CFCC BCCC AGAIN

You know, I wasn't going to do this again.  I've learned so much from the last two BCCCs - how to eat for leanness and for maintenance; how certain foods make me feel; how eating to cut fat is NOT helpful to my strength levels; how fantastic greens are; how a tablespoon or so of grassfed heavy cream in my morning coffee is unbelievably delicious AND makes me a very, very happy person.

So when I saw that the BCCC (Swimsuit Edition) was coming up, I really didn't think I'd do it again.  Especially since I'm not really feeling the need to lean out more.  I mean, if I woke up one day with another inch off of my waist and hips, I wouldn't cry about it, but I'm happy with how I look, and I'd rather have cream in my coffee and chocolate on the weekends than drop more weight.

But...PhillyGuy is doing it this time.  And it's supposed to be all new and improved and stuff.  And when everyone started posting pictures of their meals in our facebook group...I just got too jealous.  So yesterday over brunch at Cafe Lift...

(prosciutto frittata. baked eggs with roasted peppers, prosciutto, onions and gorgonzola cheese. side of hot sauce.) ....I bit the bullet and decided I was in again.

So here's my goal for this one: meet my primary strength goals of a 300lb deadlift and 200lb back squat by June 30, WITHOUT getting fat.  I took a couple of my own measurements this morning and then met Meghan at the gym before classes today to get measured, both of which confirmed I'm just about the same if not a touch leaner: just under 29.5 inches at the smallest part of my waist (my tape) and 30.25" a little higher up (Meghan's tape); 38 and 1/8 inch hips (Meghan only - down almost 2 inches from my post-winter-BCCC measurements, but that could be just due to tape placement).

(For the sake of convenience, I'd also like to keep my weight below 150 so that my 300 pound benchmark will also be a 2x bodyweight deadlift.  But I don't actually care how much I weigh...I just want to deadlift double whatever it is.)

So...those are my goals for BCCC, round 3.  I'm REALLY, REALLY hoping to meet my strength goals.  With just about 60 days to go, it's time to train hard.

Log:

Thursday, April 26: cleans. 63x2, 83x2, 103x2, 113F (WHAT) - rested 30 seconds and power cleaned 113. Took 113 again for a single and got under it this time.  Ended with 118, which got up really easily, but again I barely got myself under it in time. Woof.  What happened to that magical week I just had where I PRed both of my oly lifts?  Fark.  Metcon: 60 yard shuttle runs - 6 total, rest 90 seconds between. Rounded to seconds, since we don't have a clock with smaller increments: 16/16/16/16/15/15.

Friday, April 27: beach muscle Friday. Bench press, peak of 2: 65-85-100-110-115-120.  Definitely a PR, since we never bench and back when I did, I always did sets of 8.  Metcon was REALLY fun - a team workout where everyone on the team had to do at least one 30" farmer's walk with the handles, plus the entire team had to get 100 strict pull ups. 15 minutes total.  Score was our average farmer's walk weight, based on everyone's heaviest carry.  I realized we cannot do math - we initially thought we killed this, but then someone realized we were counting the handles as 50lbs each, rather than 50lbs total.  Womp womp.  (This means that last week, when I thought Amber and I carried 320lbs, we actually only did 270.)  Still - I walked with 230 and then 290.  Tried and failed to get 330 off the ground.  Also contributed 10 pull ups.  I LOVE partner workouts.

Sunday April 29: double-session Sundays.  Started with gymnastics, doing some skill work for the muscle up. Ring dips (1 bodyweight; 4 or 5 with a mini band...these are still really hard for me); jumping muscleups; band-assisted muscleups - 2 or 3 with light band; 2 or 3 with two minibands, plus a couple of failures where I couldn't get up out of the dip all the way.  Metcon: 15 minute AMRAP of 5 jumping muscleups, 7 burpee tuck jumps, 12 hollow rocks.  7 rounds total.  

Regular session: turkish getups.  Having a lot of fun with these now that I'm using a barbell.  33lbs, 43lbs, 53lbs.  I shared a bar with Amber and told her my goal was to get bumpers on there because it looked cool.  We succeeded.  I had planned to skip the metcon but then got peer-pressured into doing it anyway.  Karen - 150 wallballs for time (20/14), with an 8:00 cap.  I kind of half-assed this, using a 10lb ball and completing 133 wallballs at the cap.

And then I ate steak and eggs.

Mixto - skirt steak, two eggs over easy, mixed greens.  Fabulous.  Here's to challenge number 3.

Totally Compliant

Whole30? LULZ.

