Stress, Rest and CrossFit

Following last week's excellent training, I needed to take my foot off the throttle a little this week. On Monday I had to take 2 of our children back to school that involved some 10 hours in the car for me. Although not as physically stressful as a full-on training session, this is still extremely tiring and brings its own stress that requires a similar need to rest as the physical sessions. So on Tuesday I did an easy 40 minutes that included a warm-up on the rower, core, stretch and flex and finally an easy 10 minutes on the gym bike. And that was it. Today I hoped to get out on the bike but work intervened and I didn't get out. I did, though, get to the CrossFit gym for an excellent session. After a good warm up that included some interesting stretches, we did the WOD; 5 x 5 reps of front squats. The idea is to start at a weight you know you can do and to increase it until you max out. I started too light and so I ended up doing 7 sets and eventually maxed out at 55kgs. It's not a massive weight but it is more important for me to get the technique right at this stage; the weights will no doubt go up once I get this locked in. Once this was over we did an extra session, 15 minutes of a mixture of exercises that included lots of bodyweight exercises, kettlebell lifts and 100m runs. An excellent evening's work.