Hump Day

Today's WOD was a doozy.

5 Rounds for time

5 deadlifts @ 75kg
15 wall squats
5 pull-ups
20 double unders
10 pushups

time: 19:53

Again, before the WOD, I crawled around on the rock wall for about 15 min. I was dead after the workout, but felt great.

Return of the WOD

Today I bought a pair of proper rock-climbing shoes. After going hiking for the last two weeks, I have become interested in the sport. The school that I work at, Hengyee (恆毅), also has a rock wall that I can use.

I haven't posted a WOD because I was sick for about a week. But here I am back at it with the half-WOD's. Today, I made my own exercise because I was already in my schools "weight room." I use quotation marks because the room isn't much. It has three Olympic bars, a safety squat rack, a lat pull-down machine, a butterfly machine, two crunch benches and a back extension apparatus. Not much, but I only use the Olympic bars and the back extension.

WOD (I was originally going for 5 sets and 15 thrusters, but after the first round, I wimped out.)

3 rounds

5 thrusters @ ~50kg (I'm not sure how heavy the Olympic bar is)
15 sit-ups
15 push-ups
15 back extensions

time: 15:96

Prior to the WOD, I had used the rock wall previously mentioned, for about 20 min. Being my first time on a wall since my first time 8 years ago, my forearms quickly got pumped and could no longer grab.

Swimming

Today i went swimming. As far as I know, swimming isn't explicitly part of the Crossfit exercise program, but I figure its a great workout nonetheless. So I will include it here. I did 10 laps freestyle, 10 laps breaststroke, in a 50 m. pool. Forgot my watch so I wasn't able to time it. Next time I will post the time here.

Hard Day

(Modified) Grace

30 cleans

time: 10:37

Quite painful. I must say that all these WOD's will be painful until I can do the full exercise as it stands. But so far, all modifications. I think it will be a while until I can do real WOD's as described by Crossfit.

Farewell Fox

I'll get to the title in a bit. Today, my WOD (workout of the day) was a modified Angie. An Angie exercise consists of 100 pull ups, push ups, squats, and sit ups. I modified it, as I know I don't want to spend 2 hours doing this, to:

50 pull ups
100 push ups
100 squats
100 sit ups

Time: 26:21

This isn't a very good time, but the goal is to improve over time.

~~~~~

Back to the title. My friend Warren Fox, whom I've known since college, is off to Beijing to shoot a movie. From what he told me, the movie, Gasp, is a comedy where he will be teaching Ebonics to Chinese students.

Fox, who is also a martial arts master, will be in Beijing for a month working on this project. Later in December, he will return to Taipei for a week, then shoot off again to Beijing to compete in a international martial arts competition. He has been a practitioner of Bagua, or eight trigram palm, for about 6 years, and has attained the status of master, under his master, Wu Guo Zheng(吳國正). He has traveled all over Taiwan to take part in numerous competitions, even managing to place 1st in his most recent event. He is an inspiration to all who hope to achieve their goals. Check out some of his vids on YouTube. Here is a quick vid:



The MC in the background music is also the one and only, Fox.

Way to go brotha.

I Jumped on the Crossfit Wagon, and Hurt my Pride.

Crossfit is definitely not new and not exactly new to me either. I had heard of it from friends who opened gyms in the state of Washington. One friend owns Urban Crossfit in Seattle, and another founded Crossfit Tacoma, in Tacoma, Washington.

But what was new, was trying it. This was almost like my Sunday morning excursion in an earlier post, A Sign. Ready with the feeling that I could take on the world, I attempted the Cindy (Crossfit has this thing with naming workouts after the people who made them). Workouts of the day, or WOD's are usually a quick body-jolting set of exercises that at the end, will have you crying, wishing you could go back to your old gym.

Cindy consists of a set of 5 pullups, 10 pushups, and 15 squats, doing as many sets as possible in 20 min. I saw Craig Cooper's (the owner of Urban Crossfit and personal friend) blog and thought, "If he can do 19 sets, I could at least do that or more." How foolish I was. I started out with a bang. Pumped out the first several sets in 45 sec. each. The next few took 1:30, then 2:00. By the end of 8 min., I had done a total of six sets, and was cached. I spent the remaining 12 min. consoling myself, wondering why I couldn't do more.

I will definitely continue to do Crossfit WOD's, as soon as my body and confidence restore themselves.

Crossfit is no joke. It is a serious way to get results fast. Try it for yourself. I guarantee you will be a different person, or your money back.

If you are in the Tacoma or Seattle area, and are interested in Crossfit, I highly recommend you check out these gyms as I personally know the instructors and they are excellent. Check out this news article of Morgan Hepfer (owner/founder of Crossfit Tacoma). (I have not been paid to say this.) (Okay, maybe a little.) (Just kidding.)

Let me end with a cartoon to get your ass out of your chair and moving: