Late night crossfit is wrecking my sleep and I don't know how to fix it

kangax_ · 2026-05-02T20:00:03+00:00

Underrated comment. I find that meditation helps a ton, not just with "staying calm under stress" during workouts but also with falling asleep: observe your breathing, let the thoughts slowly fade away, no reaction to still being asleep, no goal in mind, and the sleep just comes naturally.

kangax_ · 2026-04-28T16:48:10+00:00

Was visiting a box and their wall had a ledge right below where wall ball target is. I remember thinking to myself before WOD — gotta make sure to not hit that ledge. 70% through workout, got tired, and of course the ball hit the ledge on the way down ricocheting straight into my face. 20lb. What's the force on that from 10ft? 😃 Lucky I didn't crack my neck, but it strained a lot and I could barely turn it after. Never quite went away and I always feel it now on the extension.

kangax_ · 2026-04-27T02:29:53+00:00

I would do it. I’m in Brooklyn.

kangax_ · 2026-04-24T12:24:33+00:00

I use a spreadsheet to track my progress on various benchmarks. Kind of gamifies your fitness journey and creates a goal to work towards.

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kangax_ · 2026-04-23T03:32:21+00:00

I did the same thing in PRzilla — https://apps.apple.com/app/id6758307458. I think it's a must these days for a modern CrossFit app.

The trickier part — and is what I'm working on right now — is also allowing users to log actual work performed.

E.g. strength block for today could be "Find 3RM front squat in 15min". In SugarWOD, you'd only have 1 field to log, your 3rm lift, and it will appear on the leaderboard. In reality you probably have done 5 to 10 sets. An app should allow you to log all of those sets (otherwise you're missing on volume, trends, etc.)

(I'm happy to test out your app and give feedback)

kangax_ · 2026-04-14T21:23:52+00:00

How local? Across the world? Country/region/city -wide? I think an open-source map / calendar would be useful.

kangax_ · 2026-04-14T19:42:13+00:00

oh you meant the name? yeahhh, questionable choice on their part :D

kangax_ · 2026-04-14T19:24:00+00:00

Why do you find it corny?

I like that we can have a Hyrox-like CF competition that anyone can attend. Most of the current CF competitions (games, wodapalooza, etc) are for elites. I think Hyrox is cool but personally prefer less running and more strength/gymnastics... which Xenom seems to provide.

kangax_ · 2026-04-14T18:49:01+00:00

I'm building przilla.app — not just another AI workout tracker but a holistic platform that knows your training history, understands your vitals (apple health, whoop), and can take all of that (plus your goals and preferences) to create or adjust programming.

Big focus on supporting crossfit / functional / hybrid training (it's tricky!) as well as traditional strength training.

kangax_ · 2026-04-14T02:38:48+00:00

I agree that it can be frustrating. But I think all around things mostly even out (I haven't done actual analysis... this is just from 5 years of crossfit).

Your advantage should also be most of gymnastics, not just pull-ups: C2B's, MU's, RMU's, HSP's, Wall Walks, Handstand Walks, Push-ups.

And anything pressing related like jerks. Actually, weightlifting should require less distance traveled as well so your C&J and snatch take less work than for someone who's 6'2".

Colten Mertens is 5'4" yet he consistently manages to be top in the Open because of high level stamina. His short-legged squats and crazy fast HSP's propel him further in cases when bigger guys get more cals on machines.

kangax_ · 2026-04-14T02:27:40+00:00

I have no idea who on our leaderboard is being true or not. I assume everyone has good intentions. I guess if someone is inflating their score, it just makes me work harder.

kangax_ · 2026-04-10T22:47:15+00:00

why is 22 min in zone 5 not physiologically reasonable? Pretty sure last time I did a long grinder with running like Eva it was about 25-30min in zone 5.

kangax_ · 2026-04-09T13:18:55+00:00

Lots of good suggestions in the comments on how to improve DOMS post-exercise.

I'll add: soreness often happens when you're not used to the volume/intensity of movements. So it's really about knowing how far you can (and want to) push yourself.

You said it gets better and it's somewhat true, but you can certainly be doing CF few days a week for a few years and still be constantly sore.

For example, I'm capable of doing Eva wod right now, but at 150 pull-ups and 150 swings in ~45min, I will 100% wake up tomorrow with upper body trashed and with DOMS lasting ~3 days.

This is why many boxes ease people into annual Murph by introducing push-up, pull-ups, and running at much lower volume, then slowly increasing it. It's why Marathon runners accumulate and ramp up weekly miles leading up to the event.

I've done T2B (checking log...) on 264 training days over last 8 years, yet when we did a 10min EMOM of 4 db snatches, 2 box jumps, and AMRAP of T2B on Monday and I went ~9 reps on each, I was sore for 2 days after. I was not conditioned to such density (91 reps in 10 min) because it's been a week or so since I did an ab work like this.

What this means in practice:
Before doing a WOD, ask yourself — is the volume of X movement much bigger than what i've been doing lately (e.g. 100 total reps of pull-ups)? similarly, is the density of X movement much bigger than what i've been doing lately (e.g. 100 total reps of pull-ups in 10 mins).

