Injury

I have been dealing with a nagging knee injury which has greatly hampered my training for the last  month and a half.  I sprained my ACL but the main injury was a deep bone contusion in my knee which the doctor said would take three months to heal.  This is probably a repetitive use injury, probably need to get some better shoes.  Also I might need to work on my running form since about 80% of runners get injured throughout a year.  All too often injuries are part of Crossfit and any other sport for that matter.  This shouldn’t be a deterrent but rather a cautionary tale to listen to your body when training.  If you feel something is off don’t train through it.  Stop doing activities that aggravate it for that workout go home and take a day or two’s rest and re-evaluate that injury.  This is something I could have benefited from but often times I butt heads with my competitive stubborn spirit which tells me to toughen up and keep going. Taking extra time off is sometimes very hard to do, but three days off is much better than three months off. 

I have been battling this injury for months and trust me it’s no fun.  This has been probably the most frustrating and painful time of my life.  I never realized how painful a contusion can be or how much you need your knees.  I have had ligament and rotator cuff injuries, and tendonitis in both my elbows.  All of these pale in comparison to my knee injury.  The process of healing a bone contusion can be a very long process and there is really nothing to do but REST!  So do yourself a favor next time you feel something off, take it easy and get a few days rest if needed.             

Crossfit for the Cure

              Today was a long eventful and fun day at Crossfit Grand Strand.  We started with a seminar at 9am and had Scott Panchik the world’s 4^th fittest man two years in a row come in to talk.  If you don't know him he is the one in the image below.  Yes that is 315lbs that he just power cleaned, what a BEAST!  While there he went over his experiences and how he found Crossfit.  He also talked about what goes on inside the Crossfit Games.  He also came around and critiqued our form on various lifts.  It was pretty surreal that he was there engaging and giving me tips on my form.  This was a great start to the day.  We had about an hour and half break before the Crossfit for the Cure challenge.  I hung around and ate some jerky, nuts, and dried fruit.

               

             The two workouts were Fran and Diane.  The gym got really crowded there was probably 50 to 60 people in here and the majority of them were competing.  The atmosphere was electric with enthusiasm and bright pink outfits.  The guy wearing a pink tutu definitely wins best dressed.  There are two workouts going on at once and about three heats for each.  This wasn't considered a competition since it’s for a much bigger cause but you could tell people were still really anxious to post a good time.  My name gets called in heat 3 and so far people have been giving tremendous effort.  There were a lot of PRs going on a few times around 5 and 6 minute range.  I was up and ready to go.  I had nerves like I use to get before a basketball game excited but yet nervous.  I get through the first 21 thrusters relatively easy.  I’m the second one onto the pull-up bar and I go unbroken separating myself from the rest.  Then I got through 12 reps on my set of 15 and put the bar down.  Took a breath and picked it up and finished.  The crowd was very motivating and Daryl was right next to me encouraging me to get through my thrusters.  I think he was half the reason I PR’d on this workout.  Now I get to the pull-up bar bent over and really feeling it.  I jump up get a quick 10 hop down.  I’m back up finish my final 5.  Final round it takes every ounce of strength and fight in me to get through the final 9 thrusters.  I rush over to the pull-up bar and get through the last 9 reps and see a time of 4:01.  Best time so far, not bad 44 seconds faster than my time less than a week ago.  I collapsed and my heads spinning and I’m just trying to get myself together. The next round one of the contestants put up an impressive 3:30 time squashing my time.  I continually get worse and eventually make my way outside to puke  I had a pounding migraine and couldn’t do the second workout and left a little early.    

100 Burpees!

METCON

100 Burpees for time

Today I scheduled an afternoon metcon of 100 burpees for time.  I knew this was going to be absolutely brutal.  It was just as challenging physically as it was mentally.  This is a very low skill, straightforward metcon just down and up.  Seems easy enough but throw in a high number of reps at maximal intensity and this becomes an extreme challenge.  I started off strong and hit 25 burpees in my first minute.  It was at this moment that I started to realize what I was in for, the next minute was terrible.  My pace slowed considerably only getting about 20 in that minute.  I started breaking them in to sets of five and would take a quick breath.  I was fighting to get through the final 30 reps.  I was dripping sweat and mentally was struggling to carry on.  I ended up finishing my 100^th rep and stopped the clocked at just under 7 minutes.  I was happy with that time considering two or three weeks ago I did the 7 minute burpee test and only got 80.  So I increased my total work by 20% in the same time period. I think I can improve upon that time and get 100 in closer to six minutes.  It took me a solid fifteen minutes just to regain my composure I was in a foggy haze.  I don’t plan on scheduling that again anytime soon.

