Knees, My Old Nemesis, and Recap of Friday

I've been a little distracted over the last week. It's been crazy busy at my house: my boyfriend has been in town, I had to bake Halloween treats every day last week for my son's preschool, and let's not even go there about Halloween prep and madness. I completely forgot to blog about last Friday -- I have slept since then -- but it's worth covering quickly. Then I'll debrief today's WOD.

Friday, 30 OCT 09

Warm up: Buddy pull ups, kipping practice
WOD: Max deadlift, max shoulder press

The pull ups were mainly to build strength and practice getting our kipping motion down. Thankfully my boyfriend was there to help me, strong guy that he is, but he's also got a lot of CrossFit experience and has given me some great tips toward building up to a full kipping pull up. I know I should be working on these every time I walk in/out of the gym, but geez -- they are such a pain! But nonetheless, they are coming along slowly but surely.

I am proud to say that this was a fun day. As usual, I love heavy weight days. I blew right past my max deadlift from last time and probably could've gotten farther, but I could feel my form suffering to the point that I could've put myself at risk for hurting my back. I'm completely unwilling to hurt myself and have to take time off to recover if it can be helped. It's true that as you add more and more weight that your form might suffer a little bit, but I was sufficiently pleased with my new max and wanted to live to fight another day, as the saying goes.

The max press was the real challenge for me. It's so tempting to dip and drive to get that bar up over your head instead of just pressing straight up from your shoulders. I needed a little spotting but eventually got that weight up. This is just a hard one for me, plain and simple.

Max deadlift: 190 lbs.; attempted 195 but failed.
Max shoulder press: 75 lbs.

Monday, 02 NOV 09

Warm up: 400m run, butt kickers, high knees, high knee cross overs, walking push ups
WOD: For time, 40-30-20-10 goblet squats with 20 ball sit ups between each set of squats.
Challenge: Team 1000m row

Isn't it a bad sign when you're exhausted after the warm up that the WOD is only going to be even worse?!? That's kinda how I felt today. I felt a little off kilter but for the most part was ready to rock-n-roll.

When I saw today's WOD, I thought, Oh nice, something to work on intensity and go fast but not so hard that I'm hurting afterwards. HA! I couldn't have been more wrong!! Today was another really hard day on my knees. I could've moved so much faster had I not had such sharp, piercing pain in my knees. My muscles were burning well the whole time, but certainly nothing that I couldn't push through. It was the sheer pain associated with my knees that made me want to be sick. Today was actually one of two days where I thought I might be in real danger of injuring my knees. Thankfully I feel a lot better now, but I need to find the motrin soon.

The goblet squats weren't hard form-wise. I wanted to go heavy and just keep a steady pace. For my knees, going fast (Tabata-style) is no good, but keeping in constant motion is about as much intensity as I can handle on them. I chose a 35# dumbbell and racked it up. I was able to keep moving in sets of ten for the most part, sometimes in fives.

I was really surprised to see just how much my quads were involved in the ball sit ups. The emphasis on core wasn't bad at all, but it was how my legs were engaging getting down to the mat and then getting back up on my feet that liked to have killed me. I was able to keep doing those in sets of tens and then fives, too.

I had to pause between movements and stretch my quads. This helped some, but I just wish there was something I could do to better lengthen those muscles and tendons when they're warmed up and moving. That would make a huge difference. I know I need to do more workouts and movements that strengthen this area for me. It's really frustrating to feel like I could be doing more "if only..."

Something else that was getting to me was being the last one done today. We had a couple of new girls in class today, which was lots of fun. It's exciting to see more people get involved, especially women. But I'm tellin' ya -- these girls may have only been doing CF for a week or so, but they are strong and swift to begin with! Talk about a challenge to which I need to rise up! As much as I enjoy the motivation of seeing others to "chase after," it is hard to feel like I'm working as hard as I can but have this stupid situation going on with my knees. All I can tell myself is that I kept moving, worked as hard as I could, and will beat my time the next time we do this. The only person I'm really competing with here is ME!

Posted time: 18:07

P.S. -- Brandy, did you ever finish Elements??? :)