Solcana blog

Hi friends,

Happy almost 4th of July! Hard to believe we’ve already reached this point of the summer. But, here we are. I have some exciting news to share this week…for one, I’m down 6 lbs from when I started with Solcana at the beginning of this month. Additionally, I wore a pair of pants last week that I haven’t fit into for four years! Crazy!!!! Must be all those squats and burpees I hate so much.

In other news, I hit the box last Friday (5:30am) with Coach Morgen and Saturday (9am) with Coach Hannah. Friday was my first time dead lifting and Morgen was super helpful and first broke down the form using PVC pipe with me. From there, I went on to dead lift 65 lbs for 5 rounds of 5 reps. I get nervous lifting sometimes because I don’t yet know what I’m capable of and so I think sometimes I act too cautiously. This would be one of those times, because, looking back I know I can lift more. Metcon consisted of as many reps as possible (AMRAP) in 8 minutes of 10 shoulder to overhead press (I did 45lbs) and 10 bar facing burpees – I made it to 47 reps. Not great, but I’ll take it. Have I mentioned how much I hate burpees? Does anyone “like” burpees? I’m guessing they get easier with time. Please, let them get easier with time.

Made it in for Saturday lady class with Coach Hannah and Ann, Emma, and Sarah. I see Ann at the 5:30 am classes so it was nice to see her again, and Emma and I had been in a Saturday class before, too. Fun times all around. We started the workout with a bear walk and I told Hannah I’ve been having a thing with my wrist (I was too embarrassed but finally admitted I have Texting Wrist). In her amazingness, she whipped out some VooDoo Compression Floss and wrapped my wrist up, which worked wonderful voodoo magic on my texting tendinitis. It was impressive. I’ll be getting some of that for myself. Lifting consisted of split jerks – a new concept for me, but the sensible next step after spending the last couple of Saturdays on push jerks. I had a little bit of an issue here, you guys. I was thinking way too much about the movement and psyched myself out once I got the bar off the rack. I started with 55 lbs (my last push jerk was 65lbs) and something about jumping and splitting my legs freaked me out and I just stood there. Finally I said, “I’m scared!” and I put the bar back on the rack. Ridiculous right? Everyone should have made fun of me for this behavior but they didn’t. In fact, Hannah said, “Look. I know you can do this because I’ve seen your push jerk with more weight. Try a push jerk again and we’ll go from there.” Ann, Sarah, and Emma all had words of encouragement for me, too. In that moment, I knew they were right and I could do this. So I dug deep and got over myself and DID SOME FREAKING SPLIT JERKS! Getting over my dumb fear and accomplishing this was pretty cool and it made me think about how the coaches at Solcana really live the mission: “The power to change. The strength to do it.” Yep. This pretty much sums up my entire experience thus far with Solcana, but especially with split jerks. We closed out Saturday with row sprints, 1:1 work:rest at intervals of 30, 60, 90, 120, and back down to 30. Sounds easy in theory but holy cow we were all winded at the end of this. We did it for calories and I hit 81, which apparently was prescription so, yay!

It’s holiday week and I’m actually sick with a allergic reaction (I’m 36 and finally got an allergy, guys!) as I write this to you from my bed. I’m supposed to head out Thursday am for the glorious Madeline Island and I’m hopeful I can make it to class before I leave. If not, I’m for sure going to check out a CrossFit To-Go box to do while I’m there. Stay tuned, kids. Last time I was on Madeline Island I flipped a moped so things could get interesting…..

Thanks for continuing to read and be supportive of me. It means a lot!

-Jenn