Dont Ever Do Bear Crawls With A 40 Pound Weight Vest

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.

4 x 100m weighted lunge walk (50 lbs on shoulders)

Rest 3′ between walks. Use either a sandbag, pack loaded with weight, or barbell on shoulders.

4 x 20 leg extensions, weight should be heavy enough so that you struggle hard through last 5-6 reps, almost to failure / super set that with 15 jumpies.

4 x 12 dead hang pullups / 20 burpees

Have fun with that! I couldn’t walk or sit comfortably for 2 days afterwards.

On to the events. It’s a miracle I got through all this in one piece.

CrossFit Games Open: This was the initial qualification event for going to the CrossFit Games, which is the world championship for CrossFit. The Open, which replaced the Sectionals system from previous years, was 6 workouts over 7 weeks and was open to absolutely anyone that wanted to participate. Even though I have no aspirations of being a Games competitor, it was awesome to participate and be part of the community. I set a number of personal records and identified several areas of strengths and weaknesses. It was tough but I’m really glad I participated. My favorite experience was doing six reps of 165 lbs clean and jerk in 5 minutes, where 165 was my previous 1RM.

Muddy Buddy: My pal Jack and I competed in the competitive men’s category and took 16/93. Not bad considering neither of us specialize in mountain biking or running. Muddy Buddy is one of my favorite events of the year and I’ll definitely do it again. Well organized and tons of fun.

Super Spartan Race: 8 mile trail run with obstacles. I’ve done Warrior Dash and this is not like that. Spartan Race is tough, like way more taxing than I thought it was going to be. The obstacles are bigger, harder, and cooler, the trail running is very technical, and the miles grind you down. I was hurting by the end. Of course, it doesn’t help that my group took a wrong turn and got lost to the tune of TWO extra miles. No worries, we still rocked it. My favorite two obstacles were the archery setup and the lateral wall climb.

Life AsRX Crossfit Tour: This was part of the Europa Sport and Fitness Expo and took place at the Orange County Convention Center. Two words: FUCKING AWESOME. I can’t over emphasize how much fun I had at this thing. This was my second CrossFit competition and I loved every minute of it. The event organizers were super cool, the WODs were nasty, and holding it in conjunction with a Fitness Expo was a treat. It was a serious spectacle with everything from bodybuilders, martial artists, wrestlers, and Strongman competitors all rubbing elbows and geeking out big time. They have three other tour dates, so hit it up if you can.

I spent the entire day at the competition and did four workouts total. I was totally wrecked by the end. Set two additional PR’s on the day, with 23 push jerks @ 135 lbs in 10′ (can you tell I kind of suck at upper body shoulder stuff?) and 30 reps total of 70 lbs KB swings (previous was 20 reps).

The final WOD was especially nasty, like Seal Team Six nasty. Whoever thought of this thing needs to be waterboarded immediately. Here it is:

Wear a weight vest (40 lbs for men, 20 lbs for women)

10 KB swings (70/50)

25m bear crawl, do 1 burpee, then 25m run

6 thrusters (65/45)

reverse course, do bear crawl + burpee + run back to KB

3 rounds for time.

Let me tell you something, you haven’t truly lived until you’ve swung a 70 pound kettlebell above your head while wearing a 40 pound weight vest and you only weigh 150 pounds (me). Just putting the weight vest on and walking around shot my heartrate up. By the third round I felt like my IQ had dropped 80 points while suffocating to death while falling off a cliff. I had tunnel vision and could only tell what was next because the judge was basically leading me around with a lease. Definitely the most painful WOD I’ve ever done. Besides that it was awesome.

I participated in one Strongman event just for the hell of it and had a total blast. This was the barrel run + farmer’s carry medley. Each barrel had a 25 lbs plate in it and the farmer’s carry was 165 lbs per arm. Good livin’. The Strongman competition was sponsored by Signature Fitness. Strongman events are fairly CrossFitty, so I recommend giving these a shot if you’re curious.