Workout date: 5/30/15
I try not to bring a bad attitude into the gym with me, even if I've had a bad day prior to getting there. There are a variety of reasons for that. I tend to think bad moods are contagious, so I don't want to ruin the experience of other folks at the gym just because I can't get my act together. I also think it's important to be in the right mindset if you're hoping to give your best performance at the gym. There have been times where anger has powered me through a tough part of a workout, but I certainly didn't start the workout angry. If that were the case, I likely would have fallen apart much earlier.
Saturday morning I was not in a good mood. There were several reasons why, but the point is that it was noticeable to the people I was working out with. There are many times when I am able to disguise how I am feeling, but yesterday morning was not one of those times. And it was Competitor's Class, which meant that not being in the right place mentally would have even greater repercussions.
The class was supposed to have three parts to it, but we ended up only doing two segments (well, I did a little bit of the third segment on my own after class). We were starting off with double under bingo. The rules of the game went like this: you would state how much you wanted to bet (double under reps) and if you were able to string together that many reps, you received that amount as your score. Trip up and you got 0 that round. There would be 8 rounds in total. Before round 1, I asked if I could fold (what bad attitude?), but apparently this game was more showdown than actual poker. I thought 15 was a reasonable number to start with. It was not. Three times in a row I tried for 15 and didn't even reach 5. Knowing that I was regressing in double unders even though I've spent more time practicing this movement than anything else in the gym this year was really making me cheery. I lowered my bet to 5 and finally got some points on the board. My first attempt at 10 was a failure, but then I went back to my old form of jumping way too high and got 10. For round 7, I was able to manage 20 jumping around like an idiot. With Aimee holding the highest final score with 415, I bet 381 for my final round, because I'm not big on finishing second. I fell a measly 372 reps short in my quest to win double under bingo.
The showcase of Saturday's class was a hero WOD that we'll be testing every 3 months. I wasn't available to do it in February, so this would be my first experience with hokey man. What's that? It's called Holleyman? Hmmm...I received a text message that said otherwise. Plus, hokey man is a lot more fun to say, so we're going with that. Hokey man is 30 rounds long, although there are only 9 reps per round:
5 Wall Balls (20# to 10', 14# to 9')
3 Handstand Push-Ups
1 Power Clean (225/155)
At least I can do the wall balls! My hope was to do handstand push-ups with two abmats. I still can't kip anything, but I have done 11 consecutive strict handstand push-ups with two abmats before. I thought I would be able to handle three per round, but I was concerned because the last time I attempted these, it did not go well. So the majority of my warmup was practicing these. Over and over again, I failed on each rep. Finally, I managed to squirm my way through one. And then I failed a couple more. At that point, I stopped. I was furious. Maybe I could translate some of that fury into the heavy power cleans. All I knew is that I would not be doing handstand push-ups of any sort. I would be doing stinkbugs, which I hate, mainly because I end up with a giant red mark on my forehead from doing them. At least I was a little smarter this time around, using my backup shirt as a tiny bit of padding.
Choosing a weight for the power cleans was difficult for me. Originally I was planning on using 165, but I knew the intent of the workout was to do very heavy cleans. So I bumped it up to 185. Given that you only had to do one per round and then got some recovery while doing the other movements, I thought I could work my way through 30 of them. One other thing setting my mind at ease was that I knew this was a long workout. If I failed on a power clean rep, it wasn't the end of the world. I could re-group and do it again. I just needed to keep moving throughout.
Most people in class got a whiteboard, wrote the numbers 1 to 30, and planned on crossing off each round as they went along. That seemed like too much effort to me. Plus, as someone who is notorious for finding reasons to take breaks during a workout, I didn't want to give myself an excuse to stop every 9 reps. So I grabbed an abacus and decided that I would do 3 rounds and then slide over one of the 10 beads to keep track of my 30 rounds. During the workout, I discovered that this was also an excellent time to grab a sip of water as well.
As we made our way through the initial rounds, I would glance at the clock. It was impossible for me to avoid it as I was doing a progression from the wall to the floor and then over to my barbell near the clock. I was keeping a pace of just under a minute per round, which I was comfortable with, as 30 minutes seemed like a solid time based on what I remembered of the times posted in February. Long workout = just keep moving. The wall balls weren't a problem except for the fact that I was sweating profusely and my ball was practically glistening as I tossed it. I had one round where the ball slipped off of my fingertips as I went to catch it. From that point on, I caught the ball more with my palms to ensure I would not drop it again. My sweat did prove useful in verifying that I was hitting the 10' mark, as little wet ball prints began forming on the wall each time I threw it up there. It was so hot in the gym that Aimee struggled with sweat dripping into her eyes during the workout. She was sweating so much that afterwards she told me she thought to herself "now I know what Dave feels like" during the workout.
The stinkbugs were not my favorite movement, but at least I knew I wouldn't have a mark on my head when I was done. Some rounds I powered right through the three reps. Other rounds, my arms would shake a bit. The power cleans developed the same way. There were some reps where my form was great and I threw the bar right up on my shoulders. And there were also some reps where I cleaned it up to my nipples and kinda shimmied it up from there.
At the midway point, I was around 16 minutes. I was starting to slow a little and I had decided that anything over 35 minutes was unacceptable. For rounds 16 through 18, I pushed as though it were the final stretch of the workout. I had Aimee on one side of me and Michal on the other. Up to that point, we were keeping close to the same pace. When I started my wall balls for round 19, I was about a round ahead of each of them. That was nice, but now I had to hold on. With about 7 or 8 rounds left, I was feeling it. I tried to maintain my pace, but going to the floor to do stinkbugs was too close to my usual squatting resting position. I never really took a break, but I definitely slowed during that section of each round. With 5 rounds left, I tried to make another push through rounds 26 and 27. Finally I was making my way through the last 3 rounds, telling myself how few reps I had left. My last power clean was pretty solid and I stopped the clock at 33:45.
Afterwards, I got some muscle-up practice in as that was the intended third segment of the workout. It wasn't much. I did 5 jumping muscle-ups, although my form on the first one wasn't great. But I was happy with the last four as I'm trying to focus on jumping forward so that I am in the proper spot for the transition. And even though I haven't done a lot of dip work, I've found that I'm able to dip out consistently when I get to the transition point. So no surprise, there is pull-up work and kipping work to be done. If I ever figure that out, then maybe I can do a muscle-up.
One last thing that I want to write about. I struggle with weakness. This week, I experienced my fair share of both physical weakness and mental weakness. It's been tough. You always want to feel like you're making progress at the gym, but I've had a clear regression with both double unders and handstand push ups. Don't even get me started on pull-ups. Not being able to get through a warmup without needing a roll of paper towels is embarrassing. And my body pretty much completely fell apart in a hotel room in Hartford. Those physical issues have made it tough to keep it together mentally. The gym is basically my sanctuary, the place I go to regroup and forget about real life for a while. When it's not going well there, it feels like it is all going wrong. And for most of this week, I have outwardly projected that it all seems to be going wrong.
Part of the reason I began writing this blog is because I feel more comfortable writing than speaking. I'm not really big on speaking about myself at all. I'm more of a listener. I'd rather listen to other people and try to help them out, then speak about my own issues. In fact, I was told this week that listening is my "overhead squat of life skills". I kinda liked that line. It is one of the many kindnesses I have experienced this week.
I've been a part of KOP for nearly 2.5 years now and have developed friendships there, but it wasn't until this week that I got to truly appreciate how good I have it. When I had my problem in Hartford, I had friends offer to drop everything to drive there and bring me home. I had people ask me if I was okay throughout the week. Some people repeatedly checked to make sure I was alive (wow, I must have really looked bad this week). And I've had people let me know they're willing to lend an ear when I'm ready to talk.
I may never learn how to kip anything. I may never become proficient at double unders. I may never stop squatting next to the bar to take long breaks. And let's face it, I'm never going to stop sweating. But I can be okay with all that knowing there are good people looking out for me. Thank you.
Sunday, May 31, 2015
Friday, May 29, 2015
The Bald Guy With The Fade
Workout date: 5/29/15
Good things come to those who wait. Or to those who get their asses kicked at the gym on Wednesday and Thursday. One of the two. They say a broken clock is right twice a day and due to the constantly varied nature of Crossfit, every now and then a workout that suits my abilities comes along. Or at least it reads like it will suit my abilities when I read it on the blog the night before.
The "Barbell Mash Up" was a workout I saw on the KOP blog some time back, but it took place on a day when I couldn't make it into the gym. I was really bummed because it sounded like something right up my alley. The confusing part to me were the times people put up. In my mind, this seemed like a sub-10 minute workout, but most times were in the teens. Probably underestimating things again. Here is the workout:
(115/75 for all movements)
10 Shoulder Press
15 Overhead Squats
20 Push Press
25 Front Squats
30 Push Jerks
35 Back Squats
Areas of concern: Shoulder Press (only 10 reps, but that's a lot of weight for me doing that movement), Front Squats (when I get tired, the bar falls forward off me, which would not be good during a round of 25 reps).
Bright spots: Overhead Squats (just because), Back Squats (115 pounds should be light)
On Thursday night, Rachel texted, trying to persuade me into doing the 6am class with her. I think I've been pretty clear about how I feel about the 7am class on Saturday, so arriving an hour earlier to work out sounded like one of the last things that I wanted to do. However, Brittany's farewell happy hour started at 5pm on Friday. Hitting up the 6:30pm class like I normally do would mean not getting to the happy hour until 8pm and who knows how many people would still be there at that point. So I talked myself into doing the 6am class. Upside: it was about 20 degrees cooler than the afternoon classes. Downside: SIX. EH. EM.
