My first video ever...

After some technical issues yesterday, I finally got it right. I present to you my first ever youtube video...

Row, row, row your boat...

Yo water lovers!
I finally got to blog a little again. The easter holiday has been somewhat busy, since i decided to move in with my girlfriend. We sure did a lot of functional training, emptying and cleaning my old appartment.
The weather in Denmark has been fantastic all week, so we worked hard to get through the moving stuff and to be able to enjoy the sun.
I haven't had much time to do crossfit lately and i think that it shows on my Games Open results. I'm only competing to gather some good scores for the Butcher's Garage Team, so it really doesn't matter, but still i hate sucking at anything. I really screwed up the first WOD and that has had me trailing behind ever since. Friday i did my first decent result, finishing 6th in the european region with a score of 385 on WOD 5.
Yesterday, my girlfriend and I went to the naval base in the harbour of Copenhagen and grabbed a rowing boat from the naval pentathlon course and set out to do a little CrossFit Submerged WOD.

As i said, the weather was fantastic and doing a rowing workout was absolutely perfect. So here is the WOD.

3 rounds
200m row
20 V-situps
10 burpees

Really wasn't anything fancy, but it was fun and when do you ever get to do real rowing in a CrossFit WOD?! I didn't time it, but gave it my all and was really exhausted afterwards. My abs and my forearms were absolutely smashed. I tried to attach a small video, but it took forever to upload it, so i lost my patience and a picture has to be what i can give you by now. If you guys know any good program for creating videos, please let me know.

Back to the pool...

I'm finally getting my shit together and posting a new WOD. As mentioned earlier, the last month has been quite eventful and i haven't had much time to blog.
My training for Afghanistan is coming along fine, but because of it i haven't had much time to do CrossFit. I've done the two Games workouts, but fucked up the first one because of my bad DU technique and only got 5+ rounds. Just did the second yesterday and got respectable 12 rounds straight. The pushups with hand release were really hard for me and by round 5 or 6 i couldn't do 12 unbroken any longer. Anyway, I'm not bitching and neither am I trying to qualify for the Games this year, so it really doesn't matter, but still, I'm a competitive person and I don't like doing bad.

Okay, back to the next "water-WOD". Here goes:

15min AMRAP
100m freestyle
5 inverted burpees
10 hindu-pushups
20 jumpsquats

For every time you can't do an exercise unbroken and have to take a break, do 10 atomic situps as a penalty.

That will be it for now. Have fun and let me know if you are doing the WOD.

Stay safe!
Kasper

It's been a while...

The last month has been pretty busy for me, and the next four to come aren't going to be easier. There are a lot of things going on in my life at the moment, so blogging hasn't been top priority in my spare time. I promise I will make up for it, with a new WOD soon.
So, what's new? I have recently begun my training towards my deployment to Afghanistan in August. It's nice to be the one being taught new stuff for a change and not always being the one doing the planning and teaching.
My training is coming along nice. The education towards my deployment adds some training i wouldn't have done otherwise, but it's nice to do something different. My strenght is increasing steadily, although i don't seem to make any progress at all in my benchpress, which is already pretty pathetic (1RM 253lbs). But i seem to make progress on every other lift. Last week i did "King Kong" for the first time ever. It took me 15min (last round 9min!!!), which is definately no good time, but most people can't even do that workout, so being able to finish it was awesome.

My good friends Affe, Cathrine and Kenneth at Butcher's Lab in Copenhagen, recently opened up another CF box, called Butcher's Garage. It's what I would consider the coolest and most ambitious CF gym in Europe, with all a crossfitter would ever dream about. There are going to be forged some epic crossfit athletes in that place, I tell you! To kick things off, they held a CF Football inspired competition on the opening day, called "Butcher's Stronger Challenge". It was a team event, with three members on each team and a lot of heavy lifting. My team ended up in second place, which we wouldn't have anticipated after only finishing 7th in the first event. Only two teams qualified for thefourth and final event, which was a 4min farmerwalk. The leading team was given a 30 sec. head start, and we were not able to close that gap. But it was a great day and an awesome way of opening up the new place. I managed to PR on my deadlift, which was performed on a trap bar, with a 484lbs lift. I posted a video below about the event. Check it out and make sure to visit the place, if ever in Copenhagen (http://www.butchersgarage.dk/).
I will be posting a new swimming/water WOD this weekend, so stay tuned.
Take care!
/Kasper

"Tabata swim WOD"

