Wouldn't it be great if muscle weighed the same amount as fat? Yeah, it does, and I'm an idiot for forgetting that until my coach kindly reminded me that a pound is a pound is a pound. What I meant was wouldn't it be great to be able to see our fat loss on the scale even while we build muscle? Because even though we are capable of understanding that we can be fitter and leaner without losing actual pounds, we've unfortunately all been programmed throughout our lives to care what the scale says.
I decided to switch to monthly instead of weekly check ins for that very reason as I didn't want to be discouraged if the number didn't change on the scale, despite feeling stronger or looking leaner. So imagine my reaction when I stepped on the scale yesterday and I still weigh the SAME THING as I did 4 weeks ago!
Thankfully I have my tape measure and body fat calipers to reassure me of the changes I see in the mirror. I've lost another 1/2" off of my waist and 3/4" off of my hips (ie. unhealthy abdominal fat). And, if you believe that I'm measuring correctly (or consistently measuring incorrectly), I've gone down another 2% in body fat.
I will admit I felt a brief twinge of disappointment when I stepped on the scale, but while I want to lose weight and look better, what's most important to me is simply that I'm meeting the goals I've set forth of clean paleo eating and Crossfitting and swimming regularly. If I continue with that as I have been, the rest will fall into place.
Saturday, April 6, 2013
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Crossfit Catch Up
Wow, I am seriously behind on my blogging; time to play a little catch up. Let's get the crap out of the way. Today was the first day I felt shitty about my performance at Crossfit. I've had plenty of days where things have been really hard and I've thought I was going to vomit or die or both, but today I felt like my body just wouldn't do what I wanted to. I was fatigued, sore, tight, my back is bothering me - it all added up to a crap workout. :( Which sucks, because I was excited to do this workout when it was posted last night. Oh well, them's the breaks. Nothing to do but get back in there tomorrow and go back to kicking ass!
On a more positive note, on Friday I completed my Foundations class and I went out with a bang. You all know I was really looking forward to repeating Fight Gone Bad to see how I had improved since I did that WOD 6 weeks ago. However, the big accomplishment turned out to be not how many additional reps I did, but the fact that I Rx'ed my first workout! This means I used the prescribed weights and didn't need to scale anything. Here's what I did:
3 rounds of AMRepsAP in 1 min each of:
Wall balls (14#)
Sumo Deadlift High Pull (55#)
Box Jumps (20") (yep, I am back to doing box jumps and my box actually had an extra inch, you know, for the record :P)
Push Press (55#)
Row for Calories
1 min rest before moving on to next round
My total score was 210. Last time my score was 259, but I scaled so I was using a 10# wall ball, 35# for the high pulls and presses, and a 12" box - laughable! (Although to be fair, I scaled the box jumps because I was freshly injured and they were exacerbating it.) In any event, I was pleased I was able to Rx the workout even though I'm already thinking about how I could have changed my strategy to do better. Thankfully I'll have a chance again in a few weeks. I use the term thankfully loosely though as this workout was much harder than I remembered. Like super hard.
So that makes me an official Crossfit girl (again). As if to ensure my street cred, yesterday's WOD included a ton of ring dips, which left me with 3 large bruises on my arms. And today's included a large number of pull-ups so my hands are ripped up again. Between that and how sore I am, I am feeling beaten, battered, and bruised. Yep, I'm officially a Crossfit Girl.
On a more positive note, on Friday I completed my Foundations class and I went out with a bang. You all know I was really looking forward to repeating Fight Gone Bad to see how I had improved since I did that WOD 6 weeks ago. However, the big accomplishment turned out to be not how many additional reps I did, but the fact that I Rx'ed my first workout! This means I used the prescribed weights and didn't need to scale anything. Here's what I did:
3 rounds of AMRepsAP in 1 min each of:
Wall balls (14#)
Sumo Deadlift High Pull (55#)
Box Jumps (20") (yep, I am back to doing box jumps and my box actually had an extra inch, you know, for the record :P)
Push Press (55#)
Row for Calories
1 min rest before moving on to next round
My total score was 210. Last time my score was 259, but I scaled so I was using a 10# wall ball, 35# for the high pulls and presses, and a 12" box - laughable! (Although to be fair, I scaled the box jumps because I was freshly injured and they were exacerbating it.) In any event, I was pleased I was able to Rx the workout even though I'm already thinking about how I could have changed my strategy to do better. Thankfully I'll have a chance again in a few weeks. I use the term thankfully loosely though as this workout was much harder than I remembered. Like super hard.