Besides me and Rachel, the class consisted of Balmer, King, Manisha, Theresa, and Justin D. I was kinda excited to be working out with King because he's a good barometer for me on many workouts. He tends to be a bit faster than me, but I think I can go a bit heavier on some lifts. He is definitely one of the names I look for when I'm figuring out what a good time/score for me would be on a given day. And plenty has already been written in this blog about how I try to keep up with Rachel. So I had two people to push me today.
We got going and, as I expected, the shoulder press was problematic. My hope was to do all 10 reps in two sets, six then four. After the sixth rep, I felt like I could get one more, so I was up to 7 before putting the bar down. Good start! When I cleaned the bar the second time and went to press it, I realized I was in trouble. I barely got that 8th rep. Another clean and another struggle for rep #9, with the same routine for rep #10. Not great, but not horrible.
Overhead time! This was the same weight I blew a few days ago, so I was giving it a healthy amount of respect this time around. Didn't even try to snatch it, simply went with the clean and jerk. My hands were a little close on the first set of 8, but I got them into better position for the final set of 7. And because I moved so fast on those, I was ahead of Rachel. Got to keep moving!
We do a lot of push presses with 95 pounds and I can normally knock out a bunch of those, so I thought I could do some big sets at 115. Ideally I would have liked to do all 20 in 2 sets, but I didn't want to tire out and start doing push jerks accidentally. I ended up doing 8 in my first set, leaving me confident that I could do two sets of 6, which I managed to knock out. The problem was that I needed some air in between sets. And I was probably taking too long during these breaks. I was still ahead of Rachel when I finished my push presses, but she immediately went into her front squats. I was doomed.
I suspected the 25 front squats might need to be broken into 3 sets, but I was hopeful that I could maybe do it in two. When I needed to drop the bar after a set of 11, I knew it would be 3 sets. Set #2 would be 8 more reps, followed by a set of 6 to finish things. But the breaks in between sets? Probably getting longer without even realizing it.
The 30 push jerks is where it really came apart. Even though I tried to be conscious of how much time I was taking on breaks during this movement, I could only handle 6 reps at a time. Including the break before starting push jerks and the break before starting back squats, I took a total of 6 breaks between the last front squat I did and the first back squat I did. No wonder I was falling so far behind.
As I got to the 35 back squats, I had one thought in mind: don't put the bar down. 115 pounds was pretty light to hold on your back for a long period of time. I couldn't think of a reason to put it down as I could rest with it on my back. Yup, wrong again. As I made my way through the reps, my feet were on fire. Even standing straight up with the bar was painful. I did 11 reps and dropped the barbell. Picked it back up and did 9 more reps. Not wonderful, especially in the home stretch. At that point, I told myself that I was not dropping the barbell again no matter how much my feet hurt. Sure enough, I was able to get the last 15 done, stopping the clock in 16:00, more than three and a half minutes after Rachel finished.
I did finish a little bit ahead of King and amusingly enough, he told me that he also struggled with the back squats because of how much his feet were hurting. Take a wild guess who owns the exact same pair of lifting shoes as me? Yup. I'm not sure how much better things would have been with my Nanos on, but this workout was a rare one in how much of a toll it took on my feet.
Takeaways? Well, the big one is the need to shorten my breaks. And that will be a challenge all summer long. Even with the cooler weather, I was sweating profusely. It is incredibly hard to breathe in that gym and these longer workouts are taking a toll on me. If I'm going to improve, I need to find a way to get back to the bar even if I'm not mostly recovered. It is a problem that is both physical and mental, so I doubt that it will be one that I can quickly overcome. I don't have a strong desire to vomit, faint, or have a heart attack during these workouts, so it will be tough for me to get to where I need to be, but that is clearly the next barrier to overcome in my progress.
Good things come to those who wait. Or to those who get their asses kicked at the gym on Wednesday and Thursday. One of the two. They say a broken clock is right twice a day and due to the constantly varied nature of Crossfit, every now and then a workout that suits my abilities comes along. Or at least it reads like it will suit my abilities when I read it on the blog the night before.
The "Barbell Mash Up" was a workout I saw on the KOP blog some time back, but it took place on a day when I couldn't make it into the gym. I was really bummed because it sounded like something right up my alley. The confusing part to me were the times people put up. In my mind, this seemed like a sub-10 minute workout, but most times were in the teens. Probably underestimating things again. Here is the workout:
(115/75 for all movements)
10 Shoulder Press
15 Overhead Squats
20 Push Press
25 Front Squats
30 Push Jerks
35 Back Squats
Areas of concern: Shoulder Press (only 10 reps, but that's a lot of weight for me doing that movement), Front Squats (when I get tired, the bar falls forward off me, which would not be good during a round of 25 reps).
Bright spots: Overhead Squats (just because), Back Squats (115 pounds should be light)
On Thursday night, Rachel texted, trying to persuade me into doing the 6am class with her. I think I've been pretty clear about how I feel about the 7am class on Saturday, so arriving an hour earlier to work out sounded like one of the last things that I wanted to do. However, Brittany's farewell happy hour started at 5pm on Friday. Hitting up the 6:30pm class like I normally do would mean not getting to the happy hour until 8pm and who knows how many people would still be there at that point. So I talked myself into doing the 6am class. Upside: it was about 20 degrees cooler than the afternoon classes. Downside: SIX. EH. EM.
Besides me and Rachel, the class consisted of Balmer, King, Manisha, Theresa, and Justin D. I was kinda excited to be working out with King because he's a good barometer for me on many workouts. He tends to be a bit faster than me, but I think I can go a bit heavier on some lifts. He is definitely one of the names I look for when I'm figuring out what a good time/score for me would be on a given day. And plenty has already been written in this blog about how I try to keep up with Rachel. So I had two people to push me today.
We got going and, as I expected, the shoulder press was problematic. My hope was to do all 10 reps in two sets, six then four. After the sixth rep, I felt like I could get one more, so I was up to 7 before putting the bar down. Good start! When I cleaned the bar the second time and went to press it, I realized I was in trouble. I barely got that 8th rep. Another clean and another struggle for rep #9, with the same routine for rep #10. Not great, but not horrible.
Overhead time! This was the same weight I blew a few days ago, so I was giving it a healthy amount of respect this time around. Didn't even try to snatch it, simply went with the clean and jerk. My hands were a little close on the first set of 8, but I got them into better position for the final set of 7. And because I moved so fast on those, I was ahead of Rachel. Got to keep moving!
We do a lot of push presses with 95 pounds and I can normally knock out a bunch of those, so I thought I could do some big sets at 115. Ideally I would have liked to do all 20 in 2 sets, but I didn't want to tire out and start doing push jerks accidentally. I ended up doing 8 in my first set, leaving me confident that I could do two sets of 6, which I managed to knock out. The problem was that I needed some air in between sets. And I was probably taking too long during these breaks. I was still ahead of Rachel when I finished my push presses, but she immediately went into her front squats. I was doomed.
I suspected the 25 front squats might need to be broken into 3 sets, but I was hopeful that I could maybe do it in two. When I needed to drop the bar after a set of 11, I knew it would be 3 sets. Set #2 would be 8 more reps, followed by a set of 6 to finish things. But the breaks in between sets? Probably getting longer without even realizing it.
The 30 push jerks is where it really came apart. Even though I tried to be conscious of how much time I was taking on breaks during this movement, I could only handle 6 reps at a time. Including the break before starting push jerks and the break before starting back squats, I took a total of 6 breaks between the last front squat I did and the first back squat I did. No wonder I was falling so far behind.
As I got to the 35 back squats, I had one thought in mind: don't put the bar down. 115 pounds was pretty light to hold on your back for a long period of time. I couldn't think of a reason to put it down as I could rest with it on my back. Yup, wrong again. As I made my way through the reps, my feet were on fire. Even standing straight up with the bar was painful. I did 11 reps and dropped the barbell. Picked it back up and did 9 more reps. Not wonderful, especially in the home stretch. At that point, I told myself that I was not dropping the barbell again no matter how much my feet hurt. Sure enough, I was able to get the last 15 done, stopping the clock in 16:00, more than three and a half minutes after Rachel finished.
I did finish a little bit ahead of King and amusingly enough, he told me that he also struggled with the back squats because of how much his feet were hurting. Take a wild guess who owns the exact same pair of lifting shoes as me? Yup. I'm not sure how much better things would have been with my Nanos on, but this workout was a rare one in how much of a toll it took on my feet.
Takeaways? Well, the big one is the need to shorten my breaks. And that will be a challenge all summer long. Even with the cooler weather, I was sweating profusely. It is incredibly hard to breathe in that gym and these longer workouts are taking a toll on me. If I'm going to improve, I need to find a way to get back to the bar even if I'm not mostly recovered. It is a problem that is both physical and mental, so I doubt that it will be one that I can quickly overcome. I don't have a strong desire to vomit, faint, or have a heart attack during these workouts, so it will be tough for me to get to where I need to be, but that is clearly the next barrier to overcome in my progress.
Revised Expectations
Workout date: 5/28/15
As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I knew that Thursday's workout was not going to be one that I would particularly enjoy. Perhaps that took off some of the pressure going into it. I didn't have much of a plan for the workout. Giulz wanted us to finish in under 20 minutes and I wanted to abide by that standard, but honestly, I wasn't going to be heartbroken if I didn't.
The workout was as follows:
60 calories of rowing
50 KB swings (55/35)
40 chest-to-bar pull-ups
30 calories
20 KB swings
10 chest-to-bar pull-ups
If I had any focus in this workout, it was to be solid on the rower and my sets of KB swings. And not to give away the ending, but in general, I was.
