Motivation

Some days, I feel super motivated to keep going in my journey towards being healthy. I’ve managed to keep on track with the Whole30 for the past week (my second round at it) and having 8 days off from work means I can get my workouts in easily. Not having to deal with sciatic pain is a lovely added bonus and still a welcome novelty to me.

Some days weeks, however, it is harder to find the motivation. I get stuck in a funk at times and I wonder why I put myself through all of this. What is the benefit of all this torture fitness known as Crossfit. Why did I keep waking up at 0500 for 2 whole years, paying good, hard-earned money to subject myself to workouts that are so demanding, I sometimes end up crying on the mat at the end. Nowadays, the 0500 wake-up call have been replaced by rushing through the morning routine for school for the girls, WOD at 0930, then rushing to get ready to pick up Béa from preschool, or groceries or cooking. Some days, I sit down for the first time at 5pm and I’m exhausted. Why do I suck up all of the precious energy I have and go “waste” it all on a workout? Why, you say? I’ll tell you why.

I’m tired. ALL.THE.TIME. It doesn’t matter that I get to sleep in one day a month or not. I’m the wife of a husband who travels a lot for work which means I’m “single-married” (married, but alone at home with the kids for extended periods of time) a lot.

I’m a NICU nurse and I work shift-work and have been doing so for the past 10 years. 10 years of switching between nights and days on a dime. It takes its toll on a body. More recently, I have gone into a Charge Nurse position. I love the challenges it has brought upon me, but it can be added stress at times. That also doesn’t help making me feel less tired.

I’m a mom to 2 lovely, cuddly, active little girls. They like to be on the go and we try to accommodate that as much as possible. Some days, I crave 5 mins to myself. Even if we don’t do something big, they constantly want us to be involved in their little play, which means I can’t focus on anything I’d like to be doing for myself. That’s ok though, if I have a little bit of energy left in the evening after they’ve gone to bed is when I usually try to focus on myself. If the energy is AWOL, I usually just sit and watch TV and find some other time to do MY things.

When you put all those realities of my life together, it’s only normal that I need an outlet to REALLY focus on myself: my physical, emotional and mental well-being. THAT’S why I do Crossfit. When I am there, it’s usually 1hr of my life where I only need to make minimal decisions: Will I use 55lbs or 65lbs for the WOD? Do I need my wrist wraps or not?, etc. Nobody’s life hangs in my hands and I can let out of all the emotions that have been bottled up inside my short little body. Am I exhausted at the end of a WOD? For sure! Then again, I’m always exhausted and at least, I’ve done something for myself to get in better health!

Lately, I have struggled to find the motivation to get going. Whether it’s because the PRs don’t come as easily as they used to or because I have struggled with my sciatica, I’m not sure. I was talking to Kathleen about that a few weeks ago and I was debating taking a break. It is a scary thought. I feel like I would probably get lost if I didn’t do Crossfit. Either that, or I’m afraid I would never go back and all the hard work (and money) invested in myself for the past 2 years would be a total waste. Because of those fears, I have kept going, pushed through the struggles and injury and keep telling myself things will look brighter again soon (hopefully). When I really struggle with my motivation, I like to “check-in” with myself. I did one of those “check-in” 2 days ago and it has lit up a small fire of determination to keep going:

Top is on my 1st day of Crossfit, bottom is a few days ago. 28 months in between pictures

Sure the progress could be a lot better, but like I said, I’m a wife, a mom and a nurse. My diet isn’t always the best and I workout 1-3x/week at best. Progress is progress and seeing it helps re-focus my drive.

This morning was my first day back at the Box for Oly lifting in over a month. I was debating going at all as I feel like I have to re-learn everything about my snatch and C&J as well. I decided to go in anyway with the philosophy that everyone has to start somewhere. I don’t want to make the coaches feel like they are wasting their time with me, but I also would like to move past my injury and finally get proficient at those Olympic lifts. Coach Caleb wasn’t there this morning and we had the lovely Coach Val to guide us through our session. Karen and I struggle with dropping into the squat in the snatch and Coach Val has given us some pointers to fire up our hips and drop quickly.

I was trying with an empty 35#-bar this morning and Coach Val suggested I get a training bar (10#) and put some plates on it so that I would get the proper feel of the bar. That meant I started my snatch work at a very low weight, but I was at peace with that. I got my Dynamax ball for my butt depth into the squat and got working on things.

