So after Mon day's 'ease' myself back into it, I was a little stiff on Tuesday morning, but not enough to put me off my first WOD
But first I had volunteered to help Iain and Gavin make some plyometric boxes down at the Reebok Crossfit Glasgow .
During the last few months the Glasgow box has underwent a major upheaval, moving offices and changing rooms, from one end to the other, a lot of this work was carried out by Iain and Gavin but also a lot of the Crossfit Glasgow community, joined in to get 'their' place in the best shape possible, helping out with anything from demolishing the old offices and filling skips, to painting the new areas.
Part of this upheaval was designing and making new plyometric boxes, so I volunteered my services.
This 'community' spirit is something I have noticed is a massive part of being involved in Crossfit, it definitely creates a sense of being a part of something, your not just a member, who pays their monthly fees and then basically left to your own devices, its more than that here.
Anyway, back to the WOD (Workout of the Day)
These WOD's are run throughout the day, the same WOD, but changed everyday and they are all programmed in such a way, that all aspects of your strength and conditioning are covered, without any body part or exercise getting overused.
These WOD's can all be scaled to suit each persons level of skill, fitness, flexibility and movement patterns.
So it is, done properly, suitable for anyone.
In Crossfit Glasgow, as in most Crossfit boxes, everyone has to go through a fundamentals session or two, so the coaches can make sure everyone has a basic level of skills in all the main exercises, before they are allowed to go through a WOD.
These are a huge step up from the usual Induction you go through at other gyms, where they show you the treadmill, cross-trainer, machines, weights area and then basically leave you to it.
I have done my fundamental sessions, for those of you wondering.
So the WOD, I was about to attempt, consisted of 2 exercises, yes that's right just 2 exercises.
HOW HARD CAN THAT BE ?????
Each day the WOD is posted on the white boards in the box, then everyone puts their results up next to it, which is really good as you can see, as you can assess how well you are doing, on average with everyone else, or it can show up weaknesses, you may need to work on.
So, again, back to the WOD
After a warm up and mobilty section, which (although a full body warm up) focuses on the exercises and body parts that will be used in the WOD.
These are always a lot tougher than you expect, not just a half hearted grab your ankles, stretch your hamstrings, swing your arms a bit, type of warm up a lot of people do. This gets you warm, out of breath, but most importantly, ready.
First exercise was Farmers Walk (pictured below) building up the weight, to find your maximum weight you can walk 20 metres with, without putting it down, once you found this weight, you had to do at least 3 sets of 20 metres.
We were put into teams for this, not to compete against each other, but just to ceate more space and give you adequate rest time.
This also helps, with motivation and inspiration, everyone encouraging and coaching each other and when you see someone, about the same size and weight as you carrying a certain weight, it makes you determined to push yourself.
Farmers walks are definitely a very underrated exercise, as it works every part of your body and nervous system, especially when you get heavy.
After about 20 minutes building up, my finishing weight for 3 sets was 210kg (over 2 1/2 times my body weight) which I was very pleased with.
Next up was Tabata style(but only for 3 minutes) Front Squats.
Tabata is a system, created by a Japanese Professor (Tabata) which has you working for 20seond periods, with 10 seconds rest, usually for 4 minutes, completing as many reps as possible in the 20 seconds.
For the front squats we used, if you could, bodyweight on the bar, or it was scaled to suit each persons abailities, I used 75kg, just under my body weight and managed 32 reps in the 6, 20 second work periods, I think my first set was 8 and by my last it had dropped down to 4 !!
3 minutes in total, but I felt like I had been doing 30 minutes cardio, the biggest thing with these kind of workouts (tabata) is you need to push yourself to your limit, in each of the 20 second blocks, even if its only 1 rep, which I've seen, it has to be your best, or your results will never go as high as they should.
This session, was around lunchtime, as I knew I was attending the weightlifting class, in the evening, which I hope to go to every week to improve my Olympic lifting technique, which will then carry over to any WOD's with these lifts included in it.
These sessions are run by British Weightlifting coach Raymond Cavanagh and his team.
Although I have done a bit of Olympic lifting I put myself in the beginners section, so I could go back to the very basics and start from scratch.
We were takien through, some snatches, cleans, clean and jerks by Colette, who despite her tiny frame is way stronger than me in all of these exercises, she actually set my first challenge, to complete these exercises at the same weight as her - Challenge on
Although, I was hoping to not push myself to much, during this session, it is actually harder (well I find this) to keep good technique, if the weight is too light.
So the weights steadily crept up, with more than one 'suggestion, about adding weight, if I wanted' from Colette.
I was reasonably pleased with how it went and came away with some great points to focus on, to get improvements quickly.
By the end of this session, my central nervous system was shot, and I left (after helping with more plyo boxes and getting a shot of the nail gun) one extremely tired boy.
Wednesday has another WOD in prospect for me, then its rest day.
Craig
No comments:
Post a Comment