The class was packed at 6:30 as we stood 17 strong for the workout. If it wasn't muggy enough in that gym, having a mob of people working out together was going to take it to another level. Somehow I ended up with a sweet spot in the middle of the gym. I had Roman on one side of me with Cline on the other. We got started on the rower and I felt like I maintained a solid pace. I had 21 calories after the first minute and was just shy of 40 calories at the end of minute two. At that pace, I thought I might be one of the first people off the rower. I was not. Cline jumped off his rower somewhere in the neighborhood of 2:40, which completely threw me off. I know he's very good on the rower, but that seemed really fast, yet he didn't look exhausted as he grabbed his KB. As we approached 3 minutes, other folks started getting off their rowers. Maybe I had misjudged this one. At 3 minutes, I was at 56 calories. A few big pulls later and I was done.
As I went to grab my KB, I did notice that Cline was struggling a little bit with his, giving me some concern about how this next portion was going to go. I thought I could do the 50 swings in two sets, something like 35-15 or 30-20. That was a little ambitious. I managed 17 swings in my first set, followed by 13 (making the rookie move of stopping on a nice round number for no good reason), then 11 (making the smart move of not dividing the remaining reps evenly, as it is always best to leave a few less reps for that last set when you're tired), and then the final 9. I was sweating and breathing pretty good, but I wasn't destroyed. That being said, nearly everyone had made their way to the pull-up bar.
I knew I would not be doing chest-to-bar pull-ups and after failing at Helen (36 pull-ups) recently, there was no point in trying to kip 40 in this workout. So I'd need a band. I was hoping to set one up like I had for the mobility challenge where I could step on the band with both feet, but there wasn't enough time to set one up. Hence, I was back to the good ol days of alternating between a box to rest on and a band tied to the bar that I could put one foot into. Immediately there were no pull-ups to be had. I tried to string some, but it wasn't happening. So instead I methodically did sets of 2 fast singles, then shook my arms, then did another set. Not exactly ideal for a set of 40, but it was getting me through the workout, slow but steady. As I looked at the clock, I did some math and figured if I could complete this round of 40 by 14:30, I could keep the workout under 20 minutes. I got off the bar around 14:20.
Back on the rower, I thought I could make up some time, but my shoulders and arms were spent. I tried to maintain good form, good speed, and make strong pulls as much as I could. The 30 calories went by slowly, but they got done. Next it was 20 reps on the KB and I would really have liked to string the whole set. Unfortunately, rep #12 was where I got wobbly, so I set the KB down and did a set of 8 to get back to the bar.
Another glance at the clock let me know that unless I truly fell apart, I would be under 20 minutes. I churned through those last 10 reps one by one. They were not pretty and they were not fast. But when the tenth rep was complete, the clock only showed 19:39. I didn't have much in the way of goals for the workout, but it was nice to stay under 20 minutes.
Class ended with some rolling out. I didn't work on anything else in the gym, although I did talk with Steph V. about the spreadsheet she wants me to make for the Bridgeport Barbell Classic at the end of June. And if you think I'm geeking out about the awesome spreadsheet I'm creating...well then you're 100% correct.
Next blog post: the return of a workout I really wanted to do, but missed. They call it "the barbell mash up".
As I mentioned at the end of my last post, I knew that Thursday's workout was not going to be one that I would particularly enjoy. Perhaps that took off some of the pressure going into it. I didn't have much of a plan for the workout. Giulz wanted us to finish in under 20 minutes and I wanted to abide by that standard, but honestly, I wasn't going to be heartbroken if I didn't.
The workout was as follows:
60 calories of rowing
50 KB swings (55/35)
40 chest-to-bar pull-ups
30 calories
20 KB swings
10 chest-to-bar pull-ups
If I had any focus in this workout, it was to be solid on the rower and my sets of KB swings. And not to give away the ending, but in general, I was.
The class was packed at 6:30 as we stood 17 strong for the workout. If it wasn't muggy enough in that gym, having a mob of people working out together was going to take it to another level. Somehow I ended up with a sweet spot in the middle of the gym. I had Roman on one side of me with Cline on the other. We got started on the rower and I felt like I maintained a solid pace. I had 21 calories after the first minute and was just shy of 40 calories at the end of minute two. At that pace, I thought I might be one of the first people off the rower. I was not. Cline jumped off his rower somewhere in the neighborhood of 2:40, which completely threw me off. I know he's very good on the rower, but that seemed really fast, yet he didn't look exhausted as he grabbed his KB. As we approached 3 minutes, other folks started getting off their rowers. Maybe I had misjudged this one. At 3 minutes, I was at 56 calories. A few big pulls later and I was done.
As I went to grab my KB, I did notice that Cline was struggling a little bit with his, giving me some concern about how this next portion was going to go. I thought I could do the 50 swings in two sets, something like 35-15 or 30-20. That was a little ambitious. I managed 17 swings in my first set, followed by 13 (making the rookie move of stopping on a nice round number for no good reason), then 11 (making the smart move of not dividing the remaining reps evenly, as it is always best to leave a few less reps for that last set when you're tired), and then the final 9. I was sweating and breathing pretty good, but I wasn't destroyed. That being said, nearly everyone had made their way to the pull-up bar.
I knew I would not be doing chest-to-bar pull-ups and after failing at Helen (36 pull-ups) recently, there was no point in trying to kip 40 in this workout. So I'd need a band. I was hoping to set one up like I had for the mobility challenge where I could step on the band with both feet, but there wasn't enough time to set one up. Hence, I was back to the good ol days of alternating between a box to rest on and a band tied to the bar that I could put one foot into. Immediately there were no pull-ups to be had. I tried to string some, but it wasn't happening. So instead I methodically did sets of 2 fast singles, then shook my arms, then did another set. Not exactly ideal for a set of 40, but it was getting me through the workout, slow but steady. As I looked at the clock, I did some math and figured if I could complete this round of 40 by 14:30, I could keep the workout under 20 minutes. I got off the bar around 14:20.
Back on the rower, I thought I could make up some time, but my shoulders and arms were spent. I tried to maintain good form, good speed, and make strong pulls as much as I could. The 30 calories went by slowly, but they got done. Next it was 20 reps on the KB and I would really have liked to string the whole set. Unfortunately, rep #12 was where I got wobbly, so I set the KB down and did a set of 8 to get back to the bar.
Another glance at the clock let me know that unless I truly fell apart, I would be under 20 minutes. I churned through those last 10 reps one by one. They were not pretty and they were not fast. But when the tenth rep was complete, the clock only showed 19:39. I didn't have much in the way of goals for the workout, but it was nice to stay under 20 minutes.
Class ended with some rolling out. I didn't work on anything else in the gym, although I did talk with Steph V. about the spreadsheet she wants me to make for the Bridgeport Barbell Classic at the end of June. And if you think I'm geeking out about the awesome spreadsheet I'm creating...well then you're 100% correct.
Next blog post: the return of a workout I really wanted to do, but missed. They call it "the barbell mash up".
Thursday, May 28, 2015
A Lesson In Humidity
Workout date: 5/27/15
I was going to start with some positive things in this post, but even that didn't go right today. Samson had taken video of me doing my 5th rep at 265 on Tuesday and I tried to include it in this post, but I kept receiving a message that it didn't upload correctly. So you'll have to go along with my critique sans footage of the event:
It's not often that I include a weather report in this blog, but with summer coming in full force, it might become a more common occurrence. I was sitting in my office, slowly watching time tick by, when I heard loud noises. It is deathly quiet in my office, so it was a bit startling to hear this noise all of a sudden. I went out into the hallway until I came across an office with a window and saw that there was a strong thunderstorm. Guess we'll be warming up on the rowers today. It had been hot earlier in the day, but didn't seem oppressively hot. With this storm, I figured things would cool down. Yay, right?
Wrong. When I got to the gym, it was immediately clear that the humidity had not dropped after the storm. Of course, our gym is a sauna most of the time anyway, but it was noticeably worse last night. Still, I figured I should be able to make it through 6 minutes of work, especially with 4 minutes of rest. That part would have been true if I planned properly, and not surprisingly, I did not. Keith explained what the scales for muscle-ups would be and it involved the rings, not the bars. Specifically, I would be doing jumping muscle-ups. I was not as concerned about my grip with the rings, so I decided not to wear my hand grips. This was yet another notch on my belt of poor decision making.
I still had time to fix this mistake after warmups, but I did not. Even though the workout was only 10 minutes including rest, the warmup was at least 20 minutes long. It was exhausting (bad sign when the warmup is exhausting!) and I had already produced a puddle of sweat where I would be snatching and doing overheads later. My hands were moist (Did I use that word because I know so many people who hate it? You betcha!), but my thought was that I had two minutes between rounds to dry them off, plus I had chalk available. I won't need those silly hand grips!
We got going on the workout and somehow the muscle-up portion ended up being the bright spot for me. I needed some adjustment in the middle of the two minutes so that I was jumping far enough forward to simulate the transition in a muscle-up, but I was able to dip out of that transition successfully over and over again. When the clock hit two minutes, I had done 11 jumping muscle-ups. My previous high was 7.
Time to knock out the stuff I like! Especially since I made the decision during warmups to go with 115 instead of 135. I did some snatches at 95 and they did not feel as light as I would have expected. And since I have learned not to underestimate any workout with rest built into it, I figured the wise move was to scale down to 115. My goal for the snatches would be 20 reps and for the overheads I'd be trying for 30 reps. Those would be tough to get, but I thought I should at least be close to those numbers.
We got going with the snatches and I strung four in a row. I'm sure my form fell apart as I was going for speed, but I was moving with good speed. I had 9 done at the one minute mark. I tried to keep pushing for at least 9 more, but had to drop on one of the lifts (foreshadowing!) and ended up with only 7 in the second minute for a score of 16. Not terrible, but not great. At least we were ending with my favorite movement. I wiped the sweat off of me, chalked up my hands, and waited for the two minute rest period to end.