Snatch 6×2 E2M: Here were my reps for this one:

30#-35#-40#-45#-50#-50#

I stayed at 50# for my last 2 rounds and had to drop the bar in-between all my reps in order to reset my form, but I managed to get it done and somewhat drop into the squat. I was happy with that. Not quite at the 90% target of my 1RM (50# was 77% of my “fake 1RM of 65# and 83% of my real 1RM of 60#), but not too bad considering I’m re-learning to move safely for my sciatic. I was glad I managed to get up that high as I was expecting to stay at 45# and just work on form.

Death by Power Cleans: It was my 1st time doing this one and since I don’t even have a 1RM at 92.5# for my C&J, I was definitely going to scale down for this one. After discussing with Coach Val, I decided on 65# and warmed up to that. Coach Val told us to aim for 10 rounds and I felt like I would probably bail out before then, but I went it anyway. I managed to go unbroken for rounds 1-7 and then things started to slow down a little after that. I had to drop the bar a few times during my round of 8, then started introducing singles into the round of 9. I was pretty pumped to complete the round of 10 and still have 15s to catch my breath before diving into the round of 11! 😉  I had to do them all as singles and there were a few reps that I caught really high in my neck, but I pushed through and squeezed in my last rep with 1s left in the round. Technically, I could have started right away on the round of 12, but I had nothing left in the tank. My for was getting wonky, my neck was catching the bar more and more and my left wrist was getting slow in the catch so I chose to stop there.

What do you get at a 5am lifting class? Bruised neck and dark circles, that’s what you get!

I came back home and jumped right back into the realities of motherhood. Béa had tried to go pee by herself. She managed to get her pants off, hoist herself onto the toilet and couldn’t figure out the toilet paper, so she called out for help. I’m just thankful she didn’t put that pile of paper in the bowl as that would have been a nice plug! 😉

See? Finding balance and purpose is what keeps me motivated! 😉

Swole And Flexy

I have recently discovered ROMWOD, through a friend on Facebook and it has been one of those very nice little discoveries. Pat (my FB friend: we have never met. We both have a friend in common and we all do Crossfit. We became friends on FB during the Open and have been cheering each other on ever since! Crossfit is such a great community, even with strangers who become friends!) had posted about it on IG and I was curious so I asked him about it. After looking into it more myself, I registered and am I ever glad I did! Below is my review of the site:

ROMWOD stands for Range Of Motion Workout Of the Day. Long name for something that could be called yoga for Crossfitters or any other athlete, really. When you register, you need to give them your credit card number, but they give you access to the site for 7 days for free before they start charging you $13.95/month. What it gives you is the following: access to a daily online yoga session ranging from 10-45 mins in length, targeted at increasing your flexibility and range of motion, which then, helps out in your mobility and lifts when you do Crossfit or weightlifting. They have “warrior” sessions on Thursdays that are  longer (45mins) and I have enjoyed all the sessions tremendously.

Each video session is lead in a different Crossfit affiliate and while some are lend by very bendy people, some are also led by your average flexible Joe and makes it easy to see what modifications you could do for each poses. They also have a detailed instruction for each pose on the website as well as how to modify each poses according to flexibility.

Here’s what I have enjoyed so far since I started, a week ago:

• The narrator isn’t annoying at all and doesn’t talk through the entire session
• You mostly stay in the poses for longer periods of time (2-4 mins/pose) and deepen your stretching over this length of time, with deep breathing. I really enjoy this because while you’re not imposing the stretch on your body, you can work into it.
• The sessions are short enough that I can do them everyday, even after a long day at work.
• Some of the poses are easier for me. I was a dancer in my younger days, so I’m fairly flexible, but I’ve lost a lot of my flexibility over the last 10-15 years because I haven’t worked on it very much. I see fast progress on the seated folds and I think I could probably get back into a straddle split and maybe even a front split before the end of the year if I keep at it. The butterfly is also easy and I believe I will be able to complete i with a full fold soon too.

Front Split. Still need to go much lower with my upper body, but it’s a good start!

 

Butterfly pose. Look at how low my knees are already!

• While some of the poses are easy, others are quite challenging and I have to use the modifications for them: the Saddle, particularly is challenging for me. I really feel it in the knees and the Standing Straddle is usually challenging for me to hold for long periods of time. But I’m making progress in them and that’s all that matters to me!
• Although I wouldn’t recommend doing these everyday with the kiddos, it is doable! I have done one with the girls before their bed time. It was a little challenging and I couldn’t really relax as well into the poses, but I still managed to get my stretch in and the girls had fun getting on the floor with me!

