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Prehab
Theraband External Rotations
Lat Activations
Wrist DROM
Warm Up
1 min UB Single Unders
1 min DU’s
10 Pause Ring Rows – pause at the top
5 Wall Walks
:30 Handstand Hold
Cool Down
Banded Lat Stretch
German Hang
Door way Stretch
Fitness
Strength
Take 20 minutes to establish the following:
A. Max Strict Handstand Pushups
B. Max Double Unders in 2 minutes
C. Max Freestanding Handstand Hold in 3’x3′ box
Notes: This will be retested at the PCFWC, so be sure to record your results along with any notes needed! For the SHSPU, your palms must be within the 3’x2′ box and performed on the blue mat. Note bands used if needed. If you cannot yet perform a freestanding HS, see how long you can hold a handstand facing the wall.
Conditioning
2 minutes for max reps of Bar Facing Burpees
Rest as needed
15 minute amrap:
200 Meter Run
20 Pushups
10 Push Press
Notes: The Bar Facing Burpees will be retested at the PCFWC. Standards are 2 feet leave the ground and land at the same time. Prescribed weight for the Push Press is 95/65. Scale the pushup reps as needed to maintain quality and intensity.
Advanced
Strength
Take 20 minutes to establish the following:
A. Max Strict Handstand Pushups
B. Max Double Unders in 2 minutes
C. Max Freestanding Handstand Hold in 3’x3′ box
D. Max Strict Muscleups
Notes: This will be retested at the PCFWC, so be sure to record your results along with any notes needed! For the SHSPU, your palms must be within the 3’x2′ box and performed on the blue mat. Note bands used if needed. If you cannot yet perform a freestanding HS, practice the progressions and see how long you can hold a handstand facing the wall.
Conditioning
2 minutes for max reps of Bar Facing Burpees
Rest as needed
15 minute amrap:
500 meter Row
15 Strict Handstand Pushups
10 Dips
Notes: If you struggle to complete the handstand push-ups, adjust the reps so to maintain intensity and full range of motion. Do not perform partial range of motion or kipping style.
Similar to some of the previous athletes profiled this week, I also had a little bit too much fun in college … and after college … for more than a couple of years. At my current height of 5’10”, I weighed about 140lbs my senior year in high school. I was a distance runner, so that wasn’t too abnormal. By the time I was two years out of college, I weighed 195lbs and most of my fitness came from running the point in pickup games at the Mizzou rec center. I would occasionally bench press and do curls.
When I moved out to LA seven years ago, I was looking for a fresh start. I started running again and lost some of the weight, but I didn’t really feel like I could get back to the level of fitness I had achieved in my teens and early 20s. I honestly didn’t think it was physically possible, and certainly not likely while training alone. Fortunately, someone who I worked with named Adam Condal … aka Adam Jones … aka ’13’ … noticed that I was working hard and not really getting anywhere. I can’t exactly remember how he put it, but essentially he told me that he did some fitness thing and I should come try it because I would like it a lot. He was right. Like many of you, I was absolutely hooked and haven’t looked back for over three years now.
Crossfit appealed to me because it was competitive, never boring, and turned out to provide what I assume most adults get out of country club memberships – a group of people to do stuff with. At some point, I decided to take the whole diet thing more seriously and I spent about 7 months adhering to fairly strict paleo during the week and eating what I wanted on the weekends. Little by little, I experimented with my routine. I added back in dairy for a while, and then took it out. I added back in rice, and left it in. Essentially, I had removed all of the potentially nasty shit and would reintroduce those things back into my diet periodically, one at a time, to see how my body reacted. I feel very strongly that everyone has a different ideal diet, it just takes a little self control and patience to figure out what that is. All of this transpired, of course, while I was showing up at the gym 4-6 times a week and just having fun doing Crossfit workouts with my friends.
That really became the easy part.
On the tail end of those 7 months, I experienced a dramatic body change. I had been gradually improving in my gym performance and had seen minor changes to my body in the first 12-18 months, but somewhere at the end of that 2nd year, I started to look very different than I ever had before. I felt very good, almost all of the time. It was easier to sleep. Easier to get work done. I even noticed that sitting in a chair felt a lot more comfortable … even though we’re not supposed to sit in chairs … or toilets, apparently. I got very strong for my body weight and I even experienced a little bit of running success again, which made me very happy.
In the year since that transformation, I’ve been a lot more liberal with my diet, but it really seems like the change that I made during that time period is going to be hard to undo. My work schedule lately has prevented me from going to the gym as much as I like to, but I seem to be able to come in and perform at a relatively high level and haven’t seen my body weight fluctuate much at all (I sit at about 165 these days). I don’t look quite as lean as I did a year ago, but that has it’s benefits … Cooney no longer tells me to “eat a carb.”
I suppose the lesson heading into the EIE challenge is this: just stick it out, because it gets a lot easier. Just like the WODs get easier after you’ve been doing them for a while, just like running gets a little easier after you’ve done it consistently for a couple of weeks, the diet and the impact of dialing all of those things in at the same time gets a lot easier.
If you can hold out through the difficult early stages, you can eventually make permanent changes to your body and fitness that require a lot less will power to maintain.
