Okay! One more time, with feeling.

Aaron, who is awesome FYI, sat us down and helped us spiffy up the plan for the next three months. Thanks, buddy! And then we went and demonstrated how fricking right he was by attempting to do oly after a heavy strength day. Yeah, our lifts were AWESOME. No, no they weren't.

Oh, yeah, and then on the ride home, we figured out that doing ring dips and bench on the same day was also not a smart plan. And we came up with that on our own. Go B Team!

Monday
General warm up
Oly lift of the day as per CFR programming
Either on the minute clean and jerks or snatch for 10 or 15 minutes, depending on the lift.
Optional mini metcon

Tuesday
General Warm up
Skill Work - muscle up
Strength Workout
- 3x5 back squat
- 3x5 shoulder press
- 3x3 power clean
- 3xmax max weighted ring dips

Thursday
General Warm up
Aaron's oly club lifting program
Mini metcon

Friday
General Warm up
Skill Work - HSPU
Strength Workout
- 3x5 back squat
- 3x5 bench press
- 1x5 deadlift
- 3xDHPLU/weighted PLUs

Also, today Paul showed me how Spealler teaches the strict muscle up. Thanks to Paul's fine coaching, I did five! Woot! They feel way better on the joints than does the kipping version. 30 muscle ups for time as rx'd is up next. It's going to likely take me well over an hour but I really want to do it.

CrossFit Stuff

So, I've finally come up with a plan from now until the end of the calendar year that really focuses in on some of the gains I want to see this year in terms of strength and skill. I'm no where near as strong as I'd like to be. And I struggle with the oly lifts and more advanced gymnastics stuff. Frankly, it's also just fun to work on things that are dang hard, too. I've got progressive strength training happening twice a week, two days dedicated to oly lifting, MU and HSPU skill work before strenth work (I've got my muscle ups back... did four last night) and two short and dirty metcons post oly lifting. Most importantly, I'm enjoying the snot out of it! I heart lifting so much. The schedule kind of looks like this:

Monday
General Warm up
Skill Work - Muscle up
Strength Workout
- 3x5 back squat
- 3x5 shoulder press
- 1x5 deadlift
- 3xmax DHPLU/weighted PLUs

Tuesday
General Warm up
Aaron's oly lifting program
Mini metcon

Thursday
General Warm up
Aaron's oly lifting program
Mini metcon

Friday
General Warm up
Skill Work - HSPU
Strength Workout
- 3x5 back squat
- 3x5 bench press
- 3x3 powerclean
- 3xmax ring dips/weighted dips

Trying to also make sure I'm doing some mobility work after each evening and foam rolling at home as well to keep things feeling good. My diet is also really dialed in right now and my recovery after the strength work has so far been rocking. Not feeling stiff, sore or tired like last time when I went to town on the nut butter. I think the additional recovery day is also helping a bit. Where I'm falling down is the shit kicking I'm giving my cardio. 'Nuff said about that. I'm getting it sorted!

Next up on the competition front is the Sask Powerlifting's Last Chance meet here in Regina sometime in December. I'm hoping to make some nice gains between now and then!

The entire disk is gorgeous...

I'll post something CrossFitesque soon enough, I suppose.

This song has been in my head lately...

Of course, it could just be stuck in my head because I keep hitting play on my ipod.

Cabbage Rolls (For Maxine)

I'm not Ukrainian or well versed in Ukrainian cooking so if anyone has any other suggestions for this, let me know.

Go get yourself some:
ground meat (bison, beef or venison would be lovely)
1lb of good quality bacon
a head of sour cabbage
a spaghetti squash
a bunch of fresh tomatoes
tomato paste
an onion or two
lots of garlic
some chili pepper flakes (or chili-garlic sauce)
sea salt and fresh pepper


1.  Fry up your bacon.  Set aside the fat and crumble up the cooked bacon.  Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Cut your spaghetti squash in half, remove the seeds, rub with some bacon fat. and roast in the oven for about 40 minutes or until the flesh is tender and you can easily flake it apart.

2. Dice up your onions.  In a frying pan, add some bacon fat, then saute the onions until they are translucent.  Add your garlic and your meat.  Fry the meat until it is cooked.  You can add seasoning to the meat if you wish (I add pepper, pepper flakes, onion powder, garlic powder and whatever else seems like fun at the time).  Remove from heat and add your crumbled bacon pieces.

3.  Take your head of sour cabbage and rinse it really well.  Separate out the leaves and set aside.

4.  Chop up your tomatoes, toss into a sauce pan along with tomato paste.  Add your spices (same as what's in the meat will work but especially something to give it a bit of heat).  Heat over low to medium heat until it starts burbling a bit and the tomatoes juice out nicely.  Remove from heat.

5. Rescue your spaghetti squash from the oven.  Allow to cool a little bit before flaking all of the flesh off of the rind.  This is your pretend rice.

6.  Take a leaf, put some of the meat mixture in the middle and a bit of spaghetti squash.  Roll up the leaf and put in a casserole dish or roaster.  Continue doing this until you run out of ingredients.

7.  Smother the entire thing in the tomato mixture, cover with some tin foil and then roast in the oven at 350 until they look, smell and taste done.  Not sure how long that is.

Enjoy!