Attempted CrossFit, CrossFit and bad rap music.

Laziness, you will be the death of me. As will video games. Luckily I like eating too much so I'm not as risk of forgetting to eat while playing Elder Scrolls Skyrim, otherwise it would be a distinct possibility.

CrossFit 
When we last left, our young hero was eager to try out a new 'craze' called CrossFit, a group exercise club that could loosely be described as bootcamp for fit people with technical exercises. The documentation I have here describes it as:

CrossFit is a strength and conditioning system built on constant varied, if not randomized, functional movements executed at high intensity.

From what I had heard it involves lots of deadlifting, jumping exercises, body weight activities and other fun stuff. My mate Hagen forwarded me a flyer about the Canberra CrossFit club which advertised an Introductory Session that was to happen on the Saturday morning, all you had to do to attend was deposit $25 into their account and send an email indicating you were coming and had paid (writing it now, it sounds oh-so dodgy.. ). So I did just that when I came home from my run on Friday night and went to bed early, looking forward to trying it out the next morning. The next day my trusty GPS led me to the house, which looked slightly deserted, and I could see the 'workout shed' out the back to which the email directed me to which looked equally deserted. Knocking on the door brought no responses with the exception of mental images from Saw and Texas Chainsaw Massacre so I re-reviewed the flyer on my phone for the 37th time and seeing no phone number I could call, I drove angrily to the gym and worked out there instead.

Saturday's workout

After the debacle of thinking I was stuffed around with my CrossFit lesson, I got to the gym in a pretty dirty mood but that quickly lifted after I started to.

EXERCISE	Set #1	Set #2	Set #3	Set #4	Set #5
Squat	95kgx5	95kgx5	95gx5	100kgx5	100kgx5
Incline Press	42.5kg	45kgx5	45kgx5	47.5kgx5	47.5kgx5
Deadlift	70kgx10	90kgx5	110kgx5	XX	XX
Chin-Up	12	8	6	XX	XX
DB Bicep curl	12.5kgx5	12.5kgx5	12.5kgx5	XX	XX

Not much to really say about this workout, 100kg squat felt just that little bit better as it has every workout since reaching it, as did deadlift but I was a little bummed that I'm not ready to up the weight yet. Chin-ups went down, not too sure why either, so that sucked, too. On a whole it was decent, but eh not great either. I did lose a bit of faith in humanity during this session when I heard at a girl at the gym say to her friend "y'know how, like me and you are, lawyers..". Now I know it makes me somewhat of a hypocrite because I'm been guilty of saying 'like' and even using it too excess when I've drunk to excess, but hearing that sentence made me cringe and die a little a little inside.

Supplements

Pre-workout: MusclePharm Assault

Intra-workout: Scivation Xtend (watermelon)

Protein:  Dymatize Elite with 30g of dextrose.

Nutrient partitioner: Genomyx Slin-Sane - before and after.

Later that afternoon after the workout I received an email back from the guy who runs the CrossFit class who apologised profusely and told me that since he hadn't heard back from anyone (and my email was kind of late on Friday), he had decided to not run the class. He offered to transfer me my money back or to give me a one-on-one introduction to CrossFit personally during the week - which I took him up on and agreed to meet him on Monday evening.

CrossFit Part Duex

So I went back to the Saw-Shed after work and met the guy who runs the Canberra CrossFit club and was pleasantly surprised that rather than the Meathead I had imagined (admittedly whilst sitting grumpily in my car on Saturday morning) running the place, the guy was very genuine and friendly, yet built like a meat-axe (I found out later that he is or was a powerlifter). He explained to me how the club works and the principles they follow (weight lifting classes follow Mark Rippetoe's Starting Strength program) and how everything they do revolves around working the core and being functional, i.e. getting stronger as opposed to body building. He explained to me that sessions at the club either consist of strength/weightlifting (Wednesday and Friday) or a 'Workout of the day' or WOD (every other weekday). The WOD's consist of semi-structured programs that may be timed circuits of different exercises, how many sets/reps of an exercise/circuit can you do before failure or 1 Maximum Repetition (MR) training (what's the most you can lift) and other strength/aerobic programs. He then gave me a run through of some different types of squats (box, front and holding a bar above my head), presses (incline, push-press, clean and jerk) and then some deadlifts, all with basically no weight just to check my form and give me some pointers. While I did arrive hoping I would be shown some tips to my form and get right to upping my deadlift amount straight away, in hindsite the way he went about it (i.e. without weight) was much better and has made me more keen to begin. In other words, I was sold after the introduction and starting next week I'm going to try and go to the Mondays and Tuesday WODs instead of gym on Tuesday. Prices seem reasonable and there are different pricing structures you can follow depending on how much you want to attend. I can't wait!

Tuesday's workout:

Nothing gets me more amped for a big gym session than stress at work and lately I've had that in abundance

EXERCISE	Set #1	Set #2	Set #3	Set #4	Set #5
Squat	95kgx5	95kgx5	100kgx5	100kgx5	100kgx5
Bench Press	72.5kgx5	75kgx5	75kgx5	75kgx5	80kgx5
BB Bent Over Row	55kgx5	55kgx5	60kgx5	60kgx5	60kgx5
Incline DB Fly	10kgx12	12.5kgx12	12.5kgx12	XX	XX
Seated Calf Raise	70kgx12	80kgx12	85kgx12	XX	XX
Tricep Dips	12	10	8	XX	XX

I mixed things up a little with this workout and did box squats onto a bench, which were very different and I was able to ensure that I really squatted deep enough and I did and it hurt. I reached a new personal best with my bench (80kg) too which I was very happy with, though I was only able to complete 4 repetitions before failing. Next time I'm getting the whole five. I also added tricep dips at the end of the session too and it was eye opening to see that I could a whole three sets when a couple of years ago I could even balance my own weight. *happy dance*

Supplements

Pre-workout: VPX Sports - NO Shotgun (Grape Bubblegum). I've been getting quite bored of the pre-workouts that I've been using lately so I figured I use up a sample of NO Shotgun that I had in my desk drawer. Taste is pretty awesome and doesn't have a bitter aftertaste like many seem to have. Seemed to get a pretty good pump with it and my lifts were pretty decent too. Could be worth a purchase in the future when I've finally finished some of my plethora of pre-workout supplements. Yeah, I just used the word plethora and not a pinata was in site, oh wait.

Intra-workout: Scivation Xtend (watermelon)

Protein:  Dymatize Elite with 30g of dextrose.
Nutrient partitioner: Genomyx Slin-Sane - before and after. I'm still not too sure that I can notice a difference with this stuff, but I'm going to keep with it until I've been using it until it's been a full two weeks and then I can empirically say that it did something or not. Again, I'm not having it with a decent amount of carbs so that could have something to do with it, I'll still have enough to run it again next year when I try to add on some decent muscle mass with a normal carb-containing diet.

Music
Aiight (ha!), so I haven't really been listening to music in the gym lately because I've been training with my mate and on Saturday I didn't expect to be in the gym so here's a clip from Fat Joe. My mate told me to check him out because I've been looking for any sort of new music to look out for and ehhh.. not really a fan if I'm truly honest. Some of the stuff on his new album Darksiders Vol 1 is pretty good, but this song kinda sucks.

Progress pics

So 3 weeks down and the pics don't really tell too much at this stage but I've remained at around the same weight and my lifts have gone up, so that's decent... I guess.