Family Standing Straddle!

• You can do these in the comfort of your living room (in your pjs even, in my case) without requiring massive props. I sometimes wish I had a yoga block (Béatrice chewed it all up when she was younger and teething), but that’s easy enough to get and for now, I deal with couch pillows!

As for the benefits, I really felt I was able to get deeper into my squat on my C&J this morning. Also, I’m not sure if it has anything to do with helping with my shoulder mobility (thanks to the Puppy Dog), but I’ve been able to successfully do 2 TTB earlier this week (which I have never been able to do before). I’ve also only had one very short episode of sciatic pinch since I’ve started the program, even though I have been lifting heavy at Crossfit. Usually, running, squatting and deadlifts do my sciatic a world of pain and I haven’t felt it as much this week. If anything, it allows me to wind down and de-stress after a long day at work and, to me, that’s very beneficial.

Alright! Enough about my ROMWOD and here’s what we did in our Oly class this morning. Last week was Snatch testing and I missed it because of work. 😦 Although I’m not a fan of snatching (sorry Coach Caleb), I was really curious to see if I could hit my “fake PR” of 65#. Next time! Here’s what we did this morning:

2.5# PR on my C&J!

I PR’d my C&J by 2.5#! It’s not a huge increase, but I was happy with that! I tried at 95# and although I had a good high pull on both attempts, I just didn’t have anything left in me to drop into the squat and catch it there. The jerk was also a challenge at 92.5# and I knew I was pushing it by trying at 95#, but I just had to give it a shot! 😉

Good lifting session in the books for today!

 

When Your Cheat Meals Cheat You!

Artsy shot I took of the sunrise on our condensation-filled bedroom window this morning

Alright everyone, enough with the artistic distractions. It’s confession time:

My eating hasn’t been on point for the past two weeks and I can definitely feel it in my performance / energy level. I have had pasta, bread and dairy, increasingly more over the past week and it showed up today.

I walked into the Box and felt like I hadn’t been there for 2 weeks. That’s how low my energy level was. Again, I didn’t have high expectations about the skills or the WOD for that matter because I already felt so drained…

I had Béatrice with me and I was a little worried about being able to focus on my stuff with her there, but the Coach AJ parted the skies and brought out the big box of giant Legos! Combined with her snacks, I had a happy, content kid and I was able to really focus on the work to do! Yay for Coach AJ! 🙂

While I was warming up, I managed a very good TTB, followed closely by an almost successful 2nd rep. Rob Black, I’m definitely coming for you! (Rob and I have a friendly competition going: 1st one to manage 10 TTB consecutively. He’s been cheating lots by doing lots of Team comps, so I don’t feel bad at all at practicing my TTB!)

Source

Skill: Back Squat 3×10 E2M

I had gone up to 100# last time on these and managed to get a little higher today with a last set at 105#. My reps were: 95#-100#-105#. The last set was hard, but I tried to keep my chest up as best I could and really keep my knees out as well on the up. I think I managed ok.

WOD: Flash

It was all women except for Mike today and I felt bad for him because we all started talking about bladder leakage and well, he couldn’t really relate, could he? To keep with the topic, I received this email yesterday. My heart always sinks when I get this email from my period-tacking app. Maybe I should just remove the app, but then, how would I track my cycle?

Worst email ever…

Ok, back to Crossfit

This looked like it was going to be easy on paper, but man, it did me in. My quads were pretty beat up from the squats and I had nothing in me. I have been trying to up my weights during the WODs to 65# (I used to do 55# all the time) and I’m not sure if it’s because I was using that weight or because of my less-than-desired nutrition, but I did not do very well on this one, at all! Here were my times for each rounds:

1:41 – 2:00 – 2:11 – 2:11

After my second round, Coach AJ told me to start again at the 5min mark so I could get some rest. It was a blow on the ego for sure, but I had a cutie who kept smiling at me and kept cheering me on with her enthusiastic “Go Maman!, Go maman! so I really didn’t have any other choices than to smile back and pick up the darn barbell back up. Ugh! Kids! Can’t fail in front of them and certainly cannot give up either, because what would I be teaching them then?!?

