Kipping It Real

Workout date: 4/1/15

With the Open complete, I can now go back to the gym and embarrass myself at the normal level I am used to.  Or maybe not.  Tonight's workout could easily have been called "Screw With Dave's Head".  It was a 30 minute AMRAP (Sweet Jesus!) of 10 burpee pull-ups, 15 toes-to-bar, and a 400 meter run.  And for those wondering, a burpee pull-up is a burpee followed immediately by a pull-up.  My biggest issue with learning how to kip is that once I start to swing on the bar, my body thinks I'm about to do a toes-to-bar.  So I raise my knees to my chest and mess everything up.  Flipping back and forth between these two movements in the same workout was enough to make my head explode.

One positive before we started the workout was realizing that with spring on the horizon and no more Open to worry about, I could look forward to some big classes and working out with a lot of folks I enjoy working out with.  When the Open starts up, it is very exciting, but for 5 weeks, your schedule gets out of whack.  Now I should regularly see people at the gym again and get to joke around with them before going through whatever WOD is scheduled.  I won't lie, I'm kinda psyched about that.

Tonight I was on the far end of the gym doing the workout with my judge from Monday, Yuengling Lager.  Oops, sorry, that's Jill C.  Now that I've had some time to recover from my Monday night hallucinations, I can clearly see that it's her.  I figured she was going to smoke me in this workout since a) I suck at burpees, b) I suck at pull-ups, and c) she's an absurdly fast runner.  But I do enjoy toes-to-bar slightly more than her, mainly because it won me some ice cream.  So maybe I could hang in there.

I thought I could finish 3 rounds tonight, but I wanted to try and push for 4.  I did not have a good sense of how tired my arms were going to become from the pull-up/toes-to-bar combo platter, so I wasn't expecting big things tonight.  As has become eerily common for me now, I did not consider using a band.  Apparently I have weened myself off of those, despite having terrible kipping form.

We got going and not surprisingly, I was way behind for the first run.  My burpees were fine and even my pull-ups weren't too bad early on, but I'm certainly slow with them.  Then I knocked out 2 sets of 5 toes-to-bar while most of the gym headed out the door.  I did a set of 2, then 3 singles, and I was out the door before Jill.  Maybe I could get a little bit of a lead before...nope, she's right next to me.  I didn't even make it two strides out the door before she caught up.  Luckily, she's an incredibly nice human being, so she took pity on me and ran with me during that first round, even though I know she could have ran to Frosty Falls, had an ice cream cone, and then completed the run before I got back.

Once we got back and started on round 2, the pull-up form began getting shaky.  My kip was half kip, half knee raise, and quite a few of the pull-ups were only slightly helped by the kip before I pulled myself up with a strict pull.  Maybe that will help me in the long run, but it was not helping me in this workout.  As I worked through my toes-to-bar, nearly everyone was gone again.  With 3 left, Jill headed out, leaving me to bring up the rear.  At this point I was doing singles on the high bar and that was becoming tiring, so I did the last few on a low bar and resolved to complete the rest of my toes-to-bar down there.  I'd keep doing pull-ups on the high bar, as that was the idea behind the burpee pull-up (instead of jumping and clapping, we were jumping and doing a pull-up).  Going to the low bar for that would have gotten rid of the jump.

I wasn't extremely far behind on my run after round 2, but I was dreading those pull-ups.  I kept at it and finished all 10 legitimately on the big bar, then headed to the little bar to churn through my toes-to-bar.  I was trying to "string" them by doing singles and keeping my hands on the bar.  I can't really string them on the low bar because my feet would hit the ground between reps.  I did some bigger sets this way and I wasn't that much further behind Jill after round three.  However, she was remembering what a fast runner she is, so I was falling further behind.  As I ran for round three, I came across Jimmy (met him for the first time today) and urged him to run faster, even though he was a round ahead of me.  The old, tired guy should never be beating you on a run.

We got back and there was about 8 minutes to go.  That should be enough time to get through round 4.  The burpees were slow, but each one was capped off by a band-less pull-up, which made me happy.  Then I got to the toes-to-bar and tried to employ my same "stringing" technique, but soon I was struggling.  As the clock was closing in on 27 minutes, I knew I needed to get out that door, in case I was running slower than I realized.  Going up for rep 14, my feet missed the bar and I still had two to go.  Tick tock.  I tried 14 again and got it.  Kept my hands on the bar, did a big kip, and got #15.  Slightly past 27 minutes, so it was time to push.

I will say that as much as I suck on these movements on the bar, they don't take anything out of your legs.  As I ran out the door, I began to pick up the pace.  Michal was right behind me and I had seen her blow by me enough during Nancy to know she wasn't going to run slow.  Jimmy was up ahead of me, so I ran to catch him.  When I got to him, I tried to urge him on like I did last round.  I got to the turnaround point and told myself to keep moving so that I could at least get 1 more burpee pull-up in. As I got close to the doors, Keith yelled "one minute" and I realized I had more time than expected.  By the time I got back to my station, that minute was more like 30 seconds.  I did my first burpee pull-up.  Then my second.  And as Keith counted down the final seconds, I got one more in.  4 rounds plus 3 burpee pull-ups.  That was a very solid score for me.

I probably won't make it to the gym tomorrow, but I am psyched that I will get to make up Grace on Friday morning.  Again, I don't have a good sense of how fast my time should be.  It should definitely be under 5 minutes.  I would like to break 4 minutes.  And I watched Derreck do it in a shade over 3 minutes on Monday, so part of me wants to be greedy and go for that.  I think something in the 3:30 range will make me happy, so I'll try not to get too carried away with it if I end up with a 3:35 or something.  Ahhh...so much thinking!  Wish I could turn it off!