Haha I’m not really a morning person but my discipline is pretty decent to just get up when my alarm goes off thankfully. Though I have been known to fall asleep instantly lol
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I can force myself out of bed on occasion to train but I can also find other times to train besides 5 am.
I can force myself out of bed, easy. Get to the gym, easy. Can’t force myself to lift anything heavy once I’m there at 5am though
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I’ve read that your spinal fluid gets absorbed into the discs when you sleep. It makes your spine more stiff and susceptible to injury first thing in the morning.
I’ve experienced this first hand. My spine aches during my warm up lap at the gym during early workouts. That means if I want to lift heavy then I need to get up even earlier to ensure I have time for a thorough warm up (which allows time for the fluid to leave the discs).
It’s just not in the cards for me. I’ll get to the gym on occasion for a 5 am session but it’s bodybuilding or conditioning stuff.
It sounds believable. It certainly feels like that could be what happens. I have no idea what would happen with cardio that early but I guess cardio sucks no matter when you do it, so the time makes no odds.
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12 mins yoga… Man… I need this in my life more
- Build to a triple OHP with 55kg
- Giant set of chins, OHP, 1 minute plank and deadball slams
- Macho man for 6 minutes
Slowly building that sucker
I liked yoga as my warm up this morning. Was a nice way to start the day. I’ll see if I can keep this up
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Yoga is good. I’m doing a sun salutation almost every day.
I’m sure it looks horrible but I like it.
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I consider your conditioning to be pretty damn good. What do you think is the best approach for someone like me?
I notice that you’ve been doing short WODs at the end of your sessions (5-10 minutes). That’s more appealing to me. I’ve made the WOD my entire workout either by planning or by exercise induced nausea.
Last night I had about 10 minutes to kill so I did some foam rolling and drop sets on two exercises. I felt great and really enjoyed the pump and not feeling like death.
Am I killing myself for no reason? Could I still make decent progress with a shorter session?
This is from a study I found in the TSAC-F Journal. It seems that less can be more (this is from a general fitness perspective).
Preventing overtraining
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Running 5 days per week vs 3 days per week increased injury risk by 225% with no difference in VO2 max
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Running 45 minutes vs 30 minutes 3 days a week increased injury risk by 125% with no improvement in VO2 max.
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I definitely think you can make progress with some shorter sessions! I find when I do these short duration conditioning exercises at the end of a workout, I’m already fully warmed up and it also makes me auto regulate depending on how fatigued I am, so I’m less likely to hurt myself (I think). Like say I had a big squat PR, I’m probably not going to run macho man, and I’ll more likely do something with lighter KB swings, pushups and lunges to shuttle some blood into my legs and back to help recovery, if that makes sense?
This way I build up around 40 minutes conditioning through the week at a higher intensity that I could maintain for 40 minutes straight. A bit like the daily dose Deadlift stuff, a little bit each day, rather than balls out
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Also, you’re like minded as me and see these guys like Frazier, bailey, fikowski, bridges kicking ass and being jacked while doing these insane workouts, and we get so amped up we want to do what they do. But we need to remember that their goal is to compete at the highest level of the SPORT of crossfit, while you and I want to look and feel good, so we need to tailor things more to ourselves and not let our egos stop us.
For instance instead of doing FRAN 21-15-9
Which is thrusters and chin ups and a bloodbath when done all out, why not do push press and bend over rows instead? And build weight while keeping the same time limit vs the crossfit one. This is Sorta how I’m trying to approach my conditioning now. I’m not using the Rx weights for most things, just what I need
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I’m glad I’m not the only one who may not be able to do things with prescribed weights. Your approach makes sense. I keep thinking to myself as in dying that there are average people doing these WODs at their CrossFit gym. I’d like to think I’m at least slightly above average after 15+ years of steady exercise.
The killer for me right now is my injuries and limiting pain. Thrusters, wall balls, and front squats are out. Pressing movements are questionable. I want to do them but I don’t want to drag out my shoulder injury. I think I’ll be alright as long as I stick with pain free movements.
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Police agility test today
Needed to complete under 2:30
I managed it in 1:39, pretty happy with it, maybe
Could have gone a little faster but we’ll see.
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Is it possible to link the source?
My understanding is that the vast majority of people doing Crossfit are not doing WOD as “RXed”, or whatever the term is. There are ways their instructor makes the WOD applicable to them; such as using bands for chin-ups or using lower weight, vice versa. Plus it is apparently very easy to push out dozens of pull-ups if you kip properly, whereas I am convinced that I can count with my fingers the people on this forum who can do the volume of pull-up prescribed in most WODs.
That being said, there are plenty of Crossfit folks who aren’t Frazier or Froning who can do the WODs pretty “easily”. WODs are, at the end of the day, just giant sets. If do giant sets with the correct weight and intensity and build up, you’ll eventually become someone like Alpha.
… It’ll just take over a decade of training.
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No. It’s a member’s only subscription on the NSCA website and I currently don’t have access. I read it on the TSAC-F journal #19. The title of the article was Military Fitness and Injury Risk.
Wait, I had the journal saved and was able to look up the reference. I think both of those are from this study.
Pollock, M, Gettman, L, Milesis, C, et al. Effects of frequency and
duration of training on attrition and incidence of injury. Med Sci
Sports 9(1): 31–36, 1977
I can’t seem to find access to the full study/article which is too bad. The abstract states that the 45 minute / 3 days per week group and 30 minute / 5 days per week groups improved their cardio respiratory fitness the most. I’m curious where the VO2 max stuff came from in the article I read.
The abstract did say that those two groups were not recommended for beginners due to the increased injury risk.
Well, that’s encouraging. I might achieve my goals in my mid 40s…
I also have to acknowledge that the pros train all day. I watched Froning on Netflix and he just hangs out in his garage creating workouts all day.
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Training going well. Ran a 5km yesterday while it was 37 outside and ran pretty decently for the first 20 minutes
Got a Garmin 735xt for Christmas and it’s fucking awesome. I love stats so being able to track things like my daily calorie expenditure, sleep quality, vo2 max etc was really cool. Also makes me more motivated for a triathlon/half Ironman as it’s built for that very purpose. Cool stuff.
Also got an email from the Sergeant at the academy this morning asking me to confirm some details of my application and also that as per the application I still accept and understand that we will do shift work and may have to do country work. Can’t imagine getting that email if it wasn’t looking at least promising. Time Will tell
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Deff a good sign to get the email. Fingers crossed for you.
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Watch is going to be super helpful for T-ransformation, no more guessing how much I need to eat to stay in a deficit, being able to check my sleep quality in the mornings helps know when to push hard or go easy etc. Hopefully I’ll see resting HR etc going down too and other health markers. Y’all are fucked now 
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