What followed was a mix of my faulty body, bad weather, and probably a mental breakdown. All in two minutes! As the round began, I went to squat snatch the bar to get a quick overhead squat in. I can pretty much do this in my sleep now with 95 pounds, so 115 shouldn't have been too much of a struggle. And really it wasn't, except that as I pulled the bar over my head and dropped below it, my grip gave a little bit and the bar started sliding forward out of my hands. I tried to hold on, thinking that if I could stand it up, I could re-grip and proceed with the overheads. But the bar had slid too much and I had to drop it. Not a wonderful start. Then I power snatched it and did 5 reps, but again, the bar didn't feel right in my hands, so I put it down. When I went to snatch it again, the bar flew out of my hands and bounced forward. My hands were covered in white goo (stop it) as the chalk and my sweat had combined to thwart my overhead squatting efforts. I wiped my hands on my shorts, ran over to the chalk bucket, and got some dry chalk on my hands. I snatched the bar, did a larger set, and then put it back down. With less than 30 seconds to go, I tried to snatch it again, but the bar slipped out of my hands yet again. Having no time to re-chalk, I got the bar over my head via a clean and jerk and got a few more reps in. When time was called, I had only 16 reps. Maybe I should have worn those hand grips! Moron.
As I rolled out after class, I continued to be furious about the workout. It's bad enough blowing it on something I'm not particularly good at, but that should be balanced out by doing well on things I'm decent at. Messing up an overhead squat workout was like forgetting it was jeans day at work. After stewing for a bit, I did 4 sets of 10 swings using the 80 lb KB as I've been wanting to do for a while. Then I capped the day off with some very poor double under practice. At that point, it was time to call it a day and hope for better things tomorrow.
Next blog: a workout with 50 chest-to-bar pull-ups? Maybe I need to hope for better things Friday.
I was going to start with some positive things in this post, but even that didn't go right today. Samson had taken video of me doing my 5th rep at 265 on Tuesday and I tried to include it in this post, but I kept receiving a message that it didn't upload correctly. So you'll have to go along with my critique sans footage of the event:
- Calling it a "controlled descent" may have been a slight exaggeration. In the video, I still drop to the bottom awfully fast, a problem that will haunt me when I go to higher weights. As Giulz would say, FIX IT!
- With that aside, the video showed little struggle on that last rep. If it was someone else in that video, I'd turn to them and say "you got that easy, you can do that all day". For myself, I'll go with "that wasn't so bad".
- The part of the video you will be most upset about missing is after the lift, where I become super awkward while wandering around, eventually high-fiving Keith and Matt B.
- According to the chart at the gym, if I can do 5 reps at 265, I should be able to do 1 rep at 305. Key words: should be able to.
It's not often that I include a weather report in this blog, but with summer coming in full force, it might become a more common occurrence. I was sitting in my office, slowly watching time tick by, when I heard loud noises. It is deathly quiet in my office, so it was a bit startling to hear this noise all of a sudden. I went out into the hallway until I came across an office with a window and saw that there was a strong thunderstorm. Guess we'll be warming up on the rowers today. It had been hot earlier in the day, but didn't seem oppressively hot. With this storm, I figured things would cool down. Yay, right?
Wrong. When I got to the gym, it was immediately clear that the humidity had not dropped after the storm. Of course, our gym is a sauna most of the time anyway, but it was noticeably worse last night. Still, I figured I should be able to make it through 6 minutes of work, especially with 4 minutes of rest. That part would have been true if I planned properly, and not surprisingly, I did not. Keith explained what the scales for muscle-ups would be and it involved the rings, not the bars. Specifically, I would be doing jumping muscle-ups. I was not as concerned about my grip with the rings, so I decided not to wear my hand grips. This was yet another notch on my belt of poor decision making.
I still had time to fix this mistake after warmups, but I did not. Even though the workout was only 10 minutes including rest, the warmup was at least 20 minutes long. It was exhausting (bad sign when the warmup is exhausting!) and I had already produced a puddle of sweat where I would be snatching and doing overheads later. My hands were moist (Did I use that word because I know so many people who hate it? You betcha!), but my thought was that I had two minutes between rounds to dry them off, plus I had chalk available. I won't need those silly hand grips!
We got going on the workout and somehow the muscle-up portion ended up being the bright spot for me. I needed some adjustment in the middle of the two minutes so that I was jumping far enough forward to simulate the transition in a muscle-up, but I was able to dip out of that transition successfully over and over again. When the clock hit two minutes, I had done 11 jumping muscle-ups. My previous high was 7.
Time to knock out the stuff I like! Especially since I made the decision during warmups to go with 115 instead of 135. I did some snatches at 95 and they did not feel as light as I would have expected. And since I have learned not to underestimate any workout with rest built into it, I figured the wise move was to scale down to 115. My goal for the snatches would be 20 reps and for the overheads I'd be trying for 30 reps. Those would be tough to get, but I thought I should at least be close to those numbers.
We got going with the snatches and I strung four in a row. I'm sure my form fell apart as I was going for speed, but I was moving with good speed. I had 9 done at the one minute mark. I tried to keep pushing for at least 9 more, but had to drop on one of the lifts (foreshadowing!) and ended up with only 7 in the second minute for a score of 16. Not terrible, but not great. At least we were ending with my favorite movement. I wiped the sweat off of me, chalked up my hands, and waited for the two minute rest period to end.
What followed was a mix of my faulty body, bad weather, and probably a mental breakdown. All in two minutes! As the round began, I went to squat snatch the bar to get a quick overhead squat in. I can pretty much do this in my sleep now with 95 pounds, so 115 shouldn't have been too much of a struggle. And really it wasn't, except that as I pulled the bar over my head and dropped below it, my grip gave a little bit and the bar started sliding forward out of my hands. I tried to hold on, thinking that if I could stand it up, I could re-grip and proceed with the overheads. But the bar had slid too much and I had to drop it. Not a wonderful start. Then I power snatched it and did 5 reps, but again, the bar didn't feel right in my hands, so I put it down. When I went to snatch it again, the bar flew out of my hands and bounced forward. My hands were covered in white goo (stop it) as the chalk and my sweat had combined to thwart my overhead squatting efforts. I wiped my hands on my shorts, ran over to the chalk bucket, and got some dry chalk on my hands. I snatched the bar, did a larger set, and then put it back down. With less than 30 seconds to go, I tried to snatch it again, but the bar slipped out of my hands yet again. Having no time to re-chalk, I got the bar over my head via a clean and jerk and got a few more reps in. When time was called, I had only 16 reps. Maybe I should have worn those hand grips! Moron.
As I rolled out after class, I continued to be furious about the workout. It's bad enough blowing it on something I'm not particularly good at, but that should be balanced out by doing well on things I'm decent at. Messing up an overhead squat workout was like forgetting it was jeans day at work. After stewing for a bit, I did 4 sets of 10 swings using the 80 lb KB as I've been wanting to do for a while. Then I capped the day off with some very poor double under practice. At that point, it was time to call it a day and hope for better things tomorrow.
Next blog: a workout with 50 chest-to-bar pull-ups? Maybe I need to hope for better things Friday.
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
I Have 245...Now I Have 255...Do I Hear 265?
Workout date: 5/26/15
With my first (and hopefully last) kidney stone behind me, I was desperate to get back to working out. Four days off is way too many, whether you spent part of that time in an emergency room or not. I was relieved to see that the WOD was one that I was interested in doing, although I felt like I was sensing some deja vu. Typically, you won't see a workout pop up in the gym's programming again if it had been done recently. Sometimes you can go six months or even a year before certain workouts are repeated. This year, that window has decreased, as we are doing specific testing every three months. Still, this seemed even more recent than that.
Today we were testing our 5RM back squat and after some research, I discovered that we had done this only a month ago. Very strange. As was the case a month ago, Matt B. was in class to be partners with me. In our last attempt at this, I had gotten 255, while Matt had gotten 225. But to be fair, I did all 5 sets, while Matt stopped after the 4th, and the 4th set was 225 for both of us. So I fully expected him to go higher than 225 today. I had tried 265 after my 5th set at 255 a month ago, but I let the weight collapse on me like an elevator plummeting to the ground floor and couldn't manage a single rep. The goal was to not repeat that mistake and get 5 successful reps at 265.
(Cool note about today's class: it was half-bald! Of the 6 people taking class, Derreck, Brent, and myself were representing the follically-challenged. Lindsey, Michal, and Matt were left to admire our domes.)
Matt and I didn't want to waste too much energy on warmup sets, so we decided to do a set of 5 at 135, then get into the real sets at 185. As I got ready to do 185, Keith pulled me aside and told me "let's get that weight today that you couldn't get last time." Awww...he was such a dick to me last month about this and now he was being so nice! All kidding aside, a good coach knows when to inspire you with positive vibes, but also knows when to kick your ass to push you harder. I needed that kick in the ass last month and Keith is a good enough coach to have realized it.
I let Keith know that the plan was to start at 185 and go up in 20 pound increments so that my last set was that weight of 265 where I had failed previously. I was also using the lower setup on my back for these sets. I had tried this twice up until now and both times it felt awkward. I had been told that would be the case (isn't that always the case when you're trying something new?), but I certainly had concerns about feeling uncomfortable while trying to squat 265 pounds five times. And I tend to believe that feeling comfortable during any Crossfit movement is essential to success. Why do I struggle with squats and deadlifts? At least partially because it doesn't "feel right" when I set up to do the lift or when I'm in the middle of completing the lift. That was always the case with my footwork and it wasn't until I got lifting shoes that the problem went away. Jumping rope didn't feel natural to me, so I struggled in my double under progression. Being upside down? Lot of work needed to feel comfortable with that. And so the list goes on and on.
