2015 Recap

Yes, this post took about a week for me to put together.  I knew I wanted to write a year-end recap, but I wasn't exactly sure what I wanted to say in it.  Did I simply want to list out my times and scores from the beginning of the year and compare them to where they are at the end of the year?  Did I want to delve into how my perspective of Crossfit has changed over the course of the year?  Did I want to make this a farewell post, as my original intention for this blog was only to cover a year's worth of workouts?  In the end, I knew I would need to touch on all of these things, but I would need to keep things as brief as possible so everyone didn't fall asleep halfway through reading this.  As you know, brevity is not my strong suit, but I will try to keep things to a light ramble as I try to recap my journey over the past year.

The Speech That Never Had To Be Given

I had one major goal for the year: to make it on to the gym white board.  There are 36 categories on the white board.  Surely I could find one category on there where I could crack the top 3 in the gym.  After all, everyone has their strengths and weaknesses.  Wasn't it possible that one of my strengths would cosmically align with a major weakness of most of the other male athletes in the gym?

In a word: no.  I didn't come close.  I really believed that Nancy would be the workout which resulted in the name Dave gracing the white board, but my inability to put together decent 400 meter runs in the later rounds left me a solid 90 seconds off of the white board.  The 500 meter row was a possibility, but just as I began creeping closer to the third place spot on the board, we had Advent Challenge #2 and everyone in the gym went after the top 3 spots.  All the old times came down and three faster times went up.  Earlier in the year, I was really excited to PR my overhead squat by 40 pounds.  That had to put me in the range of the white board for the overhead squat, right?  Sorry, even another 40 pound PR wasn't going to get me on the white board there.  I no longer have the speed to crack the running events nor the hops to challenge on the max height box jump.  There were simply too many jocks for this nerd to overcome.

My goals for 2016 will be much simpler:

• Strengthen my hamstrings: This is the weakest part of my legs and it has hindered me from making larger gains in some areas (Olympic lifts), while causing me to completely plateau in other areas (hello deadlift!).  I was able to improve both my pull-ups and my double unders when I devoted my time and focus to those movements.  Hopefully some 2016 focus on my hammies will lead to some bigger lifts in the new year.
• Grip strength: I can't really say there is a weakest part to my upper body.  It is all weak at the moment.  But if I am to get better at gymnastic movements like pull-ups and toes-to-bar, I need to drastically improve my grip strength.
• Learn to butterfly: While we're on the topic of pull-ups, I think I need to take a crack at learning butterfly pull-ups.  Not only do I struggle with grip strength, I struggle with the push away piece at the top of a kipping pull-up.  Butterfly pull-ups are more advanced, but they eliminate that push away aspect when doing pull-ups.  A couple of people at the gym have told me they struggled with kipping pull-ups but found success with butterfly pull-ups.  Seems worth a shot.
• 10 benchmark goals (ascending in order of expected difficulty):
• Grace - 2:59
• Deadlift - 400 lbs
• Handstand Push-Ups - 1 strict with 1 abmat
• Nancy - 14:59
• Clean and Jerk - 245 lbs
• Annie - 9:59
• Handstand Push-Ups - 5 consecutive kipping
• Front Squat - 300 lbs
• Double Unders - 100 consecutive
• Bar Muscle-Up - 1

To All The Girls I'd Never Done Before

That's a pretty fantastic video, am I right?  Seems like a Saturday Night Live skit in the making.  Unfortunately I couldn't find any SNL parodies of that video.  (Note: Johnny Carson did do a parody of this and his Willie Nelson impression was excellent.)

If I'm going to list out my highlights for the year, I have to start with those workouts that I had never done RX before.  As always, ladies first:

• Annie
• Cindy
• Fran
• Helen
• Isabel
• Jackie

And then the animals (wait, what?):

• Badger
• Wolverine

And then there was that one really wild night:

• Filthy Fifty

And last, but not least, the first workout I ever did at KOP:

• Baseline

Besides getting through these workouts RX for the first time, there were many other highlights for me in 2015.  Among them:

• Best workout of the year: Kelly (December 8th)
• A PR of 6 minutes and 29 seconds.  The combination of improved box jump technique (rebounding throughout), improved wall ball technique (controlled breathing and better arm position), and the most mental strength I've ever managed in a workout.
• Stringing 10 toes-to-bar, winning the ice cream bet with Jill C (January 15th)
• Finishing Kalsu with 95 pounds, one of the two workouts that I had previously started but never finished (June 2nd)
• 225 lb overhead squat (June 26th)
• 49 consecutive double unders (June 30th)
• 330 lb back squat (October 1st)
• 225 lb clean and jerk (October 6th)
• Advent Challenge #15: 50 consecutive wall balls (December 15th)
• Advent Challenge #18: most pistols in one minute (37) among the guys at the gym (December 18th)

That's Just The Way It Is.  Some Things Will Never Change.

Badger - January 31st

Brawl In The Burbs - August 15th

Wolverine - October 31st

Day of Infamy - November 16th

People have to wait for me to finish workouts.  Quite a lot.  I did a quick search of Crossfit photos that I had accumulated during the year and it didn't take long to find 4 different examples of this phenomenon.  The quest to get better isn't always pretty.  The "pity circle" may not have been a popular moniker, but look how incredibly bored/sad those support groups look!  The "pity circle" formed many times for me in 2015 as I tried my best to keep my performances respectable.

If I'm willing to list out the highlights of the year, it seems only fair that I mention the low points of the year as well:

• Worst workout of the year: November 16th (see photo above)
• Some unexpected troubles during the toes-to-bar and overhead squat segments of the workout only added on to the misery that was found during my feeble attempts at completing double unders.  Repeated failures just led to more and more anger, pushing me further and further behind the rest of the class.  The overhead walking lunges to finish were no picnic either.  No other workout I did all year elicited as much commentary.
• The 5 week beatdown at the hands of Rachel during this year's Open, with the worst of it coming during my second attempt at 15.2, where I couldn't get a 10th chest-to-bar pull-up, then suffered the indignity of being denied beer at Wegman's (March 9th)
• My performance at The Festivus Games, specifically the first two events where I was slower in Event #1 than I was in my two practice attempts at it, followed by large amounts of crawling during the burpees over the bar portion of Event #2 (April 18th)
• My attempt at Helen in May, as just when I thought I had the hang of pull-ups, I fell apart and ended the workout doing ring rows in extreme frustration (May 18th)
• Launching myself backwards off the high pull-up bar and into the wall in front of everyone at Aimee's Pull-Up Clinic (June 8th)
• Struggling yet again at the annual King and Queen competition, most notably in the second event, a couplet of KB swings and sit-ups where I was time capped with 42 reps still to go (July 18th)
• Having my body fail me during the final workout at Brawl In The Burbs (August 15th)
• Being unable to improve upon my deadlift PR of 385 lbs
• Being unable to do a strict handstand push-up with 1 abmat despite more attempts than I can count

The Heat Of Competition

Even Spaz was able to come through in a competition.  Wasn't even distracted by those Swedish subtitles!  But could I?  Not so much.  You may have noticed that a lot of my worst performances this year took place during competitions.  And that is very disheartening to me.  I used to pride myself on coming through in the clutch.  When I was growing up, my dad taught me how to play games like darts and pool.  When we played against each other, there would be nothing out of the ordinary unless I had the lead late in the game.  Then the chatter would begin.  If I needed to hit a bullseye to close out the game, my dad would be in my ear, telling me how this was the toughest part of the game.  Don't get nervous!  Same deal if I was lining up the 8-ball for a final shot.  At first it was infuriating, because the pressure would get to me and I would always blow the game.  Then I finally won.  

Soon I embraced the trash talk.  I'd start to laugh at all the crazy stuff he'd say to me.  It began to calm me in those tense moments.  After a while, you crave those moments.  You want to be the one who has to take the last shot.  I was in a bowling league in middle school and my team finished the season tied for first place with another team.  In the tiebreaker match, it came down to the last frame and I needed a strike to keep the match going.  Maybe you worry much less as a kid, but I remember having no doubts that I was going to hit that strike.  And I did.  (Note: We still lost when the guy on the other team knocked down enough pins in his final frame.  Bastard!)  In high school, I hit a buzzer-beater to win a basketball game.  In college, I went on a run to close out the final rack en route to winning the team pool tournament.  Is this painting the picture that I am overly competitive?  Guilty as charged.

The reason for the trip down memory lane is to give you some insight as to why I take my Crossfit competition failures so hard.  I'm certainly not going into them thinking that I'm going to win any of them.  But I do expect myself to perform at my best during them.  Instead the opposite has happened.  It is one thing to accept losing a step or two as you get older, but losing the ability to be even remotely clutch has been a much tougher pill to swallow.

So will I do any competitions in 2016?  I'm still figuring that out.  Will I continue to go to Competitors Class?  There's part of me that thinks it's silly for me to be there.  I mean, this is a classic case of...

Spoiler: I'm the hat

Then again, there's part of me that is always driven to improve.  My obsession with trying to RX workouts is based in part because I've always loved challenges.  Competitors Class is a super-sized WOD with some of the best athletes in the gym.  If waking my groggy ass up and working out with them isn't the best challenge available to me, then I'm not sure what is.  So I'll likely be spending more Saturday mornings standing in the shower for 20-30 minutes at 6am.

Who Reads This Stuff Anyways?

As I mentioned in the intro, my original intention was to write this blog for 2015 and that's it.  KOP had put together a benchmarking program for the year and the write-up on this new program included the following instructions: "To take full advantage of the upcoming year, it will be imperative that you log your workouts."  Imperative?  That sounds serious.  How bout I start writing a blog that covers all of my workouts and you can sign me up for that full advantage thingy?

My results from the program can be found by following the link at the end of this paragraph.  In it, you will see a bunch of tabs.  The creatively named tab "All Workouts" includes all of my workouts from this year.  It has the name of the blog post that covered that workout.  The details of the workout are listed next, along with my final time or score.  Workouts done RX are in bold.  The final column has any additional notes that I wanted to include.  Did you know that I started a back squat program on April 6th?  Neither did I!  But I wrote it down.  The second tab, "Gym Benchmark Series", outlines my results from the program that inspired this blog.  The third tab is the aptly named "Other Repeated Workouts" and shows any repeated workouts that weren't in the second tab.  "Improved Benchmarks" shows all of the areas where I made improvements in 2015, while "Unchanged Benchmarks" shows the areas where I stalled out.  Finally, the tab "First Timers" covers the workouts that I completed RX for (you guessed it) the first time in 2015.  Here's the spreadsheet.

So now what?  Well the program may have been my initial inspiration, but it isn't the only reason I wanted to write.  I used to love writing and I rarely get to do it any more.  Plus I discovered along the way that this blog essentially was free public therapy for me.  I mean, I may have uncovered some daddy issues while writing this recap.  It's bizarre where my mind goes.

That hasn't been the only discovery along the way.  I guess this blog has been the closest experience I will ever have to being on a reality show.  (Sorry, the Thanksgiving Amazing Race didn't quite cut it for me.)  I never really thought of it in that context when I started this blog, but that's kinda the way it has played out.  During my first two years of Crossfit, I would get an occasional comment from a coach after a workout or possibly the next day.  Now I have people mention things like "hey, it's been five days since you took a rest day" or "maybe you should have done ring rows instead of banded pull-ups during that workout".  I ignorantly put myself under the microscope for better or worse.  That's not always the easiest thing for someone with low self-esteem to handle.

While I was away last week, I mulled over whether I wanted to keep writing this blog in 2016.  There was one thing that stuck in my brain as I weighed the pros and cons.  Every time I log on to my blog, it shows the number of views the blog has had.  When I started writing this, I figured a few people from the gym might be interested, possibly some friends and family, but this group of a dozen or so potential readers would likely only read it every so often.  It blew me away when all of these folks from the gym told me that they were loyal readers.  It was even more shocking when I found out people who don't do Crossfit were reading it.  (Note: I would like to once again extend my apologies to those of you who stumbled on to my blog in search of Russian porn.  Thank you for visiting anyway!)  When I fell behind with my updates, folks wanted to know when I was going to post again.  This was not what I was expecting at all.  

To date, this blog has gotten approximately 11,000 views.  Maybe in the grand scheme of things, that's not a lot.  But it is a lot to me.  I can't thank all of you enough who have indulged me as I rambled on day after day, being an audience for me as I get to enjoy a hobby of mine.  Perhaps a time will come when my audience will grow tired of hearing about what runs through my mind as I'm doing a set of wall balls or how I've devised the perfect plan to get through a Hero WOD, but I feel like that point hasn't been reached yet.  

So after we ring in 2016, I'm going to keep on writing and hope you keep on reading.  Have a Happy New Year everyone!

Finishing On A High Note

Workout date: 12/18/15

Attending the final class of the day has been a mixed bag recently.  Either I'm in a class of 11 people (why is it always 11 people?) or I end up in a class all by my lonesome.  My final class before vacation was the 6:30 class on Friday and the class consisted of me, myself, and I.  And because the class was purely strength (1RM hang power clean and jerk), I felt bad asking Miranda to coach an extra class when I could go through the motions myself.  So we came to a compromise: Miranda would put me through a tabata to warm up and she would keep an eye on me as I did my lifts, but for the most part, I'd be blending into the Friday night Open Strength session.

Not only was Miranda keeping an eye on me, but so was most of the Open Strength class.  That was a blessing as I almost immediately began doing hang power cleans with about 7 things wrong with my form.  As I added weight to the bar, Shawna gave me tips on my hand placement.  I had never noticed that people adjust their hands when they get to the top of their clean, but then when I watched Faby do his cleans, I saw exactly what she was talking about.  She also pointed out that I should be stacking my wrists when I transitioned into the jerk.  As I moved from 95 pounds to 125 pounds and then 155 pounds, I tried to remind myself of the importance of proper hand placement.

When I got to my lift at 185, I was still able to clean the bar successfully, but not by much.  That might sound a little weird since my top clean ever is 225 pounds, but we were doing these cleans from the hang.  What does that mean?  Allow me to describe this really poorly.  To get to the hang position, you stand the barbell up to your waist as though you were doing a deadlift.  Then you lower the barbell to just above your knee as your upper body hangs over it.  This is technically the low hang, but it is the point most people use when doing hang power cleans.  The high hang is a more upright position where you lower the barbell to a position in line with the pockets of your shorts.  Both the high hang and the low hang are points you should be hitting along the way when you do a full clean from the floor.  The reason I struggle with cleaning from the hang is that I prefer to have the momentum generated as I take the barbell from the floor.  Others prefer cleaning from the hang.  To each their own.

My next jump in weight was going to be to 205 pounds, but I didn't have high expectations for getting this lift.  My personal best hang power clean was 215, but as is the case with most things in the gym, if you don't practice it regularly, the ability goes away.  The lift at 185 made me wary that I could get 205.  I'm not sure if that lack of confidence transferred its way into my actual lifts, but I missed three straight attempts at 205.  I had resigned myself to taking a score of 185 for the day when Miranda gave me some help after failed attempt #3.  She told me that I was not pinching my shoulders back during the clean.  I had them pinched back in my setup, as well as when I lifted the barbell to my waist, but when I lowered the bar to the hang position, I was rounding my back.  This was seriously inhibiting my ability to execute the clean.  The funny part about all of this is that I had been actively thinking about keeping my shoulders pinched back because this was the same issue Rachel had told me about when I was struggling with my sumo deadlifts earlier in the week.  I guess sometimes even when you think you are doing something right, you may not be.  (Note: the opposite is true as well, since I felt like my arms were wobbly during my jerks, but everyone kept telling me how strong my jerks looked.)

I decided to give 205 one more shot with all of my focus on keeping my shoulders pinched back throughout the lift.  Did my normal setup, went through the routine of bringing the barbell to my waist, made sure my shoulders were pinched back as I lowered into the hang, and sure enough, as if it were magic, I was able to clean the 205 pounds.  From there I did the jerk and my score for the day became a little more respectable.  But as is always the case with me, when I learn a new trick and find success with it, my eyes fill with wonder like a kid on Christmas morning.  If that worked at 205, maybe it would work at 215 as well!  I put 10 more pounds on the barbell, waited a few minutes, then gave that weight a try.  I was hyper-focused on my shoulders the whole way and once again I cleaned the weight.  I took care of the jerk and now I had increased my score by 30 pounds from what I thought it would be 10 minutes ago.

Time was running out in class, but I had time for at least one more lift, so I moved up to 225.  Miranda had gone out to the lobby for a few minutes, so she wasn't there to watch over me during this lift, but I pretended she was there, not wanting to disappoint her by having a rounded back once again.  I went through the whole routine and even though I barely got the barbell high enough, I was able to secure the clean at 225.  My adrenaline must have been pumping at that point, as the weight didn't feel incredibly heavy on my shoulders.  My jerk at 225 may have been the best one I had all night.  It was a new PR for me in terms of a hang power clean and jerk.

So what does one do with only a couple minutes left in class when they are brimming with confidence?  They add 10 more pounds to the barbell naturally.  I had a lot of confidence that I could jerk 235 if I could only manage to clean it.  Unfortunately, I hit my wall.  I only made one attempt at 235, but it was pretty bad.  Not sure I could have gotten it with multiple attempts that evening, but it may be a weight I can get if I'm a little bit fresher.  Final score: 225.

Time for the Advent challenge and somehow I was thrown a bone.  The challenge was max pistols (one-legged squats) in 1 minute.  I had a real chance of winning this challenge.  To make life even easier for me, only two non-coach male athletes had done the challenge and the highest score was 8.  I had done a cash out earlier this year where we did 3 burpee pull-ups EMOM and then tried to knock out 60 pistols as quickly as possible.  During the first minute of that cash out, I did 29 pistols, so doing 9 in a full minute seemed like a piece of cake.  In fact, my goal for this challenge was to get 35.  Or at least it was until I saw Jill A had gotten 40.  Then my goal was to try like hell to beat her score.

Shawna had just gotten her first pistol and I was convinced she could get more, so she stuck around to attempt this a second time with me.  We waited until the timer hit a full minute and then got to it.  I was slightly cautious at the very beginning, but I was still moving fairly quickly.  I had 10 pistols in the first 15 seconds.  When I went to do my 12th pistol, I lost my balance and fell over.  Oops.  From that point on, I knew I needed to move even faster if I was going to have any chance of catching Jill.  Pretty soon I began looking like a Russian folk dancer.  As time winded down, I bounced from one pistol to the next as fast as I could, but it wasn't fast enough.  Final score: 37 pistols.  At last, I had won something in the gym!  Only took an entire year.

Perhaps it was a fitting ending though.  The next day I hopped on a plane to Mexico for a vacation that will last for most of the remainder of the year.  I'll probably make it to the gym a couple times before 2015 ends, but after a week of fun in the sun, you can imagine how wonderful those results will be.  So for all intents and purposes, the pistol challenge marked the end of my 2015 adventure.  I will be writing up a recap of the year soon and providing a spreadsheet that contains all of the details from my workouts this year.  But for now, it's time to go lay by the pool.  Hasta luego!

My Safe Word Is Dave

Workout date: 12/17/15

On Wednesday I did a workout that didn't sound all that appealing to me and I actually did well.  In order to maintain balance in the universe, I was going to need to get my butt kicked in a similarly non-appealing workout.  And the universe does not like to be off-balance for long, despite allowing me to be lopsided for 37 years.

Thursday's workout was an 18 minute chipper that focused heavily on the arms.  Here's a look at it:

AMRAP in 18 Minutes:

50 calorie row

40 KB swings (53/35)

30 push-ups

20 pull-ups

10 deficit ring rows (using 13" box)

Before we even warmed up, I was chatting with Chris about this workout and I gave him a prediction.  Everyone knows how much I hate pull-ups.  Push-ups I'm a bit more fond of.  But having done workouts like this one in the past, I predicted that the push-ups would be the downfall in this WOD, not the pull-ups.  There were only 30 of them, but I suspected that this would be the point where everyone's arms would fatigue much more than they might expect.  (Okay, okay...maybe this only applied to me because I'm lacking arm strength, but it was possible that others might encounter the same issue.)

Warmups began with an ice breaker as Doctor Coach Sommelier VP Giulz asked us what our safe words were if we had one.  I didn't realize that I had one just then, so my reply was the epically boring "don't have one".  Then we went through each of the movements in the workout.  The class was a large one with 11 people in it (seems to be the magic number these days for some strange reason), but this was not a workout conducive to a big class.  Each athlete needed space for their rower, space to do KB swings, space to do push-ups, a spot on the rig to do pull-ups, and a spot on the rings for ring rows.  Now add in that Open Strength was taking place in the gym as well as a fundamentals class for a new athlete and you have space issues.  Space issues have been particularly problematic for me recently as I've been trying to use a high bar when doing pull-ups or toes-to-bar.  Most people are using the low bars for these movements.  Because of the alternating setup of low bars and high bars, and because you are swinging back and forth during these movements, using one high bar effectively takes away the space for using two low bars.  And using one low bar takes away the space for using two high bars.  With most people on low bars, you can see how there is very little high bar real estate available.  This would be the case again during this workout.

I had set up shop at the near end of the gym where Jason was teaching the fundamentals class.  I asked him if I was okay doing pull-ups on the high bar behind my rower and he said yes, as his student was going to be working one space over.  Cool.  Except when the workout started, I discovered that the student was doing lifts from the rack, which meant that one end of his barbell was sticking out underneath my high bar.  No bueno.  So some adjustments needed to be made on the fly.

But before getting to those dreaded pull-ups, there was plenty of other work that needed to be done.  3...2...1...and let the rowing begin!  With 18 minutes of unpleasantness ahead of me, I had no intention of exhausting myself on the initial row.  The plan was to make nice big pulls while keeping my breathing under control.  I surprised myself at how quickly I was moving through the 50 calories. The coaches always tell you to try your best to get 1 calorie on each pull, but that's really ambitious for someone like myself.  However, this was the first time where I did a long row and came close to making that happen.  I was done with the 50 calories in about 2 and a half minutes when I was expecting it to take closer to 3 minutes.  I got off of my rower about a second or two after Adam, who was working alongside of me.

Despite taking great care to control my breathing during the row, I immediately felt the effects of the first element of the workout when I went to swing the KB.  My plan here was a set of 25 and a set of 15 for the 40 reps, but that fell apart when I needed to put the KB down after 12 swings.  I did not want to have to break up the last 28 reps into 3 sets, so I knew I had to hold on a little better for the rest of the round.  The next 14 reps were unpleasant, but I held on until they were complete.  After a short break, I hung on for 14 more reps.  Adam and I put down our KBs at the same time and got started on our push-ups together.

As predicted, this is where it fell apart.  I started with a set of 10.  Then I got a set of 7.  I kept shaking out my arms while I took a rest in between sets.  With 13 reps left, I was hoping to go 7 and 6, but I barely made it through 5 reps in my next set.  Adam finished up his push-ups and moved on to his bar, as our in sync workouts came to an end here.  I managed to get another set of 5, before completing my push-ups with a shaky set of 3.  It was now time to find someplace to do pull-ups.

With the fundamentals athlete essentially blocking three of the high bars and Adam blocking two with where he was doing his pull-ups on the low bar, there was nowhere for me to go.  I scanned the pull-up rig at the other end of the gym, but most of the folks in class had already begun their pull-ups and were using the low bars.  I decided I could use the high bar to the right of Adam, but I would jump on it while he rested.  If I had any luck, he would be done soon and I'd have that space to myself.  It actually ended up working that way, but for a different reason.  When Adam saw me do a couple of reps on the high bar to his right, he moved back one space to the open low bar there and completed his pull-ups at that station.  Thanks for helping me out Adam!

My shoulders were feeling spent when I went to do singles on the pull-up bar.  As people migrated to the rings, it was me and Alona left over at the pull-up rig.  Alona was doing a much better job of stringing her reps, while I was doing a decent job of doing single after single until I completed sets of 4-5 reps.  I finished off my 20th rep and headed to the rings while Alona followed right behind me.  When we got over there, we were a bit lucky.  There are only 8 stations over where the rings are located and 6 of them were in use.  Alona and I grabbed the two empty stations and began doing the deficit ring rows.  We only had to do 10, which didn't sound that bad, but my shoulders and arms were toast.  If I was lucky, I'd get 2 in a set before having to come off the rings and reset my feet on the box again.  I was very slow getting through these, reclaiming my traditional last place spot as I was the final person to get back to their rower for round two.

Approximately 13 minutes had elapsed when I got back on the rower.  Despite pulling with more urgency than I had during the first round, I was only getting 1 calorie every two pulls.  I was on the rower much longer this time around, getting these 50 calories in about three and a half minutes.  That left a little over a minute left for the 40 KB swings.  I knew I wasn't going to be able to complete all 40 in that amount of time.  I did a set of 11 and then a set of 7 reps.  As time ticked down, I picked up the KB one last time and got 7 more swings in before time was called.  Final score: 1+75.

Not an awesome score by any means, but I wasn't bothered by my score in the end.  This was a workout that I expected would be a struggle for me and it was.  After a week in which I was pleasantly surprised by some of the results I had, it only made sense that I would eventually come back down to earth.  And I'd rather it happen on a workout like this than one where I thought I'd do really well.

The Advent challenge involved scaling the peg board.  I had attempted this once or twice before and I had gone nowhere.  To get up the peg board, you hang from two pegs and then remove a peg and place it in the hole above the one where the peg was previously.  Sounds simple enough, right?  Except removing Excalibur from the stone seemed easier to me than getting one of these wooden pegs out of its hole.  With my body weight pulling the pegs downward, they would not slide out, so I'd have to jerk them out, which would lead to me falling from the board.  The members of our class went up one by one and tried out the peg board.  Some were rock stars and climbed to the top or very close to it.  Others made it up 2-3 holes for the first time ever.  As for me, I didn't even want to attempt it again.  I already knew I sucked at it and didn't require further validation.  When Giulz and some of my classmates began to say "come on Dave, try it", it dawned on me that Dave was my safe word.  Once Dave was said, the action stopped.

I may not have attempted it then, but after watching nearly everyone else go, I felt like a bum and tried it out.  I had the same struggle that I had in the past and fell after removing the first peg.  Then someone gave me a tip.  I was holding my body up on the pegs, feeling that it was necessary to do it that way or I'd never reach the next hole higher up.  But the folks who were successful getting up the board said I should try it with my arms fully extended, so that I was hanging low underneath the pegs.  It would be harder to reach the next hole, but the peg should slide out more easily.  And whaddaya know...it did!  I had to lunge towards the next hole when I got the peg out, but I didn't immediately fall off the board like I had done in previous attempts.  And I will admit it was a cool feeling when I got the peg into the next hole.  Success!  In fact, I managed to move up one more hole before failing on the third one.  I didn't win any raffle tickets, but I left the gym feeling happy that I accomplished something new.

Friday preview: My final workout before heading on vacation.  A 1RM hang power clean and jerk followed by....PISTOLS???  Christmas done come early.

