Mama Said Knock You Out.

I had a date last night with a guy named Nate. Nate left me feeling a little tired, to say the least. Even more impressively, Nate left my forearms and triceps sore and spent. Yep. I got my ass kicked Crosssfit style once again.

Let me jump back a little tho. I started out the day going for a run with Carin. We picked up our morning runs together this week since I am back to working at home for a while. So its been fun to get some miles in with someone again. It's starting to get so dark in the mornings... its sad but kinda fun to watch the sunrise in the middle of a run all the same. So we ran about 4 miles-- nothing too exciting. It felt good. I was a little tired from yoga the day before, so it wasn't my best showing, but I can definitely tell that cardiovascularly, I am in my best shape ever. So that part felt really good even if the lack of sleep and the yoga fatigue was at place.

Thursday nights are also my Crossfit classes. I knew, roughly, what I was getting myself into-- you can typically look up the Workout of the Day (aka the WOD) ahead of time. All Crossfit affiliates do the same WOD, although we are sometimes behind a day. Many of the WODs have names. Female names correspond to workouts you do as a benchmark of your fitness. Male names correspond to people killed in the line of duty, and are often rounds or reps for time.

Class starts with some warm ups. We do a lot of squats, push ups, sit ups, something called a Samson stretch, etc. Then we go over the WOD and make sure everyone is down with the plan. And then its all hell breaking loose for the WOD. So yesterday was called the Nate, named in honor of Navy Seal Chief Petty Officer Nate Hardy who was killed in Iraq on February 4, 2008. The "Nate" as it is known involves doing as many rounds as possible (AMRAP) of a set of 2 muscle ups, 4 handstand push-ups and 8 2 pood kettlebell swings. Muscle ups are what you call hanging below the gymnast rings and pulling yourself using your core up so that you are pressed up from the rings and then you do a dip down to the point where your thumbs touch your armpits and back up. I can't do any of them yet. So in lieu of that I got 5 pull ups. I also cannot do a handstand push up (it is exactly as it sounds... up in handstand, go down to let your head touch the floor and push back up. In lieu of that, I got some dumbbell push presses with 30 lbs of weight. Yep... that's where I maxed out for now. I'll get stronger. Lastly is the 2 pood kettlebell swing. So a pood is a Russian unit of weight that corresponds to 36.11 lbs. 2 poods is 72 lbs. Now an American-style kettlebell swing involves taking said 2 pood cannonball with handle, swinging it between your legs and up over your head so that you are fully extended and your head pops out between your arms. With my current body weight I was pretty sure that kettlebell swinging more than half my body weight also needed some adjusting, lest on the swing back between my legs the rest of me just follows suit. So we knocked me down to a 12kg, or 26lb kettlebell. So in the end, my Nate ran like this:

AMRAP- 20 mins
5 dumbbell push presses
5 pull ups
10 26lb kettlebell swings.

I got 7 reps in with 2 additional push presses and lord help me if I didn't hit full on muscle failure a few times throughout that workout. Pull ups did not count if you jumped or if your chin did not come over that bar and that was really where I suffered the most. The push presses were ok... I only hit anything close to muscle failure during the 7th rep and into the beginning of the 8th. It was brutal. And I loved it. At one point, I tuned into the music blasting throughout the vastness of the gym and realized it was LL Cool J's Mama Said Knock You Out.


Today is my rest day, for obvious reasons. I am sore. I am hoping to get my swim on tomorrow morning so if I wake up even more sore than today (which often happens), it may not pan out... but I am hoping it works out in the end.

Either way... these here chicken arms are already starting to get some tone to em which is a welcome sight. And I am not sure if I mentioned here or not that I am looking into some boxing classes. Yep. I decided this a few weeks ago, but once Mama told me to knock you out, then I knew I had to keep it going. So keep an eye open for some updates with that soon. The nice part about base training periods is I get to mix it all up again without worrying too much about making sure I am getting all my other triathlon requisite workouts done. So dang it if I am not going to have some fun now.