with each in their own partition of a shrine-like painting. The colours behind the goddesses remind me of outer space, a fitting background for these divine representations.

Marion Marquand's "The Demise of the Divine Feminine", 3D mixed media.

A variety of materials and surface is implemented by Susan Cleaver to show the rich colours and absorbing design of her art. She uses found and photographed images to make photo mosaics, mandala images and cut collages in her wall-hung artwork, and has had images printed onto fabric to make various household furnishings and a jewel-like peacock dress.

The back lit glass panels with butterflies and foliage printed on them attest to her technical proficiency in a range of media. A detail of one, "Blue Butterfly/Koru Fern" is pictured below. It uses image sparingly and light subtlety to give full impact to the pristine colours illuminated through the glass.

Detail of Susan Cleaver's "Blue Butterfly/Koru Fern", digital print on glass.

Sue Wademan's textiles are a delightful play of colour and light using the materials and techniques embroidery, a minority practice in the world of Fine Art. Sue's landscapes are skilfully built in large and small format, using atmospheric perspective and shimmering highlights to give depth and mood. Her large format landscapes are gently dramatic. Unfortunately I couldn't photograph any of them well due to gallery lights reflecting off the glass.

Three of her "Prayer Dresses" are also included in the exhibition. These are made from silk saris in luxurious colour and hung to be reminiscent of buddhist prayer flags.

Sue Wademan's "Last Light", Appliqué and embroidery.

The Vulgar Painting

And the painting that was too vulgar to be shown in this gallery, due to school children visiting? "Why Is It the Most Vulgar Word in the English Language?" by Marion Marquand. I saw this work where it presently hangs in her studio at the Queenstown Arts Centre and found it's message very intriguing.

Marion's artist statement, a slightly shorter version of which is the text in the painting:

You may not be aware that cunt is a very ancient European word which simply named a woman’s genitals. It appears in ancient Basque, Old Norse, Old Frisian, Latin and Middle English. The medieval church believed that women disempowered men and led to their ruin. They gave cunt teeth and called it ‘The Mouth of Hell,’ as is illustrated in this miniature in the Winchester Psalter, c.1150. Cunt became an obscenity – an offence to print or utter. Why is it still the most vulgar word in the English language today?

The painting is in two halves, the right half the text and the left Marion's reproduction of a drawing in a medieval Psalter. The illustration of "cunt" on the left side shows a monster's mouth, open wide, containing demons delightedly torturing the men who have been entrapped. A solemn faced angel holds a key in the lock to this abhorrent place.

Good point Marion, why? Why is it the only word that still has some power to shock? Why does a name for anatomy distinctive to women the worst insult you can give?
Vaginas are not actually abhorrent things that only lead men to their ruin. But the words we choose are how we build ourselves. They communicate ideas about the culture we were brought up and live in. Sometimes swearwords are the right words at the time to get our point across or express the situation. But they all have original inexorable meanings that subtly affect our lives. If its not a bad thing, why use it as a bad word? Marion is asking us to be aware of our words.

"Do You Care?" is on until Sunday the 29th of March. The exhibition has been curated by the Lakes District Museum and Art Gallery to a good exhibition standard. Spot lighting is employed so that viewers are walking around in semi-darkness with lights showing off the artwork, most of which has it's own glow engineered by the artists who are skilled in light play. Prints of " Why Is It the Most Vulgar Word in the English Language?", among other prints are available, and most of the original artwork exhibited is for sale.

And check out this Shakespearean insult generator if you need some help in thinking up imaginative insults!

Do you care? How do you use the word 'cunt'? Have you seen the exhibition? What did you think? Comment below!

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The Heavy on CrossFit Open 15.3

21/3/2015

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A movement that we haven't had in an Open Workout before was announced today, the handstand push up. With this WoD we can say that CrossFit HQ have certainly made a major shift in this year's Open. The inclusion of scaled workouts marked a change for the start, then in 15.3 all those without a ring muscle up were forced to scale. 15.4 shows that this new level of difficulty is not an anomaly. The raised bar is here to stay. Here's some tips for the average CrossFitter, trying to get through a few rounds RX or scaled.

Pictured is the Rx Workout, scaled: Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 8 minutes of: 10 push presses, 10 cleans

Prepare Your Mental Game

This Open workout will be the toughest yet mentally. The handstand push up is a movement with a high fail rate, so plan what you need to do to minimise your missed reps and also plan how to deal with it in your mind when you do. Go over your cues about how to do the HSPU most effectively so you have something concrete to focus on rather than just trying harder.

Negative thoughts will creep in, especially after 5-7 minutes when your glycogen stores run low. You mind will be in survival mode then rather than focused cognition. When you start hearing the negative thoughts - I'm useless, it hurts, Dave Castro can go suck some hairy ones - you've got to deliberately push those unhelpful thoughts out. Replace them with a mantra that you have planned that will help you through, such as "I'm strong, I can do this" or "tight core, one at a time".