Building Sprint Speed

Workout date: 12/16/15

There are definitely things I like to see programmed at the gym (overhead squats, rope climbs, pistols).  There are other things that I've slowly learned to enjoy (wall balls, rowing).  And there are things that simply drive me nuts (pull-ups, double unders).  Most other movements tend to fall into the "meh" category for me.  I go and do them with the hope that I will improve as I get more practice in, but they are much more palatable for me in a workout if you sprinkle in some of the other stuff I like.

I think that is why my initial reaction to Wednesday's WOD was so lifeless.  I clicked on the KOP blog at 10pm per usual and found this:

AMRAP in 8 minutes
5 strict handstand push-ups
10 box jumps (24"/20")

Would you like some flavorless dessert with that?  Might I interest you in a one mile run for the day's Advent challenge?  Mmmm...make sure to order some lukewarm tap water to wash all that down.

I decided to go to the noon class because I had something planned for later in the afternoon.  The first person I spoke to was a guy named Rag.  I had never met him before, but apparently he used to work out at KOP.  And he couldn't have been any friendlier.  He was so nice towards me that I legitimately got a little worried that I had met him before and had forgotten our previous encounters.  When Coach Jenna told us we needed a partner for our warmup, I made sure I got Rag.  Also working out in the Express class were Queen Pam, Denise, Karen, and Therese.

With the warmup complete, we went over the standards for the WOD.  Having no kip to speak of, there is no difference to me when strict handstand push-ups are programmed vs normal handstand push-ups.  In fact, as I started talking with Queen Pam about it, I realized that today's programming would help me.  I only do strict handstand push-ups so I would just do what I typically do, while others in the gym might need to scale as a result of not being allowed to kip.  Maybe this workout played to my strengths after all.

The only issue was that my ability to do strict handstand push-ups with two abmats was pretty fickle.  Some days I could knock them out easily and some days I could barely do any at all.  Perhaps the conversation about strict handstand push-ups being something I typically do resulted in some extra confidence, because I didn't even set up a fall back scaling option for myself for this WOD.  Somehow I convinced myself that I was going to be able to do them for 8 minutes.  It was only 2 weeks ago that I did Holleyman and could only make it to 18 reps before needing to scale (and even those 18 reps were shaky).  Can't give a good explanation as to why I was certain I could handle sets of 5 reps on Wednesday, but I was.

Queen Pam was in a similar situation to me.  She tended to do more strict handstand push-ups in workouts than those of the kipping variety, so the extra qualifier that reps could not be done with a kip wasn't a big deal to her.  She was starting out with 1 abmat, but felt she would need to switch to 2 eventually.  (Note: I don't know for certain when she made the switch.)  Right before we started, Queen Pam asked me if it was okay for her to work alongside of me.  She had been down towards the other end of the gym during warmups, but now her 2 abmats were sitting in the space next to me.  Oh no!  I've been down this road before.  She was giving me the Michal treatment!  I could already envision Queen Pam doing her last set of box jumps facing me, letting me know they didn't give her that crown for nothing.  I was going to need to find an extra gear today to keep up with her.  Earlier scores seemed to indicate that 7-8 rounds was a solid score, so my goal was to finish 8 rounds.  After all, I was pretty certain Queen Pam would get 8 rounds done.

If I had a sweet spot in terms of the time domain for a workout, 8 minutes would be pretty close to it. I've shown throughout the year that I tend to mess up workouts when I have to go super fast (see: recent rope climb Advent challenge).  I also tend to fall apart when a workout requires going beyond 15-20 minutes (my recent Kelly performance being an outlier).  The day after Holleyman, I did a 15 minute WOD where I kept it together for a solid 14 minutes.  That meant I should be able to keep moving at a brisk pace for this 8 minute workout.  And that is exactly what I did.

The most important aspect of this WOD for me was to be fearless about going upside down.  I waste a lot of time psyching myself up about going upside down when I need to just go for it.  It isn't the worst thing in the world if I hit the wall tilted to the side or I simply fall back off the wall.  I can do it over if need be.  But I couldn't afford to waste time talking myself into going upside down.  JFDI!

Jenna got us started and I got upside down immediately.  Time for the first litmus test: could I do 5 strict handstand push-ups?  Yes I could.  In fact, I did them pretty quickly.  I came off the wall and ran over to my box.  After doing a few reps using the rebound technique, I predictably tripped on the box during a rep.  I didn't let that hold me up too long though, finishing up round one at about the same time as Queen Pam.  From that point forward, things went smoothly.  I did trip on the box again later on, but that was bound to happen as you're trying to blaze through box jumps as fast as you can.  When I finished my fifth round, I took a quick peek at the clock and saw 3:57.  If I could keep this pace up, I could finish 10 rounds.

Naturally, I thought there was no way I could keep that pace for another 4 minutes, but any time I felt like I was slowing down, I told myself to keep going.  It was only a couple minutes more.  Move, move, move!  I was now a round ahead of Queen Pam as she ran into problems on the handstand push-ups a couple of times.  As I finished my 8th round, it occurred to me that I might be moving fast enough to move two rounds ahead of her.  This was a Kelly-esque miracle.  Soon I heard Jenna tell us there was one minute left.  I completed my box jumps and had 9 rounds in the books.

After getting upside down and stringing 5 strict handstand push-ups for the 10th consecutive time, I ran to my box.  The clock read 7:37, meaning I had 23 seconds to get these 10 box jumps in if I was going to get 10 full rounds.  Queen Pam was on her 8th round of box jumps, so I could still catch her as well.  With only 23 seconds remaining, I knew I couldn't afford to stop or mess up.  I needed 10 solid rebounding jumps.  I moved as fast as I could and finished the set.  Could I get one more handstand push-up in?  Jenna began the 3, 2, 1 countdown just as I got back to the wall.  There was no chance of me getting upside down and doing a rep in 3 seconds, so I stayed upright.  10 rounds was much better than I could have expected on this workout.  Maybe, just maybe, my cardio is improving.

Queen Pam got her revenge on the mile run as I knew I had no shot of keeping up with her.  I didn't stay as close to her as I had hoped, but I held on to a decent pace the whole way.  What was that pace?  No one knows.  Jenna thought she had started the clock when we began our mile journey, but it turns out that when she came back from the bathroom, she saw that the clock was still all zeroes.  Oops.  My "official" time was 7:42, because it certainly took me more than 7 minutes, and 42 is my favorite number.  (Seriously, this is how we came up with my time.)  It was tougher for Queen Pam because she ran very fast during the mile and didn't have an accurate time to show for it.  Laura A had done her mile in 6:26 and I have to believe Pam's time was very close to that, if not faster.  If I had to guess on my real time, it was likely in the 7:15-7:30 range.

Afterwards, I got to talk with the Queen as we shared stories about how neither of us have rhythm (explains our kipping woes) and how we're working on so many different things in the gym.  Despite an obvious difference in abilities (WOD scoreboard after Wednesday: Queen Pam - eleventy billion, Dave - 1), we did seem to have a lot in common as far as which movements in the gym remain a struggle for us.  I'm sure we will be practicing more of these things after class again the next time I hit up the Express.

Thursday preview: An 18 minute chipper!  Let's see how well I can keep it together during rowing, KB swings, push-ups, pull-ups, and deficit ring rows.

Not 92, But 50

Workout date: 12/15/15

I got a personal training day on Tuesday!  Okay, not really, but I was the only one who signed up for the 7:30 class, so Coach Rachel was stuck dealing with only me.  In a normal class, coaches can at least walk around and witness some decent form being displayed by athletes not named Dave.  But poor Rachel had to yell cues at me for the better part of a half-hour because there were no other students to be found.  And I bled on stuff.  We'll get there.

The WOD on Tuesday was purely strength.  We were doing sumo deadlifts.  This used to be a lift that I didn't particularly enjoy because it always felt strange standing in a sumo stance picking up large amounts of weight.  The tradeoff for your funky stance during the sumo deadlift is that you don't have to lift the weight as high.  I had a good experience with sumo deadlifts the last time I did them.  In that WOD, we were finding a 2 rep max and somehow I was able to get two reps at 385 pounds.  That made me believe that 395 was possible this evening.  The setup was two sets of 5 reps, then 3 sets of 3 reps, before finishing off with 2 attempts at a big 1 rep number.

Despite having only 75 pounds on the barbell, my form was dreadful right from the start.  Hips up, neutral gaze, shoulders back, keep the barbell close to your body at all times...these were all cues that Rachel had to say to me over and over again.  I was still a work in progress when I did my final warmup set at 135.  Rachel asked me to pause before starting my sets so that she could make sure my setup for the lift was correct.  Inevitably she would need to correct a few things before I got started each time.  What can I say?  I'm a slow learner.

