Proving a point
Everyone knows I train weightlifting that’s a given, I follow a weightlifting program 6 days a week and have for well over 2yrs now, After World Masters Weightlifting Championships in Florida in 2022 I decided I would enter 2 online crossfit comps, these would be first the Masters League Championships, then the Crossfit open. Both I set a goal of making the next stage. Changing very little to my normal 6 days weightlifting, the only thing I added was 1-2 40-50 min functional workouts on top of the weightlifting each week.
The open I was 1% outside the top 90% in ANZ so I missed that goal, but I had already made the Masters League online comp to qualify for the face to face state championships. This was held Sunday the 7th May. After being away the week prior for work, no strict diet, beers every night I went into the day with one goal and that was to win the snatch complex which wasn’t till last.
Event one was broken into two parts A & B, consisting of Max front squats at 65kgs in 2mins, I placed 2nd over all in this event and Part B was 10-8-6 clean and jerks and chest to bars which surprisingly I took the event win after not even attempting a chest 2 bar for a long long time..
Event two was truly not well thought out correctly, people everywhere, heats with more people than what they should have been leaving me without a Box in the second 2 mins of max box jump overs.. I rarely lose my cool these days but I went off which I later apologised for to the poor guy who copped the brunt of it.. so I had to wait a few minutes until I continued the workout completely out of sync to my heat.. The workout was 2mins on 1 min off max wall balls, box jump overs, devils press and wall walks. The first two movements my favourites second two horrible, thankfully I did enough reps to be well clear of the field in these 2, hitting 50 unbroken wall balls with a total of 59, then 51 box jump overs in 2mins, and held on for event win number 2
Event three.. knowing this Part A was going to be my worse finish of the comp before I went in, I made a decision I would stop at the 9min make of the 10min cap of 25-20-15-10 deadlifts and Toes 2 Bar, I stopped with 30sec on the clock with 7 reps remaining of last set of T2B.. Gymnastics not my strong point being a weightlifter. This decision was made to try and get my heart rate back down for the snatch complex. 70kgs was still on the bar so I snatched that as a single just to get the movement, then changed it to 80kgs for the first complex attempt.. my first attempt was 20kgs above everyone else in the heat and I could hear the spectators in the crowd talking about the weight.
The complex was Snatch + 2x Hang Snatch + 3x Overhead squats, it was brutal. Making the 80kgs flow I had one attempt left in me before the 5min cap was up. We loaded 85kgs, again you could hear the people around me including the competitors in my heat as they watched me comfortably snatch the first 85kg from the ground, a cheer from the crowd then into 2x hang snatches and the crowd was getting behind me, into the 3 OHS which was when the complex became brutally hard. Stumbling forward in the 2nd I regained the stability for the final OHS, I wasn’t failing this now.. sitting in the bottom of the squat for what felt forever before standing it up, waiting for my judge Jimmy to say yep and a big bar slam to not only take the win in my age group for this event but the highest recorded complex of the day across all age groups within NSW.
This experiment was to prove, strength training holds a lot more cardio stamina and you don’t need to do cardio every day to be competitive in the functional fitness world if you combine both Strength training and cardio..
The weightlifter won 3/5 events for the overall win within NSW 45-49yrs olds booking a ticket if I choose to go to #newzealand to compete in the finals.
