Sunday Snatches and the Open Gym Buffet

Workout date: 1/4/15

My original plan for Sunday was to just go in and participate in the Open Gym, with the hopes of winning my ice cream bet with Jill (the bet will be detailed in a future post).  There really is no better motivator than ice cream.  But then I saw it was snatch day at the gym.  And that meant an hour less sleep so I could get to the 10am WOD.

I'm a big fan of the snatch.  (I honestly tried to come up with a better way to say that, but there really was no way around it.  Also, I am a 12 year old boy.)  I struggle much more with squat cleans than I do with squat snatches.  For some reason, I feel much more comfortable being in a squat with weight over my head, then with it landing on my shoulders.  It took a while to get to that point, but once I did, I started looking forward to WODs that include snatches.

Today's WOD was different in that you would do 1 rep every minute on the minute for 20 minutes, starting with 50% of your 1 rep max weight and increasing 5-10 pounds each minute.  If you failed at any point, you got the next minute off, but you had to decrease your weight by 30%.  It was a test of your pit crew skills, as you didn't have much time after putting down the bar to change the weights and get ready for your next lift.  My 1RM is 175, so I started at 90 and planned on going up by 5 pounds every minute.  Once we got going, I noticed that I would only have about 10-15 seconds after changing the weights.  That wasn't too big a deal early on, but it started to become one as the workout progressed.  As the weights got heavier, I started starfishing (bad) instead of squatting (good).  I think it's just instinct to not want to drop your body down while pulling weight up, but I should know better by now.  I got up to 135, lost my balance on the lift and dropped it.  Still had time to lift again though and got it the second time.  Got 140, struggled on 145, and knew 150 was going to be the wall.  Dropped down to 105 and kept going up by 5, until it dawned on me on the last lift that it was dumb to just go to 130 when I had done 145 already.  So I bumped it 15 pounds on the last lift and did 140. My form was much better on the set of lifts after I failed, and I felt very comfortable in the full squat for the final lift at 140.  Probably my best lift of the day.

The number one priority at Open Gym was pull-ups.  After yesterday's debacle, I've made it a point to develop pull-ups, no matter how much I suck at them and no matter how much I hate doing them.  Pull-ups have become the equivalent of eating my vegetables.  So I put on the black band (not the big one that is the width of a tire, but not the super tiny one that would snap if I placed my body weight on it) that I used yesterday and proceeded to do 5 sets of 5 strict pull-ups.  I have a bad habit of swaying during pull-ups (due to my roly-poly physique), so whenever I started swaying, I stopped and continued only when I was stationary again.  Since I knew I would need a break between sets, I did 25 sit-ups after every 5 pull-ups to mimic the cash-out from yesterday.  Got through it all, but my hands are still very sore from being torn up during a recent toes-to-bar intensive WOD.  But the plan going forward is to do this same routine whenever I am at the gym.

After that was done, I attempted some handstand push-ups with 1 abmat.  Not sure why my range of motion seems to come to an abrupt halt at 1.5 abmats, but I once again failed every attempt at 1 abmat, even though 2 abmats feels relatively easy.  Just one more thing to work on.  Then I turned my attention to double unders.  Justin was nice enough to help me out since his best string of double unders (74) is slightly better than mine (6).  He noticed that I may have cut my rope too short, but the big issue is that like pull-ups, I just need to practice a lot more.  I was able to do a bunch of sets of 3-4, but no higher than that.

I wrapped things up by doing as many consecutive wall balls as I could.  I think I was a little more tired than I realized, as I could only get to 28.  With one of the Festivus events in April including 50 wall balls, I would like to get to the point where I can string all 50.

Definite rest day tomorrow, although I might do a row at home.