Reflection

My first month of Crossfit has been amazing with lots of fun training experiences.  I have been overwhelmed with knowledge and have learned a lot.  I have had a lot of good workouts and plenty of bad ones.  Tuesdays are usually a workout involving a lot of squatting.  This seems to be my weakness and I have finished many workouts on Tuesday near the back of the pack.  I have had many workouts where I finished first.  It feels good to be the first one done but it is so much different than any other sport.  You cheer people on after you’re done to help motivate them and show your support.  The day that I feel I gain the most are the ones where you’re struggling to get through a workout and want to quit but have found some motivation inside you to push even harder to get through the workout.  

I have decided that since I want to compete I need a little extra time to work on technique and strength.  So I decided to start my own programming.  For me to get to where I want to be I’m going to need to spend more than an hour to get my skill, strength, and conditioning work in.  It’s bittersweet because I will miss doing the WODs with the class but I’m also excited for what my new training will entail.

Fran

I walked in to the box and walk straight over to the whiteboard as usual and see the one four letter word I don't ever want too see "Fran".  It’s been a little over a month since I did Fran for the first time and here it is again.  My first time was 11:30 and when I did it two days later it was 8:44.  Today I knew I would get a faster time and I was excited and nervous.  It’s kind of the feeling before a game, like the feeling I would get leading up to a basketball game.  I got my barbell set up and placed it near the rig so I would have a quick transition from the thrusters to the pull-ups.  I ripped through the first set of thrusters and pull-ups unbroken.  Then on to the set of 15, and wow does this bar feel heavy.  I get 11 and drop the barbell and take three breaths.  I pick the bar up and get the next 4.  I get to the pull-up bar and I’m really breathing hard.  I hop up and get 15 and now I’m back to the thrusters.  I get 6 and then 3.  I finish the pullups and look and my final time is 4:45.  The image above is "Pukie" the Crossfit mascot and this pretty much sums up me after the workout.  This was a 7 minute improvement from my first time.  I felt really good with my time.  I’m hoping to stay in the four minute range for the Crossfit for the Cure challenge this Saturday.  The 4^th fittest man in the world Scott Panchik is coming to speak at Crossfit Grand Strand Saturday morning before the challenge. Going to be an awesome experience!

2 Miles of Sprints

Fridays WOD was an absolute cardio killer.  It was 4 x 400m sprints with 2 minute rest between each sprint.  Then 4 x 200m sprints with 1 min rest in between, 4X100m sprints with 30 secs rest in between, then finally 4x50m sprints with 15 seconds rest in between runs.  This was physically and mentally challenging.  It was hard to know how hard to push yourself on each round.  I went all out on about every sprint only bested by the guy in the gray t-shirt and green boardshorts.  He was an absolute machine, he has an insane work capacity.   This is something that I don't work on often enough.  Sprinting is an extremely beneficial exercise.  It can be done on  different surfaces to soften the load on your joints like on grass or in the sand.  It can also be done on a bike or in a pool.  Props to everyone on this WOD it was brutal for us all.

Deadlifts & Burpees

Today’s workout was a grueling Metcon which consisted of 10 to 1 Deadlifts at 225lbs and Lateral Burpees.  For each burpee you jump over your barbell and do a burpee.  The first round is 10 deadlifts and 10 lateral burpees, then 9 & 9 etc. etc. until you do 1 deadlift and 1 burpee.  It’s a total of 55 deadlifts at 225 lbs and 55 lateral burpees.  We started with a strength session of deadlifts.  I only worked up to 315 since I knew the Wod had a ton of deadlifting.  This was a flat-out grueling WOD, I contemplating quitting a few times.  The 12 o’clock class was petty empty just three other guys.  We were all covered in sweat and gasping for oxygen.  I got my second wind after the round of 5.  This was probably because the rounds were really short now and I really started to push myself.  I think I finished around 9 mins.  I had the fastest time which I was only proud of since the other guys weighed at least 220 and I was getting through the deadlifts faster than they were.  I thought I would pull away on the burpees since I weigh less, but these were just so taxing.  Everyone posted a good time and really pushed it hard.  Overall a really exhausting workout and I was wrecked afterwards.

First WOD

I walk into the gym for my first WOD at Crossfit Grand Strand and I’m a little unsure of what to expect.  The WOD today was instructed by Kelly and was an intense one to say the least.  “Hotshots 19” was the workout, which was a tribute to the brave firefighters who lost their live battling the massive wildfire in Arizona.  This workout consisted of 30 air squats, 19 Power Cleans, 7 Strict Pull-Ups and a 400m run.  Oh yeah and that’s only round one; 5 more rounds to go, or a 30 minute time cap whichever comes first.  The Power Cleans called for 135lbs but I scaled it to 95lbs.  I should have gone heavier since they weren’t much of a struggle.  The air squats were tiring after the run legs were filled with lactic acid.  The strict pull-ups got tough in the later rounds after all the power cleans.  I finished five rounds plus 10 air squats.  Not bad for my first WOD at the box!  Nobody finished all six rounds inside the 30 minute time cap but a couple came close.  This workout was really tough and grueling but that comes with most tribute WODs.  You don’t really have an excuse to dog it, just toughen up and keep moving.  My motivation also came from our coach Kelly who was also doing the workout and still yelling motivation to all of those struggling.  I was pretty wiped overall it was a great WOD.

