Their Balls Are Bigger Than Ours…

…wallballs that is!

I got to sleep in this morning because I was meeting up with Krista to go throw down at Keating Crossfit. Since she is working a night shift tonight, she wanted to do a later class so we decided upon the 0730 class. I was there early and warmed up a bit on my own before Krista arrived. I signed up the waiver and then we did a general warm-up. Once we were warmed, Coach Brent said he was ready when I was. I tried a few wallballs with their balls because I had never used balls like these before to do wall balls. They use the “wall ball” whether we use something more similar to a medicine ball. Here’s the difference:

Med ball

Wall ball

 

I have to say, the wall ball is a lot more forgiving when you smack it on your chest. I can’t say for sure how it feels like when you smash your face with it because I managed to avoid doing that today. Maybe it felt more forgiving because it was 10# instead of the 14# I’m now used to using, but I still needed to get used to it. Once I did a few reps, I felt like I was good to go. I had brought my own rope so I knew I was good in that department as well. There was no way I was going to even attempt Rx, so Scaled division was what I was aiming for. My goal was to finish two rounds.

I got started on the wall balls. I managed 8, then I tried for 7, but decided on breaking my rounds into 5 reps, as much as I could. My technique wasn’t the greatest and I kept catching the ball, stopping, then dropping into the squat. That was a poor strategy and I wasted a lot of energy doing that. I got my 50 reps in and moved onto the 200 single skips. I was trying my best to get to 100, then rest, then do 100 again. I managed pretty close to that, with only a few tripping in my own feet.

Back to the wallballs. I broke all my reps into 5’s again and this time around, I was much more efficient at catching the ball into a squat. I got a few no-reps, but I just kept pushing through.

Back to the single skips. I was trying to speed up a bit, but it only made me trip on my feet more frequently so I slowed down my pace for more accurate reps.

I got back to the wallballs and managed 12 more reps before time was called.

Total reps: 512 (2 full rounds + 12 wallballs) Goal surpassed!

For once, I kind of felt good doing wallballs today. Don’t get me wrong, they are still my most disliked move so far, but I didn’t feel too defeated doing them. Must have been because of the lighter weight!

Wallballs: short people’s nemesis!

Then it was time for Krista aka Power House aka Little K. That girl is a machine. She does triathlons and I knew she had the lungs for this one and I was sure she would beat my score easily. She totally did too! Here she is in action:

Fully extended for the reach!

Squatting below parallel in the catch

Breathing through the skipping

She did amazing with a score of 535!

sweaty short people unite!

Once we were done, we cooled down and discussed wallball technique (I gave her a few tips) and worked on our kip for the pull ups. It was nice because I usually don’t have time to stay behind and work on anything once I’m done, I usually have to rush home to Ben and the girls. I also gave her some pointers for her DUs and she worked on that for a little bit. Now that she knows my tricks, Krista has texted me that she may attempt 15.3 again on Monday. I won’t

I swung by the grocery store to get what I was missing to make these Crab Cakes and this Zucchini Chocolate Bread, had a quick shower and made myself a hearty breakfast! Now that I’m done with this post, I will get my cooking going! Keeping in mind with the secret I mentioned yesterday, we have a fun afternoon planned and, hopefully, I will be able to divulge my little secret antic back here soon! In the meantime, I hope you enjoy your weekend, I get to spend mine with my husband and my kids, a rare event lately!

Crossfitting Away From Home

We are on our little (rainy) beach vacation in Parksville, BC at the moment and the clouds seem to want to clear up  so we can enjoy some beautiful sunny beach time. Of course, before we came out here, I had checked out affiliate boxes in the neighbourhood in order to get a WOD in. My choices were Crossfit Nanaimo or Crossfit Qualicum Beach. I opted for Crossfit Qualicum Beach after perusing their website and  I’m glad I did. It is a smaller box and from their Facebook page, it looks like they opened sometime in April or June of 2014 (don’t quote me on that, it’s just my little uninformed guess). I had the great pleasure of dealing with Lucas Bugg who is the Head Coach and owner of CFQB. I was the only one on site for the 0630 class so I also got the bonus of a private lesson. Score!

Lucas is a really attentive coach and you can tell he knows his stuff. Here’s what we did:

Skill: Clean Squats. We worked on the progression with a PVC pipe and working our way to doing the full clean squat. It had been a really long time since I had done clean squats (we usually do power cleans) and at one point, I was overthinking things and complicated everything. It was easier once I did the progression with the empty bar (35#). Lucas gave me some pointers and reminders (which I needed. I have a tendency to get into the swing of things and forget a bit about form at times, so that was really helpful). I then showed him my burpees and we moved onto the WOD

WOD: I knew this one would be hard so I wanted to stay at 35# for my bar. I used the training bar (15#) + 2×10# plates. My plan of attack was to break the 21 in 3 sets of 7, the 15 in 3 sets of 5 and the 9 in 3 sets of 3. I stuck to my plan except for the 9 burpees which I did unbroken. Lucas reminded me to keep my knees turned out before I tackled the set of 9 clean squats and it helped tremendously getting through them. I finished in 14:23, sweaty and happy!I got to meet 2 regular members who were there for the 0730 class. Lucas offered for me to register for an oly lifting class on Saturday morning with Ed Fergusson, but we have some fun family things planned so I will have to pass on that one. I wish I had known earlier and planned accordingly though! 😉

Post WOD sweatiness with Lucas Bugg

Goofing off at Crossfit Qualicum Beach

All in all, CFQB is a nice little box and from what I could tell, Lucas is totally dedicated and very knowledgeable about having his members WODing safely. I’ll be sure to come back for more when we are in the neighbourhood. Please check them out as well if you’re ever the area!

