CrossFit with Friends: Elissa Ho

Ask the Athlete: Elissa Ho

How long have you been doing CrossFit?
Started Crossfit December 2012.

What affiliate do you call your home box?
CrossFit Hell's Kitchen is my homebox and where my heart is whereever in the world I may find myself WODing.

What is your favorite movement or WOD?
Wallballs. Wod-wise - anything short and sweet. 15 min time cap

What movement or WOD do you hope never to see on the board?
All the strengths and skills that I suck at or don't have.. HSPU, MU, pistols, ring dips.. Oh and excessive cardio D:  that being said, i don't wish to never see them on the board.. gotta get better somehow.
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Elissa and I are both members of CrossFit Hell's Kitchen who currently reside in Georgia. I'm still calling myself a member at CFHK because I have active classes in my MindBody account and I spend just as much time in the Facebook group as anyone else. Elissa is down in Augusta for some army training. When I heard she was coming to Atlanta and looking for a place to stay, I invited her to stay with me because that's what family does.

New Nano 4.0s!

Hot man bearing new Nanos = my kind of birthday fantasy

Ryan came down for a long weekend so we could celebrate my birthday a few days early. I'm leaving for Houston today and won't be back until this weekend. I have a wonderful boyfriend who has a wonderful family and they made me feel very loved this weekend. Ryan's nieces made me the best card I have ever received and it is my favorite present. My new Nano 4.0s are pretty sick too.

We both took Monday off from work and had a great day hanging out with each other. Ryan joined me for the noon class at CrossFit Identity. We worked up to a 1RM back squat and I PR'd with 190#. One hundred ninety pounds of barbell (and not 188# because I used the men's bar) went down with me below parallel and then made it back up. There was a moment there where I wasn't sure I was going to make it but my partner Stacey talked me through it. Thanks Stacey!

The WOD was awesome. I used 75# instead of 95#, but Ryan Rx'd it at 135# and crushed it!

WOD:
Power Cleans (PC) 1 minute-max reps
Rest 1 minute
Shoulder to Overhead (STO) 1 minute-max reps
Rest 1 minute
PC-1 minute-max reps
Rest 1 minute
STO-1 minute-max reps
Rest THREE minutes
REPEAT

photo courtesy of @cfidentity

Reunited with Cleo

Last November I was talked into volunteering with children on a Saturday afternoon. I spent three years of my life working with children. I like to volunteer with animals, the elderly, and the environment, but somehow I ended up at a school on a weekend. There was a boy involved. Most of my really poor decisions are because of a boy or boredom or both.

Anyway, this day was not a total loss. It's where I met my friend Cleo and soon after we were enjoying Kettlebell Kitchen lunches during the workday and watching the Chargers on the weekends and WODing whenever I could get him to drop into Hell's Kitchen. Life was glorious until February when Cleo up and left me for San Francisco. His leaving was the kick in the pants that I needed to leave New York and the rest is history. Oh, and that guy I was willing to volunteer with in order to see? We don't speak anymore, which is for the best.

Cleo and I reunited at the CrossFit Games and enjoyed beers and gossip while watching other people work out. It was exactly like it used to be except it was warm out. We got a workout in together and I haven't been that happy in a really long time.

Intervals on the Active Oval

I woke up on Sunday and couldn't lift my arm. If it didn't hurt so badly, I would have thought I was paralyzed. It turns out that I did something to my rotator cuff when I reached behind my driver's seat looking for my pocketbook the day before. Yup, I have injured myself through my own laziness because I wouldn't get out of the car to look for my purse. I blame my passengers for forcing my pocketbook to relocate to the backseat floor in the first place.

On Monday I woke up in excruciating pain. I managed to dress myself and get to CVS for Icy Hot patches and Advil. I really wanted to make it to CrossFit that evening because the WOD was everything I like: clean and jerks, cleans, shoulder to overheads, doubleunders, wallballs (eh maybe not wallballs), but my arm just didn't feel right. I decided to get over to the Active Oval and complete the interval run from my half marathon training plan that I have been putting off for weeks.

