Niall's Blog

[caption id="attachment_690" align="aligncenter" width="320" caption="Me participating in FBG IV at CF Oakland, Sep. 2009"][/caption] I've signed up as an athlete in the CrossFit Games 2010 Sectionals NorCal. I'd consider myself an intermediate level CrossFitter at this point - able to complete all the WODs in a reasonable time - but certainly nothing compared to the guys at the top.

Why I'm doing the Sectionals

Great Team Mostly, I'm going to compete because a bunch of my friends at the gym are also competing. I want to support our awesome crew and throwing my name in the ring seems like the best way! Personal Goals Even though I'm not exactly expecting to win, or even do especially well, I think the sectionals are important as a training goal. Having an event in the near future (12 weeks out at this point) is a great motivator. For me, CrossFit is very much a personal development thing. Although I enjoy the friendly competition at my gym and am looking forward to competing at the sectionals, as far as I'm concerned I'm mostly competing against myself. So, the Sectionals are basically a way to push myself and hopefully beat a bunch of my personal records along the way.

Training Log

I thought it might be cool to post my training log to my website. I already keep a private log as part of my diary, but having it public makes things a bit more interesting. I plan to update pretty regularly although I don't know yet if it will be daily or more like a weekly digest. Since this is my first entry, I should start by stating roughly where I am right now. Weight: 165 lbs Height: 5'8" Age: 26 Current Personal Records Lifts

Shoulder Press: 155lbs Back Squat: 300lbs Deadlift: 375lbs Power Clean: 195lbs Overhead Squat: 145lbs

Named WODs

Fran: 4 minutes 33 seconds Elizabeth: 9 minutes Georgia: 5 minutes 20 seconds Charlotte: 4 minutes 33 seconds Randy: 3 minutes 57 seconds Fight Gone Bad: 320 points

Other Stuff

5k time: 21 minutes 13 seconds 10k time: 48 minutes 10 seconds Max pull-ups: 42 Max weighted pull-up: 95lbs

[caption id="attachment_714" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Many of the crew at CF KMSF!"][/caption]

Training Plan

I'll be following the WODs at my gym as much as possible. I hope to be able to make it to the gym four times a week, more if possible. When not at the gym, I will work out at home. I have kettlebells, a pull-up bar, rings and an olympic weights set (300lbs of iron plates - can't go too heavy) so I can do a bunch of good stuff in my apartment. Strength I believe that the single most important thing in the competition is going to be strength. The stronger you are, the easier every possible workout will be, no matter what. Also, strength takes a long time (years) to develop - compared with cardio endurance it can't be trained quickly. So I'm going to work quite a bit on getting stronger with the power lifts and Olympic lifts. Two-a-day I'm also hoping to train in the morning and in the evening. In the morning I'll probably focus on high intensity, many reps kind of stuff. I don't know that I'll be able to keep up two-a-day every day though. Shoulder flexibility Shoulder flexibility is probably the biggest single weakness I have. It makes some of the movements quite difficult and even painful for me - for example heavy push jerks. I've made good progress in the past year, but over the next 12 weeks I want to be particularly dilligent with icing and mobility work. Diet I'll be following a Paleo Zone diet as best I can, although I'm not planning to be terribly strict about it for a while yet. Supplements I'm taking 200 mg chelated magnesium, 5,000 IU vitamin d3 and two tablespoons of fish oil daily and plan to continue.

Today's Log

Gym is closed today so I worked out at home. Still getting back into things after a 2 week layoff while I was on vacation in Ireland. I ran this at home: 4 rounds of: 30 Kettlebell Swings @ 1.5 pood, 10 Dead Hang Pull-Ups.

Niall O'Higgins is an author, event organizer and software consultant. He wrote the book MongoDB and Python, published by O'Reilly. Events he organizes include We Have Tablets, the #1 Bay Area Tablet Computing Meet-up and PyWebSF. He also offers consulting services for Mobile, Tablet and Cloud Computing.

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