The Islets of Langerhans

Workout date: 2/15/15

My scheduled first attempt at the Valentine's Day Massacre partner WOD on Saturday was cancelled after an impromptu partner WOD with Jack Daniels on Friday night.  We crushed it, but a recovery day would be required.  These things happen.

Today I was back to a very quiet, mostly empty gym.  I went to the 10am class, somewhat excited about the workout.  The skill component for today was a three-part complex revolving around the snatch at different points of the hang: the high hang, the mid hang, and the low hang.  The high hang was from the hip crease with a slight bend in the knees.  The mid hang was from an adjustment down to mid-thigh by pushing your butt back.  Finally, the low hand was an adjustment down to right below the knee by keeping the same angle but lowering yourself in the stance.  The second half of the workout was a team cash-out where we would be scrambling to complete as many rope climbs as possible in 6 minutes.  Sadly, my Ronald McDonald socks were in the washer, so I had to go back to the plain white socks today.

I don't remember ever snatching from the high hang, but it is something I should start practicing.  Coach Paul made two important points about this position.  First, he noted that this is where we should be right before we begin to pull the bar overhead for the lift.  Second, he accurately noted that most of us never get to this position.  I know most of the time I don't!  Still, trying to snatch with only the slightest amount of dip drive seemed difficult and I guessed that I would not be able to throw much weight on the bar for this session.  The other two positions felt more natural as we practiced, so I got the impression that if I completed the first lift in the complex, I'd get all three.  Of course, I was wrong.

I started out with 75 and that was fine and even 95 wasn't too bad. 115 was where it got tricky and I didn't do myself any favors by leaving my lifting shoes in my bag.  During the lift from the mid hang, I got up on my toes and had to run forward a few steps to complete the lift.  Successful lift?  Yes.  Good form?  Absolutely not.  I did manage to get the third lift at 115, but it was time to put the lifting shoes on.  I was anchored to the ground for my next lift at 125, but holding on to the bar for all three lifts had become an issue.  As I got ready for the third lift of the complex, I let go of the tension in my upper back, meaning I got almost no pull.  I did drop into my squat very quickly and almost saved it, but it was no use.

Paul came over and explained where I had failed, but also gave me some good advice in general regarding the snatch.  As with most things, I tend to overthink the crap out of this lift, but Paul told me that despite the complexity of the lift, I needed to be focused on only one thing when I was ready to lift the bar.  It could be speed, it could be the pull, it could be dropping under the bar...but it had to be only one thing.  Thinking too much was going to lead to an unsuccessful lift.

Because I am a slow learner, I narrowed that list down to two for my last attempt at 125.  Paul had noted my loose upper back, but also that I was slow going through the complex.  So my "one thing" was keeping my upper back engaged while being fast.  I did the first two portions of the complex and they were both improved from my initial attempt at 125.  Before I could overthink the last lift, I muttered "fast, fast" and went right into the third lift.  What unfolded was a very quick, strong pull that did not even come close to hitting that contact point at my hip crease, but the bar did swoop over my head and I was "successful" at 125.  Needs some work!

Next was the rope climb dash and we split into 2 teams of three, where each team could have two members working at the same time.  My team included Cline and Lauren.  With 6 minutes on the clock, we got after it, with Cline and I the first on the ropes.  I hit my mark and scrambled down to let Lauren go, but when Cline came back down, he said he was going again.  Damn, putting me to shame  right off the bat!  Over the course of the next few minutes, I jumped on whichever rope opened up, trying to maintain my quickness in getting up to that 15 foot mark.  After about 5 climbs, I was starting to feel it, but my goal was to keep up my intensity throughout the 6 minutes.  I'm pretty sure it was the 8th climb when I noticed my pulls were becoming much shorter.  It was also the point where Paul said we had one minute left.  As I was coming down from that climb, I began to get really eager about completing 10 climbs.  I waited for a rope to open up and then scurried up to 15 feet.  Taking a cue from Cline, I was not giving up my rope at this point.  As I touched the mat, Paul yelled "20 seconds!"  Gotta get back up there.

