Feels Like Ages...

since my last post!  I guess I have just been majorly distracted with this whole moving East thing.  Lindsey said to me yesterday that she thinks it's actually hitting me for the first time for real.  I said that the idea that it will probably hit me soon has just hit me and that is all the intensity I can handle!  Oh well, the fact of the matter is, it's happening soon and I better be get my butt prepared!  As I prepare, I want to be sure to keep writing as it really is a form of therapy to me almost.  And I figured, to welcome me back to posts, I'd do a bit of a "catch-up" post for the week I missed; so, here goes!

The day after my awesome day of hiking last week I headed out to Lalanne Fitness for the Open Sectionals Workout #2.  In 15 minutes we all had to do as many rounds as we could of 9 deadlifts with 155#, 12 push ups (raising our hands off the ground at the bottom of each), and 12 box jumps at 24".  Being surrounded with such a large group of awesome athletes got me so motivated.  And despite the fact I was working off no food for 4 hours (baseball game before) and only a soy latte in my stomach (bad idea), I was able to walk out with a top score of 12 rounds, 9 deadlifts and 8 push ups.  I left pretty happy with that score, but VERY confident I could do better with better fueling and a slightly better approach (I broke up my push ups in a very time-consuming manner). 

The rest of the week was pretty straight forward, I trained people. took it easy physically as to rest up for Saturday, and that was about it!  When Saturday rolled around, Lindsey and I drove down to San Jose to meet up with CrossFit Games competitor Neal Maddox at his gym to try the workout again.  I felt good, fueled, energized, excited!  Watching his athletes tear through the workout got me even more pumped as they all put forth some impressive scores.  Neal and I set up our stations side by side, cranked up the music and got after it.  Well, I felt pretty strong (perhaps a little slow) through around 7 rounds, breaking up the push ups early and often I was actually ahead of my last attempt.  But it all came crashing down on me fast.  I went ALL OUT for this, like literally.  The idea of talking, moving, doing anything afterward was scary, I just gave every ounce of energy I had at that time.  I got the exact same score! 12 rounds plus 9 deadlifts and 8 push ups.  Lindsey told me that I was actually shaking my head towards the end of the workout, I had nothing else to give it.  This sort of thing is so interesting to me, how could I have been so much better prepared, but end up having a ton less energy than the last time?  After a few days of thinking about it, I am pretty sure it was the following (this is simplified like crazy by the way, details on all this can be saved for a more in-depth post later): over-trained muscles through volume (the amount of repetition I was asking specific muscles to withstand over the past couple weeks was insane), lack of carbohydrates in my system (while I fueled very well in terms of amount, I neglected any sort of increase in carbs in the days before the workout.  The cardiovascular demand of this workout called for a greater amount of energy to burn, and I did not have any reserves).  All that being said, there was nothing I could do but accept that score and post it up (as of now I am sitting 18th in my region, not bad at all seeing how the top 60 advance).

We ended up taking the rest of Saturday totally off.  We originally had plans to maybe camp out, but Lindsey had tons of work, and the Final Four games were on as well!  So, we waited until Sunday for our little adventure.  After a wonderfully huge breakfast, we drove out by Walnut Creek to some mountains in search for a waterfall.  A couple miles up a wide cattle trail, we found it hidden in the bushes.  A small, spritsy, 15 or so foot waterfall.  We treked around it for a while trying to figure a way to get both to the top of it and the bottom.  Eventually we were able to navigate it pretty well and have a small lunch underneath it.  All was great until I took a nasty spill as we began hiking out of the creek area.  Lindsey did an admirable job cleaning my shorts in the creek (we were planning on hitting up dinner in Walnut Creek afterwards and having a HUGE mud spot right on my butt was not the most, um, attractive thing in the world).  I spent the rest of the hike strolling around in just my 2XU compression shorts, real classy!

We enjoyed a feast-like dinner and drove on home.  And there you have it folks, my week!  Now, I want to touch a little about my progamming over the next month of so.  I feel like i am totally under-prepared for the CrossFit Games fun and not only that, I have put on a sneaky 10 pounds in the pas 3 months.  Visually it looks like I have lost like 5 pounds, but that's apparently not the case.  This makes all those tricky body-weight moves that much harder for me.  Being a touch over 220 pounds I guess makes my scores for those past two workouts damn impressive, but i am doing nothing but making it all harder for myself.  So, it's time to dial in my nutrition, and make my training that much more a priority.  I know plenty of people who take the Games season like it is their professional sport; I mean seriously, with a $250k prize pot, I can understand why.  My priorities right now lie in spending time with Lindsey when she's around, training clients, THEN training myself.  That's just not good enough.  I am sure I'll make regionals, but then, if i don't make some changes, I'll just get crushed!  So, time to turn it all around! 

Monday's - skills work, Olympic and strength training, short, running-based metcon
Tuesday's - Easy conditioning, rest
Wednesday's - Either: Open Workout or Heavy strength training and metcon (depends what the workout is)
Thursday's - Hard, weighted conditioning
Friday's - Rest
Saturday's - Either: Open Workout or Heavy strength Training and long metcon (depends what the workout is)
Sunday's - Rest

The goal is to focus in my training around preparing for the Regionals.  I will take the Sectionals workouts seriously but I have no need to do the damn thing twice.  I'll just base what day I do it off whatever it actually is (strength based or conditioning/skills based) and re-work my programming accordingly.  Then, once I complete the workout, I'll get back to training hard!  Oh, and I'll be posting up here on a daily basis again!

Never Stop, GET FIT.

Josh Courage