J.T. Kalnay's Blog, page 10

Dear CrossFit, 13.5, What We Haven’t Seen Yet

Dear CrossFit,

We all knew C&J was coming, and we all knew T2B was coming.  See, for example, http://jtkalnaynovels.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/13-4-what-we-havent-seen-yet/  which identifies T2B and C&J as missing.  However, none of us saw C&J and T2B coming at the same time!  So many of us thought that 13.4 was going to be Fran. I suppose, from one point of view, C&J are a lot like thrusters and T2B are a lot like pullups, and thus I am removing Fran from my 13.5 prediciton.

So, now that 13.4 is out, what can we say about 13.5?  First, we can identify the movements that haven’t been done yet (thrusters, pushups, situps, walking lunges, pullups, HSPU, wall walks, kettlebell swings, pistols).  Then we can notice that so far all four WODs have been AMRAP.  There haven’t been any WODs for time or for weight.  This makes me think that 13.5 will either be a chipper for time (e.g., 10 wall walks, 20 situps, 30 pushups, 40 pullups, 50 kettlebell swings, 40-30-20-10) for time (20 minute time cap), or a combined weight (e.g., CrossFit total, 20 minute time limit).  Since we haven’t seen Fran yet, we aren’t going to.

I wonder what tomorrow’s WOD will be…

Thoughts Upon Encountering A Recent War Widow

The young widow sits surrounded by family and friends,

Her friends, and his friends,

Friends of the family, friends of the soldier.

A “hero”, they say, killed in action in a far-off land.

 

They try to comfort her, ask what she wants, ask what she needs.

They try, but they do not succeed, they do not even succeed in comforting themselves.

 

She wants to cry, to shriek, to throw off the thin, brittle mask she has somehow managed to carefully deploy with her shaking hands.

She wants to let loose the torrent of tears that feel like they will never end.

She wants someone else make the decisions for a little while, to tell her what to do, to stop asking her to questions when every piece of her strains just to keep her upright as she reels from this unfathomable blow.

 

And she needs to know why.

Why her man, her friend, her lover, is dead.

Killed in action in a far-off land,

In a war none of us understand.

Muscle Ups at 300 Frames Per Second

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKcnpJSAsbo

It’s very interesting how she uses her hip drive to create a weightless moment where she can pull her hands to the bottom of her rib cage.  This establishes the pivot around which she rotates her body to get “over” the rings and into the dip position.  She is pulling while horizontal, rather than pulling while vertical.  Then, once she has her hands at the bottom of her rib cage she can lock off and roll forwards then do her dip.  Very cool footage.

Dear CrossFit, Waiting For The 13.4 Bomb To Drop

Dear CrossFit,

This is torture, it really is.  Crystal balls, tea leaves, statistical analysis, trend analysis, you name it, we’ve been doing it, trying to figure out what 13.4 and 13.5 will be.  Even worse, for the small percentage of the world that isn’t involved in the Open, they need us to stop obsessing.  They want us back as friends, parents, children, spouses, dates, workers, and colleagues.  We’re three weeks into this thing.  A lot of people have bailed, for different reasons (apathy, injury, disgust at padding, disgust at no-reps, …).  But a lot of us are still in it, even though our rationale may be evolving.  I started out with a goal of making the top 90%.  Depending on what 13.4 and 13.5 are I have a legitimate chance at being in the top 50%.  My friends from the Shed ‘o Pain are already tweaking their training for next year after posting scores that they know they can improve.  My competitive friends are crossing their fingers and toes hoping for “something heavy” or “something light” or “something aerobic” or “something long” or “something short” depending on what their strengths/weaknesses are…

All I know is this.  At some point in the next two weeks we are going to be doing pullups.  I have pullups.  I also know that we are going to be doing something that I don’t have (HSPU, pistols, OHS). 

So CrossFit, why not be unpredictable and announce both WODs right now.  Some of us want this to be over, and some of us need this to be over!

I wonder what tomorrow’s WOD will be…

Dear CrossFit, Drop-ins welcome in Buffalo

Thanks Robert Vest at CrossFit Williamsville for a nice drop-in WOD

http://board.crossfit.com/showthread.php?p=1152101#post1152101

This is one of the best parts of CrossFit isn’t it?  Finding energetic, like-minded people everywhere.

I wonder what tomorrow’s WOD will be…

Dear CrossFit, How Much Does Every Rep Count?

Dear CrossFit,

We hear it all the time, “every rep counts.”  Well, how much does every rep count?  In 13.1, getting one rep at the next higher snatch weight counted for thousands of places.  In 13.2, each rep counted incrementally.  In 13.3, getting one dub counted for hundreds of places and getting one muscle up counted for thousands of places.  How much did getting one more rep (other than a higher weight or muscle up) matter in the middle of the pack (where I currently reside?).  Here’s some data from a middle of hte pack competitor.

