CrossFit Spartanburg

Well, I live in Spartanburg now, so it’s time for me to go to a gym in Spartanburg. I reeeally love my CFBB family, so trying a new gym (CrossFit box or not) is scary for me. Not to mention that I’m introverted and meeting new people is scary!

On Saturday, I went to the Indoc class at CrossFit Spartanburg. It was for people who really don’t know much about CrossFit — what’s a clean? Here’s how to do a wallball. Are you squatting deeply enough? So, yeah, I know all that stuff already, but going to the newbie class made me feel more comfortable.

So today, I went to my first real class. And CrossFit Spartanburg doesn’t have Boost... so I have to go to regular CrossFit now. They scaled the workout a bit for me, which I was thankful for! So my workout tonight was:

15 lateral barbell burpees
15 Russian kb swings (26 lbs)
10 lateral barbell burpees
10 overhead squats (35 lbs)
5 lateral barbell burpees
5 American kb swings (26 lbs)

I finished in 7 minutes and 38 seconds. Felt good. Coach Tal was awesome. People were friendly. Guess I’ll go back!

Last night... no, really.

Last night was my last night of going to CFBB regularly. I'm pretty bummed about it. I am moving to Spartanburg this weekend, and the 2 hour round trip is a bit much for driving to the gym. I'm going to have to find something in Spartanburg!

My Boost friends took a couple of pictures with me!

Cleaning Up

Me again!

Last night, I went to regular Crossfit again. I was going to go to bootcamp, but a fellow gym member asked if anyone wanted to go to the 6:30 class... and I really wanted to because it actually looked pretty fun. Fun=hard.

We did our 400m run and stretching to start, followed by bench presses. The Rx weight was your body weight + 25lbs. I laugh at that. I benched 55 lbs. So there.

Then we had 20 deadlifts, followed by 10 push jerks... 3 times. Once again, I laughed at the Rx weight of 105lbs. I loaded the bar up to 55, but couldn't clean it. That was frustrating because I know I've cleaned 55lbs before. Oh, well. I went down to 45 and did fine. We had to do all that in 14 minutes, and I finished right at the 14 minute mark!

Next week is my last full, normal week at CFBB. Then I'll be living in Spartanburg. Gotta find something there. I'll visit, though!

June

So I've been really bad lately about writing in this blog!

June was great, though! There was actually a week where I went to Crossfit 5 times. I went to Boost twice, Bootcamp twice, and then to Conjuga (focus on powerlifting).

I've also been to regular Crossfit twice this month. I'm trying to prepare for later this month when I move. I'm very ready to move to Spartanburg, but there a two main issues I'm having. One is unrelated to Crossfit and involves a cat. The other is that I'm moving an hour away from CFBB. I love the community at BangBang and I'm pretty sad about leaving. I'm also very nervous about finding another gym that I'll like. I want to check out Crossfit Spartanburg, but I'm also open to other non-Crossfit options. I'm honestly kind of scared of other Crossfit boxes because they just do regular Crossfit classes without anything like Boost or Bootcamp. I know that I can do regular Crossfit, but I get easily overwhelmed.... I just don't know what I'm going to do! I do know that I still plan to drop in at BangBang and, of course, go to their social events.

In other news, I got a new deadlift PR last night -- 175lbs!

Murph+

I have not posted on my blog in a long time, though I have been going to Boost regularly. One day a couple of weeks ago, I missed Boost and went to Bootcamp instead. And it seemed like an easy workout in the description... but I should have known better!

Monday was a special day in CrossFit land. It was Memorial Day, which means Murph. Here’s the Murph workout:

This is the second year I have participated in Murph. Both years, I have done half — last year I did the workout with a partner, but I sailed solo this year. It wasn’t really that bad alone. But I tell you... I was sooo sore this year. I’m finally feeling better, though.
And then I went to Boost on Wednesday. I hoped for an “easy” workout (haha) since I was so sore, but that definitely didn’t happen. We had to do a hill run, followed by 60 dumbbell push presses, 4 sandbag cleans, 80 sit-ups, and then 60 lunges. And then start over! But I only got through it once with about 30 seconds left, so I stopped!

Oh, and here’s a picture from Murph:

Sandbags Be Heavy

I went to Boost again on Wednesday (and Monday, btw) evening. Jess was coaching. This workout was tough, but I think it was made tougher by the fact that I overdid it the first round through. Let's see if I can remember the workout....

20 min AMRAP

200m sandbag carry (45lbs)
20 air squats
5 hand release pushups
20 single unders
:20 bar hang

Yep, I think that's it.

Anyway, for whatever reason, my brain did not understand that carrying a 45lb sandbag was going to be really hard for me? I think it's because I can barely pick up the 65lb sandbag, so 45lb seemed light?

So, I hoisted the 45lb sandbag onto my left shoulder and started walking. I made it about 50m before I realized it was really too heavy for me. The problem was that I couldn't move the weight once I got it on my shoulder without putting it all the way down. The other athletes could move it from shoulder to shoulder, or maneuver it onto their backs, but I couldn't seem to do that. At the 100m mark, I had to put the bag down. Then it took me forever to be able to pick it back up. By the time I made it back inside, I was pretty much spent! The rest of the round did not go all that well, and then the thought of carrying the sandbag another 200m just about made me cry. Jess got me a 20lb medicine ball and I carried that for the rest of the time. I was just so tired that we skipped the 30lb ball entirely!

I kept going for the entire 20 minutes, but I wasn't particularly happy about it. I was pretty miserable, actually. Trent asked me why I do things to myself that make me miserable. I had a hard time explaining it at the time. But, the thing is, the workouts rarely make me feel miserable. In fact, I usually feel fairly proud of myself after a workout, especially if I make it through a really difficult one!

And in retrospect, I suppose I'm still somewhat proud of myself for going the whole 20 minutes of this workout. I just wish I could get to the point where a 45lb sandbag is actually doable. Where it's not a foreboding amount of weight. I just feel pretty weak sometimes and that does make me sad.

5 Times

Last night was actually the 5th time I've been to the gym since my last blog post. I've just sucked at posting anything!

So, last night's workout was kinda cool because I was the only one there for Boost. So I had Jess all to myself. I liked it! She even let me pick the music, lol. I chose, of course, Needtobreathe. Some of the other Boost regulars say they wouldn't want to be the only one there, but I really did enjoy it. Not that I don't enjoy the company of the other athletes as well....

The workout last night was a tabata work out, which I really liked. It was difficult, but the fun thing about tabatas is you know exactly what you're going to do and how long it's going to take. A tabata is 8 rounds of 20 seconds of work, 10 seconds rest... so 4 minutes total of one exercise. The first tabata was sit-ups, followed by rowing, hammer curls, and wall sits. I kept having to go down in weight on the hammer curls because they got so difficult! And the wall sits were pretty hard, too -- my legs were absolutely burning!

My arms a bit sore today from the curls, but I'm fine aside from that!