deadlift sub, strength, zone, and blood pressure.

So today Jerry had us do a crossfit game workout:

5 rounds
5 deadlifts Men @ 275#
10 burbees

I tried warming up with a few reps of a light weight, but after that my back got... not sure how to describe it. It got excited? I don't know. Anyway, Jerry then remembered my previous issue with deadlifts and gave me a sub workout "special made just for you Adam". Jerry is awesome because 1) he remembered, and 2) if he hadn't said anything I think I would have attempted this workout, and I might have made things worse. Jerry, thank you for making me feel ok with doing a sub workout.

5 rounds
10 burbees
20 kb swings
30 ab mat

I tried the first round at 46# kb, but my back started to let me know that I used it a little too much in the deadlift warmups. So I backed down to the 36#. That is such a light weight now it's annoying that I have to drop down to that, but I tried to make it as fast and as unbroken as possible.

I think I'm figuring out how to make burbees faster, and I no longer dread 10 of them like I used to.

But it amazes me that the rx'd weight for the games was 275, only ten pounds lighter than my max (and that was the max that injured my back). Crossfit really does demand strength, a type of strength I've never had. According to crossfit weightlifting standards I'm not that strong.

Press: Novice @116
Deadlift: Untrained-Novice @ 285 (probably 245 w/out injury)
Power Clean: Novice-Intermediate @ 185
Squat: Untrained-Novice @ 185 (although this is my 3 rep max)

So on a scale of 1-5, 5 being strongest, I'm somewhere between a 1 and a 2. This isn't typed out of frustration, I'm actually quite happy of the gains that I've made to be where I currently am. Rather, this led to the thought that if you ever want to see fast gains in any one exercise/movement, crossfit isn't probably the best way to go about it. After all, the specialty of crossfit is that it has no specialty. If I really wanted to up my deadlift max, I would have to switch to some more conventional program. However, the improvement in deadlift would be at the expense in other areas in fitness, such as my endurance or cardiovascular health.

By doing Crossfit, however, I will see some improvement in my deadlift, but will also see some improvement in every other aspect of fitness. I will improve my deadlift while improving everything else, albeit at a slower pace. There's a great thread on crossfit's discussion board that talks about the different theories of starting out in cf, and after reading it I have to believe the idea that if you have two people start at the same time, one using the starting strength progam for six weeks and the other doing pure cf, after a year you wouldn't see a difference. I guess I just have to realize that I have a lot to be desired when it comes to strength, but I'm ok with that because so far I've been seeing great improvement and don't see why it should stop anytime soon. I never focus on how I'm doing compared to others, I only focus on the fact that I'm improving, and if I keep improving the sky's the limit.

One reason for the great gains I've had is nutrition. With the exception of vacations, I've been very good at observing a strict zone diet. Whether I should eat more or not is for another post, but I'm starting to observe some of my new years resolutions, and it's amazing to me how many fruits and vegtables I eat in a day. For example, yesterday looked like this (if you want to see my meal plan click here):

Breakfast (the oatmeal dish): 1/2 cup grapes, 1 cup of oatmeal
Lunch (sandwich except I replaced the bread with veggies): 6 cups of mixed brocolli, cauliflower, and carrots.
Snack: 1 Apple
Dinner (Chili): 2/9 cup onions, 2/3 cup green peppers, 2/3 cup tomato sauce

I fell asleep last night at nine, so I didn't get to eat my second snack, which would have had 1 cup of pineapple. I also know that I had one cup too many of veggies for lunch, but it was either eat 6 cups or throw away 1 cup, I also ate a little bit more meat and almonds to make the meal a 4.8 block meal. Actually, to be precise the meal was:

6 cups of veggies
4.5 oz of meat
1.8 oz of cheese
14 almonds

Good thing I like almonds.

Now on to the blood pressure mentioned in the title. I went to the doc's yesterday and when they tested my blood pressure it was a little high (can't remember what). Anyway, he wanted me to check it every day if possible and if it's still up to see him again about it. I was running on something like 4 hours of sleep, and I'm still getting back into the swing of things exercise wise after the two week vacay, so I'm not too worried. Historically, when I don't exercise it goes up quite a bit, but after a week or so of exercise (even non-cf) it goes down to levels that have been called "text-book" by the nurses. So now I'll try to add that stat to this blog for the next week.