A friend of mine is in town and I therefore have a training partner for this week. Yesterday evening I took him to the treadmill and made him do the CrossFit Endurance Tabata run. For anyone who hasn't tried it, I can highly recommend it. It's an mindblowing experience! You simple set the treadmill to a 12% incline and then work your way through eight sets of 20 sec. on /10 sec. off. All out effort! Amazing how hard four minutes of work can be. I didn't let him suffer on his own though and went through it myself as well. Kept an 17km/h pace on the first five sets but had to take it down to 16,5 on the last three. The heavy squats from the morning were showing their effect. Last time i did it, i felt sick for an hour afterwards and even had to go and puke three times. Awesome!
Anyway, we decided to meet up again this evening to do some swimming. A perfect opportunity to test my newest "water-WOD" on someone else than myself. I continued to follow the "tabata pathway" and decided we should do four exercises. Here goes:

"Tabata swim WOD"
Butterfly kicks (with board)
Muscle ups on the ledge
Submerged breath holds
Sculling (arms below shoulders)

Doing a tabata workout in the pool was a new and interesting experience. The butterfly kicks were hard on the abs and it was difficult breathing because of the up and downward movement. Muscle ups proved difficult in the last three sets, because of muscular exhaustion. The interesting part were the submerged breath holds. They got easier and easier as we went through them. That is something i have experienced before, when doing multiple long dives. There is probably a scientific explanation for it, but I don't know it. The sculling on the other hand was WAY harder than i had anticipated. After two sets my arms were toast and i had a hard time going on for 20 seconds. All in all i think it was a good workout, but i could probably have put one or two extra exercises in it to make it more demanding.
The easiest way to make this workout work, is to bring a friend to keep track of time. I was pretty accurate counting twenty seconds in my head while I was submerged, but not thinking about time while you are under water probably makes it a little easier. I think sculling is the hardest at shoulder hight, were the resistance of the water against the arms is greatest. But feel free to change the position.

Enjoy!
/Kasper

Back in Denmark...

I'm finally back in Denmark, after a great week of skiing in Italy. It has been a fantastic week, with great skiing conditions, awesome weather and good company. It's definately not the last time, i will visit Chompuluc. It's located only two hours of driving from Milan and offers a view of some of the fameous alp mountains, such as Matterhorn and Mt. Blanc on a clear day. The place isn't that known and it offers some of the best offpiste skiing in Europe. It is only crowded on weekends, were italians from the nearby towns of Milan and Torino will come by.
The drive back down from the alps to Milan, really displayed natures true beauty and the majestic view of the mountains made the urge of coming back even bigger. I would love to come back for some mountainbiking and hiking in the summer.
The week off my normal training routine has made my hunger for hard work even bigger. The next couple of weeks will be really tough, but i can't wait to get started. Finding out that my trip to Brazil later this month has been cancelled really pisses me off, but doesn't change the fact that i'm in the mood for some good old hard training. I will post a new WOD later this week, that i hope to be able doing, before revealing it.

Stay safe!
/Kasper

Back to the pool folks...

Hey people!
I have a lot going on at the moment and i'm sorry that i haven't posted a new WOD before now. I'm starting my training for Afghanistan in the beginning of march and i will be taking a full month off work in february. So right now i'm in the process of handing over my position as 2IC to my successor. On friday i will be a free man!
On saturday i hope to be able to step by CrossFit Copenhagen  (aka "The Church of Pain") and cheer on my friends at the Danish CrossFit Open, before flying to Milan in the afternoon to go skiing for a week. It's gonna be a hell of a week, with my buddy Anders, his girlfriend and 6 other people i don't know so well. Hopefully there will be lots of snow, sunshine and good italian red wine (white wine is for girls).

Alright, enough about my awesome skiing vacation. On to the next CrossFit Submerged WOD. I thought this time it should be a chipper, including different kinds of swimming and exercises in between. Here goes:

Water chipper:
100m freestyle (meaning free choise of style...)
20 Burpees-pullups (only burpees if pullups are not possible)
50m sculling (see post from last week)
20 jump-squats
50m kicks on back (only using legs)
20 muscle-ups on ledge (see first post)
50m (12,5m submerged/12,5m above water)
20 HSPU
100m freestyle

This should be manageable for most to do. If not, you can scale it down to 50m instead of 100m and 25 instead of 50.
Last but not least, Sarah mentioned the possibility of doing a CrossFit Submerged event. I thought it would be great and my mind instantly wondered off the work i was doing when she brought the idea to my mind. I already know were to do this thing, and i know i can loan the place for free along with enough wetsuits, kajaks and cool gym stuff to go around. As you might have guessed, it will be an outside event including various activities in open water. I'm thinking 2-3 WOD's and a team kajak-polo tournament parallel to the WOD's going on. And don't worry, the WOD's will be manageable for everybody, no matter level of swimming experience. Being able to swim, is required though. It will be all about having fun and learing new sports. At the end of the day, there will be some kind of barbeque, before heading to town to get hammered. As some of you may know, Denmark is kind of cold at the moment, so june/july will probably be the proper time for an event like this.
Stay tuned for more about this crazy event and let me know if you got some crazy idea for workouts!  

Stay wet!
/Kasper