That’s exactly what I did, I picked up the barbell and managed through my 3rd round. Thank God Coach AJ was there to tell me to pick it back up. I’m honestly not sure I would have otherwise. That was such a hard WOD for me. 3 round wasn’t better so I took until 8mins to rest and then picked it back up for the last round. It was ugly, but I finished it and added my best and worst rounds for a total of 3:52. Before the WOD started, we were joking that I could easily bring this WOD to 10-mins, even though there was a time cap of 8min. See Coach AJ, I told you I would do this one in 10 mins! Lol! Who’s part of the special Crossfit class now?!? I am!

I cleaned up after Béatrice and came back home, ready for a shower.

Sweaty and tired, but yet, I still have to entertain this little munchkin!

Once I was done with the shower, it was time to go get Rina new running shoes as well as a mattress cover for Béatrice’s new mattress. She has now graduated to a big girl bed and we have new furniture for her room as well. I’ve been cleaning bed sheets, etc and my legs still haven’t fully recovered from the skill/WOD. I am very much looking forward to sitting on the couch and not doing anything after the girls have gone to bed. Until then, I mother on and plan on cleaning up that diet of mine (aka working on paleo)! Lol!

 

“If It’s Hard, You’re Doing It Right!”

I was happy Ben and I came to a pact that I could still go to the 0600 Oly class on Thursdays if I wasn’t working. The evening classes were just impossible for me to attend having to deal with the girls and Ben has agreed to be on “school duty” an extra morning so that I could go lift some weights! He is pretty amazing! Over the weekend, he told me he loved my determination at getting fit and doing Crossfit. If that’s not a supportive husband, I don’t know what is! #hesakeeper

 

I got up before sunrise (hello autumn) and made my way to the Box for this:

The snatch balance from the warm-up somehow were hurting my neck, but I was fine afterwards.

Snatch 10×2 OTM

I am still using my “fake 1RM” of 65#, therefore I went with 52# for these. I failed 2 reps total (I repeated one and half made up for the other one) during the 10 rounds and the hardest was catching my breath during the rest. That little sequence got my heart pumping and I got sweaty fast doing these. Still pretty happy with having managed to do all 10 rounds, even though it was hard. Coach Caleb said: “If it’s hard, you’re doing it right!” 😉

Hang Snatch 6×3 E2M

Since I had managed 90#x2 a few weeks ago (90# is also my C&J 1RM), I used that to calculate my weight and did 76.5# for all 6 rounds. The last rep was hard and I was having a hard time hanging onto the bar (we weren’t allowed to drop the bar between reps) and I could definitely feel it, but I managed all reps successfully. Getting up from the squat was much harder on some reps, but I managed to get up for all!

I rushed home so I could walk Rina to the bus stop and then, Ben dropped Béatrice at preschool. I had time to take a bath and cook some food for my night shifts uninterrupted. It was nice, but weird to have the house empty of kids. Something I will have to get used to for sure… For now, I get to enjoy some alone-time with Béatrice and it’s quite nice to focus on be able to spend some one-on-one time with her. She’s such a cuddle-bug!

Pushing The Envelope

Well, actually, I’ve been pushing weights, more than an envelope, but you get my gist, right?

After a restful night of sleep where NOBODY woke up in the middle of the night (Whoot! Whoot!), I woke up at 0500 again for the Oly class.

I wasn’t sure I was gonna make it there as my gas light turned on, on my way to the Box, but I managed to make it and there’s a gas station across the street so my plan was to fill up after class. Worst comes to worst, I knew I would be able to push my car to the station! 😉 BAM!

Today marked my 8th training session in 14 days. I’ve never trained this much in my life! It’s my last week before my month-long vacation comes to an end and my plan was to squeeze as many workouts as I can before I go back to my usual 2-3 sessions/week. I am definitely starting to feel it though and combined with it being my 1st week back on the Whole30 and all the cloudy/rainy weather we’ve had this week, all I want to do is sleep. Unfortunately, I have 2 cuties that have other plans for me:

Every time I tried to nap on the couch, they would come bother me!

Who needs sleep, right?

Anyway, back to Oly class, here’s what we did today:

I wonder if those Forehead Jerks made me look as stupid as they made me feel??? Those were weird!

C&J EMOM X10 @85%

That meant 76.5# for me. Coach Caleb told me I had soft elbows on my jerk during my warm-up to that weight, but apparently, I corrected once I reached my target weight. Maybe I just needed more weight in order to really lock my elbows? I was trying not to pause between the clean and the jerk all while keeping the lift smooth and I was tired by rep 7. I started to take a few breaths in the transition and I was glad when we were done.

