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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
RSS Feed
