I decided a few months ago I wanted to row a half marathon for new years again. It’s not really something I want to do often or anything. Maybe once or possibly twice a year. Endurance is really not my main goal. It’s not even that important to me at all other than doing some for some balance. When I first decided I was going to row another half marathon this year I was pretty sure I would have at least a slight PR on my time from last year.

I was feeling pretty good today so I decided to get this week’s 20 rep back squats out of the way a day early. I was to do 195 pounds for twenty reps today which is getting up there for me or at least mentally it’s getting up there in weight. I actually felt great with it today and got through them fairly easily. Last time around at this weight it was getting tough last spring but that’s not the case right now.

After we got done with the grocery store I did my strength for today and it felt great. Power clean day!! The squats really looked and felt awesome at 235. I am very happy with my progress back to where I should be with squats even if that hasn’t translate directly to numbers on a page it will. Better movement patterns will certainly eventually lead to that along with safer reps.

Last night we once again grabbed Mosby’s for supper along with a couple of adult beverages. Their wings are just so good and they’ve been getting better each weak I’d say. I also had a cheese steak which are pretty decent from there. It’s refreshing that they don’t call it a “Philly cheese steak” and have it in no resemble what you’d actually find n Philly. They’re pretty tasty though.

Today’s schedule had me doing my strength work and I was hoping to get at least one WOD in and I’ve done that now. I am happy to have done that already since tonight is our going out to eat night. In stead of going out though, we’ve been getting unhealthy takeout and alcoholic beverages to go since Pennsylvania has stepped out of the dark ages and is now allowing that.

It isn’t nearly as hot today as it has been but it’s still warm and humid. It could get nasty if the sun peaks out. I did turn the air conditioner on but not until I went out into the garage gym this time instead of a few minute earlier. I just wanted dry the air up a bit so I am not slipping on my sweat doing the squats and more importantly so the bar isn’t slipping around or out of my hands during the deadlifts.

It was a hot day today. Not all that humid, certainly not as bad as it could have been but still temperatures in the mid 90s is hot weather. The heat had my ass dragging all day until 1 or so I decided to just turn on the gym air conditioner and get my strength over with. It does’t help that I only had a couple of hours of sleep again last night.

After a nice relatively cool night in the low 60s for sleeping the sun came up. The temperature shot up to the mid 90s. I, unfortunately waited until 1 pm or so to do the first WOD I did. I didn’t feel like moving shit around and I was going to do the running version so I wanted to wait until the sun got high enough it wasn’t blinding me.

This morning we installed our old air conditioner in one of the garage windows since the temperature was supposed to get into the mid 90s. We had it available and got a smaller one for the bedroom so might else well make good use of it. I started it about 20 minute before lifting and it really was a game changer. The squats at 215 felt easy and explosive. They have really been feeling pretty great the past month or two.

After yesterday in what was essentially a cluster fuck of a day for fitness and exercise for me today I am feeling a lot better. I slept good again and ended up with a resting heart rate of 49 today. It’s been great to have the windows open and the fan on as opposed to the loud, annoying air conditioner on these cooler nights. That was the odd thing about yesterday.

Let me first start out with making it clear I wasn’t feeling it at all before I even attempted to do the WOD today. It happens sometimes and thankfully not often at all. We’ll all have some somewhat off days here and there. I think more than anything it’s just the recent heat catching up with me. The last time I just plain couldn’t finish a WOD was when I had gone without thyroid pills for reasons I won’t get into on here.

After slacking yesterday I decided I had to do my strength. It wasn’t too bad this morning heat and humidity wise. A little warm for my liking but tolerable at least. I’d love to be able to do the workouts early in the morning but having neighbors attached I don’t want to be that noisy asshole. It’s a matter of respect. Treat others better than you expect to be treated.

I was lazy today. Not really lazy but it was hot and I didn’t sleep so well the night before thanks to someone deciding to start lighting off fireworks around midnight. I was thinking to do a WOD after we picked up the air conditioner that we ordered but decided not to pick it up. We had a very heavy shower that really did nothing to cool it off that much but instead bumped up the humidity.

