Smashby's Training Blog

CrossFit has two types of workouts in particular that mean more to the “community” and the people who complete them. The first are the “Hero” workouts, which are in memory of some Service Personnel (Military, Police, Fire, First Responders, etc). The other are the “Girls” workouts, which take the same method of naming Hurricanes, and use women’s name to distinguish them from other workouts.

In my opinion, the most common of the “Girls” workouts is the “Cindy/Mary” day. On these days, athletes have the choice of two workouts to complete. Both of these require one to complete as many rounds as possible of the specific rep scheme in 20 minutes. Cindy is more basic movements, so the expected result is more rounds. Mary includes far more complex and skilled movements, so while much more taxing, fewer rounds are expected.

Workout of the Day:
Cindy
Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Squats
or
Mary
Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
5 Handstand Push-ups
10 One legged squats, alternating
15 Pull-ups

Jamie is very close to saying goodbye to bands to assist him on pull-ups! The next workout we do with a lower number of reps, we’re going to give it a shot. Great job making so much progress, so quickly Jamie!!

Athlete Results:
Cindy
Jamie (2 Banded Pull-Ups)- 10 Rounds + 5 Pull-Ups + 10 Push-Ups

It was the last day of January, and the weather was rough outside. Snow and ice always make getting to class an adventure, but we had four brave soldiers make it in safely!

The strength portion would consist of Back Squats, working up to three sets, and it seemed like almost everyone PR’d! Generally if we’re doing 5 sets of 3 reps, that final set will be written as “3+”. This means that the goal is to get those three reps, but IF the athlete can do more reps, they should continue on. Jamie got an awesome 6 full reps on his final set! You can see by the picture below that his range of motion was awesome even when he started to get tired. Well done, sir.

Nice depth on that squat!

Workout of the Day:
21-18-15-12-9-6-3 of-
Power Cleans / Wall Ball

This means that the athlete completes 21 reps of power clean, then 21 wall balls. Next, 18 cleans and 18 wall balls, and so on, all the way down to 3 of each.

Athlete Results:
Back Squat – 5 sets of 3 (5×3)
Jamie- 175 (6 reps!)

WOD
Jamie (65lb Power Clean / 14lb Med Ball)- 18:28

Sunday Funday again! The weeks are going by fast, but I guess I can start viewing that as “it seems like there’s less time between CrossFit Classes! This week, Andy came back for another session, too, so I guess we didn’t scare him away last time!

To start off the day, we focused on a movement that is done very rarely in CrossFit, but one that I think is important to go back and hit every once and a while… The Bench Press! Check out Clayton, putting up 165 for 5 reps.

Once we finished the strength portion of the day, we hit a workout that I saw last year, and have wanted to try ever since. I’ll do this myself in the next few weeks, and maybe post a video of it, too. We’ll see.

Workout of the Day:
1 Clean and Jerk / 1 Round of Cindy / 2 Clean and Jerks / 1 Round of Cindy / etc. until / 10 Clean and Jerks / 1 Round of Cindy

The workout is 1 rep of a Ground to Overhead lift followed by 1 round of Cindy (which is 5 pull-ups, 10 push-ups and 15 air squats). The most common and most efficient way to get something from the ground to over your head is generally going to be the Clean and Jerk. Once the athlete finishes one round of Cindy and one Clean and Jerk, then they complete one round of Cindy and then two Clean and Jerks. This pattern continues until the final round, which is 10 Ground to Overheads followed by the last round of Cindy.

Here are some clips of the guys doing work!

One of the highlights of today was watching Clayton crush the pull-ups with an awesome kip! We’ve talked for the last few months about how much his workout times will drop when he improves his kipping form. I’d say that’s pretty accurate watching this. Great Job!

Athlete Results:
Bench Press 5 Rep Max
Clayton- 165lbs
Jamie- 155lbs
Andy (performed Shoulder Press)- 65lbs

WOD
Clayton (75lb Clean and Jerk / Chest-to-Bar Pull-Ups)- 27:45
Jamie (65lb Clean and Jerk / 3 Banded Pull-Ups)- 32:18
Andy (45lb Push Press / 3 Banded Pull-Ups / Wall Push-Ups)- 19:40

Finally, as promised, here is the video of two CrossFit All-Stars completing the workout as prescribed. Both of these men are incredible athletes!

Many of you know my class schedule:

Sundays- 5:30pm-6:30pm
Monday / Wednesday / Thursday- 6pm-7pm

This week, however, was a special circumstance. Friend and past CrossFitter Melissa moved back to Denver for her next rotation! She had some friends in town with her and they all wanted to get in a CrossFit session to see what it was all about. If that wasn’t enough, Pam (friend from college) moved to Denver YESTERDAY and wanted to check it out. Now if that’s not motivation, I don’t know what is… these folks wanted to work out, and who was I to tell them no!? So, I offered a special Friday class for the four of them.

After spending quite a bit of time warming up, explaining what CrossFit is, and going over proper form for some basic movements, we were ready to hit a variation of the “Baseline” workout. Tom Nugent, friend and owner of SnoRidge Crossfit told me that they do the “Official Baseline workout” twice. Here’s what he shared with me:

Baseline is a great eye opener. We program 2 rds rather than 1 simply because anyone can complete 1 round with relative ease. The 2nd round becomes the test, teaching relative intensity and perseverance. Completing that challenge then really exposes someone to CrossFit.

That definitely made sense to me, so from now on, I am going to adopt his theory! What is “Baseline”? With my modifications from the original, our workout for today was:

Workout of the Day:
2 rounds for time of-
400 meter Run (or 500m row) / 20 Pull-Ups / 30 Push-Ups / 40 Sit-Ups (Ab-Mat) / 50 Air Squats

You all did a great job today! For the “out-of-towners”, I really hope you check out your local CF gym, you’d both be great at it!

Athlete Results:
(All athletes used banded pull-ups and Ab-Mats for sit-ups)
Pam- 19:30
Ashley- 20:18
Mel-Mel- 20:46
Mel- 21:51