The Bear Complex, sponsored by Celine Dion and CrossFit Brooklyn

Thank you for all the comments yesterday, public and private. I must say, I had some really nice email exchanges with Spider Chick (Karen) about the post. She’s a class act – and her passion for CrossFit is undeniable. I will also share with you this one point from her email, on which we BOTH agree:

“If the sweet and gentle folk who can't bear to hear a swear or snatch want to CrossFit, then that's music to my ears… As far as elite, well... there's only a just a very few of the truly CrossFit elite. There's one Speal. One OPT. One Dutch... and the patron saint of the 40+ women... Kelly Moore! But, there's a great deal of athletic value in all of us, and even the weakest and slowest CrossFitter is, by comparison, a BAMF.”

And Yvette (in the comments) said it best…

“Achievement is achievement. So maybe my clients aren't tearing up a flying Fran, but they're doing pull-ups and deadlifts for the first time in their lives! Most of them don't come from athletic backgrounds, yet they're busting butt every time they walk through my door.”

Amen. So rock on, Navy SEALS, soccer Moms and Celine Dion, because everybody needs to deadlift.

Buy-in

• 50 DUs
• 10 TGUs (5L/5R) 12K
• Bear complex warm-up with 45#, 55#, 65#

Bear-ish Complex @ 70#, AMRAP in 20:00

• The Bear part: One round = PC, FS/PP (or thruster), BS/PP (or behind-the-neck thruster)
• The “-ish” part: No requirements for holding on to the bar, rest on the ground as often as needed.

27 rounds + PC/FS

This damn near killed me. I’ve done Bear AMRAP in 10:00 a few times. Best score was 17 rounds using only 65#. I’m super happy with (a) using more weight, (b) keeping up a decent pace for twice as long and (c) putting 70# overhead 54 times in a single workout. (That’s more than 80% of my max PJ/PP.)

The overhead was the toughest. Strength was my limiting factor on this one, not cardio capacity. I did thrusters for all my FS/PP, which is huge because I suck at thrusters. I was rushing to get the rounds in, so I failed on round 27’s thruster, and several behind-the-neck PPs, so I had to do those over. And this doesn’t happen often, but when I was done, I had to sit the f*** down for a solid three minutes. (The f-bomb is necessary here. I didn’t just “sit down”. That implies a level of decorum and politeness that was grossly lacking in my sweaty, panting, messy-haired self.)

Cash out:

• Half-hearted plank and hollow holds (total of 5:00 of work, mostly 0:30 - 0:45 on and 0:15 – 0:30 off). I was seriously too tired to hold myself up for very long.

By the way, I’m convinced my CrossFit Brooklyn t-shirt helped me get those push presses UP. Seeing the upside-down "817" made me think of my CFBK workout, which made me grateful to be doing anything BUT 60 bloody kipping pull-ups one at a time. And if the back of the shirt is accurate, then my performance today was excruciatingly awesome.