Clean and Pull

30 Pull-ups
30 Clean and Jerks, 155/110
30 Pull-ups

Rest Day

Umed

or

3 Rounds of:
21 KB Swings, 70/55lbs.
12 Box Jumps, 30/24″
200m. Farmers Carry, 140/110lbs.

*Sigh*

From the Huffington Post in an article entitled “Is Crossfit Only for Maniacs?” by Penny Love Hoff: fitness/lifestyle coach. She has had two hip replacements.  That will become important information after you read this article. Take your time and post your responses in comments.

“Just to keep me on my toes, I’m going to resist the urge to use the term “audacious radical fitness zealots” when referring to CrossFit, a strength and conditioning program for what I would call the “over-the-top” athlete.

On the CrossFit website, they summarize their program in 100 words:

“Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat. Practice and train major lifts: Deadlift, clean squat, presses, C&J, and snatch. Similarly, master the basics of gymnastics: pull-ups, dips, rope climb, push-ups, sit-ups, presses to handstand, pirouettes, flips, splits, and holds. Bike, run, swim, row, etc, hard and fast. Five or six days per week. Mix these elements in as many combinations and patterns as creativity will allow. Routine is the enemy. Keep workouts short and intense. Regularly learn and play new sports.”

Okay, I agree with a lot of that. But after looking at some YouTube videos of some of the main CrossFit workouts, I’ll bet that in ten years, they will have bad knees, torn rotator cuffs and more artificial joints than me. And the sad thing is that they won’t be able to keep doing what they love to do, which is continue to move with ease and speed. CrossFit is a fitness craze.
Virginia Heffernan wrote about it in The New York Times Magazine. She called it a “grueling online exercise regime that requires near-devotional commitment” and in my (sort of) humble fitness opinion, she is politely understating it.

Of course, nothing’s wrong with have a Goliath-style work(out) ethic and a lofty Olympic-like fitness threshold, but this workout is a joint-buster. It puts the “man” back in “maniac.” Although I did find myself lusting after their handstand pushups and their rope climbs, their hurling, snatching and dead-lifting with near impossible speed. After all, I’m still working on mastering one pull up, but I also imagined their knees exploding on the next ever-deeper squat or their shoulder dislocating as they balanced in a dangerously unnatural angle on the gymnastic rings.

My reaction could just be the mom in me. Or the CPR certified aerobics instructor. Or the non-idiot part of me. Then I had a horrifying thought. What if some of my readers who read my articles about working out look upon my fitness suggestions with an equal sense of disbelief or a similar feeling that I had while reading about CrossFit — that the exercises prescribed are equally impossible?

So the point I want to make is that nothing you have to do to be healthy is super-human –although on some rainy Mondays mornings, it may feel like it. All I believe you need to do in order to live just about as long as the CrossFit cult members is 25-30 minutes of cardio exercise (meaning that you are sweating and you could talk but not sing) four times per week, fifty crunches and twenty push-ups, modified to your knees if needed. Do these most every day. And you will live just as long. Unless there’s a natural disaster and it’s survival of the fittest, then the CrossFit peeps will survive beyond most of the rest of us. But that’s okay with me. I’m not into sleeping on the ground and I’m not much of a survivalist anyway.

Rest Day

Chris Mruk

Run 5k

The Gym is closed today…go run instead, directions below. Remember to bring 3 dollars.

285 West to Roswell rd/Sandy Springs exit

North on Roswell rd.

Left on Johnsonferry

Left on Columns dr.

Follow to the dead end and park in the dirt parking lot.

Muscle-up Work

For Time:
800m. Run
30 Muscle-ups
800m. Run

Run 5k is Thursday!

MU/DL/Sprint

For time:

Greg up on top of Mt. Ranier

5 muscle ups
245 pound Deadlift, 10 reps
15 GHD Sit-ups
Sprint 50 yards
5 muscle ups
245 pound Deadlift, 10 reps
15 GHD Sit-ups
Sprint 100 yards
5 Muscle ups
245 pound Deadlift, 10 reps
15 GHD Sit-ups
Sprint 150 yards
5 muscle ups
245 pound Deadlift, 10 reps
15 GHD Sit-ups
Sprint 200 yards

Hang Squat Cleans

Hang Squat Cleans 5×2

Vilas

5 Min AMRAP of:
3 Thrusters, 115/85lbs.
12 Toes Thru Rings

Dirty Front Squats

Front Squat 5×3

“The Dirty Dozen”
For Time:
25 Walking lunge steps
20 Pull-ups
50 Box jumps, 20 inch box
20 Double-unders
25 Ring dips
20 Knees to elbows
30 Kettlebell swings, 2 pood
30 Sit-ups
20 Hang squat cleans, 35 pound dumbells
25 Back extensions
30 Wall ball shots, 20 pound ball
3 Rope climb ascents