So that makes me an official Crossfit girl (again). As if to ensure my street cred, yesterday's WOD included a ton of ring dips, which left me with 3 large bruises on my arms. And today's included a large number of pull-ups so my hands are ripped up again. Between that and how sore I am, I am feeling beaten, battered, and bruised. Yep, I'm officially a Crossfit Girl.
Wednesday, March 27, 2013
Meet Cindy
There's nothing like a sense of accomplishment to pull you out of your doldrums. I've been having something of a crappy week, but a little rundown with Cindy and I'm in a much better mood, mostly because of the sheer number of kipping pull-ups I was able to pull off without changing the band I was using. So meet Cindy:
AMRAP in 20m of:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Air squats
Looks pretty easy, right? Yeah, not so much. I honestly thought the pull-ups would be my downfall and I had 3 bands up on the bar in preparation for needing to switch from kipping with the lightest of the 3 to strict with the bands that carry more of your weight, but in the end, I completed all of my pull-ups kipping with the same band (woot!) and it was the push-ups that really killed me.
In the end, I did 12 rounds plus 1 pull-up. Because it looks so much more impressive when I list out the totals, that's:
61 pull-ups
120 push-ups
180 squats
I'm being redundant, but I'm really fricking excited about those pull-ups. Push-ups on the other hand, I'd prefer not to do any of those for a good while.
Yesterday's baseline WOD by the way was a 20 minute time trial running at the local track. I ran about 2 miles, nothing surprising there. So that just leaves Friday's WOD, Fight Gone Bad. Can't wait although I'm afraid soon instead I'll be saying "can't move", or at least can't move my arms!
AMRAP in 20m of:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Air squats
Looks pretty easy, right? Yeah, not so much. I honestly thought the pull-ups would be my downfall and I had 3 bands up on the bar in preparation for needing to switch from kipping with the lightest of the 3 to strict with the bands that carry more of your weight, but in the end, I completed all of my pull-ups kipping with the same band (woot!) and it was the push-ups that really killed me.
In the end, I did 12 rounds plus 1 pull-up. Because it looks so much more impressive when I list out the totals, that's:
61 pull-ups
120 push-ups
180 squats
I'm being redundant, but I'm really fricking excited about those pull-ups. Push-ups on the other hand, I'd prefer not to do any of those for a good while.
Yesterday's baseline WOD by the way was a 20 minute time trial running at the local track. I ran about 2 miles, nothing surprising there. So that just leaves Friday's WOD, Fight Gone Bad. Can't wait although I'm afraid soon instead I'll be saying "can't move", or at least can't move my arms!
Monday, March 25, 2013
Crossfit Total + 50 Burpees
So today was day 1 of our baseline WODs. Today we completed the Crossfit Total followed by 50 burpees for time. The Crossfit Total measures your "functional strength capacity" by summing the total of your best attempts at 3 lifts: the squat, the press, and the deadlift. It also gives me a really easy weigh to measure my progress when I repeat this workout 3 months from now. Here are my results:
Low Back Squat: 130
Push Press: 60
Deadlift: 205
--------------------------
Score: 395
Burpees took me 3:59.
I'm pretty sure I could have gone higher on the push press, but it took me a few reps to nail down my form and I got hung up on 60. On my third try, it suddenly came together and the 60 felt pretty easy, but at that point I was out of time. :(
Want to see where this puts me compared to other women? Check out this Crossfit Total Ranking Chart (I weigh closest to the 148 row in bodyweight).
In a crappy mood (nothing to do with Crossfit) so for once I've got nothing else to say. Enjoy my brevity for a change!