Instead of my usual running jump on to the rope (rope climbs are so much easier when your top hand is almost at 9 feet when you start), I jumped from where I had touched down from the 9th climb.  It wasn't much of a start.  I made two pulls and heard Paul say "10 seconds".  Uh oh, not so sure I'm finishing 10 now.  I made a couple more pulls when I heard "3" and knew I was out of time to climb.  I looked up, saw the mark was a stretch away, and reached up to smack it.  It was like a bad action sequence in a TV show where somebody has to stop the bomb from blowing up and they somehow always manage to clip the right wire with one second to spare.  As Paul's countdown hit 1, my hand slapped that barely-visible-to-me-as-I-may-be-colorblind pink mark on the rope, and I had my 10th climb.  Now it was a good day.

Jill C. had driven all the way from my old hood (upstate NY) this morning to come work out and she was the only one there for 11am strength, so I decided to stick around to chat and do one of the WODs from the upcoming Festivus Games in April with her.  I did some very poor double under practice and a few strict pull-ups as she was getting ready to squat clean, the one thing she wanted to do before the WOD.  She told me that she had a mental block about squat cleaning more than 95 pounds, which made no sense to me, as I had seen her squat clean during the 1RM clean and jerk workout in early January.  We were pushing beyond that today.

Jill did some warmup sets as she made her way to 95, and then she did 95.  Easy as pie.  So I grabbed some 2.5 pound plates and made her do 100.  Silky smooth again.  The wheels started turning in my head about how much she could really do as she did rep after rep at 100.  Next she did 105, then at 110 she started to slow down in the bottom, but this was clearly more of a mental thing as her form was pretty flawless.  Jill is very good at meeting the bar.  Compare this to me: I yank the bar as high as I can, drop below it as fast as I can, leading to the bar crashing down on me, at which point I rely on the hope that I can front squat the weight I am using.

I asked Jill what her PR for squat cleans was and she said 115.  That was totally going down.  She did 115 in the same way she did 110.  I asked her to do one more lift and she agreed to do 120.  And naturally it was a successful lift.  From watching her progress through the weights, my guess is that she can do 130.  But I wasn't going to press her on that today.  It was time to WOD (again!).

WOD #1 for the Festivus Games is a 1,000 meter row followed by 50 wall balls with a 10 minute cap.  With the Open right around the corner, I haven't thought much about this competition in April, but I will admit that it did pop in my head last week causing me to daydream about doing well in it.  This was the only workout that I remembered from the website and, per usual, I had come up with a (likely flawed) plan for the best way to tackle it.  My thought process was that exerting extra energy on the row would get you very little bang for your buck, whereas stringing as many wall balls together as possible could save you a lot of time.  Even stringing all 50 seemed like a possibility to me (although a longshot one at best).  So today's plan was to row the 1,000 meters in about 4:00, then clobber the wall balls in big sets.  My thinking was that 6 minutes would be a strong time for the workout, with the 6:15-6:30 range probably better than average.

One out of two ain't bad.  We got going on the row and I felt very controlled during it, trying to keep my breathing under control.  My pace was slightly under a 2:00 split for 500M at the start and a little over 2:00 towards the end.  I got off the rower at 4:02.  The wall balls were a different story.  I got to about rep #12 and realized that I was a little more spent than I had expected.  I dropped the ball after 15 reps, but knowing this was a sprint, did not take much time before resuming.  After that, though, it was small sets to the end.  I did a set of 7, 5, 6, 9, and 8 to finish off my 50, stopping the clock at 6:51.  Not terrible, but the wall balls could have been better.  I'd like to chop at least 30 seconds off of that time by the time the Festivus Games come around.

So what's up with the title of today's blog post?  After the WOD, Jill and I had a discussion of the Zone diet we are doing for the Nutrition Challenge with Keith.  Keith was explaining how the diet is really all about normalizing the amount of insulin that is produced in your body during the day and how it comes from the pancreas.  At which point Jill said "from the Islets of Langerhans", which generated an excited "oh yeah!" from me, as I had a nerdy flashback to when I knew stuff like that.  I'm kind of a dork.

Speaking of flashbacks, tomorrow we will be revisiting 14.4 at the gym.  Should be fun!