Sarah came by gleason’s today and shot some videos of me sparring. It’s very instructive to watch myself for 3 or 4 rounds, as I’m able to see a lot of mistakes I’m making as well as get an idea of what is working.

The videos confirm that my current biggest problem is footwork; I tend to want to stand flat footed and punch it out, and have a really hard time both closing distance and backing up while keeping the pressure on. my slipping and defense in general is miles better than it used to be, but right now, I tend to either be on defense and offense, and I need to combine the two and work on counterpunching more. I don’t have fast reflexes, but I do have good timing, and can counterpunch effectively when I try. so footwork and counterpunching are the main things I’m going to focus on over the next few months.

a few things I thought I did well here are blocking, using my left hook when inside, and using my long reach and double jab to score a bit from outside.

As is our tradition, we did “murph” today at crossfit south brooklyn. it’s a workout named after Michael Murphy, who was killed serving our country in Afghanistan.

The workout is as follows:
run 1 mile
100 pullups, 200 pushups, 300 squats
run 1 miles

The first time I did this was my first workout at crossfit south brooklyn, recently after I stopped boxing due to a hand injury. my time was 45:36. last year, my time was 44:10. this year, I managed to eek out 41:58, which I was pretty happy with, considering I am a year older, and haven’t crossfitted in 2 months as I’ve gone back to boxing.

it was a great day and really fun being back at crossfit south brooklyn, which is an awesome community of people. I’ve missed going to crossfit, but I really love boxing and I am sparring alot now and learning a ton so I’m going to stick with that for the time being, and drop by crossfit when I can.

memorial day reminds me of how lucky I am to live in such a great country, and thankful for the enormous sacrifices so many service people have made on our behalf.

couple quick lunchtime workouts, going to be out of town for a few weekends so no crossfit classes for a bit.

warmup: 3 rounds of 10 pushups, 10 situps, 10 squats, 5 pullups
squats: 165×5, 185×5, 205×5, 215×3, 220×2, 220×1. went very deep on these and my hamstrings are still sore 2 days later.

today I did:
30 chinups
press: 95×5, 105×5, 115×5, 120(f), 120×3, 120×1. I failed on 120 initially from not thinking enough about form and positioning, press is one of those things where I feel that matters a lot since a small imbalance or inattention can really throw you off.

thursday:
21-15-9 reps of:
135 squat clean
ring dips
my time was 12:49.

friday:
bench (all x3): 155, 185, 190, 195, 185
squat (all x3): 185, 195, 195, 205, 205
press: 95×5, 115×5

115 was pretty hard which was weird given I pressed 145 the other day, probably sore from ring dips the night before or something.

warm up: 30 situps, 15 pullups, 30 pushups.

press 5×1: 115, 125, 135, 140(pr), 145(pr)

my old personal record was 135 so I felt awesome about this, really good to put up that much weight. kept good form and minimal layback to boot.

afterwards, did the newly minted crossfit southbrooklyn metcon “heidi”: burpees/boxjumps/knees to elbows, 30/20/10. my time was 11:50, this pretty much sucked to do but felt pretty good about it afterwards. like most metcons I do these days, I felt like the mental part was my limiting factor. I was tired but the little “rest breaks” I take are mostly unnecessary for me anymore, but I do them out of habit or something. have to keep this in mind for next time.

warmup: 15 pullups, 15 chinups, 30 pushups, 30 situps, 30 squats

was reading “olympic weightlifting” by greg everett last night before bed, and for squat depth he pretty much says you should go as deep as possible without reconstructive surgery . for crossfit, hips breaking parallel with knees is generally the standard, but today I went as low as possible, which for me was quite low.

3x: 135, 185, 190, 190, 195

this was pretty tough for me and I started to lean forward on a few, which is kind of a no-no in a high bar back squat from my understanding. I’ll have to ask a coach about this next time I go to crossfit.

saturdays are my favorite days to go to crossfit, we start pretty early and then I usually feel great for the rest of the day.

run 4 miles, warmup was 50 squats, 30 pushups, 40 situps and 20 pullups.
press 3×5: 105, 115, 120, 125, 127.
other stuff: 4 sets of 10 weighted situps (45lbs) and 15 russian twists (35lbs).

the last rep of 127 barely went up, but the whole class was yelling at me to do it so I got it done, which felt really great. definitely one of the benefits of working out with other like-minded people, I would have failed it for sure if I was working out by myself in the gym. after the workout I tried to lift 140 but it wouldn’t quite go up, my previous 1 rep max for press is 135 so I should be able to beat that easily next time we do the total.

warm up: row 500m, 30 pushups/situps/squats

deadlift: 225, 275, 305, 315, 320

bench (3 reps each): 135, 155, 185, 190

5×3: 165, 185, 195, 210, 215. form started to break down at 215. accessory work was reverse ladder of odd numbers, 15 handstand pushups 1 L pullup, 13 hspus and 3 L pullups, and so on until they’re reversed. 14:31, switched to kipping pullups to keep it under 15 minutes.

warm up: 500m row, 2:00.

bench (x3 unless noted otherwise): 135, 155, 185, 190×2, 185, 190

row 2k, 7:54.

I tried a wider bench grip on the first 190 set and that didn’t work out too well. rowing was really hard today, definitely going to try and get in some rowing workouts especially in the winter when running outside sucks.