Low Back Squat: 130
Push Press: 60
Deadlift: 205
--------------------------
Score: 395
Burpees took me 3:59.
I'm pretty sure I could have gone higher on the push press, but it took me a few reps to nail down my form and I got hung up on 60. On my third try, it suddenly came together and the 60 felt pretty easy, but at that point I was out of time. :(
Want to see where this puts me compared to other women? Check out this Crossfit Total Ranking Chart (I weigh closest to the 148 row in bodyweight).
In a crappy mood (nothing to do with Crossfit) so for once I've got nothing else to say. Enjoy my brevity for a change!
Sunday, March 24, 2013
13.3
It's Crossfit Games season. For anyone who doesn't know, the Crossfit Games are an annual competition that lead to the announcement of the World's Fittest Man and Woman (think the Olympics of Crossfit). They've been around since 2007, but have become more popular in recent years with Reebok's sponsorship and the increasing popularity of Crossfit. You can watch them, and some of the excitement leading up to them on ESPN.
The cool part is that while only a select few go to Regionals or on to the Games themselves anyone who does Crossfit can participate in the Open, which is what's happening right now. Workouts are announced each week and Crossfitters around the globe have their coaches watch and score them, or if you can't have a coach score you, you can submit your workout via video to confirm your score. There are not only individuals on the leaderboards each week, but gyms are also ranked using the scores of all of their members. There's a lot of excitement around it and it's a lot of fun.
This week the workout (13.3) happened to be one I'd done before so I decided to take another shot at it:
AMRAP in 12 min of:
150 Wall balls (20# ball - men/14# ball - women)
90 Double unders
30 Muscle-ups
You have to do them in order. If you finish (most people don't), then you start over again with the wall balls.
I am still not doing double unders because of my previous injury and clearly I can't do muscle-ups so my goal was just to get through the wall balls as quickly as I could and hopefully squeeze in some single unders. When I did the workout last time, I was injured so I couldn't do a full squat (was only going to parallel) and I was still using the scaled 10# ball (I just switched to the Rx weight in my WOD this past Wednesday). Hello, can you say not prepared for how difficult this would be?! I huffed and puffed my way through 127 wall balls, doing them in sets of 5-6 at a time with at times much longer rests in between than I would have liked. I'd love to do this one again in a few months to see what I can do then.
Want to see how it's really done? Check out this video of Sam Briggs doing her 13.3:
She is seriously amazing. Lots of talk of her placing this year in the Games, if not winning them (she came in 4th 2 years ago and had to pull herself out last year due to a fractured patella). I can't wait to watch and see.
In the meantime, I'm heading into my final week of Foundations at my new gym. I'll have another opportunity to gauge how much I've improved when we do Fight Gone Bad on Friday, a workout I did about 3 weeks into Crossfit at my old gym. I'm pretty pumped to see how I've improved in the past 6 weeks!
The cool part is that while only a select few go to Regionals or on to the Games themselves anyone who does Crossfit can participate in the Open, which is what's happening right now. Workouts are announced each week and Crossfitters around the globe have their coaches watch and score them, or if you can't have a coach score you, you can submit your workout via video to confirm your score. There are not only individuals on the leaderboards each week, but gyms are also ranked using the scores of all of their members. There's a lot of excitement around it and it's a lot of fun.
This week the workout (13.3) happened to be one I'd done before so I decided to take another shot at it:
AMRAP in 12 min of:
150 Wall balls (20# ball - men/14# ball - women)
90 Double unders
30 Muscle-ups
You have to do them in order. If you finish (most people don't), then you start over again with the wall balls.
I am still not doing double unders because of my previous injury and clearly I can't do muscle-ups so my goal was just to get through the wall balls as quickly as I could and hopefully squeeze in some single unders. When I did the workout last time, I was injured so I couldn't do a full squat (was only going to parallel) and I was still using the scaled 10# ball (I just switched to the Rx weight in my WOD this past Wednesday). Hello, can you say not prepared for how difficult this would be?! I huffed and puffed my way through 127 wall balls, doing them in sets of 5-6 at a time with at times much longer rests in between than I would have liked. I'd love to do this one again in a few months to see what I can do then.
