Exercise in the Morning,

Before your Brain figures out what you are Doing!

I’ve said it many times and it remains true, “Winners Train at 0600”. If you have the motivation to pull back the warm covers, turn that painfully bright light on and get in to your training gear, before 0600, faced with the pissing British winter rain as you walk to the car, then you have already won. Those early risers, and the late finishers in the 1900/2000 sessions, have a level of dedication that is to be admired. Well done, team, I’m genuinely impressed.

So, my first 0600 Coaching Session in a while and I was a little daunted after seeing the WOD:

Strength

5 x 3 Sotts Press (Behind the Neck)
superset with: 8 x Turkish Get Ups (4 per arm)

If you really want to push the envelope (originally military jargon for “attempt the untried”, or, “operate outside of normal parameters”) then getting athletes to conduct behind the neck presses while in a full squat, only 45 mins after getting out of bed, is definitely it! This required considerable attention to the warm up and mobility by me as coach. It also required equal levels of concentration by the athletes to take it in, get themselves mobile and perform the movements (and without letting ego get in the way). This they did and perform they did well. Those with excellent T-Spine, hip and ankle mobility did particularly well in this while those lacking in these areas, plus shoulders, learned a valuable lesson for future work. We covered ways in which easy gains can be made at home through use of broomsticks / pvc pipes. The Turkish Get Ups are always a great mobility tool in and of themselves and certainly enhanced the Sotts Press work; focusing on an external shoulder rotation in the TGU added a little complexity but the athletes saw the immediate benefits when applying external rotation to the Sotts Press.

MetCon

“Running Annie”

For Time:

50-40-30-20-10

Double Unders
SitUps
200m Run x 1

Typically not performed with a Run, “Annie” is already a smash on the Central Nervous System. By that, I mean that you are asking your body to conduct high volume activity in one (relatively slow, low skill) modality before immediately asking it to switch to a high speed, high skill modality. Add to that a fast run and you’ve fatigued your core, then the legs and glycolytic pathway, before asking your brain to operate a high skill, controlled movement. It’s exactly what CrossFit is about: prepare for the unknowing and unknowable.

This morning’s team gave it everything; I was extremely impressed by them showing up at all at that time but to then fight through such a WOD was excellent. Some learned that they need to write down their scores more in order to gauge their scaling, especially regarding double unders, but overall it was a high achievement all round.

My Turn

So, taking the car back out to CF Watford for the 1930 session, it was my turn. How did I do on the Sotts Press and “Running Annie”?

Sotts Press: 20 / 20 / 25 / 30 / 30kg – I am happy with this. It did take a while to get confident in the position and while I know I could handle 35, I repeated the 30kg for good form.

“Running Annie” – 12:05 Rx. I was aiming for sub-12, I’ll admit. However, as Charlie (head Coach) pointed out, the route we took takes longer than the normal one due to having to turn around at the 100m mark instead of ploughing straight round. Still, I gave it my all and was pushed throughout. The initial set of Double Unders let me down by I found my rhythm for the next 4 sets. All Sit Ups obviously unbroken.