However, when I did the warmup set at 135, I spent some time making sure that I felt comfortable with where the bar was. I wanted to know that it was going to stay exactly where I had it at the beginning of the lift while I maintained good squat form. And as I did those lighter reps, I began to develop a level of comfort with the new lower setup. Even later on when my weight shifted forward during the heavier lifts, I was never completely up on my toes, which is a big deal for me.
Matt and I alternated going through that progression of weight. Neither of us had a problem at 185 or 205. I had some minor balance issues at 225 that I wasn't psyched about. Matt started shaking his head when getting stuck on his second rep at 245, but he polished off the rest of the set. Now it was time to take on 265. I told Matt that I was pretending I had no idea how much weight was on the bar because sometimes you simply mentally plateau with these lifts. I took some time before the set to think about how I wanted to hold the bar, how I wanted to breath during the set, and how I wanted to control the bar on the way down and try to push up quickly from the bottom. If I could get that first rep, I could grit my way to 5. At least that's what I told myself.
I grabbed the bar, backed away from the rack, and controlled my descent much better than I had a month ago. For a brief moment, I worried about getting stuck near the bottom on the way back up, a problem I have all too frequently at these higher weights, but I managed to stand up with the weight. It wasn't some Herculean effort either. I could get 5 of these. I paused at the top for a second, gathered my breath, and controlled my descent again. Soon I had completed reps two, three, and four. Just one more left. I wasn't shaking uncontrollably or anything, I only needed to follow the same routine I had used during my first four reps. I squatted down, had only the slightest of hitches, then made my way back upright. I put the bar on the rack and then shared some high-fives. 265 was my new 5RM for back squats!
Matt went after 265 as well and got the first rep before bailing on the second rep. He's been out for a while with injuries, but you can tell he's rounding back into form. I would not be surprised if he outlifts me the next time we do this workout.
Cash-out time and I was ready to go! Not only was I riding a high from getting 265, the cash-out sounded like one I would like. Until I remembered that a burpee box-jump did not involve jumping over the box (I've come to love box jump overs. It was a bummer that we weren't doing them in the cash-out.). The cash-out was a 9 minute AMRAP of rowing 15 calories and 9 burpee box-jumps. Before any scores were posted, I figured that 5 rounds would be a very solid score. Then the morning scores were posted and I saw the top athletes in the gym had ended up just shy of 5 rounds. Didn't matter. 5 rounds was still going to be my goal.
I did get some unexpected motivation though when Michal challenged me in the cash-out. She seemed super confident that she was going to beat me. I knew she was faster on burpees, but I had the advantage on the rowing. This would be a good test for me, because I would definitely have the early lead (rowing was first), but then I'd need to hold her off during the burpee box-jumps. And I'd need to keep it together for 9 minutes. Plus I wasn't about to let her punk me in front of the entire class. I told her to move her rower back so that I could set mine up facing hers. Game on!
I kicked the damper up to 9 and got ready to row. Once we did, I got no calories with my first two pulls, but then they started coming pretty easy. Before I knew it, I was up to 15 calories and only about 25 seconds had passed. Maybe I was too amped up! I got off the rower, shot a quick glare at Michal, and started the burpee box-jumps. Got to move fast here. I had made it through 5 of the 9 when Michal made it off the rower. Not too bad, as I should have a lead headed back to the rower and I might be able to extend it there. I finished my last 4 burpee box-jumps and got back on the rower. There was not going to be a repeat of the first round, but I maintained a solid pace. Michal was back to her rower pretty quick, but she was going to need to row faster to stay with me. 15 more calories down and I was back to the burpee box-jumps. I finished almost the entire set of 9 before Michal got off her rower. Now I had two goals: five rounds and try to lap Michal.
Unfortunately, I fell short of making either happen. The burpee box-jumps became very difficult as time ticked by, forcing me to hop on the box like a frog and then stand up to complete each rep. I kept moving, but this was definitely a slower pace. I still had five rounds in my head until Keith yelled "two minutes!" as I was in the middle of my fourth round of burpee box-jumps. I don't think facing the clock would have helped me any, but it was startling to hear how much time had elapsed, especially since I had done my first round so quickly.
Lapping Michal was still a possibility though, as she had just made it back to her rower. I got back to my rower with what I assume was about a minute left (probably slightly less). I pulled with everything I had left, but as I passed 11 calories, Michal was off her rower again. I kept working, but Keith gave the "3...2...1...time!" right after I reached 15 calories. There was no way I could have gotten out of the rower and done a burpee box-jump in 3 seconds. Michal managed 3 of them while I was still rowing, giving her a score of 3+18. I ended up with a score of 4+15. Despite not getting five rounds or lapping my adversary, I was really pleased with my first day back at the gym.
With my first (and hopefully last) kidney stone behind me, I was desperate to get back to working out. Four days off is way too many, whether you spent part of that time in an emergency room or not. I was relieved to see that the WOD was one that I was interested in doing, although I felt like I was sensing some deja vu. Typically, you won't see a workout pop up in the gym's programming again if it had been done recently. Sometimes you can go six months or even a year before certain workouts are repeated. This year, that window has decreased, as we are doing specific testing every three months. Still, this seemed even more recent than that.
Today we were testing our 5RM back squat and after some research, I discovered that we had done this only a month ago. Very strange. As was the case a month ago, Matt B. was in class to be partners with me. In our last attempt at this, I had gotten 255, while Matt had gotten 225. But to be fair, I did all 5 sets, while Matt stopped after the 4th, and the 4th set was 225 for both of us. So I fully expected him to go higher than 225 today. I had tried 265 after my 5th set at 255 a month ago, but I let the weight collapse on me like an elevator plummeting to the ground floor and couldn't manage a single rep. The goal was to not repeat that mistake and get 5 successful reps at 265.
(Cool note about today's class: it was half-bald! Of the 6 people taking class, Derreck, Brent, and myself were representing the follically-challenged. Lindsey, Michal, and Matt were left to admire our domes.)
Matt and I didn't want to waste too much energy on warmup sets, so we decided to do a set of 5 at 135, then get into the real sets at 185. As I got ready to do 185, Keith pulled me aside and told me "let's get that weight today that you couldn't get last time." Awww...he was such a dick to me last month about this and now he was being so nice! All kidding aside, a good coach knows when to inspire you with positive vibes, but also knows when to kick your ass to push you harder. I needed that kick in the ass last month and Keith is a good enough coach to have realized it.
I let Keith know that the plan was to start at 185 and go up in 20 pound increments so that my last set was that weight of 265 where I had failed previously. I was also using the lower setup on my back for these sets. I had tried this twice up until now and both times it felt awkward. I had been told that would be the case (isn't that always the case when you're trying something new?), but I certainly had concerns about feeling uncomfortable while trying to squat 265 pounds five times. And I tend to believe that feeling comfortable during any Crossfit movement is essential to success. Why do I struggle with squats and deadlifts? At least partially because it doesn't "feel right" when I set up to do the lift or when I'm in the middle of completing the lift. That was always the case with my footwork and it wasn't until I got lifting shoes that the problem went away. Jumping rope didn't feel natural to me, so I struggled in my double under progression. Being upside down? Lot of work needed to feel comfortable with that. And so the list goes on and on.
However, when I did the warmup set at 135, I spent some time making sure that I felt comfortable with where the bar was. I wanted to know that it was going to stay exactly where I had it at the beginning of the lift while I maintained good squat form. And as I did those lighter reps, I began to develop a level of comfort with the new lower setup. Even later on when my weight shifted forward during the heavier lifts, I was never completely up on my toes, which is a big deal for me.
Matt and I alternated going through that progression of weight. Neither of us had a problem at 185 or 205. I had some minor balance issues at 225 that I wasn't psyched about. Matt started shaking his head when getting stuck on his second rep at 245, but he polished off the rest of the set. Now it was time to take on 265. I told Matt that I was pretending I had no idea how much weight was on the bar because sometimes you simply mentally plateau with these lifts. I took some time before the set to think about how I wanted to hold the bar, how I wanted to breath during the set, and how I wanted to control the bar on the way down and try to push up quickly from the bottom. If I could get that first rep, I could grit my way to 5. At least that's what I told myself.
I grabbed the bar, backed away from the rack, and controlled my descent much better than I had a month ago. For a brief moment, I worried about getting stuck near the bottom on the way back up, a problem I have all too frequently at these higher weights, but I managed to stand up with the weight. It wasn't some Herculean effort either. I could get 5 of these. I paused at the top for a second, gathered my breath, and controlled my descent again. Soon I had completed reps two, three, and four. Just one more left. I wasn't shaking uncontrollably or anything, I only needed to follow the same routine I had used during my first four reps. I squatted down, had only the slightest of hitches, then made my way back upright. I put the bar on the rack and then shared some high-fives. 265 was my new 5RM for back squats!
Matt went after 265 as well and got the first rep before bailing on the second rep. He's been out for a while with injuries, but you can tell he's rounding back into form. I would not be surprised if he outlifts me the next time we do this workout.
Cash-out time and I was ready to go! Not only was I riding a high from getting 265, the cash-out sounded like one I would like. Until I remembered that a burpee box-jump did not involve jumping over the box (I've come to love box jump overs. It was a bummer that we weren't doing them in the cash-out.). The cash-out was a 9 minute AMRAP of rowing 15 calories and 9 burpee box-jumps. Before any scores were posted, I figured that 5 rounds would be a very solid score. Then the morning scores were posted and I saw the top athletes in the gym had ended up just shy of 5 rounds. Didn't matter. 5 rounds was still going to be my goal.