I woke up this morning and peaked at the weather radar before getting out of bed and saw there were some weakening thunderstorms approaching. I got dressed and grabbed the cushions off the patio furniture and brought them in. By the time I got my coffee after finishing that the rain started. That was cutting it a little close. After drinking some coffee and it getting a little later in the morning I decided to work on my strength that I skipped over yesterday while sitting in the living room waiting for a package that I may have to sign for.

I would be lying if I’d say I am surprised at failing today but I would also be in denial if I would say it still didn’t disappoint me. The reality of it is for me I know summer kills me. It always has affected me even as a small child playing. The cold is something I can tolerate more than most people though. Today the dew point is back up to the 70 degree area which seems to be where it really starts to rear it’s ugly head in how it adversely influences my ability to stay reasonably cool.

Sometimes life throws the unexpected at you and the only thing you can really do is take it for what it is and go with the flow. I’ve had a good run consistently working out basically daily and was felling really good about it.. Last week our lights started flickering but then it went away. We figured it had something to do with the transformer that blew nearby over the weekend.

I definitely had a good but rough day at the home gym today. My strength today was to be heaviest squats, moderate strict presses and light deadlifts. I just reset the weights on those. I had failed the deadlifts last week. The squats were at 240. This to me is a moderately heavy weight. Today it didn’t feel heavy at all. It felt great for sure. My technique has so greatly improved it’s amazing.

Today, fairly early in the morning I worked through my normal strength that was scheduled for this day. It went well., really well for me. It started out with with some nice moderately weighted back squats to get me warmed up. They felt really, really good today! I did them at 230 pounds today which is around where they typically start feeling heavier but that turned out to not the case at all today.

Yesterday I didn’t end up doing a WOD at all. My calves were very crampy so I erred on the side of caution and rested and stretched them. I’m sure I was just dehydrated from the recent heat and humidity and additionally drinking copious amounts of alcohol Thursday night. I’d always rather take a rest day now than exasperate an unknown injury. I did do very heavy deadlifts for me in the heat on Thursday.

I was very disappointed with failing the back squats yesterday early on and knew they were rather light and I only failed because of sweat allowing the bar to shift a bit. Yesterday and even early this morning there was a ridiculously high tropical humidity. It was the kind where sweating does absolutely no good. It just makes your skin wet. Towards late morning the dew point had been slowly falling from around 75 to 70.

It wasn’t all that bad when I woke up this morning. pretty humid but tolerable. As the morning went on the temperature has increased over time. I did a lot of debating in my head on whether I wanted to attempt my strength work today or push it back a day or two when it’s cooler and less humid About 9:00 I decided it was time to go do my strength work for today.

It was humid this morning, very humid. You know when everything feels wet and won’t dry, well that’s how it felt. Sort of like when your down the shore but there is no beach here nor is there a nice refreshing ocean to take a dip in. The dew point and temperature were maybe a degree or two a part at the most. I miss having a personal weather station to see neat information like this.

I can’t deny it. Honestly this week at least WOD wise I’ve been sort of lazy. Part of it was the heat and humidity this week. I’m getting more used to it but it will take time. We just haven’t had any this week. Even if it weren’t for the heat I’m okay with having a few days here and there where I’m somewhat lazy. Well I’m okay with it as long it doesn’t become a pattern but I can’t say I can really imagine that happening since I do love to work out and push myself.

Given the fact that my back squats today were only 205 pounds and I only had three sets of five to do today I again did them with a pause in the hole. Just a few sessions of doing this has my bottom position in much better shape than it was before. There wasn’t anything wrong with it before but improvement is always possible. I also did my strict presses since they were back to 95 pounds.

From the time I woke up I’ve had a bit of a pressure headache from everything being all closed up. No matter what I couldn’t get my nose to really open up for more than a few seconds. I don’t think I have any allergies but do get irritated from the fine particles. I can even get the same way with dust. Just to be sure I checked my temperature and it’s still 97 point something so n fever.

I turned my 3 x 5 back squats into paused ones again today since it was only 200 pounds. I am hoping history for me repeats itself an as it did in the past the paused squats help me get stronger in the sticking point. Not using any bounce really seems to help me out of the hole. Another nice thing about the paused squats is the help remind me how to stay more up right and push my knees forward forward and out coming out of the bottom rather than my ass shooting up and trying to get me out of good position.