As for the sumo deadlifts, I did have some initial success.  I did 5 reps at 225 and 275.  Then I did a set of 3 at 305 that was probably my best of the evening in terms of keeping proper form.  My form was so good that the barbell stayed extremely close to my legs the entire time.  How close is that?  Bloody shin close.  (Note: I made sure to wipe down the barbell I was using after the workout was over.)  I wasn't 100 percent sure how I wanted to proceed from there.  I knew that I wanted my two single reps to be at 375 and 395.  I felt like I needed my last set of 3 to be at 355, but that was seeming really aggressive as I progressed through my lifts.  I may have had good form during my set at 305, but the weight still felt heavy.  I decided to try 330 next and, if that wasn't a mess, I'd try out 355.  For the set at 330, I was a little slow getting the bar moving, but once I did, I was able to get all 3 reps.  Based on that set, I thought 355 was definitely worth a try.

While taking a break before the next set, Rachel and I started talking about the caption contest from yesterday's workout and I told her how disturbed I was that people think I'm doing math during the workouts.  I get why they would think that, but it is still pretty bad that people think I am that much of a nerd.  Rachel jokingly threw out a math problem for me and asked what the answer was.  When I instantly answered "92", she had a shocked look on her face.  Perhaps I am that much of a nerd.  Rachel insisted that I scream "92" if I completed the lift at 395.  Sounded like a small price to pay for getting a PR, so I agreed to the stipulation.

After taking a couple of minutes to recover from the lift at 330, I got ready to take on 355.  I got the bar moving and completed the first rep.  Then I did the second rep, but I got very shaky.  This was a lot of weight for me and I was feeling it.  I tried not to let my body get loose as I went to tap the floor after the second rep.  After letting the barbell kiss the ground, I pulled as hard as I could and got that third rep.  It was a struggle, but I was happy to get 355.

Sadly, that would be the end of the positive sumo deadlift mojo.  I added twenty pounds to my bar to do 1 rep at 375.  Really didn't think this lift would be much of an issue.  Boy was I wrong.  First attempt: fail.  Second attempt: fail.  I took some time to regroup before making a third attempt.  Third attempt: fail.  I'm not sure why my body shut down all of a sudden, but it seemed to think I was done after the 3 reps at 355.  Rachel suggested taking some weight off the bar, which I did begrudgingly.  Even that was no help, as my one attempt at 365 went nowhere.  It was a little disappointing, but I don't practice deadlifts nearly as much as I should.  When I start putting in the work, the PR will come.  But for tonight...final score: 355.

There was still reason for optimism though.  I legitimately thought my last real chance at winning one of the Advent challenges had come and gone with my screwed up performance on the rope climbs last week.  That was until I saw what was in store for day 15.  One of my remaining goals for the year was to string 50 consecutive wall balls.  I had made it as high as 44 last month, but 50 had eluded me.  So when I saw that the Advent challenge was 50 wall balls for time, I knew I had to do it.  The bad part?  Ninja Pete had put up a time of 1:34 in one of the morning classes.  That seemed really fast.  At the very least, I knew I had to string all 50 reps to have a shot.  I felt a little better about my chances when Matt B told me at the end of the 6:30 class that his time of 1:55 involved breaking the wall balls into 3 sets, while Ryan A's time of 1:45 came from a set of 35 and a set of 15.  Don't drop the ball and you've got a shot, Dave.

Rachel initially wanted to do this one at a time, and since I was still sweaty from the sumo deadlifts, I told her that she should go first.  The top female coach time was 1:29 by Aimee.  Wall balls tend to go smoother for taller athletes and Rachel is taller than Aimee, so I thought she could beat that time.  The caveat once again was holding on through all 50 reps.  Rachel got going and looked very smooth for the first 30 reps.  It isn't that she didn't look smooth after that point, but I became preoccupied with looking back and forth between her and the clock as she neared the end of her set.  As she got to her final 10 reps, she seemed to be doing a rep every 2 seconds.  With 5 reps to go, the clock read 1:19.  I started yelling "quick, quick, quick, quick" at her and she responded by finishing the last 5 reps in 9 seconds.  Rachel's final time of 1:28 was raffle ticket worthy.

As for me, I suddenly had a bad feeling I was going to blow this.  I have gotten much better with wall balls, especially as far as my breathing is concerned, but this seemed like one of those too good to be situations where the stars seemed aligned for me, only to have storm clouds roll in and cover them up.  My pessimism went away once I got started though.  I was moving swiftly, throwing the ball at the wall with some force so that it would return to me quicker.  The clock was right above me, but there was no way I was taking my eye off the ball to look at it.  I got to 25 reps and still felt good.  As I got to 35 reps, the reps became tougher, but I knew if I got to 40, I was doing everything in my power to finish the last 10.  As I hit the low 40s, I began to struggle as the ball wasn't going as high as it had been up to this point.  Rachel told me to keep the ball above the line and I knew it was time to start jumping on each throw.  After the 47th rep, I needed to jump really high just to get the ball over the line.  There were no style points at the end, but I got all 50 reps in without dropping the ball.  Final time: 1:37.

Was it a little bit of a bummer to string all of the wall balls and not win the challenge for the day?  Yeah it was.  But that feeling went away fairly quickly.  Getting 50 consecutive wall balls was one more thing that I could cross off of my 2015 goals.  Hard for me to hang my head on any day I'm able to do that.

Wednesday preview: It doesn't look like my type of workout, but I'm going anyway.  Strict handstand push-ups, box jumps, and a mile run for the Advent challenge.

The WOD That Wasn't

Workout date: 12/14/15

What was that silly little Saturday preview I wrote about at the end of my last post?  That didn't happen.  With cold and flu season continuing its rampage of the Nichols household throughout the weekend, my lack of sleep finally caught up with me.  There was no part of me that wanted to work out.  There was even an enticing WOD programmed at the gym on Sunday, but I simply didn't have the energy to do it.

I tried to pull it back together on Monday night, but I'm not sure I can really claim to have done a real WOD.  In fact, I'm not sure any of us can claim we did a real WOD.  We did a bunch of work and we were wiped out at the end, but no one really knew what their time was for the workout.  Here's what was scheduled for Monday:

21-15-9
Thrusters (95/65)
Toes-to-bar
*At the end of each round, complete a 100 meter prowler push (230/140)

Interesting...so this was like Fran, but with toes-to-bar instead of pull-ups.  That was an exchange I could get behind.  The real head scratcher here was the prowler push at the end of each round.  The weight didn't sound particularly heavy, although I'm sure it would be after you wore yourself out with the other movements.  What had me confused was how we would do the prowler push.  The 6:30 class on Monday typically tends to be pretty large.  There would be enough space for the thrusters and the toes-to-bar.  But as for the prowlers, well...

The prowler push wouldn't be quick, so only having two of them available for a large class seemed problematic.  I arrived for class about 10 minutes early, allowing me to see the end of the 5:30 class and the chaos that would be awaiting us.  The 5:30 class had 11 people in it, matching the number of people who were waiting to take the 6:30 class.  There were very few people inside the gym, so originally I thought it was a small class.  Then I looked outside and saw people hanging out while the prowler was being pushed.  The 100 meter push required going down a hill (not so bad) and then coming back up said hill (extremely bad).  And people were struggling to get up that hill.  Having looked at the blog earlier, I saw that the best times of the day were in the low teens.  So when I saw coaches Laura P and Giulz finishing around 20 and 22 minutes respectively, I knew the prowler situation was a mess.  Did I mention that it was dark out and raining as well?

Action shot from the 6:30 class

When Aimee took us outside to warm up on the prowlers, it was so dark that it was difficult to tell what weight was on the prowler.  Throw in the need to have different weights for men and women, not to mention different weights for people scaling, and you can see how a bottleneck was sure to form.

Also causing a delay was yours truly.  After going through the entire warmup, Aimee told us that we had 90 seconds to get ready to start.  Except 90 seconds in Aimee time is about 17 seconds in real time.  I hadn't put my grips on yet because I was trying to keep them dry before the workout began.  I ran over to my bag, got out my grips, and began to put them on.  All of a sudden Aimee said we were starting.  I pleaded my case for letting me put on my grips and Aimee hooked me up by having the people on my side of the class start two minutes after the first group (sorry, people on my side of the class!).

For the workout, I was using 95 pounds for my thrusters, the high bar for my toes-to-bar, and 140 pounds for the prowler.  Rachel had put 140 on one of the two prowlers and I wasn't dragging out more weight as that would have only slowed things at the prowler push even more.  After a two minute delay, I got started on my thrusters.  Planned on going 14 and 7 for my two sets and that is what I did.  Then I got to the toes-to-bar, where I did 5 correctly strung reps, followed by 4 more correctly strung reps.  Then I did 4 "I know this isn't the proper way to string these, but I'm tired" reps.  Aimee had come over to watch me and wanted to see good reps even if I didn't hit the bar, so I did my best to go back to the technique she showed us.  Only got 2 reps.  Next set I got 3 good ones, before tiring and doing 3 lousy ones again to end my first round.