I did get some unexpected motivation though when Michal challenged me in the cash-out. She seemed super confident that she was going to beat me. I knew she was faster on burpees, but I had the advantage on the rowing. This would be a good test for me, because I would definitely have the early lead (rowing was first), but then I'd need to hold her off during the burpee box-jumps. And I'd need to keep it together for 9 minutes. Plus I wasn't about to let her punk me in front of the entire class. I told her to move her rower back so that I could set mine up facing hers. Game on!
I kicked the damper up to 9 and got ready to row. Once we did, I got no calories with my first two pulls, but then they started coming pretty easy. Before I knew it, I was up to 15 calories and only about 25 seconds had passed. Maybe I was too amped up! I got off the rower, shot a quick glare at Michal, and started the burpee box-jumps. Got to move fast here. I had made it through 5 of the 9 when Michal made it off the rower. Not too bad, as I should have a lead headed back to the rower and I might be able to extend it there. I finished my last 4 burpee box-jumps and got back on the rower. There was not going to be a repeat of the first round, but I maintained a solid pace. Michal was back to her rower pretty quick, but she was going to need to row faster to stay with me. 15 more calories down and I was back to the burpee box-jumps. I finished almost the entire set of 9 before Michal got off her rower. Now I had two goals: five rounds and try to lap Michal.
Unfortunately, I fell short of making either happen. The burpee box-jumps became very difficult as time ticked by, forcing me to hop on the box like a frog and then stand up to complete each rep. I kept moving, but this was definitely a slower pace. I still had five rounds in my head until Keith yelled "two minutes!" as I was in the middle of my fourth round of burpee box-jumps. I don't think facing the clock would have helped me any, but it was startling to hear how much time had elapsed, especially since I had done my first round so quickly.
Lapping Michal was still a possibility though, as she had just made it back to her rower. I got back to my rower with what I assume was about a minute left (probably slightly less). I pulled with everything I had left, but as I passed 11 calories, Michal was off her rower again. I kept working, but Keith gave the "3...2...1...time!" right after I reached 15 calories. There was no way I could have gotten out of the rower and done a burpee box-jump in 3 seconds. Michal managed 3 of them while I was still rowing, giving her a score of 3+18. I ended up with a score of 4+15. Despite not getting five rounds or lapping my adversary, I was really pleased with my first day back at the gym.
Monday, May 25, 2015
Giving Birth
Workout date: 5/21/15
My body told me I needed rest on Tuesday night, so I complied on Wednesday by not going to the gym. When I heard what the workout was, I felt relieved as it didn't sound like something I would particularly enjoy. Naturally, that changed as Wednesday wore on. My Crossfit addiction kicked in. I began checking out the scores posted on the website during the day. I started convincing myself that the workout wasn't that bad and that I might actually enjoy it. But I couldn't persuade my brain to believe that going to the gym for a 7th consecutive day was a good idea after two terrible workouts. So I stayed home and eagerly awaited Thursday's workout.
The Thursday workout may have been even less appealing. Back squats and deadlifts don't exactly fall under the same heading as pull-ups when it comes to things I struggle with at the gym, but they are movements that I have not excelled at. When it comes to deadlifts, those struggles are amplified when the workout calls for a large number of reps. So when I saw the WOD say we were doing deadlifts with a rep scheme of 1-10-1-20-1-30, I wasn't doing cartwheels. But as is generally the case when a workout features one of my weaknesses, I tried to approach it as an opportunity for improvement.
The plan. There's always a plan. Except this was a tough one to plan. I've been eager to try out 405 on my deadlift because I feel like I've probably gotten stronger since the last time I PR'd at 385. Except I was pretty sure that I wasn't supposed to do 405 for my first rep and then go down from there. This would be confirmed when I asked Giulz at the beginning of class. That meant that if I wanted to get to 405, I would need to do it on the second 1 rep or (more likely) the third 1 rep. That also meant I would either have done 11 reps or 32 reps already. Neither option sounded wonderful, but I decided I would run with it and adjust as necessary. If all went well, I would go 365-385-405 on the single reps, with 275-225-165 my goals for the 10 rep, 20 rep, and 30 rep sets. I had recently done 10 reps with 255, so I thought 275 should be doable in this workout. 20 reps at 225 was pushing it, although I believe I've done 15 reps at that weight before. For the last set, it was purely a guess, as I've never strung together 30 reps of deadlifts in any workout. 135 sounded too light. 155-165 seemed about right. If I was dropping 50 pounds to go from 10 reps to 20 reps, dropping 60-70 reps to go from 20 to 30 reps should work.
I went through some warmup lifts as we had the entire class to finish our sets. I did 5 reps at 135, 4 reps at 225, and 3 reps at 295. Those last 3 reps felt heavier than I would have liked, so I was not feeling confident as I got ready to do my first rep at 365. I was able to complete the lift (I recently did my 3RM at 365, so not getting 1 rep would have been a very big problem!), but again, it felt heavier than it should have. Quickly beginning to think it would not be the day I get 405. I took 90 pounds off the bar and got ready to do 10 reps at 275. That round went better than expected, although I'm not sure I could have done a lot more than 10 reps at that weight. Maybe I could get 405 today! (Yes, I am a roller coaster of emotions/confidence during almost every workout.)
Speaking of roller coasters, it was time to hit the peak of the ride, followed by the terror-filled scream plummet to the bottom. I know Coach Plentus always told us there was never any point in tying your PR, but 365-385-405 seemed like an appropriate progression, so my second single rep was going to be 385. Technically it was a successful lift. But there were no style points awarded. Normally my deadlifts go well once I get them off the ground. That first pull is always the hardest. Not on Thursday. I managed to get 385 off the ground, but then it didn't move very smoothly. I started to curl over as I rolled the bar up my thigh. With the bar stabilized, I straightened up and finished the lift. Michal told me that it looked like I was giving birth. Probably not a compliment.
Well at least I knew 405 wasn't happening. And now I had doubts about how wise it was to try 225 for 20 reps, especially with a set of 30 reps still to go. Trying to be somewhat sane, I scaled the 20 rep set down to 205. Even that was a little awkward with the last 3 reps being kinda herky jerky, but I got the impression I could have done at least 215 for 20 reps, if not 225 like I originally planned.
What was I to do for my last single rep? 405 was not happening. 385 again made little sense. And since I was "successful" with my last attempt, it made sense to try more. So I loaded 395 on the bar. My impressions of this lift: "oh god, it's not moving", then "hey, it's moving", then "I'm doing that hunching thing, but it's moving still", followed by "if I get it to my thigh, I can do that roll it up my body thing". I did manage to get it to my thigh, but that was when Giulz came running over in front of me telling me to drop it. Apparently Leslie had been yelling at me to drop it from across the gym, but I had zoned out everything until Giulz was a foot in front of me. Could I have gotten it from there? I think so. Was it worth it? No. And I doubt Leslie and Giulz would have told me to drop a lift that would have given me a new PR if they weren't extremely concerned that I was about to injure myself. So 385 remains my 1RM deadlift. I stripped off 30 pounds and did 365 again, knowing it should be a manageable lift and it was.
For the final set, I decided I wanted redemption and opted for 165 over 155. With that weight and the volume of reps I was doing, this would be more about grip strength more than anything else. I made my way through the first 18 reps smoothly before pausing. From there on, I did sets of 2 until I finished off the 30th rep. It got slow at the end, but I held on to the bar and got it done. My Thursday night was complete. Well, at the gym it was. From there, I went home, packed some stuff and took off for Hartford to watch the East Regionals.
Regionals was a good time and I would highly recommend it, although going in a group is preferable to flying solo. Previous to attending this event, I had really only watched the individual competition, but I have to say that I probably enjoyed the team events more than the individual ones. There is so much strategy involved. One team will be way ahead, then a team that looked like they had no hope comes storming back to grab the lead. Didn't see that much in the individual competition, although that was very fun to watch as well. Maybe one day I'll have the opportunity to see the championship out in Carson, California.
While I was in Hartford, I also had the unfortunate experience of developing my first kidney stone. That led to a Saturday night stay in the hospital and some hard-to-describe pain. Still I'll try my best. The kidney stone felt like I was doing a core tabata, except that it went on for 3 hours, had no 10 second breaks during it, and forced me to throw up several times. It was a lovely experience. I've been told it is the closest thing to giving birth that a male can experience, so perhaps my ugly deadlift on Thursday night was simply foreshadowing for the pain I would go through on Saturday night. And the worst part is that I can't workout until the stone passes.
(Update: the stone passed this morning! Bummed to have missed Murph, but excited to hit the gym Tuesday night.)
Despite my body failing me once again, I was determined to watch the end of the Regionals on Sunday. I didn't drive all the way to Hartford to leave early. So I got to see the crazy end to the Team Competition. I saw Matt Fraser show why he is the favorite to win in Carson. I saw Michele Letendre finally get to stand on the top of a Regional podium. I saw Austin Malleolo celebrate like crazy along every step of the way as he earned his way back to the Crossfit Games. Like I said, if you get the chance, definitely go and experience it. Just don't develop kidney stones while you're there!
My body told me I needed rest on Tuesday night, so I complied on Wednesday by not going to the gym. When I heard what the workout was, I felt relieved as it didn't sound like something I would particularly enjoy. Naturally, that changed as Wednesday wore on. My Crossfit addiction kicked in. I began checking out the scores posted on the website during the day. I started convincing myself that the workout wasn't that bad and that I might actually enjoy it. But I couldn't persuade my brain to believe that going to the gym for a 7th consecutive day was a good idea after two terrible workouts. So I stayed home and eagerly awaited Thursday's workout.
