The Worst Push-Up of All Time

Workout date: 2/11/15

With my company holding a blood drive on Thursday, I wanted to make sure I got in workouts Monday through Wednesday as Thursday would have to be a rest day.  Unfortunately, I knew I would struggle with tonight's workout, at least the metcon portion.  At least I would get to do a movement I enjoy before the metcon.

Whereas last night's workout began with a skill, tonight we were starting with strength, specifically a 5 rep max for front squats.  I think most people tend to prefer back squats to front squats, but front squats have always felt like a more natural movement to me.   Or I might just suck at back squats.  One of the two.  I don't have a record of what my highest 5RM for the front squat is, but I do know that I did 210 as part of the Russian squat program I did last summer.  225 was the number I was after tonight, because what's cooler than getting to throw a second 45 pound plate on the bar when you're doing front squats?  (Probably a lot of things, but I need these mini-victories in my life)

Tim H. had set up a rack at the level that I normally use, so I asked if I could partner up with him.  It was actually an ideal pairing as we used the same weights as we progressed through the 15 minutes.  We started at 95, then went to 125, on to 155, with the fourth round at 185.  That was where things started to get real.  I had been focused on keeping my elbows up because I have a bad habit of dropping them as the weight gets heavy, which causes the weight to slide down my boobs, and then I need to awkwardly save it.  (Spoiler: more awkward saves to come in this blog)  Tim noticed that my old bad habit of buckling my knees had returned, so I thanked him and kept that in mind for my next set.  My set at 205 was better than the set at 185, although I did start to drop my elbows towards the end.  Apparently I can only focus on one problem at a time.

Finally it was time to attempt 225.  There were no thoughts of speed with this set.  I wanted to maintain good form on each and every rep.  If anything felt off, I would take a second at the top, reset, and make sure I was completely ready for the next rep.  The first 3 reps were good, but the 4th was definitely heavy.  I was only 1 more squat from being done though, so I took my pause, went into the final rep and got it up with minimal grunting (at least I hope there was minimal grunting).

Now it was time for the suck.  On December 20, 2013, I did a workout at KOP that involved doing 150 push-ups.  When you reached a point that you could no longer do any more push-ups, you had to row 500 meters.  I ended up rowing 4,500 meters!  And I didn't even do legit push-ups.  Tonight's workout was a cousin to that one.  Still needed to complete 150 push-ups, but each break required a 200 meter run.  I would be getting a lot of cardio this evening.

I thought back to that first WOD with the push-ups and remembered that we tried to do as many push-ups as we could in that first round.  I think I did about 26 or 27, but then my arms were toast after that.  So my grand plan for tonight was to go a little easier at the beginning so that I could maintain medium-sized sets for a longer period.  Didn't take long to see that plan go to crap.  The first round I knocked out 20 reps, stopped, and went for a 200 meter run, shaking my arms the whole way.  Plan seems okay.  Got back inside, dropped down, and I could only manage 15 reps.  Plan seems shaky at best all of a sudden.  Especially when I heard Patrick say he did 35 reps his first round.

Over the next 15 minutes, I had no clue whether I was doing well or doing poorly, although I suspected it was the latter.  I went from 20 to 35 to 47 to 58.  Coach Giulia had enough of my descending rep count, so she got next to me during my next round and pushed me to do more.  I was more than happy to stop after 10 reps, but she told me she wanted 3 more.  One at a time, I painfully eked out the last 3 reps, then went for another limp-armed jog.  When I got back, it was back to work on doing 10 reps per round.  From 71 to 81 and then another run.  Next round: 81 to 90, which is only nine.  What happened there?  During one rep, my arm buckled on the way down, so I had to stop for a  second and gave up on a rep.  Sure hope that doesn't happen again...

The 10 rep plan worked for the next few sets as I got from 90 to 100 to 110 to 120.  The problem was that I was now in pain just setting up for the push-ups.  I desperately wanted to bang out the last 30 in  3 sets, but I was not optimistic.  And did I mention that everyone else was done and that the next class had begun?  Yeah, another one of those workouts.  Anyways....next set got me to 129 (slowly failing), and some agony got me up to 137 a set later.  Giulia was seeing this through to the end with me, and Patrick and Shawna were nice enough to stick around to help me finish.  I tried a narrower stance for the next set in order to use "muscles I hadn't used yet", only to find that those were "muscles I do not have".  Got one rep, shimmied my way back to my normal stance, then got to 143.  Gotta get 7 in that last set.  Can't run another 200 meters.  And then it happened.

I took my time before the last set, just to ensure I could do all 7.  The setup still hurt and each and every rep was work, but as I did rep 149, I thought "don't pause, knock this out and finish".  So I came up from rep 149, went down for rep 150, and came up sideways for rep 150.  Somehow my left arm thought I had completed all 150 reps and was in no mood to participate in this "extra" rep I was doing.  My right arm extended properly, but my left arm buckled and started doing the Miley Cyrus twerk that Giulia and Keith demonstrated prior to the start of the metcon.  I am not sure why my arm decided to quit on me, but I was not going back out to run another 200 meters.  It felt like I was battling it forever (and based on my final time, that is a real possibility), but eventually my left arm cooperated, the worst push-up of all time was complete, and the clock stopped at 35:42.  Simply brutal.

A big thank you to everyone who pushed me through until the end, even if it wasn't pretty.  I am not going to lift my arms for the next two days.