When I got outside, it was mass confusion.  It looked like Rachel had grown tired of waiting on the prowlers and was going to use a sled instead.  After Giulz stated that the sled was working something completely different, she came back to the prowler, although Keithie decided to stick with the sled.  I was about 4th in line and had to wait a while.  We were going one at a time for the full 100 meters and it was very slow.  There was a lot of yelling about having people only go halfway with someone else waiting on the bottom of the hill to do half, but that made no sense in pairs.  In that scenario, teammate #1 would push to the bottom of the hill, with teammate #2 pushing it back up the hill.  Then what?  Teammate #2 would have to push it back down the hill (meaning they did the entire 100 meters in a row, defeating the purpose of this exercise) with teammate #1 bringing it back up the hill. So nothing changed for teammate #2, except he/she got to jump ahead of teammate #1 for no good reason.  You needed a minimum of 3 people to make the split prowler pushes work, although my guess is that having unequal numbers of people on each end would eventually lead to confusion.  So 4 people would be best.  You would also need to exclude people from hopping into your group in the middle of the sequence or things would get messed up.  Got all that?  (How did this not go incredibly smoothly?)

I haven't even gotten to the worst part yet!  Due to the rain, it was very difficult to get traction.  So as bad as it would have been to push the prowler up the hill in perfect conditions, it was tremendously more difficult with your feet slipping.  During my first push back up the hill, I had my feet slip twice, killing all of the momentum I had generated in trying to move the weight up the hill.  Once you got back to the flat area, it was fine, but this was the main reason that athletes were not completing their prowler pushes in a timely manner.

I believe I was about 13 minutes in when my first round was complete.  During my time outside, I waited for my turn, helped people change weights, and even ran down to the hill to encourage Rachel on as she pushed the prowler up the hill.  There was a lot of time to kill in there.  Back inside, I did 3 sets of 5 reps on my thrusters.  Then I did 5 sets of 3 reps on the toes-to-bar.  The first set was the sloppy kind and, of course, Aimee was watching.  I did the next two sets properly and, of course, Aimee was not watching.  After messing up the 4th set and doing the crappy reps, I got ready for the final 3 reps.  Aimee was down at the other end watching someone else.  So I waited a little bit.  Not like a few minutes or anything, but probably 20 seconds or so.  When she finally looked down towards where I was working, I gave her the thumbs up and pointed to the bar.  That got her attention.  Then I did three good reps and ran out the door for more prowler fun.

During the second prowler push, we got the team system going a little bit, although plates needed to be changed off and on in between legs as different people used the prowler.  Perhaps having a little rest between my initial trip down the hill and return trip up the hill helped.  When it was my turn to go back up the hill, I slipped when I went to push.  Went nowhere.  I got myself pumped up again and drove into the prowler.  As I made my way up the hill, my feet didn't slide out from under me.  As I hit the crest of the hill, I was moving with good speed.  So I decided I would put everything I had into this push and try to make it all the way back to the starting line without stopping.  Was there some Mr. Intensity-like yelling involved?  Yes sir!  But I made it all the way back without stopping.  Crowning achievement of this workout.

When I got back inside, I was all smiles.  Aimee thought I was done, but I told her I had one more round.  "Get going then!" was the response I received.  Except I'm pretty sure I mentally checked out at the end of that second prowler push.  I did the thrusters in two sets, 5 and 4 reps.  On the toes-to-bar, I sandwiched a good set of three in between two sloppy sets of three.  I was the last one to go on the prowler and received the unfortunate news that someone had taken the 45 pound plates off at the bottom of the hill and left them there.  Not sure how that happens, but it was what it was.  Rachel helped me out by pushing the prowler down to the bottom of the hill for me.  When we got there, I put the 45 pound plates on and tried to push.  I was much slower going up the hill in my third attempt.  After finally getting to the original starting line, I had to turn around and go back down the hill.  That should have been a breeze, but I was tired and couldn't have cared less about the workout at this point.  Eventually I got back down there.  Final time: Unknown.  Luke and Rachel pushed the prowler back up the hill together and then we stripped the prowler of the weights and brought everything inside.  The clock said 31:30 when I came in and I imagine it took over a minute to walk back and strip off the weights, so I told Aimee my time was "30-ish".  It really didn't matter.  No one in the afternoon classes had accurate times anyway.

When I was fully recovered, I went to the annex where Rachel was going to teach me a pull-up training technique that she had learned in her kids training course.  No, I have not yet reached the competency of a child in my pull-up development.  Maybe one day.  The technique involved setting up a band on one of the racks below the pull-up rig.  The band was supposed to be around shin high.  Rachel wanted me to try it out as a way of preventing me from pulling up my knees during my kip, but it turns out this might have been a more effective tool in getting me to do the "Superman/Hollow Rock" transition during my swings.  Either way, it is going to force me to get better eventually.  What it did last night was force me to do strict pull-ups as my kip still sucks.  

The one thing I did do well afterwards was my toes-to-bar practice.  I was mildly annoyed at myself for doing so many crappy sets of toes-to-bar, so I tried to do a huge set of proper reps in the annex.  My grip was definitely slipping, but I held on for 11 consecutive reps with proper form, which bested my old top score of 10.  See, all I need is an hour of rest between sets.

Tuesday preview: Sumo deadlifts and possibly my last chance to string 50 wall balls before the year is up.

Rush, Rush

Workout date: 12/9/15

While Tuesday night might have provided me with my best moment of the year at the gym but no raffle tickets, Wednesday night gave me my best chance at legitimately winning raffle tickets in the daily Advent competition.  There aren't that many things that I would say I do really well at the gym.  In fact, the list is probably overhead squats, pistols, and rope climbs.  If there was an overhead squat challenge, I'm not sure how I could win because that would likely be based on weight and there are several guys in the gym who can handle more weight than me.  Pistols might work, but I think it's really unlikely that they will come up as an Advent challenge for the same reason people have told me they won't come up in the Open: too tough to judge.  That left rope climbs.  I was thinking they might do most 15' rope climbs in three minutes, but the Wednesday challenge ended up being most 15' rope climbs in two minutes.  Even better!  I don't have the stamina to climb the rope for three straight minutes.  (Spoiler: I don't have the stamina to climb the rope for two straight minutes.)

Before we got to that, there was a workout that needed to be completed.  It was a partner WOD that went as follows:

21-15-9
Deadlifts (275/185)
Push Jerks (155/105)
*Athletes 1 does 21 deadlifts, then athlete 2 does 21 deadlifts, then athlete 1 does 21 push jerks, and so on.

There was one big problem.  As of about 7:27, I was the only person at the gym who was taking the 7:30 class.  I'm sure I could have done the workout by myself, but it would have been a little weird.  And it would have been slow, as I wouldn't have gotten the rest built into the workout from watching your partner work.  But just as the 6:30 class was finishing up their rope climbs, Matt E showed up and I had my partner.

I'm not sure I could have picked a better partner for this workout simply from the perspective that Matt and I tend to use a lot of the same weights when we are in class together.  As Coach Jenna walked us through the warmups, she told us we could have two deadlift barbells and two push jerk barbells, but I turned to Matt and said "I think we're using the same weight" to which he nodded affirmatively.  All that was left to do was to decide on what weight to use.  (Spoiler #2: We might have messed this up.)

Jenna had told us that we should aim to complete this workout in about 14 minutes.  I typically struggle when determining what weight I should use for a given time parameter.  But figuring it out for yourself and another person?  That's really tough.  Matt and I began negotiating.  Based on the negotiation, I kinda knew how this workout would play out.  I suggested 225 for the deadlift and Matt's response was along the lines of "sure, if you want."  That told me he could go heavier.  I'm not the greatest when it comes to stringing a large number of deadlift reps, so I wasn't sure how much heavier I should go.  I probably could have done 245 if I wasn't such a wuss.  Matt definitely could have handled 245.  But we stuck with 225.  For the push jerk, I suggested 115 or 125, but I was leaning towards 125.  Matt was leaning towards 115.  Since he had compromised on the deadlift weight for me, I thought it was only right to compromise on the push jerk weight for him.  We threw a couple of 35 pound plates on the push jerk barbell and got ready for the workout.

We had scaled down to 225 and 115, but that still didn't sound like a picnic to me.  I told myself to keep pushing like I had done 24 hours earlier and things would be fine.  We could keep this workout under 14 minutes.  Matt and I talked about who would go first and I ended up leading things off for us.  Jenna got the clock ready and we were off.  Stringing 21 deadlift reps was not going to be a good idea for me.  I'm not even sure I could do it if I tried.  But like I had done with the wall balls during Kelly, I planned on splitting up the reps into two healthy sets.  I got through 12 reps and then dropped the barbell.  Shook out my arms, reset my grip, then got the final 9 reps.  Time to enjoy some rest before the push jerks.  Or not.

Matt immediately proved that he could handle more than 225 pounds for the deadlift portion of the workout.  I thought there was at least a possibility that he would break up the 21 reps like I did, but when he got to his 15th rep and hadn't slowed down, I knew I needed to get ready to do push jerks imminently.  Six reps later, he dropped the barbell and my rest time was over.  If he kept moving that fast, we weren't going to have to worry about 14 minutes.  In fact, Jenna had told us how Giulz and Erika smoked through this workout in an earlier class, finishing in 7:47.  Suddenly it seemed like we might finish closer to that time.

