THAT was HARD!

So today I went for my first class at the new gym.

Here's a picture of what it looks like:

I love the fact i is air conditioned and much closer to my house. It's much more organized and girly too (it's a girls only Crossfit), which I love! :)

We also have stationary bikes where we can do our warm ups, and a big field where we can run on on the back, but we haven't gone on it because of the heat this week.

So here is what we had to do:

Strength: weighted planks
Conditioning:
1-10
Db thrusters, burpees
2-20
Medball twists
In between each round jumprope 100singles


This was waaay harder than I thought. I felt nauseous afterwards because I was so tired. But it nothing that a Gatorade couldn't fix. 


Total calories lost: 488!

Jumping, Jumping

Wow! Talk about cardio! Here is what we had to do:

Strength: supine row 3×10
Conditioning 5 rds
1 min jumpsquat
1 min burpees
1 min Situps
1 min jumprope
1 min rest

That was so much jumping... That 1 min rest was very much needed indeed. I was proud with myself though because I was able to complete a consistent 7 - 8 burpees each minute, rather than just 5 :p

Not much to say, besides, it was a great workout as always :)

Burpees and Heat: Deadly Combo

Okay, maybe not deadly, but definitely excruciating!

According to the The Weather Channel, it felt like 101°F around the time I was doing crossfit. 


I knew it was going to be bad, but it was, as always, worst than I thought. Here is what we had to do :


Strength: shoulder press 4×4 (35lb, 45lb, 40lb, 40lb)
Conditioning: 15 mins AMREP
5 burpees
7 tricep dips
9 push press (10lb dbs)


Luckily we spent most of the time inside. The only time I was out was when I was doing the 2 lap warm up jog. But it was still super hot, since it is an open warehouse and no a/c, only fans. 


I had drank lots of water, so I was fine in that department. It were my arms that suffered the most. My biceps, triceps, shoulders and back were a bit achy from Monday, and today we had to work on them again, so they were not happy. 


During the strengthening, I decided to start with a 15lb bar with 10lb plates on each side. My first round was fine. Then I added additional 5lb plates on each side, for a total of 45lbs. That made the second round much more difficult, where I had to bend my knees a little to get it up (which I know I'm not supposed to do). Then as I was doing the 3rd round and really struggling, the instructor told me it was too much for me and switched it to 2.5lb. So I did the remaining 3rd and 4th rounds with 40lbs and it was extremely difficult, but I did them. My arms however, were burning and very weak. 


So when I went into the conditioning, they were already tired from the strengthening. I had to stop several times, not only because my arms were feeling extremely weak, but because the heat was too much. It;s like I was breathing with no air. I wasn't counting my reps but I think I did about 6 or 7. 


So yeah, I didn't die, but felt like I was going to! 

Impossible?

When I saw this at my gym's website today, my jaw dropped:

Strength: back squat 4×5 (35lb, 55lb, 55lb, 55lb)
Conditioning: 
Run 3 laps Jumprope 
100 singles 
80 kettlebell swings (15lb kb)
60 Situps 
40 lunges (20 each leg) 
20 pullups 
10 burpees 
Jumprope 100 singles 
Run 3 laps 

I didn't think I could do it. It just seemed too difficult, too long and too crazy.

Well, guess what? I did it!!!! I was wearing a heart monitor from a watch my brother gave, ( which by the way, I will post about sometime soon) and my heart rate went up to 220. I was definitely going all the way to my limit, but I finished it, alive! A little dizzy, but alive :)

Anniversary Burpees

Wednesday was my wedding anniversary and I kept wondering if I should go work out or just stay home and relax before going out to dinner with my hubby. I ended up deciding to go work out, as well as clean the apartment in the morning and organize my closet all afternoon, hence staying on my feet all day. Go figure! Here is what we had to do at the box:

Strength: shoulder press 4×5 (15lb + 45lb + 35lb + 35lb)
Conditioning: 10 rounds
10 lunges
10 burpees
20 jumprope singles (10 du)

LOL - I'm one of them ;)

For the first time in my Crossfit life (which hasn't been that long), I had to severely scale down the work out by my own decision and not the instructor's, and that feeling really sucks. I officially hate burpees! For the life of me, I can NOT do it quickly enough or more than 5 without falling to the ground losing strenght on my arms and legs. I read somewhere that Crossfit athletes can do 10 -15 burpees every 30 seconds. Seriously? If I can do 5 burpees in 30 seconds, I'm lucky.