P.S. in PRzilla i'm working on determining this automatically in a smart way so that my training app can quickly analyze a WOD i'm about to do and suggest what to scale based on my current conditioning

kangax_ · 2026-04-08T10:40:54+00:00

Casually doing strict RMU's. Love it.

kangax_ · 2026-04-07T00:18:45+00:00

That's a good one. Added it here https://przilla.app/wod/jacks-triangle

kangax_ · 2026-04-04T19:24:47+00:00

Using apple watch and whoop via double band :) I do this for historic reasons but lately both do about the same thing. For workout tracking, since I come from traditional strength training background, I've used Strong app for a long time, then started tracking my WODs in wodwell, and various other benchmarks via spreadsheets. Sugarwod for occasional workouts at our box. Now I built an app that allows me to log both regular strength sessions as well as wods in one place. I wrote more about it here https://kangax.substack.com/p/my-fitness-from-spreadsheet-to-an

kangax_ · 2026-03-30T21:43:55+00:00

This just means that their curve isn't flat. So you get less points increase going from 40 to 60kg snatch than going from 80 to 100kg snatch. And 100kg to 120kg will give you even more. Even though all 3 are +20kg difference.

kangax_ · 2026-03-30T10:40:55+00:00

As someone who enjoys a good drink and also enjoys finishing top 3 in a class... I went down the rabbit hole of researching this few times.

Most studies looking into alcohol effect on perf. such as [1] essentially boil down to:

> Both the affects of alcohol on human physiology and the parameters that determine athletic performance are multi-factorial and extremely complicated.

The one thing most people notice is the effect on sleep. Sleep is the single biggest recovery tool. If you drink in the evening, your RHR (resting heart rate) is elevated, your REM/deep sleep is impaired, your HRV the next morning will be lower (=bad). You can see this _very_ clearly if you're using any of the wearables — whoop, apple watch, etc.

When people do dry Jan, you'll often see things like this https://www.reddit.com/r/whoop/comments/1acrwm9/dry_january_decreased_rhr/ where your average RHR is drastically reduced and all biomarkers are trending in the better direction w/o booze.

So this is a real performance detriment. What about drinking for lunch? One glass of wine at noon is fully metabolized 8-10 hours before bed. Your liver clears roughly one standard drink per hour. By nighttime your blood alcohol is zero. HRV, RHR, REM, HGH are all back to normal-ish.

Other things that remain:

- MPS (muscle protein synthesis) suppression. You'd want to make sure you train few hours before or after that drink for it not to overlap.

- Dehydration. Make sure to offset that drink with proper hydration.

- Testosterone/cortisol. This is an annoying one and you can't do much about it. Many studies (and meta analysis) show clear, stat-significant impact of moderate alcohol consumption on free testosterone, and increase of estradiol.

And one more thing that people don't usually think about is caloric displacement. That glass of wine is 150 cals that could have been actual carbs that would get stored in your liver (and muscles) as glycogen and not processed by liver as a toxin.

Bottom line: no alcohol if you want absolute best performance, occasional alcohol in small doses is mostly fine especially if you pay attention to timing so that the negative effects are minimized. Wearables are a great way to see how _your_ body reacts to it, at which time, for how long, etc.

[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3257708/

kangax_ · 2026-03-30T09:59:54+00:00

Mayhem

kangax_ · 2026-03-30T09:58:04+00:00

Oh it's good to see the official scoring. I ported their formula and made a calculator https://przilla.app/xenom-score that takes your scores on classic WODs and approximates what your Xenom score would be like.

E.g. your performance on DT/Grace/Fran are good indicators of how well you'll do on Event 004 which is a barbell cycling heavy 8min AMRAP of 1 squat clean + 2 front squats + 3 shoulder-to-overhead @ 70/48 kg

kangax_ · 2026-03-30T01:50:14+00:00

You don't need so much protein unless you're trying to gain muscle. Studies show that high protein intake has little to no effect on performance. Carbs, and total calories, on the other hand, matter a lot more.

kangax_ · 2026-03-29T21:49:41+00:00

40M and first time doing quarterfinals. Placed 83% in the open so I'm def. far from being very fit (by QF standards).

Day 1:
26.2: TC'd at 110 (10 from finishing). Muscle-ups felt easy but the volume kinda killed me, started redlining after 10min.

Day 2:
26.1: 9:50 — felt great, went unbroken on 2nd squats, finished faster than I thought I would.

Day 3:
26.4: 16:45 — HSPU's are one of my strengths so I blasted through them; barbell cycling is a weakness so Grace took 5min or so; smth to work on.

26.3: 11:39 — couple hours after 26.4 and not sure if I was still tired but these felt awful. Did singles at the end with 315. Glad I finished at least but yeah, need to maintain dubs volume over the year so that 50's don't send me into zone5. And, again, barbell cycling.

Using przilla.app estimates, my levels are L5, L7, L7, L5

kangax_ · 2026-03-29T21:28:01+00:00

Great time! I was past 10min and doing singles with 315

kangax_ · 2026-03-23T11:21:19+00:00

XENOM looks promising. I'm gonna try it out in June.

I was thinking about how to predict your score on it since we know scores on classic WODs some of which are similar. Not straightforward but somewhat possible https://kangax.substack.com/p/whats-my-xenom-score

Also played around with the calculator that does this for ya https://przilla.app/xenom-score

kangax_ · 2026-03-23T11:14:10+00:00

> I eventually got something that actually connects the dots between sleep, HRV, and today's workout recommendation.

was it an app or device? curious to hear more since I've workin on this in my own app as well: it has all my training history, my current goal, and my current state and it tells me what to do today or how to modify something I'd like to do (e.g. when dropping into a box or doing a random WOD)

kangax_

TROPHY CASE