I picked up the 115 pound barbell and got to work on the push jerks.  The competitive side of me took over.  I forget how far along I was in my set (probably around 10 reps or so) when I told myself that I needed to pull my weight in this partnership and string 21 reps myself.  The last 5 or so reps were not pleasant, but I made it through all 21 reps and dropped the barbell so Matt could go.  As Matt got started on his push jerks, I trudged back over to the deadlift barbell.  I had learned my lesson and wasn't counting on a whole lot of rest before needing to get back to work again.  Except Matt broke up his set of 21 push jerks.  I'm pretty sure that if we had been given the option of letting Matt do the 21-15-9 of deadlifts and letting me do the 21-15-9 of push jerks, the both of us would have instantly said "yes please" at the beginning of the workout.  Matt finished off the rest of his push jerks and the round of 21 was done.  And now Matt knew he would get his rest when I did deadlifts, while I would get my rest while he did push jerks.  We learned so much about each other so quickly!  #themoreyouknow

Knowing that the deadlifts were going to be much worse the second time around, I told myself that I was nearly halfway done with the workout.  Suck it up, buttercup!  I got through 9 reps before dropping the barbell.  It was important for me to get to 9 reps because I did not want to split up the reps in the final round and this was a way to remind my body that it could handle that many reps when I was tired.  Because I was definitely tired already.  I struggle with sprint-type workouts at the gym and somehow this 14 minute partner WOD had become a sprint.  I did the final 6 reps and sat down next to the push jerk barbell expecting very little rest.  And little rest is exactly what I got as Matt knocked out 15 straight deadlifts.

The lack of rest may have affected my ability to recall this next part of the workout, but I feel like I strung all 15 push jerks when I came back to that lift.  Let's just pretend that I did even if I didn't.  Just as I was mirroring Matt's deadlift sets with my push jerk sets, Matt would break up his push jerk sets in much the same way I was breaking up my deadlift sets.  We really were ideal partners for this workout.  I got slightly more rest as I prepared to do my final 9 deadlifts.  Both Matt and I were exhausted, but the finish line was in sight.

When Matt finished his 15 push jerks, I got right into my 9 deadlifts.  Don't put the barbell down, stupid.  You can hang on for 9 reps.  I'm sure this was another one of those moments involving horrible grunts and amazing facial contortions, but I did hold on for all 9 reps.  Matt was tiring, but tired Matt is still a better deadlifter than I am.  He got through all 9 reps.  I was relieved to be finishing with the push jerks as I had no doubt I could get the last set fairly quickly.  I'm sure I was doing something wrong as I began bunny-hopping forward on each push jerk, but I did nine of them and then brought the barbell back to where it had started.  Matt just needed to do 9 reps and we were done.  He took care of those 9 reps and we both dropped to the floor.  Final time: 8:36.

Did we choose our weights poorly?  Maybe.  It certainly wasn't intentional.  If you had said to us prior to the workout that there was a 9 minute time cap, I don't think either of us would have thought we could complete the WOD with 225 for the deadlift and 115 for the push jerks.  If I had the opportunity to guess again on what weights would have left us in the ballpark of 14 minutes for a final time, I would probably go with 255 and 125.  But after seeing how tired we were after only eight and a half minutes of that workout, I think we were both glad that we didn't choose a weight that would have had us working for five and a half minutes longer.

Matt decided that he didn't want to do the rope climb challenge and headed off on a road trip to Scranton for work.  That left me to take on the challenge by myself.  I needed a solid 10 minutes to recover from the WOD and only then did I start throwing on my shin guards for the rope climb.  Before seeing any of the scores, I thought 8 would most likely be the top score, with 9 climbs being a possibility if someone was really moving.  Turns out Jonathan P was really moving.  He got 9 climbs, while Samson was holding down second place with 7 climbs.  I didn't see a way I could get 9 climbs. If I could keep it together like I had during Kelly, there was a chance I could get 8 climbs, so that was my goal.

I don't know when I became such a spaz when trying to do things quickly, but that seems to be the norm these days whenever I rush.  My first two climbs were quick and under control, but my breathing was starting to become an issue.  So when I came down from the second climb, I caught my breath for a second while holding on to the lower part of the rope with my right hand.  Then I proceeded to try and jump high on the rope without remembering to let go of the rope.  The left part of my body went high while the right part of my body was anchored low.  That does not work in rope climbs.  Rather than spend a lot of energy trying to re-adjust on the rope, I bailed.  Bye-bye 8 rope climbs!

I did a third and a fourth rope climb before my next big mistake.  Again, it occurred when jumping on to the rope.  While trying to hurry, I got a very good jump, but somehow swung my legs to the wrong side of the rope and had nothing to clamp on to.  I was wasting precious arm strength while I tried to swing my legs back to the proper side of the rope.  I had my feet clamped on to the rope for a second, but then my grip strength started to go.  I dropped off the rope a second time.  Way to make a bunch of mistakes in a two-minute challenge, Dave!

I made it back up the rope a fifth time and when I got back down to the floor, I was informed that I had 20 seconds left.  I needed to tap that 15' mark one last time.  Twenty seconds sounded like plenty of time, but my grip strength was fading.  I needed a couple extra pulls to get up to the mark, but I made it with a few seconds to spare.  Final score: 6.  Not what I wanted, but after a very fast Kelly time on Tuesday and a very fast partner WOD on Wednesday, I couldn't complain about how my week had gone.

With Festivus on Thursday and why-the-heck-would-you-workout-after-Festivus Friday on deck the next two days, I'd be off until Saturday.

Saturday preview: A workout from home which will include the WOD held at the gym on Thursday.  Mucho cardio.

Gym Kelly

Workout date: 12/8/15

This week has been a little rough on the sleep front.  Both Jenn and Indy have been sick and I've been up throughout the night making sure they're both okay.  On Monday night, I got about 1-2 hours of sleep, so I wasn't super excited to be taking on a monster of a workout at the gym on Tuesday.  I mean, even if I had a full eight hours of sleep, I wouldn't have been doing cartwheels over the WOD that was programmed, but the lack of sleep didn't help.  The workout?  Kelly.

"Kelly"
5 rounds
400 meter run
30 box jumps (24"/20")
30 wall balls (20#/14# to 10'/9')

This was one of our benchmark WODs this year and I had done this one when it was last programmed back on September 22nd.  I had hoped to keep my time under 35 minutes, but instead I finished in 37:43.  That doesn't sound all that great (mainly because it isn't), but it might have been a PR for me.  I had done Kelly RX at least one time prior to that and my time was somewhere in the neighborhood of 37-39 minutes.  I believe I might have done Kelly early on in my second year of Crossfit, but I think I ended up being time capped into doing 4 rounds rather than 5.

Michal was in class with me on that night back in September and we had a conversation before the workout which was identical to the one we had on Tuesday night:

Michal: "I'm not feeling it tonight"
Me: "You're probably going to kick my butt"
Michal: "I don't think so"

She then proceeded to beat me in the workout by about 5 minutes.  So when she said this to me on Tuesday, I told her that she was going to probably beat me by at least 5 minutes and that I would hate her guts afterwards (idle threat).  My real fear was that she would lap me.  Back in September, Alex lapped me during this workout and I was not pleased.  Also in class on Tuesday was Cline.  Because there was a lot of running in this WOD, I had concerns about him lapping me as well.  Rounding out the class were Chris, Michael, and Heng.  Chris was part of the Summer Shape Up program, while Michael and Heng took part in the Holiday Head Start program.  All three are fairly new to the gym, but I've gotten to work out with them more and more recently, and all three seem like really good guys.  I wasn't sure how they would do in this workout, so I played the odds and considered them threats to lap me as well.

I have written extensively about my cardio struggles in the gym.  I have also gone on and on about my failings in workouts with multiple rounds of running in them.  Back in September, my splits for Kelly worked out to (approximately) 5:30, 7:30, 8 and change, 8 and change, 8 and change.  That was my recollection for previous attempts at Kelly as well, that I had done alright in the first round, only to falter in rounds two through five.  If I was going to do this workout in 35 minutes, I needed to approach Kelly the same way I've started approaching Nancy (which also includes five 400 meter runs).  I would need at least two strong runs and a semi-decent third run wouldn't hurt either.  As for the rest of Kelly, I wanted to stick with the rebounding technique on the box jumps, trying to go for longer sets if I could, while taking any rest from on top of the box.  With the wall balls, I've been getting better at bigger sets, so I would attempt to do a set of 18 and a set of 12 each round.  That would significantly improve my chances of a time close to 35 minutes as well.

Whoa, whoa, whoa....wait a second Dave.  Didn't your last preview say this post would be brimming with positivity?  Saying everyone in class is going to lap you doesn't sound very positive.

Fine, fine...I'm guilty of not being positive in this post.  Until now!  The truth is, I had very little faith that I wasn't finishing last in this workout.  It was more about damage control.  Don't get lapped, don't finish 5 minutes after everyone else, etc.  If I could manage to finish in under 35 minutes, that would be awesome.  Those were honestly my thoughts going into the workout.  What happened next defies all explanation.

There was nothing remarkable about the first round of the workout.  I didn't note an exact time for my first round when I did this in September, but it was in the neighborhood of 5 and a half minutes.  I figured my first round on Tuesday would be similar.  You are fresh on that first run, so you run like a normal human being, not like you've been shot in the leg (people who have seen my post-first round gimpy stride can attest that I run this way).  You have energy for the box jumps and the wall balls.  In short, the first round is what the whole workout looks like when you are Pam.  (Note: the Queen finishes this workout in under 25 minutes when she does it.  Averaging less than 5 minutes every round?  Sick.)

