In Crossfit we find a broad spectrum of athletes. Rich Froning and Annie Thorisdotir won the 2012 Crossfit Games this past weekend, but they are among an extremely small group of elite among the elite among the extremely fit. Most of us who have adopted the Crossfit prescription are fit. Sure, we would like to be more so, but we are far ahead of the 67% of Americans who are obese and sedentary. I know that isn't really a comparison that boosts our Crossfitting ego, but we are already among the minority by simply caring about our health and fitness.
So sometimes when a WOD is posted at your gym of choice or on your blog of choice (whether it is this one, Crossfit.com or one of the myriad others) you will find that you simply don't have the capacity to do it as "Rx'd." Let's take for example today's Crossfit.com WOD. It is one of the "girls." Today's WOD is "Elizabeth." Elizabeth follows the 21-15-9 rep scheme for its three rounds. The movements are the clean at 135 pounds and ring dips. Now, at the gym I might give this a go as Rx'd. I would suffer through the cleans at the Rx'd weight and welcome the punishment of the rings as a rest. Not so when I am at home. Our home gym is not outfitted with rings. So I knew that I would have to scale the ring dips to static dips. When I realized that, I decided that I wanted to add something to replace the core stability training of ring work. When I recognized that this was no longer a "couplet" (two movements) but a "triplet" (three movements) I decided to reduce the weight for the cleans. I wasn't sure where I wanted to go though. I knew that 95# was not enough as I do cleans at 95 in my warmup sets often. I put 105 on the bar and gave it a pull. It seemed easy enough so went to move to 115. Then I decided to not try 115 first but rather 125 to see if I could push myself closer to the 135 Rx. So 125 it was.
My point for all of this is that there is no right or wrong way to scale your workouts and adjust your weights as long as you are doing your best to follow the program that one trainer or another is putting out there. The program is not random. We target different movements, weights, times and intensities to try to maximize the impact that they have on your overall health. Most of the time the WOD will simply need adjustment for the weight, but on occasion you won't have rings or plyometric boxes or some other piece of gear. If you would ever like me to scale or sub something for you, just ask. After you practice and learn you will figure out for yourself when you need to modify and also begin to recognize your weaknesses and hopefully move to address them. The key is not to "go rogue" and just start doing random movements with no trainer input. Stick to a program and you will achieve the desired results. We can bias the training for weight loss, endurance, strength and virtually whatever other goal you have. So come workout with us. We are pretty strong.
The WOD:
21-15-9
Cleans @125#
Dips
GHD situps
10:16 for this WOD
ReplyDelete4:29 after the round of 21
8:03 after the round of 15
10:16 final
Great burn. I did better with the 125 cleans than I feared. New 5 RM PR for cleans along the way as I have no record of a 3 RM or 5 RM max on this movement.
Tuesday the Rx'd WOD that I put up at the gym was:
ReplyDelete5 Rounds for Time
50 Meter Tire Pull
150 Meter Run
10 Shoulder Press
15 Wall Ball
20 Double Unders
I joined the 6 AM class, but started 7 minutes late as I was trying to fix the music. Therefore I only did 4 rounds before stopping so I could record times. My 4 RFT effort took 14:17.
This WOD
ReplyDeleteCleans 30# (it is all I have at home, I could feel it and I concentrated in form - arched back, low hips @ start of movement and elbows forward at top)
Dips (on the edge of my coffee table, even at the gym I couldn't complete a single rep of an rx dip)
GHD su (su on a ball)
10.15
I'm sweating.
Before the WOD I worked on double unders. I could do them 2 months ago and now I can't get a single one. Grrrrrrr... And I added 25 air squats to my warm up. Mostly because I COULDN'T do them two months ago and now I can. :)
After the WOD, plank work.
Do you have a worksheet you keep track of your PRs with?
ReplyDelete1. I found a worksheet.
ReplyDelete2. I want to be almost as good as those cf gamers. And I'm hoping to find some footage from the games on Hulu.
There is a book called a "WOD Book" that lists all the major lifts with a column for load and date and also lists the "girls" and "hero WODs" with columns for PR times and dates. I don't have one, but there are several at the gym I have perused. I keep a plain old notebook where I have written the lifts and WODs in there and just update as necessary. I think I started to keep it around December of 2010 or January of 2011 and realized that I had made some dramatic improvements in strength and fitness. Up until then I was just happy to be strong and in shape, but it was around that time that I wanted to start to see my progress. There are still quite a few WODs I have done that I don't know off-hand my PR but I could find the times either on the Iron Major page, this page or in one of the two notebooks I catalogued every workout that is not on one of the two sites. There are a few that are missing, but not many. Trying to coordinate them all into a user friendly format is the key. Someday when I die there will be archaeologists trying to decipher the hieroglyphic coding of my notebooks. HSPU, DL, WB, C&J, OHS, 5RFT, 5-5-3-3-3-1-1-1, 5x5, 5x3 and many other odd notations exist. I don't know why I worry, by then the whole world will do Crossfit and it won't have a special name anymore. It will just be what everyone means when they say they are going to workout or go the gym.
DeleteOkay. It looks like this is going to say I am Lisa. This is Gary though.