Warm up

10 mins running, rowing or moving your whole body. Then 10 mins on shoulders including handstand holds, and then 10 mins on your hips. Do a Bergener warm up to drill in that good technique for your cleans. If you're confident of getting quite a few reps in the actual thing, run through 2-3 rounds of three reps each, enough to get your heart pumping, then rest 5-10 mins before starting. If you'll be working hard for every rep save them for the WoD!

The Handstand Push Ups

Use plates and an abmat to reduce jarring on your neck, but note that your head must have a slight deficit to your hands at the bottom of the movement. Get measured while standing on the plates. When upside down, you may need to have your hands closer to your head and your head closer to the wall than usual to get your heels high enough.

Figure out the best place to put you hands so you can push effectively, balance well and get your heels over the line. Mark that place for your hands with chalk or tape. Practice with your judge and ask the judge or a mate to tell you when your heels are over the line before you start each set of HSPU. Pull your toes towards the floor to get maximum leg extension.

PACE YOURSELF. This WoD is primarily a HSPU WoD. When you run out of HSPUs, it gets very difficult to do any more. Ignore the guy next to you pumping them out, or your friends yelling at you to get back on the wall, you need to pick them off in small sets or singles. Keep at least one in the bank. If you feel like you can do three, do two, come off the wall, breathe and go again.

Mel judges Georgia doing the scaled, and Bruce judges Dan going Rx tonight at Remarkables CrossFit.

Push Press

Push press is the substitute for HSPU in the scaled and some of the master's grades. Be careful that you do not push jerk. Show your judge your push press and make sure you are clear on the movement standards. Legs, hips, shoulders, arms all in a straight line at the top of the movement. If you can, cycle them, catching the bar back onto your shoulders as you are already dipping for the next one.

Heavy Cleans

These may be at or near your max. A great opportunity to get some serious weight shifted in a short time. Enjoy the break from the fast fatiguing HSPUs or push press. As with the HSPU, go over your cues so that you can do the movement in the most efficient way possible. Power clean rather than squat clean for as long as you are able. Use that leg and hip drive. Poor technique will overtax your arms and you need them for the other movements.

How Did it Go?

One of our guys hadn't cleaned that much before, but he got the 84kg clean twice for a new PR!

I haven't done it yet as my shoulders and arms are still sore from all my failed muscle up attempts last weekend. Will update here when I do.

Update: Did it on the Monday night night and it was haaaaaard. I went in feeling confident because heavy cleans are totally my thing, but in this workout there were so many more HSPUs which are not so much my thing. I have done very little HSPU work lately, and not even much overhead work so really, I shouldn't have been surprised. I came away with a score of 38, my worst score by ranking so far. Last Open workout tomorrow! To be honest, I'm looking forward to it being over. I have been enjoying it, but the Open is totally messing with my powerlifting training and I just want to get back into my lifting properly!

If you've done it already, did you get the negative thoughts in the second half of the WoD? Or was it happy stuff all the way through? What was your score? Was is a tough choice to go scaled or Rx?

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I Can't Muscle Up But I Can Deadlift.

16/3/2015

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It has been a full on weekend! CrossFit Open workout 15.3 was announced and it starts with ring muscle ups. Not a strength of mine. Feelings have ben hurt all over the world as people who thought they were doing ok at this CrossFit thing have been forced to scale an open workout. I was preparing for my feelings to get hurt too.

One of my many, many, silly little physio-prescribed shoulder exercises that I have been diligently doing to fix my dodgy biomechanics. Shoulders have been declared fixed now, but it's up to me to maintain that.

Muscle ups aside, I had a powerlifting competition. Bench press and muscle ups are tough on the same little bit of shoulder that I have an issue with, so I chose not to even try muscle ups until my shoulders had a chance to recover from the powerlifting. Hard Working Husband and I took the kids plus two of their friends to the family crib in Pounawea, and spent Saturday in Dunedin powerlifting and having family fun.

Southern Club Lift

The squat comes first in a three-lift powerlifting competition. I had planned to do my first attempt of three with 100kg. But I had woken up that morning with stiff, sore hips from the drive across Otago. I had done my best to loosen off my joints, but a 90kg warm-up single was difficult and sore, and so dropped my first attempt down to that.
Magically, out on the stage with my first squat, I came right! The 90kg felt easy and light so I did the next at 100kg and then a successful, if slow, 107.5kg. Good start. My mate Mel got a good 85kg squat.

The Otago Amateur Weightlifter's Club is in this weird, old, dingy building in a largely abandoned industrial part of town. Big bearded guys hang around making clanging noises with heavy prices of metal. The floor is uneven concrete and there's ancient lockers all around the walls. Unfortunately, my car charger had stopped working and my phone was almost flat, I promise I'll take photos next time I'm there!
My friend Mel from Remarkables CrossFit came too to support me and have a go herself. It was good to have a mate there.

Thanks very much Susan, coach at CrossFit Dunedin, for taking some photos while my iPhone was flat!