Want to see how it's really done? Check out this video of Sam Briggs doing her 13.3:
She is seriously amazing. Lots of talk of her placing this year in the Games, if not winning them (she came in 4th 2 years ago and had to pull herself out last year due to a fractured patella). I can't wait to watch and see.
In the meantime, I'm heading into my final week of Foundations at my new gym. I'll have another opportunity to gauge how much I've improved when we do Fight Gone Bad on Friday, a workout I did about 3 weeks into Crossfit at my old gym. I'm pretty pumped to see how I've improved in the past 6 weeks!
Friday, March 22, 2013
My CrossFit To Do List
I like amusing myself writing things on my dry-erase board. Lately the list of Crossfit skills I want to work on at home is growing so I thought I'd make myself a list I could reference easily when I was, you know, just sitting around wondering what I could do to cause myself some pain.
Wondering what all of this stuff is? The first three are all core strengthening skills. Hollow rocks and L-sits, both moves that gymnasts must master, are particularly scary (ie. hard). There's a good article about them here. KTE is knees to elbows, relatively self-explanatory - hang from a pull-up bar and bring your knees to your elbows. I think I've discussed the pull-up ad nauseum. :P The last is handstand push-ups:
Thursday, March 21, 2013
Cauliflower Crust Pizza
There's not all that much to post about when all I'm doing is Crossfit, work, more Crossfit, and eating leftovers. About the most exciting thing that's happened to me this week is that my new water bottles arrived:
Oh, and my resistance bands so I can work on my pull-ups. Yeah, exciting, right? So in the meantime, and lest you think I never screw up in the kitchen (admittedly it is rare :P), I thought I'd share a recipe fail from this weekend.
Someone got pizza in my head so I figured it was time to attempt a cauliflower pizza crust. I searched around a bit and settled on what I thought looked like a good option - mostly cauliflower, an egg, and a bit of almond flour. I mixed everything together and spread it out on the baking sheet. Anyone else nervous?
I baked it for the allotted time:
At this point I was feeling a little better about it, so I brushed some garlic and evoo on and then topped it with thinly sliced cremini mushrooms, asparagus and prosciutto. And because it was the weekend, I grated just a touch of parm on top as well, then I put it back in the oven:
Yeah, unfortunately, not so much. The flavor wasn't terrible in and of itself, but the texture was a disaster. The outside edges were slightly burnt, but still only just barely crispy and the further you went inside, the softer the crust got. There was no way you could pick those slices up with your hands and eat them, no satisfying crunch of a thin crust, no pleasurable chew from a regular crust, it just did not work. So I squeezed the toppings from the whole pizza onto a few of the edge pieces and that was my dinner.
Have no fear, I have plans to try again with a recipe from Civilized Caveman that someone actually recommended to me. Satisfying paleo pizza will happen!
Someone got pizza in my head so I figured it was time to attempt a cauliflower pizza crust. I searched around a bit and settled on what I thought looked like a good option - mostly cauliflower, an egg, and a bit of almond flour. I mixed everything together and spread it out on the baking sheet. Anyone else nervous?
I baked it for the allotted time:
At this point I was feeling a little better about it, so I brushed some garlic and evoo on and then topped it with thinly sliced cremini mushrooms, asparagus and prosciutto. And because it was the weekend, I grated just a touch of parm on top as well, then I put it back in the oven:
Looks pretty good, right?
Yeah, unfortunately, not so much. The flavor wasn't terrible in and of itself, but the texture was a disaster. The outside edges were slightly burnt, but still only just barely crispy and the further you went inside, the softer the crust got. There was no way you could pick those slices up with your hands and eat them, no satisfying crunch of a thin crust, no pleasurable chew from a regular crust, it just did not work. So I squeezed the toppings from the whole pizza onto a few of the edge pieces and that was my dinner.
Have no fear, I have plans to try again with a recipe from Civilized Caveman that someone actually recommended to me. Satisfying paleo pizza will happen!
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