The Thursday workout may have been even less appealing. Back squats and deadlifts don't exactly fall under the same heading as pull-ups when it comes to things I struggle with at the gym, but they are movements that I have not excelled at. When it comes to deadlifts, those struggles are amplified when the workout calls for a large number of reps. So when I saw the WOD say we were doing deadlifts with a rep scheme of 1-10-1-20-1-30, I wasn't doing cartwheels. But as is generally the case when a workout features one of my weaknesses, I tried to approach it as an opportunity for improvement.
The plan. There's always a plan. Except this was a tough one to plan. I've been eager to try out 405 on my deadlift because I feel like I've probably gotten stronger since the last time I PR'd at 385. Except I was pretty sure that I wasn't supposed to do 405 for my first rep and then go down from there. This would be confirmed when I asked Giulz at the beginning of class. That meant that if I wanted to get to 405, I would need to do it on the second 1 rep or (more likely) the third 1 rep. That also meant I would either have done 11 reps or 32 reps already. Neither option sounded wonderful, but I decided I would run with it and adjust as necessary. If all went well, I would go 365-385-405 on the single reps, with 275-225-165 my goals for the 10 rep, 20 rep, and 30 rep sets. I had recently done 10 reps with 255, so I thought 275 should be doable in this workout. 20 reps at 225 was pushing it, although I believe I've done 15 reps at that weight before. For the last set, it was purely a guess, as I've never strung together 30 reps of deadlifts in any workout. 135 sounded too light. 155-165 seemed about right. If I was dropping 50 pounds to go from 10 reps to 20 reps, dropping 60-70 reps to go from 20 to 30 reps should work.
I went through some warmup lifts as we had the entire class to finish our sets. I did 5 reps at 135, 4 reps at 225, and 3 reps at 295. Those last 3 reps felt heavier than I would have liked, so I was not feeling confident as I got ready to do my first rep at 365. I was able to complete the lift (I recently did my 3RM at 365, so not getting 1 rep would have been a very big problem!), but again, it felt heavier than it should have. Quickly beginning to think it would not be the day I get 405. I took 90 pounds off the bar and got ready to do 10 reps at 275. That round went better than expected, although I'm not sure I could have done a lot more than 10 reps at that weight. Maybe I could get 405 today! (Yes, I am a roller coaster of emotions/confidence during almost every workout.)
Speaking of roller coasters, it was time to hit the peak of the ride, followed by the terror-filled scream plummet to the bottom. I know Coach Plentus always told us there was never any point in tying your PR, but 365-385-405 seemed like an appropriate progression, so my second single rep was going to be 385. Technically it was a successful lift. But there were no style points awarded. Normally my deadlifts go well once I get them off the ground. That first pull is always the hardest. Not on Thursday. I managed to get 385 off the ground, but then it didn't move very smoothly. I started to curl over as I rolled the bar up my thigh. With the bar stabilized, I straightened up and finished the lift. Michal told me that it looked like I was giving birth. Probably not a compliment.
Well at least I knew 405 wasn't happening. And now I had doubts about how wise it was to try 225 for 20 reps, especially with a set of 30 reps still to go. Trying to be somewhat sane, I scaled the 20 rep set down to 205. Even that was a little awkward with the last 3 reps being kinda herky jerky, but I got the impression I could have done at least 215 for 20 reps, if not 225 like I originally planned.
What was I to do for my last single rep? 405 was not happening. 385 again made little sense. And since I was "successful" with my last attempt, it made sense to try more. So I loaded 395 on the bar. My impressions of this lift: "oh god, it's not moving", then "hey, it's moving", then "I'm doing that hunching thing, but it's moving still", followed by "if I get it to my thigh, I can do that roll it up my body thing". I did manage to get it to my thigh, but that was when Giulz came running over in front of me telling me to drop it. Apparently Leslie had been yelling at me to drop it from across the gym, but I had zoned out everything until Giulz was a foot in front of me. Could I have gotten it from there? I think so. Was it worth it? No. And I doubt Leslie and Giulz would have told me to drop a lift that would have given me a new PR if they weren't extremely concerned that I was about to injure myself. So 385 remains my 1RM deadlift. I stripped off 30 pounds and did 365 again, knowing it should be a manageable lift and it was.
For the final set, I decided I wanted redemption and opted for 165 over 155. With that weight and the volume of reps I was doing, this would be more about grip strength more than anything else. I made my way through the first 18 reps smoothly before pausing. From there on, I did sets of 2 until I finished off the 30th rep. It got slow at the end, but I held on to the bar and got it done. My Thursday night was complete. Well, at the gym it was. From there, I went home, packed some stuff and took off for Hartford to watch the East Regionals.
Regionals was a good time and I would highly recommend it, although going in a group is preferable to flying solo. Previous to attending this event, I had really only watched the individual competition, but I have to say that I probably enjoyed the team events more than the individual ones. There is so much strategy involved. One team will be way ahead, then a team that looked like they had no hope comes storming back to grab the lead. Didn't see that much in the individual competition, although that was very fun to watch as well. Maybe one day I'll have the opportunity to see the championship out in Carson, California.
While I was in Hartford, I also had the unfortunate experience of developing my first kidney stone. That led to a Saturday night stay in the hospital and some hard-to-describe pain. Still I'll try my best. The kidney stone felt like I was doing a core tabata, except that it went on for 3 hours, had no 10 second breaks during it, and forced me to throw up several times. It was a lovely experience. I've been told it is the closest thing to giving birth that a male can experience, so perhaps my ugly deadlift on Thursday night was simply foreshadowing for the pain I would go through on Saturday night. And the worst part is that I can't workout until the stone passes.
(Update: the stone passed this morning! Bummed to have missed Murph, but excited to hit the gym Tuesday night.)
Despite my body failing me once again, I was determined to watch the end of the Regionals on Sunday. I didn't drive all the way to Hartford to leave early. So I got to see the crazy end to the Team Competition. I saw Matt Fraser show why he is the favorite to win in Carson. I saw Michele Letendre finally get to stand on the top of a Regional podium. I saw Austin Malleolo celebrate like crazy along every step of the way as he earned his way back to the Crossfit Games. Like I said, if you get the chance, definitely go and experience it. Just don't develop kidney stones while you're there!
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Six Degrees Of Perspiration
Workout date: 5/19/15
By the time you reach the end of this post, you will have the impression that I hated this workout. But the truth is that when I saw today's WOD, I was excited. The workout went like this: 15 clean and jerks (135/95), followed by 100 double unders, then 15 more clean and jerks, another 100 double unders, capped off with 15 more clean and jerks. I have gotten to a point with my lifts where clean and jerking 135 pounds is no longer intimidating to me. This workout would also be a great test of how efficient my double under technique was.
Throughout the day, I looked at the finishing times of various people and determined that my goal would be to finish the workout in under 14 minutes. Knowing what I know now, I'm guessing that overexertion of the body leads to poor predictive skills. As I got to the gym, I saw Michal finishing up her workout in the 6:30 class. She finished in 19:17. Uh oh. Matt B. finished in 15:21. Uh oh. Both of them are significantly more proficient than me at double unders. A revision on that finishing time may be in order.
The 7:30 class was made up of me, Matt E., Cline, and Rachel. While I enjoyed getting to work out with so many people yesterday, I was glad to have some additional space tonight. We began what I will call the warmup, but honestly, with temperatures in the mid 80's and tons of humidity, my body is fully warmed up walking from my car to the front door. It's more accurate to call this piece of the WOD "the lather-up", since I am fully soaked by the time it is done. I visited the paper towel rolls several times, trying to get somewhat dry before things kicked off for real. We got our barbells loaded and we were ready to begin.
First round of clean and jerks went smoothly enough. Matt was working next to me and may have been 1 rep behind me. When I turned for my rope, Rachel was picking hers up, and Cline seemed to be finishing his last rep on the clean and jerks. I knew 100 double unders was not going to be easy, but I wanted to peck away at them and medium-sized sets. That did not happen. Instead, there were a considerable amount of small sets along with a few medium-sized sets that left me tired. Never a good feeling when you haven't completed half of the workout yet. My three classmates had all gotten back to their barbells while I still had 20+ reps to go. Just keep pecking away...
I got through the first 100 and went back to the clean and jerks. If anything, this was the part of the workout where I may be able to make up some time. I tried to stay on the bar as much as I could, but I couldn't duplicate the efficiency I had in round one. There was one rep in particular where I nearly dropped the bar on myself as I struggled to complete the jerk. Another bad sign. Still, I tried to remain positive as I finished off the clean and jerks. I was more than halfway home.
When I got back to my rope for the second set of 100 double unders, everything unraveled. The first set was 3 reps. The second set was 3 reps. Then I hit myself with the rope twice. Finally, I got going again for (you guessed it) 3 reps. Running low on energy and completely frustrated with the rope, I threw it on the floor. I couldn't believe I was going through this crap for the second day in a row. And this was something I thought I was decent at. Surprise, you're not! A bunch of very tiny sets followed, as Rachel and Cline headed back for their last set of clean and jerks. Finally, Keith stopped me and asked if I knew I had a knot in my rope. I did not. If I'm being honest, I really didn't understand what he was saying at first until he pointed directly to the knot in my rope while I was in between reps. Somehow I had managed to mess up my rope even though I've tried to be very conscious of storing it properly. We got the knot out and I tried to do another set. 18 reps. Nice job idiot! Probably could have saved some of that precious energy had you taken a second to look at the rope you were using.
I did manage a few more medium-sized sets, but I could barely jump at all near the end. My legs were toast. They were more of a problem than my breathing or all the sweating I was doing. I finally made my way back to the barbell, did 2 clean and jerks, then tried to squat to get my breath. Only I didn't have enough strength left in my legs to do that. So I kneeled next to the bar. For the third time in less than a week, I was dealing with the helpless feeling of being close to completing a workout, but unsure that I could do it. I got back up eventually and knocked out 3 reps. Soon I was making my way to 10 reps before requiring that awkward kneeling position next to the bar. The last 5 reps were just desperation to finish. When the last rep was complete, I was informed that my time was 20:45. Really nailed that prediction Dave!
