muscle-up progress

Here is one of my first legit (meaning starting with arms fully extended) muscle-ups! It isn't clear from my previous video, but I had been starting them with bent arms to get me closer to the turnover, which is the part that gave me the most trouble. This week I attempted it with straight arms, thus allowing me to get a much bigger kipping swing. Success, and they are much easier to do this way. Now I just need to get rid of my chicken wing arms. . .

muscle up

One of my biggest accomplishments this summer was getting my first muscle up! I had been working for months to get this, so I was ecstatic when it finally happened in July:

Oliver's first crossfit class

It doesn't get much cuter than this! Oliver had a blast yesterday trying out the new kids' crossfit class at our gym. I'm hoping the scheduling will work out so that he can continue to go. He loved it and had a huge grin on his face the entire time.

14.5

And just like that, the open is over! Nick and I completed our last open workout, 14.5, on Friday night. The workout was for time: 21-18-15-12-9-6-3 reps (84 of each) of thrusters, 95 / 65 lbs and burpees. Let's just say burpees are not Nick's favorite exercise. I don't mind the cardio/body weight movements as much, and it looks like I did well enough in this workout, and the other previous ones, that I may qualify for a spot on the team if our team makes it to regionals. Here are some clips of the workout:
 

14.4

Here is last week's workout! This one was the longest so far at 14 minutes, which I enjoyed. It also had a variety of movements: rowing, toes to bar, wall balls, power cleans and muscle ups. I can't do muscle ups yet, so my goal was to get through the power cleans (180 reps), which I did. Nick is really good at muscle ups yet he didn't think he would make it in time. It turns out he had time for five, so he was thrilled with that. Here are some clips:

14.3

Last week's workout was an interesting one for sure. Due to the amount of deadlifts, which make for very sore backs, it wasn't a workout that could be repeated in the short time period.  There are a lot of things I would have done differently a second time around, so I was a little disappointed by this. One interesting thing about this workout is that they allowed box step ups, in place of box jumps. This is pretty unusual as typically you must always jump onto the box, but may step down. I had a friend time me before the workout and it turned out that I was actually faster at step ups, than jumps, so that is what I did. Step ups also allow you to be more accurate and to breath better than box jumps.

Nick was also out of town and completed the WOD a different day than I did, so I wasn't able to get any footage of him doing it. He finished with 100 reps and I finished with 114.

14.2

Here is a bit of footage from our second 2014 Open competition, 14.2. The rep scheme was a bit complicated on this one, where you start with three minutes of time to complete a certain number of reps, and can only continue for an additional three minutes if you meet the rep requirements, and this continues until you can no longer meet the requirements in any given three minute period. Nick and I both made it into our third three-minute round, finishing with 121 and 117 reps, respectively.

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14.1

Nick and I competed in our first Crossfit Open workout this weekend and we recorded a bit of our workouts. A new workout (WOD) is posted every week for five weeks, and you have from 5pm Thursday to 5pm Monday to complete it, and you must have a judge to score you. Then you can log your score on Crossfit.com and compare it to the 200,000 people worldwide who will also be doing the same workout. This weekend we completed the first workout, 14.1, which was a 10 minute AMR (as many rounds as possible) of 30 double unders and 15 snatches (55/75lbs). We both did the workout twice, once on Friday night and then again today to see if we could improve our scores. It was definitely worth it for us to do it a second time as both of our scores went up by more than 20 reps. Nick went from 225 to 248 and I went from 268 to 304.

scavenger hunt

Nick and I had a great time participating in a scavenger hunt put on by our crossfit gym last weekend. Ten teams of four competed in a 90 minute, approximately four mile hunt. Oliver gave us our team name Bucha, which is short for kombucha. We came in sixth and were able to complete the mandatory tasks even with the boys in tow. Here are some photos of the goofy task we had to complete.

Ready to go!

Team Bucha, just before the start

first task was getting the whole team in a paddle boat

then we played at the playground

and all fit under an umbrella

took prom pictures with strangers

took a picture in front of the "now playing" list at a theater

I climbed a tree

played thumb war with a stranger (okay, so she is actually my neighbor, I cheated a bit on this one but I didn't know she would be at Green Lake)

chicken fought in front of a lawn bowling park

took a photo in front of an official zoo sign (upper left)

three of us hung from rings

I had to kiss a stranger over 70

finished!