0630 PCF WOD:

Bench Press
5-5-5     185-205-215(4)   (175-195-205, 3 asst’d last time)
Rest
Tabata Sit-ups     109  (94 last time)
Rest 2 minutes
Tabata Pushups     75  (61 last time)

Last time we did 3 sets of 5 bench press (04/24/09) I put up 175, 195, and 205, 3 of which were assisted. So this is a nice increase. I did need help after the first rep at 215, but it was light help. Needed to put it down after 4 reps though.

And last time I did tabata situps and pushups (05/13/09), I got 94 and 61 respectively, so nice increases there also. Have to remember, as Brian said, to swing arms up and just fall back on the situps.

Food:

B: eggs, melon, almonds. 5P/3C/22F

L: work lunch. We’ll see. Ended up being sort of ok – grilled chicken salad at this caribbean restaurant, but I asked them to hold the corn, which apparently made up most of the salad. Also, they didn’t put the dressing on the side, so I didn’t eat much of the greens. Estimate: 4P/0C/7F? Had some almonds right after lunch so I’m guessing I got around 14F.

5PM: Clif builder bar, then rushed home for 1 oz grilled tuna and guac, and couldn’t resist a silver bullet, so 4P/4.5C/14F

Dinner at the office, which I brought when I went home, will be grassfed skirt steak, vegetables, and mole of the guac-style. Ate a few extra almonds b/c I was still hungry. 4P/3C/20F. Not bad overall for a lunch-out-with-coworkers day.  

Finally, found this about days off/scaling posted last December on the good old PCF blog.

PCF – Days Off and Scaling:

We’ve been seeing some awesome effort at the box – the times, loads, and repetitions on the Benchmark workouts are the quantitative measure to all the qualitative observations. We understand you want to maximize your training time – but that being said, please listen to your body – take days off and scale (load and/or repetitions) for your fitness level. If you have questions about this see a coach prior to the WOD. Missing multiple weeks due to injury or over-training will slow your progress infinitely more than a day off. We want to see you progress as rapidly as possible – and rest and scaling are ingredients in that.

Background: We program 7 days of workouts at PCF for the convenience of our clients (note: The CrossFit main page only programs 3 on/1 off). We do not program “easy” workouts that you can consider “active rest.” There are two reasons for this:

1. With CrossFit it’s impossible to do because what is easy for one person is difficult for another – that is the nature of CrossFit.

2. There is no way for us to know who is going to show up when – it would be equivalent to trying to hit a moving target.  Additionally, as you get more fit, you may require more days off. As your metabolic fitness increases your ability to go “hard” at a WOD increases. This allows you to do workouts at paces that will put you in the “hurt locker” even more (though your ability to recover from a workout may also increase – the two probably will not increase linearly) – requiring more recovery than you initially required when starting CrossFit.

3. Finally, as RX’d workouts are not for everyone (but will be, if you stick with it). Scaling is encouraged – it allows us to maintain intensity. If scaling is not posted for a workout on the whiteboard, talk to a coach during the warmup to figure out your options.

One last postscript – Siddharth posted a good summary of why we sometimes repeat workouts that I wanted to post here for reference, and it also includes some info about tabata stuff that I want to remember.

Q1- Why the repeat workout? Chef, during his ad-hoc deadlift lesson during the winter, said that “Sometimes life throws two “leg” days in a row at you.” I couldn’t agree more. Constantly varied doesn’t preclude a repeat. One could argue the fact that we never have the same WOD two days in a row as an indication that we aren’t nearly as varied as we think we are

Q2- But I don’t want to repeat! YBF (you’ll be fine). Tabata bodyweights movements are some of the most effective tools we have at increasing work output. They aren’t as physically debilitating as some other short time-domain programming we do, but it is probably one of the more difficult mental exercises if done correctly. This is also why we tend to shy away from things like Tabata GHD situps, which tend to crush people for days afterwards, for minimal improvement in work capacity.