Josh

As I previously mentioned, I'll now try to explain my next goal:  completing Crossfit's Girls and Heroes Workouts as Rx'd.  Here's a brief description of Crossfit in general (from their website):

Our program delivers a fitness that is, by design, broad, general, and inclusive. Our specialty is not specializing. Combat, survival, many sports, and life reward this kind of fitness and, on average, punish the specialist.
The CrossFit program is designed for universal scalability making it the perfect application for any committed individual regardless of experience. We’ve used our same routines for elderly individuals with heart disease and cage fighters one month out from televised bouts. We scale load and intensity; we don’t change programs.

The program is an eclectic mix of running, rowing, gymnastics, kettlebell work, power and olympic lifting.  Sometimes heavy, sometimes high repetition endurance work.  The workouts vary each day, but there are a few "benchmark" workouts that will occasionally resurface so that you can gauge your progress.  They are named after some prominent female athletes from the early Crossfit days.  There are 20 Girls workouts.  The best part of this is that you can return to the house exhausted and drenched in sweat and loudly proclaim that you just did the heck out of Eva/Fran/Nicole etc.  I can assure you that my wife (Lisa) absolutely loves this aspect of Crossfit.  (please note sarcasm)

Crossfit is very popular among the military, law enforcement, and first responders in general.  The Hero workouts are named mostly after fallen soldiers/sailors/marines.  There are also a few firemen and policemen among the group.  These workouts are particularly difficult.  Generally, if a workout is too difficult, you can scale back on weight, reps, or rounds that the workout calls for.  My goal is to do the workouts as "Rx'd", in other words, exactly as stated on the website.  If you are familiar with the exercises and workouts, you'll realize just how difficult this goal is.  Some of the Hero workouts are brutal.  There are 32 of them in all.  There are three of them that I seriously question my ability to do as Rx'd.  But it wouldn't be much of a goal if it were easy.  Hopefully, there won't be any more added to the list.  But given the world we live in, it is likely there will be.  Of course, they get folded into my goal.  I wouldn't have it any other way.       


In all, there are 52 workouts.  Since, no action packed thriller is complete without a ticking clock, I need to set a time constraint for my goal.  The date:  March 5, 2011.  Why that date?  That's the day that I'm slated to become a first time dad.  And I suspect I'll be a little too preoccupied after that to effectively pursue this goal further, at least for a while.  So I need to average two per week to achieve my stated goal.

So today was my first workout - "Josh".  The workout:
For time:

• 95 pound Overhead squat, 21 reps
• 42 Kipping Pull-ups
• 95 pound Overhead squat, 15 reps
• 30 Kipping Pull-ups
• 95 pound Overhead squat, 9 reps
• 18 Kipping Pull-ups

  My time was 14min 14sec, which is abysmal.  My personal best from January 2009 was 9min and some change.  The high rep pull ups killed me.  But at least I am underway.

Last but not least, and to keep things in perspective, Josh is not just a workout, but a soldier:
SSG Joshua Hager, United States Army, was killed Thursday February 22 2007 in Ar Ramadi, Iraq.