Over the weekend I participated in my third CrossFit competition, the CrossFire Games, hosted by CrossFit Conquest in Plantation, FL. This consisted of one long “chipper” style WOD with a Firefighter theme…heats ran throughout the morning with 6 athletes side-by-side.
Building on my post about periodizing CrossFit, I want to explore an idea for adding heartrate training into the sport. Just to give a bit of background, I’ve been a professional rowing coach for many years at various levels (high school to elite), and specific aerobic training is critical to our performance. I’d like to see if heart rate training can be a benefit to CrossFit.
NOTE: Glassman on the definition of fitness and training, where he rips on heart rate training…full videos if you have a Journal account. John McBrien also addresses this on a conceptual level in this Journal video: CrossFit Endurance, Intro to Programming.
To kick this off, we need a quick primer on the energy systems and how they apply to training. There are three energy systems: aerobic, anaerobic, and ATP-CP. Common knowledge, right? But, what you may or may not know is that the energy systems break down into smaller bands–by bands I’m referring to % of heart rate max (HRM)–and each of these bands can and should be trained. Most importantly, all three of the energy systems are intertwined and need to be trained in specific ways in order to get the most benefit.
The last six weeks have been crazy retarded with races and competitions. Instead of reviewing each one in a separate post, I’ll summarize below. Before I do that, though, here’s a great workout I did last week that would work well for GoRuck training. This was typical of the type of stuff I did leading up to 007.
I plan on participating in the Tampa GoRuck Challenge the weekend of November 19. To see the exact Challenge dates, go here. Prior to GoRuck, I’m also signed up for the Megatransect ultrahike on October 1. Never heard of Megatransect? Neither had I until recently. Mega is a 26 mile run/walk/hike/crawl over Eagle Mountain in Central Pennsylvania, limited to 850 entrants. My batshit crazy friends, the same ones who roped me into GoRuck, got me to sign up for Mega. We’ll be rocking it with our GoRuck packs and hats.
GoRuck recently launched a new website specifically for the GoRuck Challenge, with a list of Challenges going on in US cities for the rest of the year. See the event calendar here. I fully plan on participating in either the Tampa or Jacksonville events in November.
I often get asked what exactly is GoRuck and why anyone would want to do it. Is it a race? Is it a night time marathon? How physically demanding is the thing? Do you have to be batshit crazy to do one? Do you really carry bricks in your backpack? My answer is this… (more…)
I completed WOD 11.2 on Saturday along with nine other athletes at Crossfit Firebase. (Disclaimer: This is a post about training, not the movement standards.) I had a number of thoughts while doing it and watching:
I’ve been getting a lot of emails since I published my GoRuck St Augustine Review from guys and gals who are looking for advice on training for the GoRuck Challenge. In this post, I’ll review the training I went through, what I thought worked and what didn’t, and offer some suggestions.
Here’s a summary of the workload for GoRuck Class 007 in St. Augustine, Florida: 23 – 24 miles of distance, most of which was done Indian-run style. Running was done primarily on sidewalk or pavement, with a couple of bridges thrown in, and about 6-7 miles were on soft beach sand. All participants had a GoRuck pack loaded with 3 bricks (approx. 20 lbs) and whatever extra gear and food/liquids they needed. I estimated my pack, fully loaded and dry, weighed about 32 lbs.
I finished off my rockin January with a pair of races on a gorgeous and warm Saturday. I was scheduled for a third race on Sunday but had to bag it due to lingering injury issues.
First competition was the UCF Iron Knight. Iron Knight is a military-style run + PT around the UCF campus and is put on by the UCF Army ROTC program. The total running distance is 4.5 miles with exercises stations posted every half to quarter mile–8 stations total. The stations included: pushups, situps, pullups, tire flipping, Hummer push, stretcher carry, equipment carry for time, and a weird traverse-the-minefield exercise that pretty much everyone failed. This is a team event with each team having four members. I competed in the Pro (adult) Co-ed division with three of my rower friends. This was my second year doing Iron Knight and I have to say I LOVE this competition. It’s super challenging, well organized, competitive, exercises are cool, the campus is interesting to run around, and the weather was perfect both years. In fact, we were bitching about how hot and sunny it was at race time. Go figure.
Over the weekend I participated in my first CrossFit competition, the Nuclear Winter at CrossFit Evolution in Longwood, Florida. Although I got my ass kicked in most of the workouts, I had a total blast and set a couple of personal records. Read on for an event recap.
2010 was a fantastic year for me training and fitness-wise, especially in the second half of the year when I really started to embrace how nutrition plays a dominant role in increasing performance. At age 35, I’m the fittest and strongest I’ve ever been, at least a full level fitter than when I was a collegiate rower. I spent a fair amount of time training at a Crossfit gym in Orlando, and also working with a personal trainer 2-3 days per week to increase my strength. From hanging around with the athletes at these two facilities, I picked up a lot of knowledge about gear, nutrition, supplements, and other cool technology related to training. In fact, I consider everything on the list below to be “high tech” options for increasing performance.