OHS 6×2 E3M

I teamed up with Linda who saved my hair crisis this morning. You know the drill: you go to put your hair up and your elastic just breaks in your hand and you realize you don’t have a spare one? Well, Linda gave me one of hers and my life was perfect again! So, we teamed up together and we started low (I’m not strong and Linda is recovering from a back injury.

I knew I could do 65# since I had done that weight for 15.2 during the Open. Looking back, I should have aimed for 70# or 75#, but I’m sore everywhere and my wrists have taken a huge hit with all the freakin’ cleaning I’ve been doing lately. Here were my reps:

40#-45#-50#-55#-60#-65#

My wrists were hurting on the last set, but I felt stable in my core and getting out of the bottom of the squat felt relatively easy. Oh well, my previous number for OHS was 6×3 @60# so I think that’s a new PR for me. I’m amazed I can still have PRs this week as I’m feeling so sore everywhere! I can’t wait for my massage Friday!

I came back home and did some laundry with the hubs (OK, he did most of the laundry while I cleaned and vacuumed the upstairs).

Look Mom! I’m hiding! (Typical Béa on laundry day)

I also did some food prep for the Whole30 since I had nothing but eggs and avocados left (I had thawed some chicken thighs and ground turkey) and I feel better now that I have healthy options in the house.

I managed to close my eyes for about 10 minutes after lunch and I tried to cuddle to the girls on the couch while they watched Frozen (I may have turned the TV on with hopes of napping next to them. Don’t judge!) but they kept poking me, pulling my hair and staring at me. Major fail, but we still watched the movie! 😉

I just have to make it through tomorrow’s class and possibly a last training session with Kathleen on Sunday and then I can go back to slacking off my regular training/work schedule.

 

Grace

I got up at 0500 for the 3rd day in a row and got ready to hit the Box for this:

Source

 

Dark and wet

It was raining for the 1st day in about 3 months this morning and I’ve been noticing how dark it is already when I get up for the 0600 class. Back to fall weather soon, I guess.

 

WOD: I warmed up with 55#, then moved on to 65# as suggested by Tracey and Coach Caleb. I had a plan of breaking my reps into sets of 3 for the first 15, then do single reps. I got to 15 according to my plan and I still felt good so I kept going with sets of 3. I figured I would keep it up until I felt unable to do so, but it turns out I finished all 30 reps broken into sets of 3. According to Mark, I looked strong doing it too. Does that mean I sandbagged this one? Should I have gone with 75# instead? I’m not sure. Coach Caleb was very adamant that we make sure our form was perfect the whole way through and I apparently managed to do just that. I wasn’t last to finish, I think I finished in the middle or towards the end of the pack, so maybe my scaling was on point? I’m not sure. I’m so used to scaling and finishing last that I feel like maybe I screwed up when I’m not last and maybe I didn’t work hard enough. Maybe I should see it as myself getting stronger instead? I’m not sure how to analyze this, but at least, I now have a benchmark for Grace and it gives me something to go from here on out.

I paired up with Neil aka Boy and we did our 5 rounds of the Skill #2. That ab wheel was something new and it hurt my wrists for some reason.

Strap your feet in and bring your knees into a tuck or pike

I only managed to string 10 DUs once. The rest of my reps were singles upwards of 4 in-a-row. Not my best performance, but today is my 4th day of Crossfit this week and I feel beat up. I was pouring sweat after the Skill #2 and I came back home, dreading having to attempt the entire house cleaning for yet another day this week.

Walking into the house, I noticed our black “leather” couch had been decorated with gold Sharpie… I hopped back into my car and drove to the only grocery store open to get a Magic Eraser. Some of the disaster has disappeared, but not all of it. Ben thinks if we draw over it with a dry-erase marker and then wipe that down, it will lift off the Sharpie as well. We’ll try that later. That’s one of the reason I didn’t want to get a real leather couch just yet… I knew it would get ruined at some point by the girls, I just didn’t think it would happen 8 months after getting our couch! 😦 Ugh!

Ben and Nanny have agreed on a plan in order to help keep me sane today: Ben will take the girls out of the house and Nanny will help me (hopefully) finish cleaning the main floor. This way, the girls have a better chance of staying alive to see another day and Nanny and I will power through the cleaning.