Labor Day Weekend

         My two boys from Maryland Scoob and Brian were coming to visit me in Myrtle Beach for Labor Day weekend.  We go down to the beach early on Saturday with a cooler full of beers and play cornhole and toss the pigskin around.  We hit the local beach bar and have a couple pitchers of margarita and listen to a dj playing reggae.  We went back home and were going to eat dinner, then shower and head out to show them a good time.  We get back eat and decide to lay down and digest(bad idea).  We all passed out for about three hours.  I guess we were a little over-ambitious and decided to call it a night.

We wake up the next morning early and decide to hit a little gym sess at the gym in my neighborhood.  My buddy Brian is nursing a shoulder injury so he decides to do a little rehab and watch a WOD that I made up for me and Scoob.  I came up with 21-15-9 with the round of 21 being Deadlifts with Pull-ups, the round of 15 being Power Cleans and pull-ups, and the final round of 9 being Push Presses and Pull-ups.  I decide the weight for me to use is 135 and tell Scoob to use 95lbs.  We start simultaneously and off we went I ripped through the Deadlifts unbroken and very fast, same with the pull-ups.  Then I grab the bar and realize there is no way I’m doing 15 Power Cleans with this weight so I  grab Sccobs bar and get through my set of Cleans while he is on the Pull-up bar.  Then I hit my pull-ups and finish my set of push-press at 95lbs unbroken and finished my pull-ups and my time was around 6 minutes.  I felt pretty good about my performance.  Scoob has never experienced Crossfit and was really feeling it.  He is bent over trying to catch his breath and I start encouraging him to finish.  He gets his second wind and finishes strong around 12 minutes.  He is wrecked and can’t believe the workout was that hard and honestly neither could I. We finished with a partner WOD of Rowing and Sit-Ups.  Scoob and I leave feeling good about the workout. 

We decide it’s time to eat and grab some beers and head down to the beach.  We paced ourselves a little better today and got back ate dinner and showered and were ready to go out.  We get out there and the bars seem pretty empty.  I was thinking this might be a dead night but not realizing that not everybody had been drinking for 8 hours like us.  It wasn’t even 9pm we meet a few people at one bar and decided to head over to a bar with a large dance floor and nobody’s in there except us.  We sat around talking and decide to start dancing anyways.  My buddy Scoob gets the dance party started as usual.  An hour later there is probably a few hundred people in this place.  It was a pretty fun night!
I had a good time and I feel relieved to know that so did they.  It’s Monday and we wake up feeling extremely rough and grab some Chicken Egg & Cheese Biscuits from Bojangles(Southern hangover cure).  This helps us a little bit with the hangover and we all took a nap.  We arose and Scoob and Brian now had to make a long trek back to Maryland.  Great Weekend!

Fundamentals Course 2

I am back at the gym for my second and final fundamentals course.  I walk in and the coach teaching the course is just about to hit a workout with a group of people.  He sees me and asks if I’m ok waiting until he finishes the workout.  I oblige since I’m curious and eager to learn so I wanted to watch.  Again these guys are at it and I’m amazed watching this coach who is probably 5’7” maybe 165lbs lift 225lbs up for cleans like it was nothing.  He finishes comes over and I met Danny and again I’m headed over to the corner with these PVC Pipes.  We mainly focused on the Olympic Lifts which I had pretty much no experience with.  These felt very awkward even with no weight.  Snatches forget it!  The receiving portion shown in the image to the left(no this is not me!).  To see the full movement if you have no idea look it up on Youtube search "Olympic lift snatch". Overall, I gained as little comfort as I could on these highly technical movements.  Again I left and I couldn’t wait to hit the class on Tuesday since Monday was Labor Day.  

Fundamentals Course

I signed up for the fundamentals course.  In my head I’m thinking what do I need this for I know what I’m doing.  I walk in a little intimidated and get to the front desk and say I’m here for the fundamentals course.  I’m relatively fit, athletic, and strong but Crossfit was something that I had no experience with.  I get sent into the gym and there is blaring heavy-metal music and about ten fit looking guys and girls ripping heavy barbells off the floor and then doing some crazy jump-rope where it passes through twice on each jump and then hitting effortless pull-ups.  Now I’m really thinking what am I doing here?  So I am waiting for the coach to come over and meet me.  So over walks this sweaty, ripped woman she looks in shape to say the least.  I met Kelly one of the crossfit coaches who was teaching tonight's fundamentals class.  She takes me and a middle-aged mother and her 13 yr old son over to the corner with these long thin PVC pipes and I’m thinking (What the hell are these for?)  We go through some of the staple motions like the back squat, deadlift, front squat, and thrusters.  We start to use just the empty barbell and never put more than a ten on each side.  I leave anxious to get back for the final fundamentals course on Thursday. 

