Another Goal Accomplished!

Ok, so this one was just outside of the window of my mission, but after I started looking more into CrossFit, one of the goals I made for myself was to be able to perform a "muscle up". This is almost a rite of passage in the CrossFit community. Well, last night, after my workout at the local affiliate, I was staring at the rings. Someone else was trying out muscle ups, so I thought I would give it a go.

I got set in the proper position, grabbed the rings, and violently pulled myself up and spread out the rings to my side. The next thing I knew, I was through the transition and pushing myself up to fully lockout the dip portion. I was shocked! I had just done my first muscle up! I stayed in that top position for a little while with a big goofy face.

A couple minutes later, just to make sure it wasn't a fluke, I tried it again and got another one!

If you don't know what a muscle up is, just check out this video:

Mission 2 Goals

Yesterday I did my strength testing, going for 1RM on my squat, press, and deadlift as a bookend to my Mission 2. I still have to test my pushups and I'll have to admit that I didn't really work my bench press as much over the mission. I viewed it as more of a supplemental exercise to help my overhead press, which is viewed as a more functional measure of pressing strength.

So these are a bit late, but my lifts were as follows:

Squat: 265 lbs (+40)
Overhead Press: 140 lbs (+25)
Deadlift: 315 lbs (+40)

So I didn't quite reach my goals for the Squat and Deadlift, but I did add 40 lbs to both of those lifts. I also exceeded my goal for the overhead press.

As for the rest of my goals, I know that I have easily added more than 5lbs of lean mass and I have managed to stay below 12.5% BF. In fact, my fat pinches have changed very little. I'll have exact measurements tomorrow along with my final "reveal" pics if I can find my camera. It's gone missing for the past little while since my gf and I got back from a trip.

As for the pushups, I want to test them on a day when I'm fresh, so I don't know when that will be, but sometime this week hopefully. So technically, I will have gone past the deadline on this challenge, but I haven't maxed out on them in a while, so I don't have all that great an idea of where I am.

Over the next few days I'll try and get back into posting a bit more about what I'm doing and some overall reflections on this mission, and what I plan on doing next.

Happy Easter

Hey folks. Just a quick post to say that I'm still around. I haven't fallen off the wagon, just haven't posted in a while. CrossFit is a whole different animal and has consumed my life. My strength goals and pushup goals have kind of taken a back seat to it. CrossFit will still have me working towards those goals, just at a slower rate since I'm working on my improving my overall fitness. This means working harder at what I'm not good at. From doing CrossFit so far, I found that my areas that I was working to improve before CrossFit are my strongest points, so there's other things that need catching up.

Tomorrow I should have a final body composition analysis as well as my final pics. I guess you could say my lack of photos in the past few weeks is going to be more like a "big reveal". I'm also going to do a CrossFit Total tomorrow and get numbers for my squat, press, and deadlift. I know I won't be able to hit the numbers I set as goals back in January, but I have definitely improved.