She looks all innocent wrapped up in my blanket, but don’t get fooled by appearances… She’s the gold Sharpie culprit and is grounded for today!

Sigh

It’s been a busy week and I’ll try to recap quickly.

Last Monday was a Civic Holiday here and we enjoyed the day at the beach with Ben’s mom who was visiting from Kingston. We hiked to Mystic Beach and had fun in the sun and sand before we headed out for the typical lunch at Mom’s Café.

Béa’s natural summer highlights! I’d kill for these!

Rina, swinging from the rope swing on the beach

Cutie pie!

Rina, wave jumping

I had only 2 days at work before I was officially on vacation and although I was counting the hours on Wednesday. Let’s be real though, I kind of clocked out mentally around 1500, even though I was working until 1930. Nothing fazed me on that day and I was happy and lighthearted to make my way to my car at the end of the day! Off for a full month and I was more than ready for some time off. I already had 2 overtime calls to come in to work tonight so far… Not gonna happen!

I’ve spent yesterday and today getting some last minute shopping and making packing lists, getting everything organized and packed for our Cuban vacation! I can now say we are 98% ready to go, with little adjustments left to be done for our carry-on luggages.

I went to the Oly class yesterday morning and I was stoked to see Ryan show up: I wasn’t absolutely certain if there actually was a class or not and I was starting to think I’d gotten up at 0500 for nothing! Here’s what we did:

High hang, low hang, full squat snatch x6 E3M

Lots of rest for these and we were to work up to 75% of our 1RM. Mine was supposed to be 48.75#, but the closest I could get to was 48.5# (not enough small plates to make it a real 75%, but close enough). I was struggling on some reps and had to repeat a few, but as I warmed up, it felt smoother towards the end.

Squat Clean, Front Squat, Split jerk x6 E3M

Again, we were supposed to only go up to 75% of our 1RM so I used 67.5# for all my reps. The split jerk was unstable at times, but I managed all my reps. I was exhausted by the end! So much rest and yet, I was done for!

 

This morning, I woke up at 0500 again and I was still tired. I’ve been going to bed a little later than usual and I could definitely feel it this morning:

Source

I had misread the WOD last night and thought it was only 1 round. Gulp! There was no way I could do this RX seeing as my 1RM DL is 160# and my 1RM clean is 90#. That would have been cutting it too close to exhaustion and Coach Caleb wanted us to do close to 30 reps/30 secs. Sometimes, the guy cracks me up! 😉 No way I was going to achieve that either, but I was happy that I managed some pretty stable rep scheme throughout all rounds. I did FG with the following reps:

DL @ 115#:8-8-9-8-8

Front squats @ 65#: 9-9-9-8-8

DUs:5-7-8-11-12

Sometimes, I look at my reps and feel a bit discouraged at how low they are. Then, I analyze them in a different way and I’m pretty happy with my work. For example, my reps are low on the DL, but if you tally it all, it comes up to 4715 lbs moved in 2:30. For the front squats, it comes up to 2797 lbs squatted in the same amount of time.  As for my DUs, I only managed to string 8 in a row (last round), but they felt smoother with each rounds. Funny how I can do those better when I’m more physically tired. Maybe it’s because I’m not as tensed up?

I’m ready to put a hot pack on my shoulders and real for the evening before yet another busy day tomorrow!

Going With The Flow

Early wake up call for another Oly lifting class this morning.

What we did today

Power Snatch + OHS + Snatch x6 E2M

This was supposed to be a repeat of what we did 2 weeks ago, but since I was at work two weeks ago, it was my 1st go at it. Now that we have the smaller plates, I was able to get closer to the exact weights I needed in order to do 75% x2 (48.5#), 80% x2 (52.5#) and 85% x2 (mine was supposed to be 55.25#, but I did 55#).

My first round at 48.5# went pretty bad when I couldn’t do the OHS. I set the bar down and started the whole sequence from the beginning and pulled it off. My second attempt went well too. I felt a little sore on my upper back this morning from yesterday’s WOD, but it didn’t seem to affect my snatch today. It is still my trouble area though and I was glad to succeed both rounds at 55# without too much trouble. Maybe, one day, I’ll feel secure about doing 1 rep at 65#. I was just glad to see I didn’t have my usual fear of commitment about dropping in to the squat on my last reps and it felt a little more natural today.

