Making Progress and Setting PR's

I hope you all don't mind me being a little self indulgent here and sharing some of my own progress in my training.

One of the cool things about recording your training and occasionally repeating your workouts is the ability to compare results and observe changes that are taking place. This gives you insight into whether your training is helping in your progress and if so, how effective is it. Below is a snapshot of my training from my last recovery day (Sat. 8.29.09) through yesterday. Some of these workouts were benchmark sessions that I have never done before, such as Sundays CrossFit WOD, others were opportunities to observe progress. Here is how it looked:

• Sat. 8.29 - Recovery day
• Sun 8.30 - CrossFit WOD: 5 rounds for time of 75lb Power Snatch X 15 reps, run 400 meters
• Mon 8.31 - CrossFit Recovery day - I ran 10 miles hitting a new PR! Really pleased especially after doing the Power Snatch/Run WOD the day before and the fact that I was not attempting a PR run, I was just cruising and ended up posting my fastest 10 miler yet.
  
• Tues 9.1 - CrossFit WOD: For time Row 1000 meters, 75lb Thrusters X 21 reps, 21 Pull Ups. Row 750 meters, 75lb Thrusters X 15 reps, 15 pull ups. Row 500 meters, 75lb Thrusters X 9 reps, 9 Pull Ups
• Wed 9.2 - CrossFit WOD: "Elizabeth" (my daughters middle name!) 21-15-9 reps of Squat Clean 105lb., Dips. Set a new PR on this WOD!
• Thurs 9.3 - CrossFit WOD: Run 5K (which worked out great as I intended to do a tempo run) - Set a PR on this run as well!
  

Okay, enough of the self indulgence. Check this out. Since back in March, I've been integrating "Project: Performance" and CrossFit-style workouts with my Bootcamp class at Delta Faucet (I teach it every Thursday) and recording the times and scores of those attending. Yesterday we repeated the following workout, which we last did at the end of April:

For time, complete the following exercises/reps. You may do them in any order and break down the number of reps in any fashion you like. For example, you do not have to do all 50 push ups in a row. You can do 10 push ups, move to another exercise and come back to push ups when you choose; you just have to complete all the reps, or scale the workout to your current fitness level:

• Run 2 X 400 meters
  
• 50 Air Squats
• 50 Push Ups
• 50 Sit Ups
• 50 Box Jumps (or step ups)
• 25 Burpees

The results were pretty phenomenal - of those present yesterday, there were 5 present when we did this workout in April and each improved their finishing time by 20%-35%! Sure, part of this is due to the fact that they had a better idea of what to expect from this workout and how to use some strategy. But, check this out - the fastest time in April was 15:07, by the super-fit Kyle Rush (he was the fastest again yesterday at 12:30); 80% of those doing yesterday's workout were faster than Kyles time and EVERYONE was faster than the slowest time in April and they were faster by several minutes. Congrats to all who were there! You are making progress and getting more fit!

Ready to get some of this? Email me: chris-roche@comcast.net

Peace,
Chris