AndiMorris

I make the lemon-lime recovery drink from the Thrive book. I think the recipe is online on one of Brendan Brazier's websites. It's tasty, and apparently hits the 4:1 carb:protein ratio required for recovery.

Man that sounds just like me, except I'm older. I've hit a plateau at around 80kg back squat, 40kg press and 110kg deadlift and just cannot seem to get beyond it, in fact I feel like I'm losing strength since going vegan! I hope people can advise you through this, I'll be very interested to know if you combat it successfully.

Workout 22/08/13 - Barbell Club Warm Up: Row 300m Pipe pass-throughs Mobility work Workout: Snatch balance 20kg Hang snatch technique 20kg 5x1 @ 80% 1RM Hang snatch (32.5kg) 3x3 Front squat (60,50,55) 2x30s L-sits (with knees bent) 100x plate twists (15kg) I love barbell club, I’ve said it before, but I love it. I like spending time getting used to the technique, and I learn something new every session. Last night I feel my pulls were all fine getting the bar up, but the usual issue raised it’s head of getting under the bar into the catch position quickly. As I wasn’t raising the weight each time this did improve with each lift and I felt more confident with each set. Slowly but surely I am getting towards the proper snatch technique, and once I have that then I can start to think about increasing the weight on the bar. Front squats tonight felt weak! Recently I did 3 x 3 at 60kg, so thought I’d have a go at 65kg, but it felt heavy, really heavy and I dumped the bar at the bottom of the squat. I have no idea why it felt so heavy! I went back and did 60kg, but form was crap, so went 50 and 55 for the 2nd and 3rd sets, which were both fine. Utterly frustrating!! I was chatting to my training partner for the night about how I’m just not gaining any strength at the moment, and he suggested the mass gainer powders. I mentioned that it was whey based, and I was a vegan and he was gob-smacked, jokingly suggesting that is why I’m losing strength. Even bringing the coach into the conversation. To be fair, I am the weakest, skinniest guy at the box, but I was just as weak and skinny before going vegan, just with some added belly fat. These are exactly the sort of preconceptions I really want to break with my training and veganism, but I am obviously struggling. In fairness to the guys, neither were outright telling me I was wrong in my choice, or stupid, etc, and any knocking on it was completely from a friendly ribbing banter point of view, and I’m more than happy to laugh along with that, as I know at the moment I am completely fitting the stereotype of the skinny vegan….it’s just made me all the more determined…..which reminds me, it’s second breakfast time

Workout 21/08/13 Warm Up: Run 400m 3 rounds of: 7 front squat 20kg 7 push press 20kg 7 burpees Lift: 3x5 strict press (30, 35, 35x3, 32.5x2) WOD (Level 1): 50 thrusters (25kg) 3 burpees on the minute Ah the press, I hate the press. I just cannot seem to get any stronger at it, in fact I have lost strength. Looking at my diary I have completed 3x5 @ 35kg a few months ago, but that just wasn’t happening last night. I guess I need more food!!! I was a bit nervous about the thrusters last night, my quads and groin still hadn’t recovered properly since the sprints last week! Even on the warm up jog everything felt tight and painful. I made sure I stretched these out quite a bit beforehand, and it actually went ok. Rx was 60kg, but there was not a chance of that happening. I went for 25kg and finished in 9:30. I was considering going at 30kg, but at the last minute dropped down, and I’m glad of that. The work capacity is definitely there these days, and technique is improving on all the gymnastic movements and most of the lifts, but my strength is still not improving.

Well this is the first time I've ever tried to bulk on a clean vegan diet, so time will tell whether it makes any difference. Fingers crossed though.

Nope, I'm the same. Every time I try a bulk it just goes on as fat.

Happy birthday for Tuesday!

Workout 14/08/13 Buy In: 50 double unders Pull up practise Warm Up: 200m run Dynamic stretching Static stretching Met Con: 5 * 200m sprints (37s, 38s, 42s, 43s, 44s) 90 seconds between rounds WOD: 7 rounds: 5 * thrusters 30kg 15 double unders 9 minute time cap I don’t think I’ve ever trained sprints before, and it showed. My legs were like jelly after these finished, and my groin and calves are really tight still, the morning after. I should get the foam roller out this evening I think. I’m pleased I finished the workout under the time cap, in 8 minutes. Double unders were chaining fairly well, which really helped. I did however scale the weight on the thrusters to 30kg. Rx was 60kg which I knew I was nowhere near achieving. My lack of strength is definitely my ahem….weakness.

