CrossFit London (UK) » CrossFit London workouts

WOD 31 July: Burpee Hell!

Colin — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 14:29:51 +0000

WOD 31.07.2010

So the morning started with a playful warm up of press ups sit ups and squats. We used the clock method. Form a circle for the press ups hold the front support position and each individual performs the set number of reps one at a time until every one has completed their turn. Of course the faster you go the less time you spend in the front support position. We repeated this for sit ups, holding a variation of the dish, and then squats holding the bottom of the squat. Its a playful team orientated way to warm up. We then put in some excellent practice of kipping and muscle ups. There was some excellent work by Warren and Temi was looking very strong. But big improvements all round.

The WOD was a Burpee Ladder. With a running clock perform one burpee in the first minute, two in the second, three in third and so on to failure. We experienced the classic “J” effort curve here. And for a lot of people this was their first experience of a ladder. It basically just hits you hard all of a sudden and then you just want it to stop! Any thing over 10 minutes is good and anything over 15 minutes is excellent. Ladders are a great way to build strength in a weak movement. I use them for getting stronger at thrusters in particular. Ten minutes of 40kg thrusters is 55 reps. Soon puts Fran into perspective.

We finished with an After Party of box jumps.

On a side note I like to run a monthly challenge at TSG4. Usually a challenge that will help you improve or learn a new skill. I went to see the Cirque d’Soleil last night, simply amazing. So in honour of them this months challenge is rope climbing. For the whole of August. In the first week perform two rope climbs every day, if you miss a day you need to make them up. In the second week perform 4 every day, the third week 6 and the last week 8 climbs every day. If you don’t rope climb experiment with scaling option, such as pulling yourself up from the seated position. Enjoy.

WOD 29 July: Swinger’s Delight

Sally — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 20:14:40 +0000

Burgnener was our starting point, breaking it down piece by piece and getting friendly with our base!

Since we have a new toy (dumbells) to play with I thought a short blast of Fran would warm the cockles!

Dumbell mini Fran.

We then finished off with some hectic swinging and snatches in the form of:

60 Swings

40 Snatches (over each arm)

20 Burpees

10 Knees to Elbow

We took the time taken for this workout, halved it and used that as the base for our rest period and then did the whole show again. Whoop Whoop Well Done boys and girls.

WOD 25 July: Kelly is awful

Andrew — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 21:35:03 +0000

There is something about Kelly

400m
30 box jumps
30 wall bags (the CrossFit London 10kg sandbag sub)
x5 ( yes!! Bloody 5 times through)

That is simply wrong.

The gym was full of suffering, especially with the hot humid weather.

Wall bag squats are fun

More fab photos on the CrossFit London Flickr pages, here.

WOD 26th July -Upper body battering!

Sally — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 20:08:11 +0000

We began today working our shoulder flexibility in prep for some overhead squats.

Our strength workout was a healthy dose of OHS in the form of pyramids. 10,8,6,4,2 …..and then back up again.

Splitting the group into those who would rather practice technique and light loading and those who wanted to go for it.

Phil going for it.

Practice makes perfect.

After a stabilizing our upper bodies with all those overhead squats we continued our session with the help of ‘JT’

21,15,9

Handstand push ups – Ring dips – Push ups

All Pushed out!

Fun had by all! Whoop Whoop

Vibram Five Fingers: The almost barefoot truth

Andrew — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:31:41 +0000

The fact that I have for some time worn Vibram Five Fingers occasionally, and that I’m one of the few genuine barefoot runners in London means, apparently, that I ought to have a “position” on Vibrams.

For what they are worth, here are my personal Vibrams views.

They are not universally cool (yet) and as Graham discovered it’s quite possible to parade up and down in front of your girlfriend and be greeted by the words “gawd, I can taste sick in my mouth.”

There is a little way to go before be-gloved toes gain public acceptance.

Apparantly, according to Ken, if the police pull you over while driving and notice you are wearing them, they’ll caution you. I’ll have to check this. But I’ve trained with Ken for a while and I’m sure he would not lie to me about something so trivial. So don’t wear them to drive. My most recent pair of Vibrams still have a cycle incident tear in them’ from when I caught my foot between the pavement edge and the pedal. Steven managed to break three toes while doing a gymnastic-ey bar thing while wearing them: so we should caution against driving, cycling and gymnastic-ey things while wearing them.

But we can , of’course, recommend them for going barefoot.

Urm, no not really.

Most people heel strike, with their foot out in front of them. Sure barefoot and Vibrams quickly stop you doing that, but most people convert to a ball of the foot “in front of you” strike that will screw your calf muscles very quickly. So I have to recommend that you learn a natural way of running be it POSE or Crossfit Endurance first (actually a plug opportunity: I’m qualified in both of those things) before you start running in Vibrams.

