Crossfit - Week 6

I've been so lazy about posting an update about how Crossfit is going but it's been really great and I love it. I'm officially finished with the crossfit foundations part of the program and am now in regular group WOD classes 3-4 days a week. I've now been to four group WODs and it's a little more intense than the foundations program, enough that I'm starting to get sore all over again. Because it's now a group workout though I seem to push myself more to keep up with the rest of the class so I think that has a lot to do with the increased intensity. I'd say my strong points in Crossfit are definitely the lifts. I'm surprised at that because I always thought I had no upper body strength but the lifts really use your entire body strength, core as well as momentum so I've been using the prescribed weights and sometimes can go up higher than that. My favourite lift is the Split Jerk because you can go with an impressive amount of weight and look really strong but the weight is being lifted by your core, not just your arms and I seem to have a strong core and good strength in my legs and hips. Plus its fun once the timing of your movements comes together.

My worst, WORST in Crossfit are Turkish Get Ups and skip rope. The Turkish Get Ups frustrate me to no end because I can't seem to get the coordination of the movements down. At the point where your supposed to pull your leg forward into a lunge is where I get mixed up. My leg drags and it doesn't feel like a smooth motion and I just hate them because I feel stupid doing them.

Skip rope I can do but it's not smooth and graceful and I use a lot more effort then I should be using because my skips are too high and well..um...I get mommy bladder. Any of you moms out there will know what that is. My bladder just doesn't like the jostling up down movement very much even though I never have a problem while running. I haven't had a 'problem' yet, but it takes everything I have in me not to release the flood gates if you know what I mean. All this week my classes have included Double Unders which I still can't get so I end up having to do 60 skips while everyone else does 20 Double Unders, all the while holding my bladder. Thats the exchange rate and it doesn't seem fair. I also dislike burpees and wall balls but I can get thru the workout and suck it up ok and they get easier from class to class.

My Pull Ups are definitely getting better. I still use the thick band to assist me but I can use the skinny green band if I'm only doing 5 pull ups total or less. I can't wait until I can do a pull up without the bands. I know I'll eventually be able to do them but it feels like my muscles need to wake up a bit. Park visits with my kids now always include me practicing pull ups on the monkey bars which is so much easier because the bars are smaller and easier to grip and your closer to the ground. I can at least do something called negatives on the monkey bars where you lower yourself down very slowly. Thats apparently supposed to help train your muscles.  Dips (not with rings) are much easier and I can do those without a band if I'm only doing 2 but with a green medium band if I'm doing more.

Body wise I have definitely seen changes in the last 6 weeks. My weight has gone up about 4lbs which my trainer insists is great but it makes me feel nervous. I can definitely feel a lot of new muscles which is what the weight gain is attributed to. My thighs have gotten a bit bigger but more toned. I was warned by my trainer that the one thing women seem to notice is that the quads get bigger. I thought that because mine are already quite big that it wouldn't happen to me but alas, they are indeed bigger. I'm having some fit issues with pants in the last two or so weeks. My Astro WU's are the right size leg wise but the waist is too big and they slip down with running quite a lot. Yesterday was embarrassing doing my run in a large group WOD all the while pulling up my pants every 10 seconds so I think I may get some Groove Crops soon. My jeans are tight in the thigh but the waist now slides down and I'm constantly tugging up at them. I used to be on the smaller side of 10 in pants and could fit some 8's (DSP's, pique grooves) but now I'd say I'm a solid 10 on the bottom thanks to the thighs.  I'm overall happy with the changes in such a short time as far as new muscle goes but I'd like to get rid of some of the fat and drop some sizes and to do that I need to bite the bullet and adjust my eating. Yesterday was my first grocery shopping trip where the cart had 100% Paleo dinners. I'm not going to totally cut dairy out just yet because I need it in my coffee in the morning and also I like to occasionally have cheese and yogurt but I can really reduce my dairy a lot by taking cheese out of recipes and only have it as a snack once in a while. It's going to take a lot of effort since I wont be changing my kids diet and I want us to still eat mostly the same meals together with only slight variation and without them seeing typical 'dieting behavior'. I think dinners will be easy but lunch and snacks will probably be hard since you can't exactly carry around a drum stick to gnaw on while out and about with the kids so I'd like to find a good paleo cookie/kid friendly snack that I can pack and take with us. 

Work in Progress

Doing 'Grace' 30 reps for time. Not a pretty picture.