Wednesday's Workout: CrossFit Austin

Sorry I've been M.I.A. -- we're down in Austin for the inaugural PaleoFX conference (a.k.a., the Gathering of the Paleos), and our schedules have been jam-packed. 

M and I are staying in a house filled with Paleo people, including Bill and Hayley (Primal Palate), Diane (Balanced Bites), Stacy (Paleo Parents), Liz and Spence (CaveGirlEats), Diana (Radiance Nutrition), Bobby (UltraGrassFed), and Laura (Ancestralize Me). And of course, you can't have large gatherings of Paleo folk without a visit to a CrossFit box.

Clad in Nom Nom Paleo socks, about most of our house's residents -- plus George of Civilized Caveman Cooking Creations -- visited CrossFit Austin today. The box is just five minutes from our house, so even though we got a late start to the day, we managed to hustle over there for the noon class.

I've been under the weather for a couple of days, so I wasn't feeling super-awesome as we pulled up to the gym. But I was hoping a good workout would knock the cold right out of me.

After a directed warm-up (very similar to what we do at CrossFit Palo Alto, down to the lunges and punter-kicks), we got down to business.

Skills Practice:

• Kipping Chest-to-Bar Pull-ups (3 sets of 10, with 45 seconds of rest in-between)
• Ring Push-ups (3 sets of 10, with 45 seconds of rest in-between)
• Lateral Step-ups (3 sets of 5 per leg, with 45 seconds of rest in-between)

These were fun. I enjoy the rhythmic motion of kipping pull-ups, and chest-to-bar pull-ups were a nice change of pace. The lateral step-ups and push-ups were a pleasant way to knock some rust off, too.

But then came the metcon workout.

Metcon:

2-3 Person Team Workout - 20 Minute AMRAP of:

• 500-meter row
• 200-meter farmer's walk (55lb / 35lb in each hand)
• Sumo Complex: 10 sumo deadlifts and 10 sumo back squats (135lb / 95lb)

In this workout, each person starts at a different station, and you can move onto the next station only after your teammate has finished that movement. I was on a team with George and Spence -- two incredibly strong guys -- so my only goal today was to avoid slowing them down...too much.

I started with the sumo complex, and had Spence on standby in case I couldn't hoist the 135-pound barbell over my head and onto my back. But I managed to get through all the squats, deadlifts, and the rowing without too much trouble.

The farmer's carry, on the other hand, was rough. We carried 55 pounds in each hand, and it felt like our wrists were going to explode. Here's Diane, expressing how all of us felt:

I managed to get two-thirds of the way through my third round. Spence and George got through three rounds each, so we ended with a score of 8 -- almost 9! -- full rounds as RXed.

We were pretty wiped by the end of the hour, but still had enough energy to pose for photos.

And one of us (*cough*Diane*cough*) had enough left in the tank to climb a rope using just her arms.

[Note: The crappy photos above are mine; the good ones are by Bobby Gill]

Wednesday's Workout: Sumo Fran

There's no better way to start a morning than with a workout named after a 1930s strongman, the national sport of Japan, and a nasally-voiced nanny from Queens.

Strength Skill:

• Zercher Squats (3 sets of 3, 2 sets of 1)

By the end, I thought I'd PR'ed, given the effort it took for me to complete the final rep. But then I checked my notebook and saw that I managed to squat 30 more pounds back in December. I guess that's the target for next Wednesday.

Metcon:

Time for some Sumo Fran -- essentially Fran, but with sumo deadlift high-pulls in place of the thrusters.

For time:

• 21 SDHPs (95lbs)
• 21 pull-ups
• 15 SDHPs (95lbs)
• 15 pull-ups
• 9 SDHPs (95lbs)
• 9 pull-ups

In a word: Awesome. I can't feel my forearms any more, but it was totally worth it.

Result: 5:35 as RXed. My Sumo Fran time's about a minute faster than my regular old Fran time -- probably 'cause I suck at thrusters. But I also prefer Sumo Fran because: (1) I can dump the bar between reps without losing a ton of time, and (2) it gives me an excuse to poorly Photoshop Fran Drescher's head onto a female sumo wrestler's body.

The Sumo Marathoner

It's been a goal of his since elementary school.

Four-hundred-pound three-time national sumo wrestling champion Kelly Gneiting is in the books as the heaviest man to complete a marathon. Yesterday, he crossed the finish line at the Los Angeles Marathon in just under 10 hours, beating his previous PR of 11:52:11.

"I'd like to see the Kenyan improve his marathon time by two hours," he joked.

Gneiting jogged the first eight miles and walked the final 18, saying afterward that he lost track of where he was after mile 10 because he felt delirious. Gneiting said he realized that he was at mile 15 only because his friend met him there with clean socks.

He finished the 26.2-mile race despite heavy rains and strong winds. For much of the race, he was also forced to obey traffic signals and walk on the sidewalk because he was walking far more slowly than the 13-minute-per-mile-pace used for calculating street reopenings.

"I was really struggling in the last five miles," he said, "but I said to myself, 'If I have to crawl, I will.'"

I'm not at all convinced that long-distance running was the optimal form of exercise for Gneiting, and he may not be much of a runner, but he's still a hell of an athlete:

"I honestly think I'm one of the best athletes in the world," he says. Bold overstatement, maybe, but this man who weighs nearly a quarter ton can do the splits, then bend at the waist and shoulders until his forehead touches the ground. He can reel off four consecutive sets of 25 pushups.

And whatever you think of a 400-pound man's decision to run/walk 26.2 miles, you gotta give the guy credit for demonstrating a level of grit and determination that few of us have.

[Source]

Round 2 / Day 62: Insanity Max Recovery

Sumo wrestlers can hold plie squats. So why can't I?