My Journey Into Crossfit

Hi, my name is Nicholas Hodgson and I'm 22 years old.  The reason I am starting this blog is to track my journey through Crossfit.  I am currently about 6 months into Crossfit.  I will spend a few posts on how I got here and my first few months of experience.  The dates on the posts will reflect the date of events not the date I published them on this blog, since I just started this blog in February.  From then on I will be updating my progress and experiences on a daily to weekly basis.  I spent most of my high school years and a few years after doing the Globo Gym routine chest and tris, back and bis, and threw in a half-hearted leg day in there.  I saw tremendous gains through my first year and a half going from a scrawny 120lbs my freshman year to about 185 going into my junior year.  Now I didn’t put on 65lbs of pure muscle but a good proportion was.  I also grew a few inches which made up some of this weight gain.  After reaching my peak junior into senior year with a 330lb bench press I started to hit a serious plateau.  A shoulder injury also stunted my gains.  Three years later of training the same way, I actually lost a good amount of strength and muscle.  It seemed like I was just going through the same motions over and over.  I followed bodybuilding and strength routines over and over trying to break through my stunted growth.

I worked as a personal trainer for about a year when I was 19 and began to lose my passion for fitness.  I would see the same redundant routines passed onto our clients without any real progress.  Many clients didn't want to train which makes it hard to want to train them.  I eventually left there unsure of what I wanted to do because I thought some form of physical training would be my calling.  Two years later I’m bored with my routines and I started looking into Crossfit.  I saw the Crossfit Games on ESPN a couple times and thought it was awesome.  I was like who are these crazy fit athletes walking on their hands, doing 30 pull-ups in a row, squatting on one leg?  This is absolutely insane, so one day I’m scouring through the internet trying to find out more about this crazy fitness routine.  I become even more intrigued by hearing stories of the everyday crossfitter who have become more mobile, fit, and able to do things they never thought were possible.  I saw the camaraderie of people inside these gyms that were filled with just about every age group, gender, shapes, and sizes and was inspired.

Looking on the internet I saw a couple workouts and decide I’m going to give one a shot.  I figured I’d pick Fran which is a combo of thrusters @95lbs(whatever those are!) and pull-ups 21-15-9 repetitions of each.  How hard could it possibly be?  So I went to my regular gym and got all set up with a barbell with no bumper plates and a curved handle pull-up bar.  Not exactly the ideal set-up.  I got my Blackberry phone stopwatch ready 3.2.1. GO and off I went.  First thruster ouch that’s tough 20 more to go Yikes!  It took two sets to get the thrusters done and now I’m on to the pull-ups.  I figured I’d do the pull-ups strict since I had no idea how to perform a kipping pull-up.  Very tough, got these done in about three sets.  Now onto the round of 15 I’m out of breath and can barely stand.  Grab the barbell and get 4 thrusters.  Now I’m strongly considering throwing in the towel.  I toughen up grab the barbell and get 6 more repetitions.  I am struggling and eventually I am doing pull-ups in sets of twos for my round of 9.  Finished hit the timer and see a time of 11:15.  I collapse to the floor head’s spinning and I'm on the verge of puking on the floor.  After about 10 mins of being completely useless I go home with my head held high thinking I got this.  So I go on the web and look up people’s times for this workout.  I see that I was basically in the lowest category.  2:30 is the elite category 3:30 excellent  5 mins good 6:30 average and 8:30+ untrained.  Wow this was a gut check.  All these thoughts began to race through my head like am I really this out of shape? Has any of my previous training paid off?  What kind of people do this in under 2:30?

I decided to watch the technique of this workout and give it another go two days later.  I develop a kipping motion on the bar more like a fish flopping out of water but it works. Sort of, I get the thrusters down a little better, thinking technique was 90% of why I did so bad last time.  I go and do Fran again I seemed a little more efficient on these movements.  I stop the watch thinking I’m probably around 6 minutes.  Way off! 8:44 was my time and I’m still in the untrained category.  Afterwards I felt just as bad as I did when I did it two days ago(lying on the ground gasping for air on the verge of puking).  I was frustrated but now I’m very intrigued by Crossfit, I'm hooked!

So, I look up local Crossfit gyms and find Crossfit Grand Strand which is not too far and has a pretty low rate compared to other local boxes. The membership is included with a regular fitness center called Fitness Edge just down the road.  I finally built up the courage to go to the fitness center and sign up for a membership.  After signing the year contract I thought to myself, what have I done?  I don’t even know what the Crossfit gym looks like, other than a few photos online.