This Is What 40 Looks Like Now Biyatches

Wondering where I've been all week? Here's what happened.

So earlier this summer I get a call from my good buddy Brian, who I went to college with back in the day at the University of Colorado.  He tells me "I'm getting married, can you be in the wedding?" I'm like, sure dude, when?

Turns out it's August 4th. Which is my birthday. Which this year would be my 40th birthday.

As in fortieth. Four Zero. The big 4 Ohhhh.

Shoot. Why the hell not right? I'll see friends, taste some good Sonoma wine and celebrate my 40th in st style.

Anyway, so this is me, in a tuxedo for a wedding on my 40th birthday. I figured at least I'll have a good pic of me at 40 and it's not bad. I've seen worse.

But the pic is just extra. The best part was when I first got there. A friend of mine picked me up from the airport and we headed straight for the bar in the city where my college buddies were waiting. There were about five of us total, all from the same dorm where we met back in 1990, our freshman year of college.

I walked in and each one of those guys were like:

"Dude, what the hell?"

"How much are you lifting? You're huge!"

"Are you using supplements or steroids?"

And the best one was . . .

"I thought men can't build muscle once you hit 40?"

When my buddy asked me that I was like, WHAT????

You're kidding me right? That's ALL we do at RFM. We build muscle.

Yeah, maybe we don't do all the sculpting that some other programs do but I'd rather look like how I do now and be able to be strong and fast (okay I'm not fast but I'm faster than I would be without RFM) than look like a body builder and not be able to do anything.

Besides, just hearing my friends talk I felt like a body builder. It was awesome.

The whole trip they kept asking me about Crossfit and the workouts and if there was a diet involved as well. I told them about Paleo and I could see it in their eyes that they were totally curious though not convinced enough to check it out.

Ah well, what can you do, right?

As for me I'm so ready to get back into the gym. Hoping to train twice as hard and stick to Paleo more strictly.

Maybe not this weekend though. This is the weekend that Bump and Kristi get married!

Good times people, good times. Stay classy San Diego.

Peace!

Rod

No Juice and Ready to Press

Back in college a friend of mine had a t-shirt that he would always wear when playing football that said "No Juice" in the front.

For the longest time I didn't know what it meant but he was a big local guy and a lot of the small haole/katonk kids from my dorm that went to the Hawaii parties on campus (hey, we had the best looking girls) were intimidated by him.

The conversations would go something like this:

Haole friend: "Rod that No Juice guy is staring at me, I think he wants to beat me up."
Me: "That's because you're the only one who didn't take off his shoes when you came inside his house."
Haole: "Is that bad?"
Me: "Just take off your shoes and have a beer."

Anyway for years he was just known as "No Juice". It wasn't until months later that I noticed the back of his shirt that said ". . . just pure genetics."

Juice had referred to steroids. No juice, meaning I'm all natural babe.

I bring this up because I had someone's teenage son tell their parents that they thought I was on roids.

Seriously? All I gotta say is, thank you kid and thank you RFM. I've gotten my shoulders to college levels again when I lived in the gym.

My shoulders are about the only areas on my body that I can get the most improvement from. I hate legs and my chest is torn and I have a lower back problem.

But even though my shoulder is tweaked it's still pretty strong. That's why I'm looking forward to doing shoulder presses today. If I keep my grip pretty narrow I should be almost at full strength.

At least that's the theory. We'll see how it goes.

Later gang,

Rod

Missing the Filthy 50 and Why My Knees Hurt

So I missed a helluva workout on Saturday, which, had I known what it would be I probably would have gone.

It's the Filthy 50, the father of all long and twisted WOD's out there.

Goes something like this:

50 box jumps
50 jumping pull-ups
50 KB swings
50 walking lunges
50 knees to elbows
50 push presses
50 back extensions
50 wall balls
50 burpees
50 double unders

It's terrible and awe inspiring at the same time. Bob didn't go on Saturday either and we both looked at the board with a sense of regret.

RFM instills a sense of testing yourself at every opportunity, and the Filthy 50 is a better test than some. I noticed Jun took the longest time, around 42 minutes. I have to imagine that I would have been around there. Ikaika was around 28 or 27 minutes I think. He said the back to back wall balls and burpees were the worst.

I can only imagine. Damn it.

So today I tried to push it, we had 4 rounds of:

:30 seconds of dumbell lunges
:30 sec rest
:30 sec push-ups
:30 rest
:30 KB swings
:30 sec rest

The thing is for the dumbell lunges you needed to do 50 percent of your weight, which for me is 100 pounds or 50 lbs dumbells in each hand. WTF.

