Question about progress

[Irishjj27]

Hi, Ive been doing this workout for a couple of weeks now and can complete day three, level eight in about 20 minutes. i would like to progress, but am in need of assistance. I cant do lunges due to a healing groin and lower ab strain, but squats dont seem to bother it. SO, in lieu of moving up to the intermediate level, would it be a good idea to move down a few levels and do the workouts with a weighted vest?

[Bri3626]

Not a bad idea. Should help. You could also look and see what your doing that may be interfering with your time. E.g. Whats your distance from where you do pullups pushups and squats. Walking more than a few feet is counter productive to your time. You could also review your technique. Are the pullups proper and kipping correctly, same format for the other two exercises. Can you speed up the rate or turnover that you are doing? I like to pump out 5 pullups hop off the bar, shake my arms out, 5 pullups etc.

Crossfit has a workout designed to improve your speed a bit on this type of workout. Essentially the goal is to get to "Cindy" or our L8D1 workout done backwards. The idea being to get comfortable doing the reps and be able to do 15 rounds within 20 minutes comfortably and then speed up/move up. So you would start L1D1 and if you complete 15 rounds with correct form go to L2D1. Everytime you find that you are messing up form you go back to square one. The trick is knowing where you are messing up the particular exercise. For me I know it breaks down pretty quickly when I fatigue. Pretty sure if I did it religiously I keep going back to Lvl 1 for a while.

[Irishjj27]

Today, Monday Sept. 26, 2011 I did Level 8, Day 1 for 16 rounds in 20 minutes in my garage. Pullup bar, drop to pushups, stand to do squats.. With some breaks here and there to catch my breath. The first three rounds I did with a 25 pound vest on. The workout that gives me the trouble is Level 8, Day 2. Around rounds 4 and 5 my pullups start to suffer.

[cheapo]

Regarding your original question:
The rule for leveling up is that you move up a level when you can complete Day 3 of your current level in less than 5 minutes.
Did you get to Level 8 by doing Level 7 Day 3 in less than 5 minutes? If not, I suggest you drop down to level 5 or 6 and work up from there.

[Bri3626]

Also had a thought. In L8D3 there are 250 reps that have to be completed in 300 seconds just to hit the five minute mark. That is 1.2 seconds per rep not including the transition from pullups to pushups then to squats. I'm not sure how doable getting under the five minute mark really is. I would love to see one of the elite crossfitters that are skilled in the three exercises try it just to see if a sub five minutes is possible. I would love to be able to do it though heh. For me the pullups will forever be an issue because of my shoulder. Cranking out pullups as fast as possible puts a hurtin on me that doesn't sit well with the injury. Heh takes me over five minutes just to do the pullups at this point.

[cheapo]

I had to use pretty poor form to beat Level 7. I wanted to beat it and I did what I had to do to get there, but I know I didn't really do it. With that experience under my belt, I decided there was no point in trying to beat Level 8 (at least not without dropping back to Level 5 or 6 and moving back up using strict form). And then there's the question of whether it can even be done!

[KTG]

There are really two interesting questions here. Is level 8 even humanly possible with good form? And, is getting through the levels possible doing only simplefit?

If anyone here has twins and would be willing to raise one of them on a strict and limited simplefit program while the other gets to play outdoors and do a variety of additional exercises, that would be a real contribution to science and the simplefit community.