Yeah, in addition to all that cream in my coffee, I really threw this concept out the window this weekend. First, there were a couple glasses of a fabulous supertuscan.



PhillyGuy and I spontaneously decided to have dinner at the bar at Amis. We enjoyed some fantastic preparations of a baby lamb that clearly died of natural causes. sausage over polenta, mixed grill with a lamb chop and some ribs, sal's meatballs, grouper. Lots of non-Whole30-approved bits, but in general, great choices.

And then this happened.



More than Just Ice Cream. That monstrosity in the front was my selection - banana chocolate ice cream (tasted exactly like circus peanuts), hot fudge, crushed peanuts, marshmallows, whipped cream. In the back, apple crumble (far superior to their much-overhyped apple pie...but then I'm not really a pie or crumble person).

We walked off the diabetes on our way back to the car.

And then it was Easter. And this was my Easter dinner, eaten on the couch over a couple games of Scrabble, several episodes of Mythbusters alternated with the Masters, and Mad Men.



I bet eating deconstructed Reese's is precisely what made Betty the size of a small house.

I skipped the gym on Sunday because I managed to bruise my left rotator cuff Saturday afternoon, somewhere during back-to-back gymnastics (many handstand pushups, a little one-armed handstanding, and some attempts at handstand walking) and regular session (turkish getups). I turkish-get-upped a barbell for the first time, starting with a ladies' bar and then adding weight. Happy with my 43lbs, but I'm thinking that's where the impingement happened. Metcon may not have helped - seven rounds of max strict pull ups (any grip) alternated with 15 hollow rocks, no resting between rounds. My score was 20 pull ups, using a supinated grip - 4 in the first round, so that's bringing me ever closer to my goal of five strict pull ups by the end of June.

This is the same shoulder I injured back in the fall. It's already feeling much, much better, but I'm still trying to be cautious with it so that I'm in decent shape for this weekend's South Philly Rumble. I'm generally awful when it comes to working out injured, and I can already tell this week is going to be a struggle - snatches are on the schedule for tomorrow, and I'm really feeling like I'm on the verge of a breakthrough with dropping under the bar. BUT. I'm already our team's weakest link, so, you know, it would be helpful to have functioning joints so that's not working against me as well. So, here's to being patient (GAH) and happy Monday, all.

my life, via iPhone

coffee and dogs and laptop and bed...weekend mornings are the best. Sophie's getting scruffy again.

dogs do NOT appreciate being walked in the rain, but they love their sweet coats.

I LOVE DEADLIFTS.

I also love steak. Costco's prime ribeyes beat the CRAP out of DiBruno's though, and for a couple bucks less per pound. Bah.

This is the real reason I got a nook color: I subscribe to US Weekly, but if anyone comes by I can quickly minimize it and pull up, say, something by Jeannette Winterson and be all like "yeah, I read postmodern literature while getting a pedicure. I find that it relaxes me."

Last week's workouts:

Monday: turkish getups. 2-3 each side, 12kg kettlebell; 2-3 each side, 16kg kettlebell; 15lb bar, 2 each side just to see how it felt (TWSS). Metcon: AMRAP 12 minutes, 2 TGU (one on each side), 30ft overhead walking lunges left, 30ft overhead walking lunges right. 3+2TGU; 1 pood kettlebell.

Tuesday: DEADLIFTS!

Thursday: Gymnastics. Front lever and strict handstand pushups. WOW, these are hard. I did a bunch with the assistance of the "average" band and it whooped me. Metcon was like...four thousand handstand pushups and four thousand strict toes-to-bar, which for me are strict hanging leg extensions.

Saturday: more gymnastics. Brutal ring work, various pieces of a muscle-up - working on false grip, ring support, ring dips and the transition. Metcon was 20 rounds of 5 seconds ring support, ring dip, 5 seconds false grip hang. I had a crapload of trouble falling into a false grip to hang - every single time I thought I was going to get it right and every.single.time I looked up to see my hands gripping the rings normally. I used a mini band for assistance and my left thigh is covered in nasty black bruises from where it kept snapping up and hitting me...at least 17 out of 20 rounds.

I had big plans to do hot yoga on Sunday morning, but I was BEAT.UP from the ring work and ended up taking an extra rest day.

gymnastics!

I think I'm addicted to Crossfit gymnastics.

See, I was a cheerleader from middle school through high school. I wanted to keep cheering in college, but I also wanted to have a job (I KNOW RIGHT? WHAT THE FUCK), soooo that was out. (seriously...COME ON. I was so stupid. To anyone debating a similar decision: you have, quite literally, the ENTIRE REST OF YOUR LIFE to work. You do NOT have the entire rest of your life to participate in organized sports/athletics and worry about getting to practice instead of getting to the restaurant for the night shift.)