13.1, got 115 reps, good for 330th place in demographic (out of 1360), 116 reps would have moved athlete from 330th to 307th, 23 places.

13.2, got 169 reps, good for 1015th place, 170 reps would have moved athlete to 997th, 18 places.

13.3, got 144 reps, good for 849th place, 145 would have moved athlete to 831st, 18 places.

Overall, the athlete is 680th out of 1345 competitors with 2194 points.  One more rep in each event would have produced 2135 points, moving the athlete to 669th.  Here’s the rub, 680th is not in the top half, 669th is!  So every rep really does count, and for this athlete three more reps would make the difference between top 50% and bottom 50%.

Here’s another athlete.

13.1 164 reps = 28th, 165 reps = 23rd

13.2 332 reps = 2nd, 333 reps = still 2nd

13.3 240 reps = 80th, 241 reps = 40th

overall, 130 points = 28th, 65 points = 8th.

For this athlete, one muscle up and one more snatch are the difference between 8th and 28th overall.

So, what all this means is, every rep really does count, and some reps (one snatch at heavier weight, one dub, one muscle up) count the most.

I wonder what tomorrow’s WOD will be.

 

Dear CrossFit

Dear CrossFit,

Doing death by kettlebell the day after 13.3 was a spectacularly bad idea….

Today will be a rest day, except for a really long drive.

I wonder what tomorrow’s WOD will be…

RIP Joe Weider

http://www.foxnews.com/sports/2013/03/23/fitness-and-bodybuilding-icon-joe-weider-dies-at-3/?test=latestnews

After being bullied in his hard-scrabble part of Montreal, Joe built his own set of weights using scraps from a rail yard.  I remember getting my first set of plastic covered, cement filled Weider weights and lifting them in the garage with one of my brothers.  RIP Joe, you will be missed.

Dear CrossFit, The WOD after 13.3

Dear CrossFit,

What do you do on the day after 13.3 when your quads are trashed? (yes I know my quads aren’t supposed to be trashed from wall balls, doing Karen revealed a huge flaw in my mechanics, thanks HQ…)

You go rock climbing!  That’s what you do.  I got in ten routes ranging from 5.0 to 5.7.  Riding down in the harness was a little uncomfortable on the quads and hammies, but it was fun.  Then you do 13.3 penance.  I got 50 of the 90 dubs today, I’ll try to get the other 40 tomorrow.  Then you figure out what CrossFit exercise you can do that isn’t completely compromised by sore quads.  I selected death by kettlebell, and dialed it down to a 20# kb.  That’s what you do the day after 13.3.

And, you try to figure out how to train your brain to stop stopping so much, and to get started sooner, after a shorter break.

I wonder what tomorrow’s WOD will be…

Dear CrossFit, 13.4 and 13.5 Throwdowns Give Clues

Dear CrossFit,

Yes you are unpredictable, constantly varied, and consistently kick my *ss.  However, the next two throwdowns give clues that I find irresistible to pass up.  Also, we haven’t seen pullups, thrusters, C&J or anything spectacularly heavy yet, so….. here we go!

13.4 will be Spealer vs. Holmberg in St. Louis.  http://games.crossfit.com/announcements/graham-holmberg-and-chris-spealler-go-head-head-134  I predict that this will be Fran, in a classic battle between a lightweight (5’5″, 151#, 285C&J, 420 deadlift, 106 consecutive pullups) and a not so light weight (5’11″, 195#, 315C&J, 525 deadlift, 53 consecutive pullups).  There has been a lot of talk about the need for weight classes or divisions in CrossFit (like in wrestling, boxing, crew, weightlifting, judo, …) and HQ may be pushing back by staging this contest.

13.5 will be Fronnig vs. Khalipa in Santa Cruz, California.

I predict this will be one of three things: 1) a first-ever 15 minutes to find your 1RM C&J, 2) ten minutes, total weight C&J, 3) 12 minutes for C&J, 135#x10, 185#x10, 235#x10, 285#x10, 305#x as many as possible.  This will be an epic battle of the titans. Khalipa (5’9″, 210#,  315# C&J, 550# deadlift, 50 consecutive pullups) and Froning (5,9″, 195#, 370 C&J, 545 deadlift, 75 consecutive pullups).  CrossFit has “gone heavy” in its training, and this is the logical progression from last year’s Snatch Ladder.  I can’t weight to see this battle.

I wonder what tomorrow’s WOD will be…