I Should Never Be Upside Down

Workout date: 4/15/15

After my Jamaica trip, there was a bit of memory lapse with my next workout.  Sure, I may have spent the weekend of my first Crossfit wedding getting inebriated at the pool bar, but at least I didn't do karaoke and rupture the eardrums of the wedding guests, right?  Unfortunately, too much rum may have made me forget a fairly recent workout, so I was a bit lost in my return to the gym.

Returning home from Kelly Ann Garber's wedding, I came back to the 4/15 workout to find that we were determining our 3 rep max for deadlifts and then spending the rest of the time practicing our handstand walks.  I didn't particularly dislike this workout, but let's just say that I am not great at deadlifts.  As far as handstand walks go, I'm not sure the English language properly describes how bad I am at those.  Still, I was eager to get back into the swing of things at the gym.  I knew that I had done a 3RM deadlift with Rich A. somewhat recently, but I couldn't remember what my max was. My vague recollection was that it was 335 or 345, but I was not completely sure.  And being the control freak that I am, that upset me.  I decided that my goal should be 355-365, depending on how I was feeling.

I started at 135, then 225, then 275.  Those lifts didn't feel too strenuous, at least not for 3 reps, but I figured it was probably a good idea to slow down on how fast I was going through the workout.  There was no point in quickly finding my 3RM, since it was unlikely that I would need a lot of time to walk around on my hands.  I took a few minutes rest, then did 315.  Now it was starting to get heavy, but not unbearable.  I had a decision to make for my next set on whether I should add 10 pound plates and do 335 or 15 pound plates and do 345.  From there, I could add 10 pound plates to reach today's goal.  Feeling pretty good in general (and since I stupidly choose the higher weight 9.5 times out of 10), I threw on the 15 pound plates.

The lift at 345 was much tougher than the lift at 315, however I made my way through 3 reps.  The worst part was that despite chalking up before the lift, the heavy weight did a number on my grip.  If I had gotten through this lift without really sore hands, I may have tried two more sets after this one.  But after barely holding on through rep #3, I knew that I only had one more set left in me.  The good part of this set?  Fayth remarking that I looked strong because the bar appeared like it was bending due to all of the weight on it.  And I'm a sucker for compliments that I can't quickly shoot down with a self-depricating comeback.

After loading the bar to 365 pounds, re-chalking my hands, and taking a few minutes rest, I was ready for my final set.  My 1 rep max is 385 pounds and I know from experience that the toughest part of the lift is simply to get the bar an inch off the ground.  Once it is moving, you can keep it moving.  But there have been many times when I struggled in vain to deadlift something heavy and the barbell had rooted itself into the floor.  I took an extra few seconds to make sure my setup was exactly as I wanted it and then I attempted to stand with the weight.  There was brief resistance at first, but then the weight was off the floor.  I got rep #1, made it through rep #2, and tried to hold on for rep #3.  Grip was definitely an issue for that third rep, but you don't have to go very far on a deadlift, and I made it back up again with rep #3.

I was very pleased with 365 pounds (less pleased later on when I looked up that workout with Rich A. and discovered I had done 355 pounds previously).  I might have been able to do a little more than that, but that test will have to wait for another day.  I also considered trying to lift 405 pounds once since I was feeling good overall (and lifting 400 pounds sounds cool in my head), but again, that probably shouldn't have been attempted at that point either.

It was time for handstand walks, something I can't do at all and usually leads to some really awkward falls.  10 minutes to injure myself...let's do this!

Where to begin?  Well, let's start with false confidence.  I secretly think I could eventually do handstand walks.  It is one of those strange things at the gym where I sort of do it right and then go "hey, I can do this!", even though I can't.  When I go up on my hands, I generally have a brief moment where everything feels stabilized.  I'm not sure how I'm making this happen, but it happens.  And that has always struck me as what should be the toughest part of doing a handstand walk.  Unfortunately, the actual walking has proven tough for me.  And once the walking goes bad, it is time for my "dismount", which the Russian judge kindly gave me a score of 2.5 on.  It is basically just me tipping over, out of control, landing with a thud.

Samson had the smart idea of grabbing the padded mats, which would gently ease the thuds to come.  I made a few attempts to get up, but once I attempted to walk, I fell.  Keith, king of the Crossfit tips, told me something that I never would have come up with on my own.  He told me that I needed to look down at my hands, not through my arms.  Now when we do handstand push-ups against the wall (my only other experience being upside-down in the gym), we are told to look through our arms, so I was confused.  Why would this be different?  I'm upside-down for both, right?  The key is that looking through your arms causes your body to arc, and when we're doing handstand push-ups, we want the body to arc so that our feet are against the wall.  We don't want that arc when there is no wall to stabilize us.  Ahhhhh!  (Light bulb goes on)

I felt even more stable when I got upside-down the next few attempts.  Finally, I got upside-down, stabilized myself, then proceeded to start walking.  It's happening!  It's happening!  The world is...spinning?  Ok, so I didn't get very far, but I did manage to walk enough that when I came tumbling down, my ass didn't land on the padded mat.  Instead it landed on the gym floor, producing a thud that drew gasps.  It was a very awkward moment, but it didn't hurt too bad.  Plus it allowed me to claim that I walked one mat when we put our WOD scores on the whiteboard.

Next blog post: Festivus prep, Festivus road trips, links to other Festivus blogs, and KOP Festivus champions!  (Spoiler: it's not me.  Not even close.)