text: Perfect surroundings in Eltsu. Mother nature was hugging me with astounding weather. It was extremely satisfying to work outdoors at the track. Started with skills training, then moved on to play with hurdles, some mobility drills and plyometric work. Then couple of 400m sprints, finishing it off with one mile run with easy pace. Wanted to touch the barbell too so I went indoors to work on my overhead squats and a newcomer, overhead lunges! My body has taken some hit this week so I kept it at one session today. Took a nap, and ate well to recover.
  Track and field.
  - 800m run, easy pace
  - Handstand walk
  - Hurdle step-overs 8x8
  - Hurdle jump-overs 8x6
  - Sprints, 400m every 3:00 (splits 1.30, 1.28, 1.27, 1.26)
  - 1.600m run, easy pace
  After running, warming-up, completing tons of lunges and mobility I took on handstand walking. The platform on a track is simply perfect. Couldn't be better. It was a totally different thing compared to my previous hs session in Klaukkala on grass that wasn't a balanced ground. I still need a flat platform with these skills.
  It felt good today and my goal was to walk on my hands, not just trying to find balance. Didn't measure the distances, couple of meters were gained per attempt. It was around 20 seconds of inverted position.
  Handstand walk recap
  Hurdle work is great. Too rarely do I get the chance to go after them. When I played floorball I had one coach that obviously loved them so we used to play with them quite a lot in the summer time. For us goalies he put us do even more drills to enhance hip mobility. I remember having done hundreds of repetitions per training session.
  Then, we used to run a lot after them. It was a totally different style of training that time. It wasn't much of strength work. Mostly core and endurance work by running in different methods. And as a goalie, I didn't run at all during the season =) But I guess my core got in good shape because of those times.
  Today I reminisced some of those hurdle drills. Started by walking over the obstacles, 8x8. Don't have the best of hip mobility but I still feel like it was smoother than it used to be. There's clearly happened some development, on mobility all over my body. Crossfit has helped tremendously on this issue.
  Another drill was jump-overs. I've done lots of box jumps that create explosiveness. This is somewhat similar exercise but also improve on elasticity, balance and coordination. Couple of times I lost rhythm on the jumps which indicate inaccuracy in my concentration. Once I focused it was a good workout! Would be awesome to have these more often.
  I also wanted to run once there's a chance for that. Took 400m sprints, not all in effort but still with a good pace. I'd like to see myself running easy 1.20 splits and max effort somewhere sub 1.10. Not there yet. Those times used to be my regular times. I remember having ran 8x400m with an average of 1.22 pace when I started crossfit. That time I ran a lot more and okay, I weighed also 10kg less. I've gained lots of strength and muscle since then. My breathing is under control pretty well but my legs start to go burn on inner thighs a lot during the sprints. Got to run now in the summer time more than during winter to regain that speed. My round times got a little faster by the round.
  - Overhead squat technique (40-50kg)
  - Overhead lunges 3x10, alternating legs (40kg)
  After running for 1.600m for recovery to flush legs it was time to go indoors for some barbell work. Didn't go heavy this time, just worked on my overhead squat technique with rather light weights, mostly 40kg, one set of 50kg was thrown in too. In the beginning I noticed my depth wasn't there but luckily I had my coach (=camera) with me to witness this. He told me to go deeper so I fixed it. Too mostly sets of 5's but in the end a set of 15 reps just for fun.
  But hey, how cool is overhead lunges? First time I tried it and now I understand how magnificent element that is. They've done front rack lunges and overhead lunges in Regionals and Games lately and I watched those events with a desire to hit this type of movements myself. They also had similar stuff in Finland's own "Crossfit Games", Winter War as we call it. I had only 40kg on the bar but I got the point.
  It's definitely a whole-body movement where you have to keep entire core tight, do lots of work with legs and shoulder to stabilize the bar and not drop it. There's probably not a muscle in the body that you don't work with. I took 3 sets of 10 reps in the end of this training session.
  All in all, it was a great day. Skills, mobility, plyometric work, sprints and some barbell work. Only thing missing was a hardcore metcon. Let's see what tomorrow brings us!