Staying Under Control

Workout date: 1/15/15

I was good today.  Part of me was interested in doing today's WOD, but I knew that would be pushing things.  And I knew that I didn't want to take the day off because I have committed to partaking in alcoholic consumption tomorrow evening.  So today was essentially a maintenance day.  The plan was to go for Open Strength and work on a variety of things.

The day didn't get off to the best start though.  Thursday has become weigh in day, if for no other reason than January 1st happened to fall on a Thursday.  Last week, I checked in at 213 pounds, which I believe would make me a double light flyweight in the boxing world ("heavyweight" has such a negative connotation).  After last night's sweat-fest, I figured that I would have at least lost enough water weight to fall in the 212, maybe 211, range.  Instead, I got on the scale, waited impatiently for it to calculate, began to get angry (come on, I do not weigh that much!) and then was informed that I now weighed 214.2 pounds.  Joy!

When my 5pm conference call began 25 minutes late, I assumed that I would not be making it to the gym at all this evening, but surprisingly the call wrapped up on time.  I ignored all speed limits and got to the gym at a prompt (for me) 6:31.  I started with some bench press as I hadn't done it in a while and because I was too sore in almost all of the body parts that I would need to do things like squat, deadlift, or Olympic lift.  I did a set of 10 at 95, a set of 10 at 125, a set of 5 at 155, then 3 sets of 5 at 165.  I've been told that I tend to jump up to the weight I plan to max out at too quickly, so I tried to work my way up tonight.

After that, I wanted to work on double unders.  Getting from 6 to 8 made me believe I could pull off 10 tonight.  Oddly enough, as was the case the other night, my first attempt resulted in me tying my previous best of 8 in a row.  I got started again and did 11 in a row.  Boom - just like that I had reached double digits.  So glad I got a new rope and so glad Justin R. showed me the proper way to hold it.  I kept at it, thinking that 15 could very well be in my future, but besides one attempt where I got 11 again, there were no more double digit successes to report.

Part of the reason that I considered tonight's WOD is because of my ice cream bet with Jill C.  I promised I'd get back to the ice cream bet.  As most of you probably know by now, I tend to find things more entertaining if a wager is involved.  It doesn't have to involve the deed to your house, but when there is a little something to play for, it makes things that much more interesting.  Jill and I have both been working on stringing toes-to-bar, and we've both been around the same range (about 5).  So we made a bet: the first one to string 10 in a row gets a free pint of ice cream purchased by the loser.  I don't think either one of us started training like in a Rocky montage to win the bet, but we both would make attempts here and there to get 10.  I believe Jill was in the 6-7 range and I had gotten 7, while coming very close to 8 in one attempt.  A good amount of that progress came from a very helpful tip that Justin H. gave us one night.

With Saturday marking the beginning of the Nutrition Challenge, the time frame for winning the bet was accelerated.  We agreed that if neither of us had hit 10 by the end of this week, we'd do one last attempt before the Nutrition Challenge and whoever got the most would win by default.  But being the competitive bastard that I am, I wanted 10.  And tonight's WOD involved rounds of 20 toes-to-bar.  It took a lot of restraint not to participate.

That didn't mean I wouldn't still try to get 10 tonight.  Once the 6:30 class ended, I went over to try and win the bet while Rachel and Michal (who had just finished the WOD) practiced their double unders.  I did 6 once, and 5 a couple of times, but my grip sucked, and the wear on my hands from trying to go fast wasn't helping.  I watched Rachel and Michal do double unders effortlessly and the light bulb went on: maybe I should just methodically crank through the toes-to-bar.  While the girls took a break, I made another attempt.  I did 3 fast reps, then hung from the bar for a second before doing rep #4.  I stuck with that pattern to do 4 more reps.  As I hung there with 8 in the bank, I realized how stupid I had been in trying to quickly rip through these in all of my previous attempts.  Up I went for rep 9, and after a brief pause, I tapped my toes against the bar for rep 10.  Using that technique, I think I could have gotten to 12, but 10 was all I needed for some ice cream.  Victory!

I was all pumped about winning the bet that I wanted to try double unders again.  In a complete role reversal, Rachel and Michal had gone over to test out stringing toes-to-bar.  Who knows, maybe we had inspired each other to go try the other thing.  Feeling confident, I made an attempt and got 5.  But I was rushing again.  I needed to just calmly work through it like I had with the toes-to-bar.  I started twirling the rope and settled into an easy cadence.  By the time I remembered to hit myself with the rope, I had miraculously done 23 in a row.  Complete craziness!  And naturally, greedy Dave wanted to beat that.  The rest of my attempts (aside from one where I got 17 in a row) were nothing to write home about.  As the clock hit 8pm, it was time to head home.

Still, it was one of the more exciting nights I've had in the gym.  Gonna keep practicing and see where it leads me.  And maybe, just maybe, one day I'll have that sort of success with pull-ups.

No blog tomorrow.  Back again on Saturday with the Nutritional Challenge that I have zero chance of winning!