I’ve been wanting to throw these in someplace for a while now but much of the spring the weather has just been pretty uncooperative for outside stuff. If the weather’s been cooperative at all we’ve chosen to do a street parking programmed WOD together. Today Molly had to do a different one and I we wanted to do the programmed one together outside on a different day so I’m holding off on that.

We ordered it a while back but there was a delay in receiving it and that was although disappointing completely understandable. We got the rest of it last week but haven’t had a dry day or one that wasn’t chilly and windy since receiving it. We were waiting on the plastic feet and uprights. The feet are nice to have since they make it fairly quiet on the blacktop. I chose to just use a 35 pound plate and go fast since I haven’t touched a sled in years and wanted to give pulling it a try too.

Over the past couple of days I have basically been too lazy to do a WOD. I’ve done my strength stuff on the days I was supposed to but didn’t do the WODS. I am perfectly fine with that too. I don’t do rest days per se but I do rest when I feel like I need it. Maybe I needed it the past few days or maybe it was just the waking up with a nasty headache from a stuffy head thanks to all of the lovely pollen.

Today’s WOD was one of them that on paper looked like It would be challenging but doable. 50 barbell man makers, which consist of a deadlift, bent over row and cluster complex and then some running. I was tired all day but my choices of days to do this WOD look like it would either be today or Thursday due to rain in the weather forecast. Warming up with the bar I thought today’s might be one of those that I could RX+ So I threw on tens in addition to the 25 pound plates so I could readily and quickly pull off some weight if I need to.

I am continuing with my starting strength and still going strong with the deadlifts. Last week’s deadlifts felt pretty slow and grindy.. Per the video the form was still good and saw no reason no to finish the set so I did but I strongly suspected this week would be the week I fail at the prescribed weight. Don’t get me wrong I was hopeful I would get through them but I kept the realistic expectation in the back of my mind that I’d have to discontinue and restart at a lower weight.

I just got done doing today’s starting strength and it got me thinking again about how grateful I am to be able to have a nicely set up home gym. Due to the fact that we’ve built up our equipment over the years I am able to keep working out like I normally do since we don’t need to go to a public place that’s smartly closed. Today was 3x5 back squats at 215.

Working Through the starting strength program today I was back to Bench press and pull ups day today. I’ve been taking it somewhat easy on the pull ups sine I lost a lot with a lump on my one wrist last year that head me back for like a year. It was only effecting pull ups. While the lump is still there bit it hasn’t been effecting me in any way since I started the street parking thing.

I was working through my starting strength today and it was bench press day. I was to do 185. This lift has always been my weakest because I never trusted spotters or myself reracking since I can’t see the j cups well. Doing it in the rack with the safetys set is game changer for me. I feel like I can push it more. It doesn’t happen often. Maybe once ever year or two but once in a while when it’s feeling a bit heavyish my Hamstring will cramp doing this lift.

I was working on my starting strength lifts today. One week and I’m already off the schedule I want to be on. Yesterday’s WOD deceived me and took way more out of me than I expected but that’s a different story. The great thing about doing this here at home is how I can be so flexible about timing and scheduling. The lifts felt slow and heavy today and I couldn’t figure out why.

A few year ago for my birthday burpees I scaled them up to burpee pull ups. That was more less because in my 40s I could do something I couldn’t do as a teenager. As a teen I couldn’t do pull ups. I didn’t try often but when I tried I just couldn’t do them. Well I got through those burpee pull ups and the first 30 weren’t bad at all but then they started killing me.

I have no idea when or why but doing lunges has finally clicked for me. Lunges are definitely one of those movements that have always given me fits and caused endless frustration. It was more to my sense of balance than skill. I tend to favor my side opposite the one that has the better vision and it’s completely understandable why. I naturally favor that side with everything because I see better that way.

Doing Today’s WOD I realized that I am able to to keep the intensity high with the WODS from street parking which really is the main purpose of doing them in this manner. The movements have been put together in a way that there’s not the things I can do well and fast with one that I am not good at thrown in every day. I am much more comfortable with running here during the day.

Lifting is one of those things that I truly love doing. My favorite lift of all is squats. Every single rep gives me a sense of happiness and feels like the one tie I can do something and be in complete control of the situation. My eyes or I guess you would say poor vision really takes that away from me in a lot of situations. Sure I can run but there’s always the risk of not seeing a car or the thing I am most terrified of is running into a little kid out playing as they should be.