Workout 11/08/13 - CHARITY WOD!!!! Warm Up: 1km run Mobility WOD: Running Fat Jackie 1km run 50 thrusters 50/25kg 30 pull ups It was just a quick one yesterday, as we had visitors from Crossfit CF31 at the box and they needed to get moving quickly. The guys from the Bridgend box started a mission on Friday evening to do a WOD at every box in Wales over the weekend to raise money for Velindre, a local cancer care charity. By the time they go to us at 8:30 Sunday morning they had already completed 11 WODs in the previous day and a half, and after they had finished at Celtic Crossfit they had another 7 WODs to do that day. Absolute kudos to them all, they are total machines, and they smashed it, and kept on smiling. Hope you raised a fortune! This contributed to a fantastic turnout and atmosphere for an early Sunday morning class, you can see the numbers below. What a great start to the day! http://celticcrossfit.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/20130811-181236.jpg As far as the actual workout was concerned I decided to scale the thrusters to 25kg, which was probably the right choice, as doing 50 of these as quickly as possible was HARD! So hard in fact that I couldn’t face pull ups after, and made a last minute decision to do jumping ring pull ups as a scale. In hindsight I’m mortified that I bailed on the pull ups, but my arms were so dead after the thrusters I may well have still been on the bar now, 24 hours after the workout started.

Workout 10/08/13 Warm Up: Junkyard Dog Deadlift technique WOD A: 4km row for time - team of 5 WOD B: 4 minutes Tabata at each station. Station 1 - double unders Station 2 - deadlift (60kg) Station 3 - toes-to-bar Row felt pretty good in this, it was only 800m each, and so we all had a good go at smashing it. I’m not sure how quickly we did it, but it was a good lung burner. Tabata was fine too, managed to get my swing going for double unders again, chaining 30 in a row for the first 20 second stint. Most of the others were more like 10-20, with one round I only managed 4, so consistency still isn’t there, but I haven’t lost them completely. Deadlift round I started with 6 reps for the first 3 rounds, and 4 for the remaining 5 rounds. We were recommended to go just over 50% of our 1RM for this, so I chose 60kg. I really struggled with the toes-to-bar though, only managing a maximum of 6 in a 20 second round, but with most only managing 2 or 3 proper reps. Speed is definitely something I need to work on with all kipping motions as I can only really do one at a time at the moment, stopping the momentum at the bottom of the swing, then starting it again.

Workout 07/08/13 Practise: 50 double unders Warm Up: 50 burpees 2 rounds of: 10 hollow rocks 5 knees-to-elbows Skills work: 15 mins to work on butterfly pull up technique 25 mins to work on handstand push up technique WOD: 50 HSPU 100 Pull Ups 12 min time cap I very much enjoyed the skills session last night, I can now do kipping handstand push ups, so this was a good opportunity to make some progress in stringing several together. I’ve never tried butterfly kip pull ups before, but I’m pleased that I picked up the technique pretty quickly. I can’t string them together just yet though, so I need to learn how to bring my legs back and into the next swing so that I go straight into the next pull up. I’ll add some of these to my practice sessions before class. A 12 minute time cap for this WOD seemed ridiculous, but again it was a good opportunity to practice the HSPUs. I thought I was unlikely to finish all 50 in time, let alone finish the pull ups, but as I started I thought that it might actually be achievable! I was stringing 8’s and 5’s together with ease, but then my neck started hurting, and I realised that as I was getting tired I was resting too much on my head, and actually starting the push off the ground with my neck! This is bad BAD BAD form. From that point (around the half way mark on the HSPU) I really made the effort to avoid any neck pushing, but I’d lost all confidence in the movement, and was just getting 1s and 2s and many many failed reps. In the time cap I got to 32 good handstand push ups. Again I really need to work on this form, so this is another movement to add to my practice sessions.

Mine is taken with a pinch of salt. I use my bathroom scales. Generally they seem to be pretty consistent, whether they're accurate or not I'm not sure, but at least I have a monitor of whether it's generally going up or down. Generally the most accurate way I think is a caliper test, taken by somebody trained in taking the measurements.

I find it very difficult to gain muscle. Before going vegan I was vegetarian, and I managed to gain 10kg up to 77kg, but I also bounced up to around 20% body fat while I was at it. Since going vegan I have dropped the 10kg down to 67kg, and I'm not down to around 13% body fat, but I still seem to struggle to put on weight that isn't fat. It's pretty bloomin infuriating!!

Love the "Show you are not afraid" poster behind the bicep pic. Nice work

CY, how do you take in ~3000 calories in 6 hours? That's pretty hefty going on paper.

Workout - 06/08/13 Warm Up: 300m row 10 push ups 10 barbell lunges (20kg) 10 pull ups 10 push ups 10 barbell lunges (20kg) Clean technique Lift: 1RM Clean (50kg squat clean, 55kg power clean) WOD: 750m row 1km run This was the first workout back after a long weekend on the road with the band, and I still wasn’t quite recovered from a severe lack of sleep and good food. Still, I struggled through and finished everything. I was really hoping I’d have nailed the dropping under the bar part of the Olympic lifts by now, but it’s still not there. I can manage just fine up to around 50kg, but anything above I just can’t get under there. I know it’s a mental thing, as the bar is right up to my collar bone on most of the pulls. I seem to have forgotten some of the technique last night too, it doesn’t feel as natural as it did at barbell club a couple of weeks ago. Practice makes perfect …… The WOD was simple enough, although my legs were like jelly going straight from the row into the run. I didn’t take note of my time.

