With Microsoft releasing it’s new, long-awaited and long-delayed OS, Vista, things were bound to turn ugly:

I love deadlift day, but I showed up with little energy and focus for lfiting today as I was at the end of a long cycle. I’m wupped! It was an interesting session at the gym. The guy next to me was doing power cleans and front squats and he was good company. The bodybuilders were another thing all together. Three times I was aksed if I needed a lifting belt and some straps. I said if I can’t grip it then I can’t lift it. I had just pulled 335 and while I was adding 20 lbs to the bar for a PR attempt, one of the bodybuilder guys felt the need to coach my form. Actually, he was right, so I asked him to show me. He almost got the 355 up but did not get lock-out. Now I was stoked! I gave it a shot but missed it too. So far, in deadlifting, when I have missed on a weight, I would get it on the second lift. By this point, I knew there wasn’t much gas in the tank, so I knocked it down to 345 which would still beat my best by 5#. I took my shoes off, lined up and paid attention to my form and took a deep breath and nailed it!

In spite of the low energy and the distractions, it was nice to come away with a good 1RM effort. Rest day, yeah!

Angie is a bodyweight workout. 100 each of pull-ups, push-ups, squats and sit-ups. Since I have not yet mastered kipping pull-ups, I have to substitute with double the amount of jumping pull-ups. Or course this is a timed WOD. The last time I did this at Met-Rx gym, I did this is just over 23 minutes, in part because instead of the jumpers, I did 100 assisted pull-ups which are closer to strict pull-ups than jumpers are. In any case, I got a great smoker workout with the jumpers. First person to comment on this post, gets $8. (Just want to see if anyone is paying attention). Offer expires 1/31.

Of the four bodywieght exercises, I did best with the squats.

Total time today was 16:25. My average heart rate was 157 bpm and the max was 172.

It was near perfect day at Dog Beach in Huntington Beach today. I met my friend, Rene Bruce, his Russell terrier, Kia, his girlfriend, Sara (sp?) and her two dogs Ichabod and Cooper and of course my two Chow Chows, ReggieFu and Chelsea. (Val, you missed out!) It was low tide when we got out there so it gave the dogs more room to play, since few of them wanted to crash the surf, although Reggie charged in a couple of times. The dogs were great but some of the people would probably be better of staying at home with cats instead.

We walked from one end of Dog Beach to the other at a leisurely pace. Rene said it was 3 miles round trip. Right now, my dogs are gassed, especially the older of the two, ReggieFu. To view more pictures, check out the left side panel.

Similar to a Shoulder Press, the Push Press gets it up with a hip “pop”; a slight dip and drive up to overhead lockout. According to strength coach Mark Rippetoe, you can get up to 30% more weight up with the help of the “dip and drive”.

I was pressed for time, (pun intended), and so I had a shortened warm-up and gave myself a max of two minutes between sets. For each lift, I made sure my feet were “nailed” to the floor, weight back on the heels and I maintained a tight core, a curve in the spine and a solid lockout at the top of the lift. I held my breath throughout the left and had a big exhale at the start of the lockout.

Here are the lifts, all x 3: 95/105/115/125/135/145/155. I had a little left for another increase in bar weight but opted out to save it for another day after a complete warm-up.

I will consider 155# my baseline 3RM for the Push Press.

After walking in the sand at Dog Beach for several hours, this was a good workout to do today. I had planned on the “Filthy Fifty”, but I did not have the mojo for that today!

Another one of the “girl” workouts is Elizabeth and a tough one at that. It calls for 3 rounds of 135# cleans at reps of 21-15-9. The second part of that is ring dips in the same numbers.

One of the great things about Crossfit is the scalability of the workouts. I opted to do 95# cleans instead and to get the same total weight as the rx’ed 135 lbs. I had to increase to reps to 30-21-13. While I may be able to do the rx’ed ring dips now that my shoulder is healthy again, I don’t have rings and did not train at Crossfit Marina, the substitution was doing regular bar dips but at 3x the number of the the ring dips.