Senior year of high school:

Anyway. My squad was OK - not great, but we had a lot of fun and we did some decent stuff. Stunting was, hands down, my favorite - I had a pretty strong stunt group. Second to that was jumps and tumbling. Junior and senior year, it was mandatory for us to take tumbling classes. I never really got my back handspring - probably because my abs were less-than-stellar - but I came pretty damn close, and I loved the shit out of roundoffs and handstands and front handsprings and all kinds of stuff like that. I mean, jumping around on a springfloor? Amazing.

So, once you quit cheerleading and DEFINITELY once you get out of college, your opportunities to do things like handstands and roundoffs are infrequent, at best. In fact, if I just ran out in the backyard at my dad's house and started doing what little tumbling I was able to master, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be invited back, and my family would be making fun of me for years.

But then you do something like join crossfit, and you realize that they have gymnastics-focused classes. Some of them are scary and things I am NOT good at (like rope climbs, muscle-ups and other ring work), but some of them are more tumbling-focused.

And for once, I was among the best in the class. Thursday, when we did roundoffs, Sammy asked if I had been a gymnast. HA. No, not so much - but WOW. It was easily the first time in ten years I'd done that kind of thing. And I forgot just how much fun it is to do goofy things like that.

(and also how it uses muscles in ways that you don't typically use them. I was feelin' it in my back and abs yesterday.)

This week's recaps:

Monday: turkish getups. 12kgx2-3; 16kg...2-3 fails and one success on the right; 2-3 fails on the left. was able to complete a TGU on the left, but my arm kept collapsing before i could get back down. metcon: "Hobbit Hole." AMRAP in 10 minutes of 1 TGU (both sides), 5 strict chest-t0-bar pullups. I used the 12kg KB and "average" band; completed 4 rounds + 2TGU. THIS WAS SO FUCKING HARD.

Tuesday: sumo deadlift, sets of 3. 75, 105, 135, 165, 175. metcon: 5 rounds for time, 10 american KB swings/10 pushups. I used the 1 pood (16kg) KB but I think I could have gone RX'ed at 1.5pood (24kg). Time was just under (or just over?) 5 minutes.

Thursday: gymnastics! bridge-ups, cartwheels, roundoffs. metcon: 5 rounds of short run (about .2 miles)/5 roundoff tuck jumps. Roundoff tuck jumps were beautiful. Run was UUUUUUGLY. Dead last in the metcon by a good 2 minutes.

Friday: front squat. My nemesis. Sets of three. warmup w/bar (45x5); 65, 85, 85, 95, 105, 115 (x2, failed on third rep). Blah. Metcon: 3 rounds of short run, for time, with 1:00 rest between. I really thought I'd kill this metcon, since it's what I like - short fast intervals with recovery - but HOLY SHIT it was hard. time (including 2:00 total rest) was 5:09.

F Burpees

I got to spend some quality time with my little girl this afternoon, since Sophie was due for her annual vet visit. We were both impressed with the summertime window display at the vet's office.

Which is nice, because today at CFCC was not pretty.

Skillwork: Turkish getups. 15 minutes to get to a peak of one.

This is a new move for me, so I focused mainly on form and didn't push the weight too much. I started with a shoe (ok, we ALL did), followed by a 10lb dumbbell, 20lb dumbbell and then a 12kg kettlebell (about 26.5 pounds). By the time I hit 12kg, my (weaker) left side started getting a little ugly, so I stayed there and did maybe 3 or 4 on each side. By the last set, I wasn't looking as bad. The surprisingly difficult part is keeping my arm straight and the bell overhead.

And then it was time for the metcon. 50 burpees for time. That sucked and I performed kind of lousy. I started out thinking I'd do 5 sets of 10. I did my first 12 in 33 seconds. I was at 20 within a minute. And then I started to really suffer, and I strung together five at a time...and rested WAY too long between sets. Total time was 4:05. Blah.

My quads were seizing up in the car (thank goodness PhillyGuy came to pick me up) and I felt like I was going to vomit. As soon as we got home I chugged a coconut water...and then chugged another. After about half an hour, I started to feel better.

All that from FOUR MINUTES of effort. And it wasn't even a particularly good effort, compared to the rest of the class - as you can see, only two people finished after me. Sometimes crossfit sucks. And sometimes I suck at crossfit. But it's going to feel damn good to get better.