Cline took off on the first run, with Heng and Michael trailing behind him.  Chris was just ahead of me, while Michal ran alongside me.  As we got back to the gym, I was the last one in the door, but I felt like I would be able to keep pace on the box jumps and the wall balls.  When I got to my box, I did 15 straight rebounding jumps before stopping on top of my box.  It was a good start for me and a preview of what was to come.  Over the course of all five rounds, I never started with less than 10 reps in my first set of box jumps and all sets after that would be at least 5 reps long (unless I had less than 5 left at the end).  I went from 15 to 24 in my second set, then planned on finishing the last 6 in a row, except I nailed the front of my box with my foot on my 29th jump, stumbling off to the side.  I regrouped, did the final 2 jumps, and headed to the wall balls.  As planned, I did a set of 18 and then a set of 12.  That wasn't fast enough to beat Heng and Michael out the door, but I had moved ahead of Cline, Michal, and Chris.  A glance at the clock showed that I had finished the first round in just under 5 minutes.  It was a little faster than my first round in September, but the test wasn't the first round, it was the four rounds to come.

As I went on that second run, I tried to keep Michael nearby.  Heng had put a little distance on the rest of us during this run.  I tried to picture Cline yelling at me that I needed to lengthen my stride so that I'd keep moving along.  I wasn't excited when Chris went by me during the first 200 meters of the run, but I pushed myself to go with him on the way back to the gym.  Also, on the way back to the gym, we passed Cline and he yelled at me to lengthen my stride.  Who needs visualization when you can have the real thing?

Back inside, I got to work on box jumps again.  There was pain after about 8 reps, but my internal drill sergeant pushed me along until I completed 14 reps.  The confidence trigger in my mind doesn't seem to go off until I have less than 10 reps remaining, so it was huge for me to get to that 20 rep mark as quickly as possible for both the box jumps and the wall balls.  A few more sets of box jumps and I was back to the wall balls.  And this was probably the point in the workout where I had to show the most mental strength.  The plan was 18 and 12 for each round of wall balls.  To be honest, I could have done more than 18 during round one, but I dropped after 18 reps and stuck to the plan.  Being a hero in round one was not going to help me in rounds two through five.  The only problem was that when I started my second round of wall balls, it became clear that I wasn't getting 18 reps in a row.

I've run into issues like this repeatedly throughout the year.  Seeing my plan fall apart so early in a workout is extremely frustrating and I'm sure my mental state has turned to mush more often than not when it has happened.  That results in a poor workout the rest of the way.  But on this night, I didn't let that happen.  I felt confident that I could do sets of 10, so there was no reason to do more than 3 sets of wall balls in any round.  I made a promise to myself: no more than 3 sets the rest of the way.  After dropping at 12 reps, I did 10 more in the next set, then 8 to finish up round two.  I was still behind Heng and Michael, but that didn't matter because I was floored by what I saw on the clock.  It read 11:10.  I had done the second round in about 6:15.  Even if I averaged 8 minutes per round for the final three rounds like I had in September, I would be close to my goal of 35 minutes.  I was psyched!

On the third run, I had a partial onset of the gimpy stride, but just as I visualize Plentus yelling at me to get aggressive whenever I'm about to squat, I continued to visualize Cline yelling at me to lengthen my stride.  Michael had left me and had caught up to Heng, while Chris wasn't too far behind me.  The big surprise was that I had a good-sized lead on Cline and Michal.  Everything about this workout was somehow backwards from what I thought would happen.  If this was truly the one night where up was down and down was up, maybe I could make it through three fast rounds.  As I entered the gym doors, it was time to find out.

This was going to be where my cardio and legs would be tested.  Further proving it was my night, Till I Collapse began playing as I walked to my box.  All of a sudden, Eminem was calling me out about round three.  I started doing box jumps in rhythm with the clapping in the song.  I only got 11 reps to start off, but then I turned into Mr. Intensity and yelled at myself before going into another large set.  When I eventually reached 30 reps, I marched over to my wall ball.  Like I had in round two, I led things off with a set of 12, but then I did 12 in my next set as well.  I gave myself the "you can do 5 wall balls without breathing" speech, only I substituted 6 in for 5.  Round three was done.  The clock said 17:15.  Not only did I have a good round three, it was faster than my second round.  Thanks Eminem!

The pessimist in me had brief thoughts that this could all come crashing down on me, that after three good rounds I was going to hit the wall, that the last two rounds could take 10 minutes each and I'd end up at 37 minutes again.  But I was driven Tuesday night.  Even if the last two rounds took 8 minutes each, I'd be at 33 and change, which would be a huge improvement for me.  In fact, I think I told Chris prior to the workout that if someone would write "36:00 RX" next to my name, I'd skip the WOD and go home happy.  Oh how things can change!

The last two rounds were far from easy.  For starters, the gimpy stride was in full effect.  I think it was in full effect for everyone except Michael, who continued to extend his lead on the run.  I didn't lose too much ground to Heng on the run, and I seemed to be maintaining the lead I had on Chris, Cline, and Michal, who was being joined on the run by professional Crossfitter Faby.  Eminem wasn't around for round four of the box jumps, but I started off with 11 reps again on my way to 30.  When I was done with those, I walked over to my wall ball, needing the pull-up rig to support me when I got there as I was gasping for air.  I went back to a routine of 12-10-8 for the 30 reps, although I'm sure I needed more rest between those sets than I had needed back in round two.  With the fourth round in the books, the clock was a few ticks under 24:30.  It was a tough round to be sure, but I had kept it under 7:15.  If I could stay under 7:30 for the last round, I could finish under 32 minutes.  Had delirium set in due to fatigue?  Maybe I passed out after round two and was having the most exhausting happy dream of all time.  Even if that was the case, this dream had one more round left in it.

As I passed the annex on the outward portion of my final run, Michael passed me on his way back into the gym.  Heng was still about 60-70 meters in front of me and I was doing my best to not let that gap increase too much.  Chris was probably about 150 meters behind me, but his stride looked better than mine on that last run and he was making up ground.  I passed Cline at about the same spot where Michael had passed me, while Michal headed out on her last run right as I was finishing up mine.  Once I was inside, I resolved to empty the tank.  I got 14 box jumps in my first set, despite the onset of back pain.  When I get tired, I tend to do a hunched over jump on to the box and then I stand up.  I'm not sure how many of the 150 box jumps I did were of this variety, but my back was definitely sore as I completed round five.  Chris was doing his box jumps next to me and it seemed like he was catching up to me no matter how hard I pushed through this round.  I wasn't going to catch Michael or Heng, but it would have been a little deflating to have Chris pass me in the final round.  When I did this in September, Sheila had been behind me in every round, only to finish one second before me at the very end.  Must.  Keep.  Moving.

With the box jumps done, I came over to the wall balls the same way I did in the last round, needing to lean on the rig for a few seconds before starting.  I was completing my set of 12 when Chris began working.  Then I did a set of 10.  I hadn't heard Chris drop his ball yet, but as I took a few seconds before my final set, he dropped it and walked away from the rig as Coach Rachel congratulated him on the huge set he had just done.  Did he just do 30 in a row?  Did I get passed at the very end again? Why can't I breathe like a normal human being?  So many questions were floating through my head as I picked up my ball and began my last set of 8.  As I went to do my 29th rep, my questions were answered.  Chris came back to his wall ball and got ready to do more reps.  I took care of my last two reps and then turned to see the clock.  Final time: 31:14.  Holy shit.

That time wasn't making a whole lot of sense to me as I collapsed next to my box, holding on to it with a death grip that would give you the impression that I thought the floor was made out of quicksand.  I drank the remaining water in my bottle and used the box to help me get off the floor.  Chris was now done, but I wanted to cheer on Cline and Michal as they did their final round of wall balls.  When they had finished, I grabbed a second bottle of water and thought a little bit about what had just happened.  I completed the final round in under 7 minutes.  That was absurd.  I had beaten my best previous time in this workout by 6:29.  That was like improving by one full round.  Insane!

I couldn't recall a single workout this year where I had kept it together both physically and mentally as well as I had during this WOD.  I've had strong workouts where at the end I've thought to myself "I can still improve on that".  This workout?  I'm not sure I'll ever be able to duplicate that magic again.  My hope is that I can duplicate some of that physical and mental strength in other workouts going forward.

Because of the daily Advent challenges going on, my work wasn't done on this night.  The challenge for Tuesday was a partner race to 200 sit-ups.  When Cline was ready to go, we cranked out 200 sit-ups together, alternating after every 10 sit-ups.  I am told that I made plenty of unpleasant noises and faces during this challenge, but that was the only way I was gonna be able to complete 100 sit-ups at that point.  Final time: 5:32.  No raffle tickets earned.  Did not put a damper on my night.

Wednesday preview: More partner work, this time involving deadlifts and push jerks.  Plus, the rope climb Advent challenge.