Kettlebells 1, Chrissey 0

One of the reasons I love my job is that, once in a while, when I've been busting my butt or have had a particularly brutal stretch, my boss insists that I take a day off.

So, here I am, sitting on my couch at 10am in my sweats with my dogs. I'm getting ready to get out and get my hair cut, nails done, and maybe pick up some stuff at the Fourth of July sales. This is totally worth the nuttiness of this month.

I got to make eggs this morning, since I didn't have anywhere to be:

Scrambled eggs with red/orange/yellow peppers, portobello mushrooms, grape tomatoes, turkey lunch meat, salsa and plain greek yogurt.

Last night's skill work at crossfit was Russian kettlebell swings. They're supposed to look like this:

When I got there, I was assigned a 12kg kettlebell. That's the smallest, lightest weight they have. All of the girls in the class got 12kg bells; the guys got 16kgs. I looked at that little thing on the ground and I was like "PSHHHH, that's going to be way too light. This is going to be easy."

False. I'm super uncoordinated, so it took most of the skillwork period and half the metcon to figure out exactly how to put together the swing and the hip thrust. I'm still not really sure what my legs are supposed to be doing in the bottom of the swing. And because my abs are pretty weak, I arch my back a TON at the top of the swing. Which means my lower back freakin' HURTS this morning.

Metcon was five rounds of as many reps as possible ("AMRAP") in 1 minute each of kettlebell swings, goblet squats, and then rest...blissful rest. So, swing like a mofo for 60 seconds, squat like a mofo for 60 seconds, and rest for 60 seconds...and then do it four more times.

My rep count was good (218 reps total, including both swings and squats, for all five rounds), but my form for the swings BLEW until the last couple of rounds. Which is probably why I was able to do so many. Squats were my stronger move - my legs are pretty diesel. But my grip strength SUCKS, and by the second or third round I had to put the kettlebell down a few times to shake out my wrists and hands.

Once again, 14 minutes of "real work," and I was pouring sweat and ready to collapse. This crossfit thing is no joke. I definitely need to work on my abs - my back strength is OK, but my abs are much, much weaker. Looks like I know what I'll be doing on my non-class days.

Time to get out and enjoy my day of freedom! Happy holiday weekend!