Muscle-What?

"Nate"

Max rounds in 20 minutes of:

2 "Muscle-ups" (3 false-grip pullups + 3 ring dips)
4 Handstand Push-ups
8 Kettlebell Swings (2 pood or 72#)

Score: 7 rounds even

Feels like my muscle-ups are getting weaker. I thought I would get 2's no problem... not the case. Why? When I first made the muscle-up break-through I was hitting the rings every day. That has certainly not been the case lately. Also, handstand pushups were really quite hard. This is a skill I simply haven't really been practicing at all so no surprise there... so there it is. If I want to improve I think I need to recommit and practice handstands and muscle-ups every day. Any ideas as to how I can do this effectively?

Weekend Madness

The boys at SB Crossfit cooked up a killer for us this morning:

4 Rounds For Time:

400m Run
50 Box Jumps

Unfortunately my knee is crap and so I sat this one out. Everybody else worked incredibly hard and in the process motivated me to put my best efforts into my own saturday madness...

(1)

1:00 PM

7-5-3: muscle-ups
21-15-9: KB swings (1.5 pood)

Time: 11:48

(2)

7:00 PM

Get estimate of today's 1 RM front squat:

Rest about 1 minute between attempts.

95 lbs X 3
115 lbs X 3
135 lbs X 3
155 lbs X 1
175 lbs X 1
185 lbs (Fail)

1 RM weight = 175 lbs

Time: 11:50

(3)

7 X 3 front squat (135 lbs - 75% 1 RM)

Time: 10:15

(4)

4 rounds for time:

500 meter row
50 box jumps (24")

Time: 25:02

Comments:

The muscle-up/KB circuit was hard but certainly didn't destroy me. Muscle-ups were limited by strength (but felt much closer to full extension). KB swings felt good. I had to keep the MU at low reps in order to keep the flow of the circuit at a resonable pace. Maybe next time I'll try smaller sets of both repeated more times so that I can get similar power output from both movements. Any suggestions?

I am fairly confident that my true 1 RM front squat is significantly heavier. I expected it to be low given that I was only taking 1 minute breaks and I was a bit tired from a long day and workout (1). No matter, the real purpose was to figure out what weight to do the triples at.

The triples at 75% felt good and hard. I had to fight but I wasn't ever dangerously close to failure.

The final circuit was beautiful. I felt like I really joined the rest of the SB crossfit crew in their WOD. Props to Phil and Russ... 24" boxes suck.

Fix Me

I decided to take Sunday off from high intensity training. However, I have a hard time doing nothing so I spent a half hour or so in the afternoon working on muscle-ups. I was thrilled to add 7 more notches to my crossfit bedpost. Even more thrilling at the time was getting the last 4 as a pair of linked doubles! A couple of hours later I returned home (still giddy as a schoolgirl) and decided to try to get some of my new toys on tape. After warming up with a few singles and doubles I got my brother to record a serious effort... in which I got a PR of 3 linked reps! Of course only the last failed rep was recorded. This turned out to be a blessing because after a short rest I tried it again. Check it out:



Please offer feedback on how I can make these better. Two things jump out at me right away:

(1) I am far from getting full extension. Part of this is because the bar isn't high enough and I have mutant legs. Still, I know there is a strength issue there that I need to train.

(2) I have a massive kip. Seriously, when the camera comes around to the side you can see that I am almost completely horizontal. Is this okay?

(3) Looks like I'm not really pulling the rings into my chest and armpits. In fact, it doesn't look like I am pulling the rings very much at all. It's as if I just sorta lock off and use my kip to get my body around.

Anybody know any drills that would clean me up?