A. EMOTM (every minute on the minute) for 9 minutes:
Minutes 1-3: 3 push presses
Minutes 4-6: 3 push jerks
Minutes 7-9: 3 split jerks.
This is the fourth week for this complex, so hopefully you’re working your way up in weight. Your starting weight should have been roughly 70% of your max push press, but you should be heavier than that by now. Try to go a bit heavier than last week. This may mean adding weight right from the start, or you may add some weight for the push jerks and/or the split jerks.
B. Row 3000 m for time. If you are a bit more experienced, and time and space allow, you have the option of doing a 5 km row. If there aren’t enough rowers in a busy class, you may do 15 minutes on the Airdyne bike for max calories.
Here’s a good article from Mike Warkentin of CrossFit 204 and the editor of the CrossFit Journal. Incidentally, if you are not familiar with the CF Journal, you are missing out on an absolute wealth of information.
Mike’s article is geared towards people who feel that doing strength work isn’t as important as getting hot and sweaty during a hard metabolic conditioning (“metcon”) workout. Firstly, let me say that I think that overall, we do a pretty good job of making sure people get some strength work in on a regular basis. However, I know there are some of you who may feel that unless your heart rate is jacked through the roof and your shirt is soaked with sweat, it’s not worth coming in for a workout. Sometimes you just need to dial back that heart rate, take the time to do things in a more controlled setting, and put everything you’ve got into just getting stronger and more skilled at a particular movement.
Maybe pull-ups just aren’t “your thing”. Newsflash… if you don’t work on them, they will never, ever become your thing. And that, my friends, is precisely why you need to work on that weakness of yours. We don’t like to do the things we aren’t good at, but part of being a mature athlete (and human being, for that matter) is recognizing your weaknesses and facing them head on.
If you’re reading this and thinking, “Hey, that’s not me. I LOVE lifting heavy stuff. I don’t even like metcons.” Well, Mike has something to say to you as well.