Power Clean + 2 pause jerk (2s pause) E2M

I was thinking of getting up to my 85% (76.5#) for this one, but it turned out to be more challenging than I had anticipated so I stayed at my 80% (72#). What we had to do was to power clean the bar. Dip as if we were going to jerk, but before splitting, we had to hold our dip at the bottom for 2s. We also weren’t allowed to re-dip before doing the split jerk. Turns out my butt was sticking out on the dip so I chose to stay at 72# and making sure I was tucking my tail in on each pause. I was getting tired towards the end!

I took my time coming back home and had forgotten Béa had her follow-up appointment with the dermatologist this morning. Ben was kind enough to take her in so I wouldn’t have to rush. It was nice! I had a lovely breakfast and then, New Potential Nanny showed up on time (how refreshing!) in order to spend the day with me and the girls and see how our routine goes. So far, so good! I like her. She’s really sweet and energetic and it doesn’t hurt that she speaks French, this way, I’m not the only one speaking French to the girls at home! I was able to run some errands all by myself during the day which is always nice and right now, she has taken the girls to the swimming pool to give me a break. The girls were super wired this afternoon, so it was nice to get an extra set of hands to help out!

Keeping my fingers crossed it will all work out for the best! For now, I will drop to the floor and roll my sore back without having to anticipate some toddler jumping on my belly! 🙂

One Of Those Weeks

This week has been one of those weeks. You know the ones: Your workouts couldn’t have gone any better, you train hard, eat clean-ish, get some rest, spend quality time with the kiddos and make the most of it. Today is my last day off before going back to work tomorrow and I have yet another lovely day planned. Coffee with a friend all while letting the girls running in the water fountain at Uptown. Then, getting some groceries and stuff at Walmart, finishing up laundry and preparing for work tomorrow.

Already, I feel accomplished. This morning was Oly lifting class and I was mentally prepared for Clean & Jerk testing week. We kept the same pattern as we did for the Snatch last week and I was struggling a bit more with the rep scheme, but it went really well in the end. Here’s what we had to do:

• 3x@75%
• 3x@80%
• 2x@85%
• 2x@90%
• 1x@95%
• 1x@100%

Since my 1RM for the C&J is 80#, below are the weights I worked with:

I had to modify some of the weights (either rounding up or down), but it worked well. The numbers on the right are just time cues for me to start my reps at. On my 1st set at 70#, Coach Caleb came by and told me I was doing a weird jerking motion from the ground up. I needed to slow my pull from the shin to the knee in order to work that kink out. I did and managed to do all my rounds, up to 80#.

Coach Caleb told me to switch and put 25# plates on my bar, but I knew that would psych me out, so I kept the 15# and added 2×10# on each side for my test. We had 3 attempts for a 1RM and I went for 85# on my 1st attempt and nailed it. I was so excited that I dropped the bar before bringing my feet back under my shoulders. Oops! I asked Coach Caleb if he wanted me to repeat it and he said to just increase my weight on the bar.

I obliged him and went up to 90#. I was starting to fatigue and coming out of the squat was hard. I managed to do it, I jerked it (and didn’t forget about my feet) and dropped that bar to the floor! Yes! 10# PR! Apparently, I do a little nod before I throw the bar down. I guess that’s my way of acknowledging that I destroyed this weight, now I will drop it like a fly! BAM!

I then tried to go for 95#.

1st attempt: Tracey recorded my attempts. When I reviewed the video, I saw that I could totally pull it high enough, but I wasn’t committing to dropping under the bar. Sounds familiar since I struggle with the same issue on my Snatch.

2nd attempt: Same thing happened here. Pulled high enough, didn’t drop. I had a chat with myself, trying to convince me that the worst I could do would be drop on my bum, so, just commit to it already!

3rd attempt: After reviewing the video, Coach Caleb noticed I hesitated a fraction of a second on the pull before dropping into the squat. I did drop though, but I fell down, since I wasn’t fast enough. Still! I was super happy I had committed to dropping since that’s a big issue for me.

Failed 95#, but I’m gunning for triple digits!

Like I said, I may have failed at 95#, but I’m hoping to get into the triple digits this year! The perfect end to a perfect week of training. I love how supportive my Crossfit peeps are and how encouraging they are. I may not be at my ideal fitness / weight / appearance, but I feel strong as heck and I’m proud of my achievements this week. Not too shabby for someone who can only attend class 2x/week on a normal basis!