My lunges felt terrible, and my knees felt like I was smashing them into the floor. I had to get two floor mats to pad the ground. That helped.

By my knees are still sore. But worse than that I want to do the Filthy Fifty.

Damn it.

Later,

Rod

Birthdays for the Big Boys (Kristi too) and the No-Pain WOD

SO . . . it figures after I say I had a dream about not being able to make the WOD that I don't make the WOD on Wednesday.

But, I went on Friday, which was awesome and terrible at the same time. More on that later.

First off, big birthday wishes to Kristi, Ikaika and Marcus. All three of them July babies.

Kristi is about as sweet as Beezlebump is evil, which means she is very sweet. But get her toasted and the HHHAAAAAAAAAAAWAIIAAAAAAN comes out small kine. She's awesome.

Ikaika and Marcus are of course the young guns in the gym, always lifting harder, running faster and pushing my limits. But it's because of them and others in the gym that I push myself too, just in an attempt to keep up with them.

Let us pause for some pictures:

Yes, I looked for the most embarrassing pics I could find. Get over it, it's my blog ya bastards.

No, but these guys make the gym what it is. Whether it's Ikaika getting that Mike Tyson tattoo on his head or Kristi yelling at me in the gym or Marcus . . . well let's just take yesterday for example.

Marcus comes into the gym looking slightly sluggish, which is unusual as he is a ball of energy most times. I asked what was up and he said he had just eaten at Da Kitchen, specifically the kanak attack plate.

Marcus said he didn't even know what a  "kanak attack" was so I explained. It's the "eat till you sleep" Hawaiian paralysis that you get when you eat too much.

"Ah," he said. "That explains everything."

Anyway so we do power cleans for strength and of course, Marcus has to go the extra mile despite a full stomach and did power squat cleans instead. Then he went into the bathroom and locked the door for a bit. I don't blame him, because we had 15, 12, 9 repetitions of over head squats, pull-ups and burpees.

And Lord knows you don't want a full stomach when you do overhead squats. All that pressure and you might have an embarrassing episode in the gym.

So we start the WOD and I throw on 95 lbs. I keep up with Marcus for the first round of 15. The whole round. Then I have to actually catch my breath and realize that nothing hurts.

I mean, sure, the WOD is tough but my shoulder didn't hurt and neither did my back, the two things that usually hold me back.

So now I'm thinking, damn, no excuses. Time to workout.

By the time I did the last workout I was floored. Like on the floor gasping for air and head spinning.

Marcus, Ken and Bruce had finished before me but we were all right behind each other. Even Bruce was on the ground.

(By the way folks, Bruce works out even though he's been getting migraines at the gym. Can we force this animal to take it easy? Probably not, just concerned about the braddah.)

Good workout and great way to start the weekend.

Take care gang and happy birthday to all of you again!

Rod

I Dream of WODs

So it's finally happened.

I had my first official Crossfit dream last night.

Like a lot of my dreams it starts out sorta realistic then turns sorta absurd.

I dreamt that the whole RFM gym was doing a whole day of WOD's. The first one was the longest then we had a bunch of other smaller but just as painful WOD's afterwards throughout the entire day.

It sorta reminded me of the Crossfit Games except anybody could do it. It was in a large park and there were hundreds of people there.

The first WOD, the big one, involved running a mile then coming back and doing a bunch of body movements and weight lifting. Fifty push-ups, 40 sit-ups, 30 of something else and so on and so forth.

Then after that we had a bunch of other WOD's. I can't remember each one but it was like if we took the entire week's board at RFM and did all of them in one day. I think we had 8 hours to do all the WOD's.

BUT . . . here's the catch.

I DIDN'T GET TO WORKOUT.

Yup, that's right. It was my own freakin dream and I had to work. I was in my workout clothes and everything and had to go to a meeting.

I was so pissed that, and this is where it gets absurd. After my meeting I found a DeLorean in the parking lot of the Uptown Chevron and tried to go back in time so I could join everyone else on the WOD. Except I didn't have fuel and I had to have Kehau and Marcus pedal on stationary bikes to jump start the flux capacitor or something like that.

Because if anyone can hit the 9.21 gigawatts I needed to go Back to the Future it's those two, right?

I don't know if I made it back to start the all day WOD because right about then I woke up. Even though it was a dream I was still upset that I missed the WOD.

