I LOVE BURPEES!

Seriously. I do. 7 minute amrap of burpees -- the CrossFit Games Open wod 12.1 would be the perfect workout for my non-pregnant self. I think I mentioned my 1,001 burpees for time experience (76:59 on June 18, 2011); I'm being completely honest when I say 1,001 burpees wasn't as bad as I expected, and I could probably be talked into doing it again (post-pregnancy). But you can't exactly flop to the ground on your stomach when you're 6 months pregnant, so burpees with a baby bump are a different story. I've found I'm still able to meet the movement standards (without crushing my baby) if I basically do a push up from my knees each rep. This makes burpees significantly harder and slower, but it works.

Workout 12.1 was about what I expected. For me, the main limiting factor was chest/shoulder fatigue (from the knee push ups), but it was still just a complete gut check of a workout. I'll admit, I broke some of my working out while pregnant guidelines -- No water breaks (kept moving the whole time) and collapsed to the ground when I finished (to my hands and knees, not my back ... somehow that's better, right?) Felt good to breath fire for awhile after I finished. My goal was 100 reps, which might have been a little overly ambitious, but I got close with 96 reps. I'm happy with it and definitely will not be re-doing that workout this week!

There tends to be a lot of complaining in the CrossFit community when in comes to the programming of the Open workouts, so I'll take a second to share my opinion on 12.1. A single modality amrap of burpees requires zero skill and tons of mental toughness; it's all-inclusive and a great measure of work capacity. Case in point, we programmed 12.1 at CrossFit515 yesterday, and every single person did the wod rx'd with scores ranging from in the 40s to 120. For all these reasons, I think it's a perfect first workout for the Open. Don't worry, 12.2 is not going to be an amrap of box jumps, followed by 12.3 being an amrap of double unders. That would be stupid. I do think the Open this year will test weightlifting stregth to a greater degree than the 2011 Open, but with 60,000 people participating, it makes sense to program the heavier weights and higher skill movements in the later workouts. So, no complaints from me on 12.1. I'm just looking forward to doing this one again when I can do normal, slam on my stomach burpees! Like this: 

Thanks for all the love and support, Justin :)

92 days left!