I really haven’t been doing much of anything for strength in the past nine months or so. I’ve been doing the Street Parking 20 rep squat programming but that’s only once a week and still relatively light for me. About A week ago I started to do Starting Strength to see where that takes me. I like experimenting at times. Today was my third day of the starting strength thing and I was doing my last set of power cleans when Cryptopsy’s Phobophile came on.

We were able to do the sandbag version of today’s wod together out in the back yard. It was just sandbag burpees and 400 meter carry for basically two rounds. The weather was decent for the winter. it was by no means warm or anything but it was mild enough to do a workout, out in the backyard and ally. The WOD itself was harder than I expected, particularly the carries.

I did the first WOD earlier. That was deadlifts and burpees. Not bad. The burpees slowed me down a decent amount do to space and not having room to trip over the bar safely. The deadlifts went really well. I chose 225 pounds for basically 4 a minute adding another burpee each minute and they felt light. I’m happy with that considering I haven’t been deadlifting or lifting anything heavy for that matter in a few months.

A little while back I was looking into the other things that street parking offers and I came across the 20 rep squat program. I decided to give it a try. So far so good, I started at only 95 pounds and now I am up to 155 as of today. It’s been feeling pretty good with no missed reps and not feeling heavy yet. In the past I have had success with lots and lots of heavy singles but I saw this program and thought I’d see how it feels.

If there is one thing I miss about going to an actual gym to work out is there is usually more options for space. We’d often try to set up near each other so we could watch each other and try to keep up with each other. We also did partner WODS together The one downfall about doing workouts in the garage is there is much less space. Stuff with barbells tends to take up to much space at least for my own comfort.

The idea for this originally popped into my head a week or two ago as a sarcastic comment. Originally I wanted to start about 11:00 PM so I could finish 2019 and start 2020 with it. I was already tired before doing the WOD in the morning so I decided to just row the half marathon after that. The worst part about these long rows is they’re fucking boring. It’s just so long repeating the same thing over and over again.

I hate running, I have always hated running even as a kid, I did not like doing it. At Crossfit It was programmed way too often in my opinion. I wasn’t paying to be told to go play in traffic. You had to either cross a busy road which of course with my vision problems I’m going to err on the caution side of things or for 100 to 200 meters it was run back and fourth in the shopping center’s parking lot and people tend to not pay attention to what the fuck they’re doing while driving in parking lots so I never felt safe doing that.

One of the things I enjoy about doing the street WODS is once in a while they throw in a different movement. A while back it was knee jumps which I had actually done once in a while on my own but it was cool seeing how many people found out they can do a new thing that they thought they couldn’t do. Anyways Today’s WOD included seated box jumps. I’ve always wanted to try them but was overwhelmed by the visual aspect of it.

We started doing Street Parking WODS a month or so ago and noticed they had a sandbag WOD and sandbag options for lots of the daily ones. I thought that looked like a interesting new twist and I’ve been wanting a sandbag for a while. Picked up a Brute Force one that takes 25 to 75 pounds figuring it would work for both of us. The 50 has felt almost too light for me but I’ve stuck with it to practice.

We’ve been in a very long rut with getting into the Crossfit gym for various reason but mainly because of scheduling. By the time Molly got home from work we had to wait to get into the box at 6pm. It was just enough time to almost eat supper and digest before going into the gym. The biggest benefit to this change is we’re able to schedule our workouts around what works for us?

Well it’s that time of the year again. It’s time for the Crossfit open. I signed up again to see where I stand compared to last year. I know I have improved greatly in the past year. The biggest thing is experience has taught me how to best approach each workout because I have a better understanding of my own strengths and weaknesses. I have improved my skills quite a bit over the past year.

Something I find sad and depressing at the same time is the sheer amount of useless contraptions and fad diets out there that people use to lose weight. The common words in the ads for such thing are “six pack”, toned, ripped. Really People all it takes is a little hard work and you can do it too! It will take more than 2 minutes a day and no you can’t eat big sized happy meals every day but if you just do the work and eat better you’ll end up healthier and happier.