My Running Journal, 021310

Today was day three of my Crossfit Onramp experience. The exercises we covered were deadlifts and box jumps. Both a very easy exercises as far as getting the form right, but because of their simplicity they are also very easy to do wrong. Especially Deadlifts. The exercise today was a partnered 10 minutes AMRAP (As Many Rounds As Possible) of 7 Deadlifts and 7 Box jumps. One partner exercises while the other rests, and when both partners have completed one set of each exercise, then they have completed one round. My partner and I did six rounds – focusing more on form than on speed right now. The DL bar was (only) 95lbs, and the box was about 18” tall.

I’m pretty sure we could have done DLs of 115 to 135 lbs and still had good form – in fact I think with more weight, my form probably would have been better – the reason being that with low weights it is relatively easy to unconsciously cheat during the exercise – I “don’t” need perfect form to lift half of my body weight, but I would need it to get up to 2/3rds, and good form also allows you to be energy conservative. I am pretty sure that I was cheating at certain points, if only because I was aware of flaws in my form and was still chugging along.

And I can’t blame that on the weight – we were at a lower weight because we were partnered up, and my partner needed to focus on his form as well as dealing with the weight. Once you have entrained yourself to use good form, there is less thinking about overall body positioning and more brain power can be pushed into your lift.

I think that today’s workout is a good replacement for the scheduled 30 minutes of fast walking in the running training. Tomorrow is a 3.5 miler on the trail, which will probably be a fun, dirty, muddy jog.