I know a lot of my Crossfit Family is in Carson right now enjoying the Crossfit Games and although I am slightly jealous, I’ve been catching up online with the live stream. According to my husband, I look stressed out just watching the Games! Haha! Why wouldn’t I be? Have you seen the OHS yesterday??? That was some serious throw down!

 

A WOD In The Park

I needed to get a second WOD under my skin before heading back to work tomorrow and I had been thinking about getting it done since last Friday, but I let life (and rain) get in my way. I finally decided on the Road WOD 6 from myWod App last night so I could do it indoors (in case it rained some more) or outdoors. I got up early with the girls this morning, got our morning routine done and out of the way before the clouds opened up (the days is still very cloudy, but no rain so far) and headed over to the Pink Elephant Park (as Rina refers to it)! My upstairs neighbour didn’t show up (she was still sleeping when I left)!

I really wanted to do 4 rounds of this WOD and incorporate 400m runs with each rounds, but I didn’t feel like I could be so far from the girls. The park is surrounded by busy streets and I didn’t trust Béatrice not to dash in the streets while I was doing a run. I instead I chose to do the WOD almost RX, modifying the sit-ups for park bench jumps (I didn’t feel like lying on my back on a hard trail full of hard little pebbles).

Easter WOD in the park

 

There weren’t too many people out and about and I was glad for that as I don’t like to “give a show” when I work out. When we go to the park closer to home, there usually is nobody this early in the morning and the park is surrounded by tall bushes and residential homes, so not many spectators.

Rina and Béatrice provided cheers for the first few rounds (Rina tried to do push-ups with me and was counting my reps: 6-4-12-8-7, according to her math skills 🙂 while Béatrice attempted to copy my squats for a few reps before heading on over to the slide). The last 2 rounds were slower as I had to keep an eye on Béa (she was starting to wander further away and closer to the street) and a stranger stopped by to have the following conversation with me

Stranger: It hurts just looking at you!

Me: That’s the whole point, isn’t it?

Stranger: My philosophy is “no pain, no pain”!

Me: Ha!

Stranger: Could I just give you one piece of advice, don’t bounce so much when you sit in your squat. Take the time to sit in it and then come back up. I wouldn’t want to see you pull a muscle or something

Me: (smiling and nodding) yes, uhuh, sure, ok, yep!

All the while I was thinking, you’re not supposed to pause at the bottom of your squat, but be nice to this man who probably means well and hopefully hasn’t been checking my butt while I was squatting away.

Oh well, another one for the books! I will be putting the girls to bed for a quick nap after we leave some carrots for the Easter Bunny and then, we’ll go on an Easter Egg Hunt when they get up!

Happy Easter everyone!

 

Finally A Post About Something Other Than Crossfit! ;)

I’m done!

I have finally bound off my Onward and Upward! The original design is Onward by Shannon Cook. It has taken me a good 2 months to finish this project. Way too long if you ask me for such a small project, but what can you do? Such is life when you are working shift work full-time, a wife, mother of 2 toddlers and an avid Crossfitter! (Ok, I lied in the title, of course I’ll talk about Crossfit! 🙂 )

My upstairs neighbour was kind enough to model the shawl for me this afternoon and I just finished editing the pictures.

Close-up of the pattern

I am now currently working on 2 different patterns (let’s be real, I just casted on for both, so you might not get to see some finished products for at least six months at the rate I’m knitting at)! I am teaching myself to knit socks two-at-a-time (knocking off 2 items off my “knitting bucket list”: knitting socks and learning the two-at-a-time method) and after having done my swatch for the Shepherd back in February, I’m finally ready to tackle cables!

Copyrights Kate Davies Design

Like I said, I’m hoping to be done knitting the hoodie by next fall, when it will be cold enough to actually wear it! In the meantime, I’m getting ready for a fun Easter Sunday:

• a Road WOD in the park (since Ben isn’t home, I plan on taking the girls to the playground so I can get my WOD in while they play. My upstairs neighbour said she might join us with her son). Hopefully it won’t be raining, otherwise, I don’t know what I’ll be doing with the girls. I guess I could still do the WOD in the living room (without the running part obviously). I’ve decided on Road WOD #6 from myWOD App which consists of 6 rounds for time:

1. 10 push-ups (mine will be hand release)

2. 10 air squats

3. 10 sit-ups

Finish it off with a 400m run

• Grocery shopping for the upcoming week at work (some of us still have to work through the Easter Holiday 😦 )
• Easter egg hunt for the girls when they get up from their nap in the afternoon!

I was also very much looking forward to reuniting with my hubby, but I just found out he will be landing back on the west coast way past my bedtime. 😦 I guess our reunion will have to wait until I come home from work on Monday… I’ve missed him very much and 5 days is a long time to be without him, even though we haven’t seen much of each other lately. We are like ships passing in the night, but I’d take a few minutes here and there any day over not getting to see him at all…