On the cleans, I got decent and deep squats on about 2/3 of the reps. the remaining 1/3 was more in the way of power cleans, with a much shallower squat. All my rounds were “broken” reps, but I cut back the rest time as much as possible. My time for this was 19:36. I think the last time I did this WOD was August of last year and was using 65# instead of today’s 95#. My time then was 17 minutes and change. This WOD was preceded by 3 rounds of the Crossfit warm-up and the Burgener Warm-up, which helped a lot.

This was about getting 75 OH squats in the least number of sets and I have the least amount of experience with this lift than the others and all the “parts” have to work for the lift to succeed. That means tight core, wide grip, right stance, bar centered overhead and probably the most important, active shoulders. The prescribed weight was 95# and I am not ready for that weight yet so I scaled it 75# and it broke down like this: 12/12/11/10/10/12/8. While this was not a timed workout, I did it in 12 minutes and was smoked when it was over. I also set up a squat box on the second level to make sure I got the hips below parallel on each squat, which I got about 90%.

This is a great lift and everything I have read about the OHS is that it confers the most benefit to an athlete. Dan John says it turns your body into “one piece” and now I am starting to understand it. Like a shuttle launch, all systems have to be “Go”. He adds, “What I was discovering was that the overhead squat requires total concentration, total lockout and perfect positions. There is no cheating; one can’t squirm, roll the knees or hips, or let other body parts help kick in. The athlete who completes this task will have strong, flexible legs. You can send your athletes to all the yoga classes in the world, but the overhead squat develops athletic flexibility. As for leg strength, that is the only way to get out of the whole in this exercise. You can’t lean forward, twist, bounce or cheat in anyway. The bar will come off the top and you will have to start again.” Pretty cool, yes?

I wish I knew this shit when I was a (younger) kid!

New legislation has passed raising the Federal Minimum Wage. Ok, so it has been 10 years since the last time but what make this so interesting is that of all the states and territories, only American Samoa is exempt from the new law. Perhaps because 75% of the workers there work for the Star Kist Tuna Plant, which is run by Del Monte Foods and headuartered in Nancy Pelosi’s Congressional Dictrict. Nahhh, must be a coincidence. The congressman in video has an interesting way of making that little factoid a matter of public record by doevetailing it with stem cell research funding. Barney Frank presides, swinging his gavel and gives a great performance.

I was going to take the day off today, but when I saw this one come up I wanted to test myself on it again. The prescribed workout calls for 3 rounds of 21-15-9 reps each of 225 lb deadlifts and the same numbers in handstand push-ups. So each round has has a set of deads and the HSPUs. The last time I did this, 10/16/06, I did the WOD as RXed in 9:21. i was happy with it for the most part but the deadlift form broke down fast and I was on the brink of a possible injury. Definitely not something I wanted a part of again.

This time I scaled back to 185# and did 25-18-10 to keep the final load equal, which came out to 4.9 tons. (I just love that stat!) I did the HSPUs close to vertical, but not entirely straigh up and down. If they were done exactly as prescribed, it would have taken a little longer and with a decreased ROM, which would have been fine. Also, the gym has no bare wall space to do this as they are covered in mirrors! Aside from that, there were no breaks in the sets and I got full range of motion (ROM). I eliminated the “travel” time in the transition and completed the workout in 6:06, which left me gassed. 30 minutes to warm-up so I could complete a 6 minute WOD. You gotta love a workout lke that! I am planning a workout for tomorrow but I may change my mind.

28:22 was my time, which is slower than the other times I have run this distance but it seemed to me like I was going faster than I was. I thought I had done it in 24 or 25 minutes. Oh well, I ran in the dark on the hilly Irvine stretch of Back Bay, up to Santiago St. and back home and mostly enjoyed the run in spite of the slow time which was, on average 9:09 min/mile.