So, now that I have very well described my relationship with burpees, you will understand why after the fourth round, I was only doing 5 burpees instead of 10. Even then I was the last one to finish. Took me about 26 minutes. I had been able to do 10 rounds of 10 burpees before, but they were combined with only one other exercise. Plus I have been sore and I even comptemplated not going to crossfit that day, because I hadn't had a rest day since Saturday, and I definitely felt it on my body. But I went anyway and I'm very happy I did. You never great the things you did. You only regret the things you didn't do. :)

The good news is, I did great with my jumprope singles! I think it's just about finding the right kind of rope and the right size. Instead of waiting until the last minute to grab a rope for the exercise, I went to look for one before the workout and made sure I measured them around my neck and tried them. The result was great performance! :)

The lunges were alright...difficult but not impossible. I may have skipped one or two in some rounds, but they sure kicked my butt. I have some bruises on my knees, which I'm sure came from them.
It was a good week overall. I pushed myself to work out four days in a row, which might not have been the greatest decision since I'm still sore to this day and have bruises on my knees, but I'm sure in the long run it will only do me good. That is another reason why I didn't go running this evening. My knees were still sore and so were my legs, so I decided to take two days of rest instead of just one. Plus it is raining.
I am hoping to go running tomorrow night though. My first 20 minutes!!! I just hope I can do it :)

Bottom line is, I am happy I went to the box on Wednesday, and after taking a nice shower afterwards and getting all dressed up, I enjoyed a very nice anniversary dinner with my husband, having two glasses of delicious wine and great italian food, guilt free!

"When You Try Your Best But You Can't Succeed"

Yep... that line from Coldplay's song "Fix you" has been playing on my head over and over. Why? Well, I'll tell you why... because a little over 4 weeks ago, I didn't think I would still practically look the same and weight the same today. But I do.

It started with the work out today. It was hot out and I had a head ache. Luckily the headache kind of went away during our warm up, but the work out overall wasn't that great. I mean, it was good in the sense I burned lots of calories, but my performance sucked, especially doing jump ropes.

Here is what we had to do:

Strength: back squat 4×5 (60lb weight)
Conditioning: 4 rounds
Jumprope 100 singles
Run 200m
10 pullups
10 burpees
10 thrusters (10lb kbs)

I was fine doing the back squat. No problem there. 

But then came the workout. I was the worst there and was about 1 round behind all the other girls. I just couldn't do the full 100 Jumprope singles. My feet kept on getting caught on the rope and the most I did was 70 until I gave up and went running. On the last round, when everyone was done, I decided to do a 400m run instead of Jumprope then run, to make up for my inability to do 100 Jumprope singles. It was difficult but I did it. I didn't even check to see how long it took me to finish all 4 rounds. Felt like an eternity. My heat rate watch told me I had burned 800 calories and it sure felt like it.

After that I decided to go on the fat measuring scale. Last week it had told me I was at 155.6lbs and I had gone down to 25% body fat. Well, today it told me I gone up to 158lbs and 26.5 body fat! I think my muscle was up by 2% but I don't remember. I was too focused on the fat part. I mean, I don't mind not losing weight as long as I'm losing fat and ever since I started this thing, I had only gone down on the fat percentage, so this certainly made me feel horrible about myself. 

So right now I feel unmotivated and tired. I'm not about to give up, but I lost all hope to lose 30lbs by the end of Summer which was my initial goal. I don't know what to do anymore. I feel like maybe I should up my calorie intake even more but I'm afraid that if I do that, it will backfire.... 