Sigh. You know, if I was going to have a Crossfit dream you would think I would dream about outlifting Bump or coming in first or something. Freakin A dude.

Whatever. So. Back to the workout.

Today was tough. Five hang squat cleans, 10 lateral burpees and a 400 meter run for three rounds.

I went heavy but not as heavy as I was supposed to. Did 135 instead of 170 and it still sucked.

The runs sucked but Bob was there to coach me through it. He kept saying stuff like "expand your stride" and "let's go, it's downhill now."

Simple yet effective. So much so that on the last round when we were coming back for the last 200 meters I took off and caught up to one of our younger members, who is still in high school.

Nothing like a last minute blast of energy to make up for the entire workout. Sixteen minutes wasn't going to impress anyone but I felt the burn.

Okay guys, I'm going back to bed tonight to dream a little Crossfit dream again. And this time I'm making the WOD.

Shoots,

Rod

Shoulder, back and legs are in pain . . . and I like it

Thrusters. What can I say about thrusters?

I hate 'em but I sorta love them too. Why, because only after thrusters does my body really feel like I worked out.

Take yesterday's workout, 9 thrusters and 9 pull ups for five rounds. Pretty simple and pretty devastating.

Ken was there at the workout and me and him were neck and neck . . . for the first round. Kept it close for the second round too but the third round was tough. I could no longer do 9 unbroken thrusters.

It got worse and worse until I was doing three thrusters at a time. My pull-ups were consistent though, but I was concerned about the "snap, crackle and pop" sounds that my right shoulder was making the whole time.

Afterwards I couldn't catch my breath and had to roll around on the floor for my usual five to ten minutes. It was good though. Somehow Crossfit ain't legit until you've made love to the floor for a bit.

Today looks like it could be just as tough. Shuttle runs of 10, 20, and 30 meters, followed by five burpees then AMRAP double unders. Rest a minute between rounds for four rounds.

That doesn't look as bad as yesterday's but I am probably wrong about that. I think Bump and Kristi have been increasing the WOD pain since our strength workouts were tweaked a little so that right now it's pretty easy. It'll get harder as we have to put more weights on but right now it's cruise city.

Oh and here's another one, how many of you would like to see a noon workout?

There's quite a few of us who go to the 4 p.m. that are interested, I'm thinking there has to be people from the other classes that would go to it to.

I'll post something on the RFM Facebook page, or you can reply here and tell me what you think. Kristi said if there's at least five people she'd do it.

Later gang,

Rod

Welcome Back to my Back and All Good Things . . .

Well you knew it was going to happen sooner or later.

For the past couple of blogs I've been complaining about my shoulder being injured, and I know some of you . . . well me at least . . . were wondering, "Okay, how long before my back acts up again?"

Got the answer yesterday. I knew it too as soon as I looked at the board.

Run 400 meters, swing 25 kettlebells, for four rounds.

Simple. No rest. No complicated olympic weightlifting movements.

But oh so very harsh for my lower back.

Shauna witnessed my back in action yesterday, she said she noticed by the second round that I was running "off center."

Didn't really think about what I must look like but yeah, I do whatever I have to do with my legs to offset what I'm feeling on the lower left side of my back.

I don't know, maybe I just have to row, or ride the bike.

Or better yet, maybe I have to lose the gut. It's coming back. I think it's my son's popsicles. Me and him eat like three each after dinner.

And then there's the Hana Relay coming up, so running is going to be kinda important during that event. RFM is putting together another team and I've seen the squad, all good runners. I'd like to join but I really don't want to hold them back this year.

Some of my other friends were talking about running and putting our own team together. That might work out better.

Oh, and then there's one more thing.

Got a job offer out of state. Out of country in fact. Something I can't really refuse.

It's been good to be back home on Maui and I'm really going to miss the crew at RFM. Shoot, Kehau still hangs with us every now and then and she still misses us to the point of tears. It was very touching to see her at the party this past weekend.

I think I'm still in shock. I don't have to go but I'd be stupid to pass this up. And I guess I can keep working out by reading the RFM blog from wherever I am as long as I have a well stocked gym with kettlebells and bumper plates.

Ah well boys and girls, we'll talk about this later. I'm not leaving tomorrow or next week or next month. Definitely here AT LEAST until my son leaves for California in mid-August so we've got some WOD's to do first.

Wow I feel sad.

Okay, enough, we'll talk later gang.

Rod