Hard to imagine but I have only one week left in China. Not only am I going home for a month during the holidays (hooray!), but I am also anticipating another change that will completely shake up my life once again. I cannot tell you what is happening at this time but wait for a big announcement maybe at the end of this week. All I can say is that Kirsten Captures is becoming more of a travel blog then ever anticipated.
Holy moly.
Saturday, November 3rd
Since I skipped Thursday evening Crossfit due to extreme exhaustion, I was determined to do my own workout during Saturday’s open gym. I needed to break my 3 day exercise hiatus! Fortunately Wednesday’s morning WOD was still written on the mirror and included a strength portion!
I have never done Front Squats before and managed to get a few pointers from trainer Mark. Positioning the barbell is a little awkward and really tests the flexibility of your wrists. I found it helpful to focus on keeping my elbows up and in. It is also important that you grip the bar so that it can rest on the anterior deltoid.
To start I did a couple of warm-up sets with just a 20kg bar to work on my form. The movement felt super awkward at first but eventually I got the hang of it. I worked my way up to 5 sets of 5 Front Squats with 40kg (88lbs). Not too impressive, just a little more than one half of my bodyweight, but it felt good and totally fried my quads. My strength has seriously taken a beating! Ugh.
After that I set up for an “easy” WOD. Sometimes I like easy ;-).
WOD
10 Burpee
20 Wall Ball (5kg)
30 OH Walking Lunges (10kg)
3RFT
My time was 13.10 but it was definitely a struggle! Burpees and Wall Balls are definitely some of my least favorite exercises because my lungs are screaming for mercy before my muscles. However, they are explosive movements that work the entire body which is always a good thing. More bang for your buck!
As much as I enjoy the group environment of Crossfit classes, I prefer selecting my own workouts based on my body and and my goals. I look forward to mixing up my workouts with Crossfit, good ole strength training, and HIIT once my Crossfit membership ends.
But for now, I’m still learning. It is my goal to learn as much as I can about the basic olympic lifts and Crossfit programming in order to best incorporate them into my own workouts as well as my client’s workouts.
When it comes to fitness I am eager to learn as much as I can.
Kirsten Captures 