Today's Workout: 120413

“Chelsea”
Every minute, on the minute, for up to 30 rounds:
5 pullups
10 pushups
15 squats.
Today: CrossFit Lite at 6:15am, and an Ignite Enrichment Group at 4:30!
This looks a lot like “Cindy,” right? By the end of the 20:00 interval last Wednesday, you were probably achieving about one round per minute. But many athletes will make the full 30 minutes on “Chelsea,” even if they didn’t make 20 rounds. Why?
Metabolic recovery is one of our training goals. We can become far more efficient at using energy in a constant state, buffering lactic acid, removing waste, delivering energy…that’s “Cindy.” You only slow down as your ability to do these things slows. When any of those activities is impaired, your performance declines at a rapid rate, and the others snowball.
What if we allowed your metabolism-the process of doing all of those things listed above-a few seconds to catch up? That could make all the difference. The amount of time needed for rest between hard bouts is trainable, too; the more efficient our metabolism, the less time necessary to ‘catch up.’ That time will increase as energy needs increase, and metabolic waste grows; an elevated heart rate will be your sign. Want to really measure your progress? Wear a heart rate monitor, and record your heart rate at the top of each minute. In the first rounds, your heart rate will recover toward baseline during rest periods; after awhile, it will recover more slowly; and as you reach a metabolic tipping point, it may not drop at all.
Confounding the problem will be that you’ll be moving more slowly, and have less rest time, as you fatigue. In other words, things can go downhill quickly in “Chelsea,” even given the rest time. Therefore, while “Cindy” is a good measure of your ability to hold off exhaustion, “Chelsea” is a better measure of your ability to recover quickly between hard bouts of exercise. Same movements, similar pace, very different test.