That acroyoga picture is amazing!

Warm Up: 400m run Lift/Skills: Clean 20kg Pull ups Ring Dips Handstand Pushups WOD: I was chuffed with myself stringing together 5 ring dips and 7 handstand push ups in the skills section, both of which are PRs, and I think there’s more there once the technique settles. I’m still a bit unstable on the rings, but with practise these will get there. HSPU are now Rx instead of with an added ab-mat too. The WOD on the board looked insane! 6 benchmark workouts in a row, but of course with 3 people in each team that meant there was plenty of rest time, and a third of the amount of reps. We powered through this at a decent pace, but we did scale the weight on the bar to 35kg for everything apart from the deadlifts which were at 70kg. I probably should have gone to 40kg, but 35kg felt heavy enough mid-WOD. I managed to squeeze out a few HSPUs during the WOD too, which I’ve never managed to do before. We completed the WOD in 26 minutes if memory serves, and it was a really good fun one. Pleased with the small progress I made with some skills movements during this class.

Workout 29/07/13 - PR frustrations Warm Up: 4 x 100m runs with 5 air squats at the end of each run 4 rounds of: 3 chest-to-bar pull ups 5 clean and jerk (20kg) 1 wall walk 1 spiderman lunge Lift: Each minute for ten minutes increasing weight until failure 1 x clean and jerk (I did power cleans and jerk, with a PR of 57.5kg) Partner WOD: 21 med-ball sit ups each (7kg) 25 overhead squats each(30kg) 25 burpees pull ups between us The lift was frustrating last night as everyone just hoarded weights, and there were none left for my partner Beth and I to be able to do this properly. We were supposed to increase the weight each rep until failure, but I had to stick at 52.5kg for every round, up until the last when I managed to borrow another 5kg from another team. This gave me my PR, but I know I could have gone higher. I also seemed to completely fallback to power cleans, instead of working on my squat cleans. Oh well, a PR is a PR, I’ll make sure to beat it properly soon. I’m so close in chest-to-bar pull ups! I know I’m only about an inch away from contact, I just cannot get my chest to connect. I think that now my double-unders have come back to reasonable form I’ll concentrate on getting these when possible by arriving early to the class. I’m sure nailing this will be another step forward to the elusive muscle up. The WOD didn’t cause too much of a problem for me. My partner and I found some middle ground with the OHS weight and the med ball weight, and we got through it all without much difficulty. Pretty enjoyable, but completely chaotic WOD when the gym is that busy.

Workout 25/07/13 - Barbell Club Warm Up: Plenty of mobility and foam rolling Snatch balance Lifts: Work up to working weight, then: 4 x 2 Hang snatch (30kg, 35kg, 30kg, 30kg) 3 x 3 Hang snatch pull (35kg) 3 x 3 Front squat (60kg) Another successful barbell club session. My main goal before starting this session was to get under the bar quicker, and I am definitely getting there!! None of the weights I did were really pushing heavy, but it was much much easier to pull under, which I’m very pleased with. Also, I can easily see improvement in my second pull, the connection with my hips is definitely better and the bar is flying up in the air, admittedly without much weight, but I can tell it’s better. I love barbell club, I improve everytime I go!

So, potentially we could supplement just the Leucine alongside our normal 25-30g of protein in a shake?

Thanks Justin, I'll check out the videos. It's not that my back is rounding, I have trouble keeping my upper body upright, and I always look up. Cheers for the advice, hope the stance change has sorted your knee caving issues?

Warm Up: Mobility WOD (in teams of 3): http://celticcrossfit.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/20130724-193948.jpg We scaled the weight to a 20kg plate, 35kg thrusters and 30kg OHS and finished a couple of minutes over the time cap. All in all a pretty punishing workout, but being in teams of 3 meant that there was plenty of rest in between sets. The main bit I struggled on was the thrusters, which after the first set of 10 I then had to drop to 5s. However I picked this up on the toes-to-bar when my team members were struggling slightly. Also, there is no easy way to run with a 20kg plate!! Breakfast: Oats with almond milk Morning snack: smoothie plus 25g nuts Lunch: Chilli and white rice (we have kilos of this to eat that we bought in bulk before starting clean eating) Afternoon snack: 2 spoons of peanut butter Post workout: Lemon-lime recovery drink (homemade, Thrive recipe) Dinner: Bolognese with pasta (again clearing old stocks)

Hi Justin, I hope you don't mind me jumping in on this thread, but I have the same sort of issue and it seems pointless starting a new thread. My knees often cave in on the ascent, so I too will try and bring my feet in a little. However I always find my chest dropping as the weight gets heavier, and I really struggle to keep it up. What sort of accessory work would you recommend to strengthen the ability to keep my chest upright?

I find this with crossfit all the time. Someone recently said to me, "when I first started this if you'd have told me that a 4 minute workout could leave be lying on the floor gasping for breath, I'd have told you that you were lying". I love it.