If you fancy strollling about in them as an alternative to flip flops, oh why not. You can get in on all that “back to nature” stuff… you will feel the Chi flowing

They are easy to clean (bung them in the washing machine) which is just as well, as they quickly stink (it’s that rubber sweat combo).

It’s a pain getting the right size. Vibrams are mainly an internet phenominan so you need to know your own shoe size, and check up with the supplying company what their return terms are. I own two pairs of Vibrams. Both are too small. Couldn’t be bothered to return them (What? Repack them, queue up in the post office, wait in for couriers….but some people love this sort of thing).

There is much sizing advise around that includes one size less then your “normal” shoe size, foot diagrams and charts…do a mix and guess.

If you intend to lift in them, you had better have excellent ankle flexibility.

The biggest draw back is this: unless they fit perfectly, the chances are they will tug on your big toe. Not too awful you may say. But, if you go to our adult gymnastic classes (gosh, another plug) Amelia will, if she see you struggling with an arabesque, tell you to lift your big toe up. This makes you supinate, which means, among other stuff, you get more stability. The problem is that most natural running styles rely on you harvesting ground reaction forces (among other stuff). If your feet are forced to supinate because your big toe is being pulled in/up, the opportunity to get ground reaction is very diminished. This is a bad thing.

So are they the best thing since sliced bread, No. Will you probably buy a pair? Probably yes, especially as prices are coming down, and alternatives are appearing.

WOD 25 July: No photos, please. We’re British.

Steven — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 18:23:38 +0000

So…we kicked off with heavy thrusters (five sets of three) before I threw in a the curve-ball of a heavy set of 10! Perhaps I was the only one who enjoyed that?

We had a brief dalliance with box jumping, especially the question of “how high can you jump”. T’was impressive.

Finally a cheeky little kettlebell WOD to finish:

1x Kettlebell swing (16kg/12kg)
1x Goblet squat (16kg/12kg)

On the minute, increase by +1 with each successive minute. Continue until pooped. We started at 3x on account of me being impatient.

No pictures today.

WOD 24 July: Never judge a book by its cover

Colin — Sat, 24 Jul 2010 12:41:00 +0000

Never Judge A Book By Its Cover

How many times have you looked at a WOD and thought “What’s the problem here?”

Well that was what today was all about.

Five rounds for time of:

5 x Deadlift (80% 1RM)
10 x Ring Dips

I did this on Friday to make sure I was happy with the WOD and 6:47 later and I was understanding what the problem was. The heavy deadlifts pool all your blood into your lower half and then you have to go make use of your upper body. A simple couplet that manages to create a terrific load on the system.

There were some great efforts and my time only just survived with a morning best of 6′ 50″.

Just to make sure we were hitting the right weights we started with some heavy deadlifts to confirm/discover our 1RM.

Some great improvements here.

And we finished with a great little Afterparty of tabbata hand stand holds and/or planks.

Mark deadlifting

Wod 23 July Fight Gone Bad

Andrew — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 21:29:39 +0000

A fabulous night.

FIGHT GONE BAD

push press
row
wall ball
sumo deadlift high pull
box jump

one minute on each station is one round. one minutes rest between rounds. 3 rounds in total

A well done to James, Phillip and Trevor for joining Warren in the 300-plus Fight Gone Bad score club

the 300 plus fight gone bad team James 344, Phillip 315, Trevor 310

But as special extra mention to Trevor And Phil for being the first of our “home grown” talent to smash the 300 mark.

A big hurrah to everyone, all 20 of us, who went through the FGB mincer today.

More pictures on Flikr here

WOD 21 July: A warm up followed by Elizabeth

Andrew — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 21:28:30 +0000

A nasty, amended CrossFit warm up warmed up everyone who wasn’t already warmed up by the warmed up by the weather… phew!

Three rounds of:

a cute 30 second Sampson stretch
15 overhead squats
15 RDL’s
15 leg raises
10 pull ups
10 handstand press ups

Which accounts for the old Crossfit saying: “our warm up is your workout”…

Followed by Elizabeth

21-15-9

Squat cleans
Ring dips

WOD 19 July: Death by 10m

Andrew — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 20:25:58 +0000

It was a lovely night.

A strength biased Crossfit Warm up with particular focus on shoulder mobility in the samson stretch.

We escalated the weight on the overhead squats and converted the 2nd and 3rd rounds of pull ups and dips to weighted ones.

With Andrew back from his Crossfit Endurance certification, it was time to sling “Death by 10 metres” into the mix,

As the header photo shows, start off walking, then (photos below) run…then collapse. Or more exactly, one 10m shuttle in the first minute (10 meters? Are we sure? It’s far too short a distance…), two 10m shuttles in the second minute…quite comfortable until 10 minutes. 12 to 19 minutes become, er, challenging…

...then run really fast...

...until you need to stop.