It's funny how a couple of years ago, all I had to do was eat little and I lost a lot of weight. Now I'm practically kicking my butt every other day, drinking at least 2 liters of water per day and watching my calories, and NOTHING happens. This sucks.

PS: I have been doing Crossfit for officially a month now...even though it doesn't look like it :/

No More Burpee Tears

I was supposed to go to a 9:30am crossfit class this morning, my lazy self got the best of me. It was raining, cold, and I had had a tough time falling asleep yesterday. So when my alarm went off at 7:30am, I decided to turn it off and ignore it. The reason I was supposed to go at 9:30am instead of 4pm which is when I usually go on Wednesdays, is because I was supposed to work overtime today from 3pm - 8pm so I was going to miss the 4pm class. So I woke up at 10:30am instead, and decided I would do a at home work out to make up for my lazyness. I decided to a past at home work out:

10rds: 10 walking lunges each leg and 10 Burpees

This is the same one they have us when the gym was closed for renovation. The last time I had tried this workout, I cried towards the end. It was incredibly difficult and painful. I finished it in 28 minutes.

So I went for a run around the block as a warm up, and did this work out for the second time in my crossfit lifetime.

It took me 28 minutes to finish again. I didn't cry this time though.. But I realized, I probably didn't do the whole 10 rounds the last time I did it. Maybe I thought I did, but I know I did much faster this time. My guess is that I only did 9 rounds the last time, which means I probably cut down 4 minutes from last time's time. But I will never know.

This is the problem with cheating in crossfit. You are really cheating on yourself when you skip rounds or don't time yourself properly. Not that I did it on purpose last time, but still...

I also got a bruise on my hand from the pushups..my first Crossfit bruise :)

Beginning of 3rd Week

Last week wasn't my greatest.. I didn't follow my diet very strictly and it was just a bad week overall. So I decided to try and do better this week. Working out in the morning is still weird for me. I'm not used to working out without having a lot of time to get ready and eat. What I do is I eat as soon as I wake up around 7am to give enough time for the food to digest by the time I go work out at 9am. The last two Sunday I had walls that kept me from doing the work outs to the full extent. But today I was fine.
Here is what we had to do:

Conditioning: in teams of 2
800m run
100 kb swings
50 burpees
100 squats
50 db thrusters
50 box jumps
800m run

Since this was done in teams of 2, we each had to do half of these work outs. While one person ran 400 meters, the other rested until she had to go and run 400 meters.

For the kb swings we used a 15lb. I thought it was a little too light, and it actually made it more difficult. For the db thrusters, we used 10lb dumbells. That was actually enough, a little too heavy actually.

Overall, it was a great work out and I'm just glad I didn't have anything to keep me from completing them.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Burpee Tears

I still haven't gone to the actual gym for the Crossfit classes. Yesterday's class was cancelled as well due to construction and I decided to use it as a day of rest and go today at 4pm. Turns out I hadn't checked the scheduled carefully and they didn't offer a class at 4pm, only at 9:30am. Since they had given an at-home work out for yesterday's cancelled class I decided to do that one today just so I could have my 3 days of CF work out for the week. 


Here was the work-out:  


10rds: 10 walking lunges (each leg), 10 burpees.


I was dreading it since last time I tried to do Burpees, I couldn't finish 3 sets of 10. I pressed Play on my Ipod and started.. The Walking Lunges weren't as difficult. But then came the Burpees. Oh my God, my legs kept on getting weaker each time. Usually around the 4th or 5th I collapsed on the floor or stopped before jumping up. I didn't think I could finish it. I started crying at around the 8th set. A rush of different emotions came over me: Disappointment, shame, lack of belief in myself, pain, tiredness... I knew my brain was trying to put me down. I then prayed to God in my head to give me strength and played Stronger by Kanye West. And 3 sets later I was finished! I collapsed on the floor, breathing hard, smiling, I was so proud of myself. 


It took me 28 minutes but I had done it. 


I was in so much pain afterwards, I did about 10 minutes of stretches and then muscle rolling. I feel fine now, but most of all, accomplished!