I ran from my apartment to the Active Oval and that conveniently took care of my 1 mile warm up. Then I ran fast for 30 seconds and recovered for 60 seconds sixteen times. I'll be honest, some of those 1 minute recovery jogs were more like stumbling around like a drunk walks. Most of my 30 second runs were at 7:09 or 6:15 pace. Once was an outlier at 8:20 but that was when the timer went off in the middle of me chugging water from my almost empty bottle. It was pitiful looking. Georgia is hot.

Hot Yoga in Houston

I was in Houston for work last month and my colleagues sent around an email chain about going to hot yoga at YogaOne. Only Kaitie and I ended up getting up at the butt crack of dawn to make the 6 AM class but I'm glad we went.

What's Mine is Mine

If I were out to dinner and I ordered a delicious bowl of pasta and my dining companions ordered measly salads, the waitstaff would never bring extra forks for them to enjoy my dish simply because they ordered poorly.

Why is it then that when my dining companions order only coffee and I order a delicious piece of cake, the waitstaff always brings extra utensils for sharing? I didn't order 1/2, 1/3, or 1/6 of a dessert. I ordered the whole damn dessert.

And that's why I've started picking up the extra utensils and handing them back

100 Doubleunders

A year ago Anthony, my coach at Hell's Kitchen, told us that if we all committed to 100 doubleunders a day, we'd all have doubleunders. The idea of being able to do 100 doubleunders, not unbroken, just 100 doubleunders within a window of time was unfathomable to me. When people complained that it would take forever to complete 100, Anthony said that even if it took an hour, we should do it because how were we going to reduce the amount of time it took if we didn't practice.

source

So fast forward. I attended a doubleunders workshop, I upgraded to a cable speed rope, and I got unbroken doubleunders. But like anything, if you don't use it, you lose it. I moved down to Atlanta and was messing with a rope one day that first week and my doubleunders were horrendous. Victor walks over to me and says that I'm working too hard for doubleunders and he was right. Victor tweaked my form, gave me feedback, and generously offered to size my new rope.

Now I do 100 doubleunders before every WOD and it takes me maybe 5 minutes. Right now I'm up 60 unbroken. My goal is all 100 unbroken by August 15.

The moral of the story is when Anthony tells you to do something, fucking do it.

A Long Run for Half Marathon Training

Long runs are pretty critical for any long(er) distance race. I used to run and race so often that I didn't really bother with them. I signed up for the Area 13.1 Half Marathon in November under the condition that I would train for it. I have a training plan that I loosely follow, but I haven't been that great about the long runs. I did my first long run in a very long time on Monday, July 14.

I gave myself 2 hours to run 10 miles. As you can see above, I reached that goal.

Squats with Charlie and Pat Sherwood

Charlie and Ryan at the CrossFit Update Show desk
I know that my boyfriend will always love Charlie more than me, and really, I can't blame him.

Remember when I was so nervous about meeting Pat Sherwood? Well it went swimmingly if I do say so myself. Charlie, my boyfriend Ryan's best friend, met us at the StubHub Center, gave us nifty CrossFit Media wristbands, and then took us on a tour. Part of this tour included meeting Rory Mckernan, Tommy Marquez, and Pat Sherwood. I said hi, thanked everyone for letting us come in to see where they work, and tried not pee myself. Ryan said my eyes got really big and that this is the most quiet he's ever seen me in the thirteen years that we've known each other. I call that a success.

I cannot thank Charlie enough for a wonderful weekend. One of my favorite parts of the trip was being able to have dinner with Charlie and Ryan at a sushi place in Manhattan Beach on Friday night. We ate Kobe beef corn dogs, nbd.

While we were at dinner, Charlie mentioned that he and Pat made a video about the squat. And then I saw it posted on CrossFit's Facebook page. Charlie and his dog Riley are famous. Enjoy.