There were a bunch of novice lifters from CrossFit Dunedin. We enjoyed chatting to Charles, a member of CrossFit Dunedin who had taken up powerlifting and had convinced his mates there to have a go at it. Good stuff Charles. There were also some Special Olympian powerlifters competing who had been training just as hard as anyone there and who were pulling some impressive numbers. Powerlifters come in all ages too, with many New Zealanders holding world records in the various Masters age groups. That's another reason to like powerlifting, it's a very inclusive sport.

Benchpress comes next. Mel learned how to benchpress as we were warming up! On my first attempt at 55kg I made a noobs' mistake of not waiting for the "Start" call. That's why I need the competition experience. Did a good lift at 60kg and then another at 62.5kg. A referee had words with me after about shifting my bum around during the lift, another thing to learn! The referees were very helpful, with so many novices there we needed it. Mel benched 57.5kg - WOW. That was her first go at bench pressing. That shows what good general condition CrossFit gets you into.

Heavy deadlifts make your neck go all red and stringy. We'll stick with photographs from a distance for now.

Ooo then deadlift! I love deadlifts. It had been a while since Mel had maxed out hers and she easily got a max of 120kg. I got 145kg, then 150kg, and then got 157.5kg off the ground but not all the way up.

Big ups to OAWLA for hosting a well run lift, especially with all the newbies there. There was three referees, five loaders/spotters, three people crunching numbers and one announcing the whole afternoon. Rather a lot of work, and all voluntary. Those people are awesome.

Meanwhile Hard Working Husband had taken the kids out to the pool, the museum and visiting relatives in Dunedin. We took the kids to Great Taste, an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. It was a treat after the day's heavy lifting! We waddled our food babies back to the crib, and then the beach and home to Arrowtown the next day.

Open WoD 15.3

Tonight I fluffed around for 14 minutes and didn't get any muscle ups. My Remarkables mates did, and I'm really pleased for them. Going by the Beyond the Whiteboard preliminary results, it appears that many more times men than women are getting reps at 15.3 Rx'd. In our box, four guys and no women have gotten them so I'm going to say we fit with the normal.
Righteo, I'm off to bed. I need to drag my bruised ego up early to do 14 minutes of light wall balls and single skips. Dave Castro may think I'm scaled, but I can deadlift like a Games Athlete. So there.

Update: Open WoD 15.3 Scaled

Busted out that sucker this morning. The scaled version, for the multitudinous hordes of us who can't do a ring muscle up, is a 14 minute As Many Rounds As Possible (AMRAP) of 50 4kg wall balls and 200 single skips. I was trying for one round every three and a half minutes to make a 1000 rep total, and came nine skips short, or got a 991 rep total. The wall ball was much lighter than I'm used to - I usually train with a 9kg rather than the standard women's weight of 6kg. I'm grateful that these light wall balls felt like air squats and so besides a couple of fumbled catches I did them all unbroken. I had to keep a steady rather than fast-as-I-could pace on the skips to be able to keep going without tripping.
I felt much better about it all when I saw so many other scaled workouts on the leaderboard. In fact, only six females in Otago and Southland got a score for it Rx.
Using the results I could glean from Beyond the Whiteboard, I made some calculations. These are not 100% accurate as I couldn't determine the exact numbers from the data I had available, and I an unable to accurately correct for variables such as which gender might be more likely to log their workouts on the online platform. Also, I am an artist and not a statistician.

15.3 Rx results from "Main Site" members of Beyond the Whiteboard. You can see here how many more men than women did the workout Rx, even though there are similar numbers of men and women doing CrossFit.

But I calculated that of the men who attempted CrossFit Open 15.3, 72% were able to get at least one muscle up and therefore do the workout Rx. Of the women, only 20% could get an Rx score. Both genders performed fairly evenly in the Rx division once they were there though, with a female, Sam Brigs, getting the highest score worldwide. In the scaled the women performed about 0.2 of a round better than the men. I wonder if women were quicker to opt into scaled rather than tough it out trying to get a muscle up?
The muscle up is one of the signature moves of CrossFit so it's no surprise that it has been used to draw a line between the Cans and the Cannots, the Rx and the Scaled.

How was 15.3 for you? Did you get hurt feelings? Did you get your first Muscle up?

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<<Previous

Oh My Quads it's 15.5

How To Do It (if You're an Average CrossFitter)

Prepare Your Mind

Warm up

Row

Thrusters

Recover

Links

The Psychopathic Beast

The Psychopathic Beast

"Do You Care?" Exhibition, and a Painting that is Too Vulgar to be Included

The Exhibition

The Vulgar Painting

The Heavy on CrossFit Open 15.3

Prepare Your Mental Game

Warm up

The Handstand Push Ups

Push Press

Heavy Cleans

Further Reading

How Did it Go?

I Can't Muscle Up But I Can Deadlift.

Southern Club Lift

Open WoD 15.3

Update: Open WoD 15.3 Scaled

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