While I struggled during that second round of 100 double unders, Keith asked me if this was my 5th day of working out in a row. It was not. It was my sixth. And my body was not being ambiguous at all on whether I should be going for seven in a row. I'm tapped out and in desperate need of a day off. With my trip to Regionals this weekend, I wanted to get in as many workouts as possible before leaving, but there comes a point where you need to be a little sane about this. So I will be staying home tomorrow. I'll probably work out on Thursday night before hitting the road for Hartford.
By the time you reach the end of this post, you will have the impression that I hated this workout. But the truth is that when I saw today's WOD, I was excited. The workout went like this: 15 clean and jerks (135/95), followed by 100 double unders, then 15 more clean and jerks, another 100 double unders, capped off with 15 more clean and jerks. I have gotten to a point with my lifts where clean and jerking 135 pounds is no longer intimidating to me. This workout would also be a great test of how efficient my double under technique was.
Throughout the day, I looked at the finishing times of various people and determined that my goal would be to finish the workout in under 14 minutes. Knowing what I know now, I'm guessing that overexertion of the body leads to poor predictive skills. As I got to the gym, I saw Michal finishing up her workout in the 6:30 class. She finished in 19:17. Uh oh. Matt B. finished in 15:21. Uh oh. Both of them are significantly more proficient than me at double unders. A revision on that finishing time may be in order.
The 7:30 class was made up of me, Matt E., Cline, and Rachel. While I enjoyed getting to work out with so many people yesterday, I was glad to have some additional space tonight. We began what I will call the warmup, but honestly, with temperatures in the mid 80's and tons of humidity, my body is fully warmed up walking from my car to the front door. It's more accurate to call this piece of the WOD "the lather-up", since I am fully soaked by the time it is done. I visited the paper towel rolls several times, trying to get somewhat dry before things kicked off for real. We got our barbells loaded and we were ready to begin.
First round of clean and jerks went smoothly enough. Matt was working next to me and may have been 1 rep behind me. When I turned for my rope, Rachel was picking hers up, and Cline seemed to be finishing his last rep on the clean and jerks. I knew 100 double unders was not going to be easy, but I wanted to peck away at them and medium-sized sets. That did not happen. Instead, there were a considerable amount of small sets along with a few medium-sized sets that left me tired. Never a good feeling when you haven't completed half of the workout yet. My three classmates had all gotten back to their barbells while I still had 20+ reps to go. Just keep pecking away...
I got through the first 100 and went back to the clean and jerks. If anything, this was the part of the workout where I may be able to make up some time. I tried to stay on the bar as much as I could, but I couldn't duplicate the efficiency I had in round one. There was one rep in particular where I nearly dropped the bar on myself as I struggled to complete the jerk. Another bad sign. Still, I tried to remain positive as I finished off the clean and jerks. I was more than halfway home.
When I got back to my rope for the second set of 100 double unders, everything unraveled. The first set was 3 reps. The second set was 3 reps. Then I hit myself with the rope twice. Finally, I got going again for (you guessed it) 3 reps. Running low on energy and completely frustrated with the rope, I threw it on the floor. I couldn't believe I was going through this crap for the second day in a row. And this was something I thought I was decent at. Surprise, you're not! A bunch of very tiny sets followed, as Rachel and Cline headed back for their last set of clean and jerks. Finally, Keith stopped me and asked if I knew I had a knot in my rope. I did not. If I'm being honest, I really didn't understand what he was saying at first until he pointed directly to the knot in my rope while I was in between reps. Somehow I had managed to mess up my rope even though I've tried to be very conscious of storing it properly. We got the knot out and I tried to do another set. 18 reps. Nice job idiot! Probably could have saved some of that precious energy had you taken a second to look at the rope you were using.
I did manage a few more medium-sized sets, but I could barely jump at all near the end. My legs were toast. They were more of a problem than my breathing or all the sweating I was doing. I finally made my way back to the barbell, did 2 clean and jerks, then tried to squat to get my breath. Only I didn't have enough strength left in my legs to do that. So I kneeled next to the bar. For the third time in less than a week, I was dealing with the helpless feeling of being close to completing a workout, but unsure that I could do it. I got back up eventually and knocked out 3 reps. Soon I was making my way to 10 reps before requiring that awkward kneeling position next to the bar. The last 5 reps were just desperation to finish. When the last rep was complete, I was informed that my time was 20:45. Really nailed that prediction Dave!
While I struggled during that second round of 100 double unders, Keith asked me if this was my 5th day of working out in a row. It was not. It was my sixth. And my body was not being ambiguous at all on whether I should be going for seven in a row. I'm tapped out and in desperate need of a day off. With my trip to Regionals this weekend, I wanted to get in as many workouts as possible before leaving, but there comes a point where you need to be a little sane about this. So I will be staying home tomorrow. I'll probably work out on Thursday night before hitting the road for Hartford.
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
Hell-en
Workout date: 5/18/15
It was a packed house at the 6:30 class on Monday night. I mean, take a look at this lineup!
Me
Cline
Borden
Derreck
Christine W
Ashlea
Dan G
Ashley
Michal
Rachel
Alona
Jen S
Jimmy
Matt B
Steph C
Fifteen people strong! Oh wait, there's one name missing from that list. And her name is Helen. There's a solid chance that we might not speak of her again after this blog post.
Helen has been one of our test day WODs this year, meaning every three months we will do this workout and see how much we have improved over the course of the year. I wasn't around when this was done three months ago, so this was my first time attempting it this year. The workout is 3 rounds for time of a 400M run, 21 KB swings (55/35), and 12 pull-ups. I think you know what the problem is already.
Perhaps it was because I felt guilty about using two bands during the baseline workout for the Mobility Challenge. Perhaps I was feeling empowered by all the work I had done on Sunday morning. Whatever the reason was, I got it in my head that I could handle 36 pull-ups without any sort of assistance. Is that pure crazy talk? Of course it is. But it didn't register in my noggin until we actually started doing the workout. What was the thought process? My brain, having clearly been seduced by delusion, thought that the worst possible scenario was that I would do the runs at a decent clip, hang on to the KB for all 21 swings in each round, giving me some extra time for the pull-ups should they go poorly. You read that correctly. Somehow that version of events was the "worst case scenario". I will just go ahead and put the crack pipe down.
What actually happened in the workout? Well, I wasn't too far off on the run and the KB swings for round 1. I finished that first run mid-pack, grabbed my KB and swung it 21 times in a pretty controlled fashion. This would be a bit of a test for me because in the past, I've been able to do 21 swings with the 55 lb (in this case, 53 lb due to lack of supply) KB for one round but not for multiple rounds. The fact that I was not straining to get through the end of the first round of KB swings gave me confidence I could string all of the reps in rounds two and three.
As I made my way to the pull-up bar, I was still mid-pack, as we were instructed to choose a KB weight that we could do 21 reps for, at least in round one. Everyone seemed to have chosen their weight properly. But as I tried to knock out one pull-up after another, I was struggling. I didn't have many no reps, but it was certainly an effort to get each rep. One by one, everyone else in the class headed out the door. I was not even close to mid-pack anymore. I finally completed my 12th rep and went for my run, already cursing this workout. On my way out, I ran into several people headed back towards the gym. Great! A workout with three rounds and I had found a way to get lapped.
Could I have pushed harder on the run? Probably. Was I royally pissed off? Absolutely. For most movements in the gym, I have seen progress, even if it has been slow. That is not the case with pull-ups. I've slowly gotten better at strict pull-ups, but those won't help me in a workout. And kipping is completely foreign to me. I've had many people try to help me with it to no avail. Spending time practicing it has not led to any improvement. It has been nothing but frustrating. The only solution at this point seems to be to lose weight, since swinging 211 pounds from my arms is not leading to positive results. So hopefully I'll be able to shed some pounds this summer. Oh, and maybe grow adult hands, instead of my current pair that hurt every time I hang on a bar for 10 seconds. That would help too.
Anyways, after falling well behind, I did my run, came back, swung the KB 21 times in a row again, and headed to the pull-up bar. I had caught up a little bit, but I also knew I was about to lose a ton of time once again. Sure enough, some ugly pull-ups ensued. And then the string of no reps began. The pull-ups were gone. There was no bringing them back at this point. Defeated, I headed over to the rings to do ring rows to complete my round. As I did, several people had already come back and were finishing up their third round. Some may have even completed the workout. Who knows? I was miserable and wanted this crap over with.
I headed back out, did my run, swung the KB 21 more times in a row (at least I handled that part ok), and did 12 ring rows. Since the ring rows aren't all that time consuming, my last round was by far the fastest and I finished with a time of 15:06. Pretty damn slow and I didn't even get an RX. Hooray failure! The only benefit may have been the loss of a significant amount of water weight due to the humidity in the gym.
After some mobility work and a grueling tabata for the core, I stuck around for strength. Except I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had done a ton of squats on Sunday, so they were out. Maybe deadlift or bench? I wasn't feeling that at the moment. The one thing bouncing around in my brain was double unders. I have made a lot of progress with double unders this year, but I have been measuring that progress by how many of them I could string together. In that pursuit, I haven't focused on how efficient my movement has been and any good form I might have had has slowly eroded away. I can still knock out the occassional set of 30, but I'm exhausted from it. Having watched the Crossfit Regionals online this weekend and how all of the athletes simply glided along while doing double unders, I set my mind to getting the rhythm for efficient double unders. If practicing that meant I could only get 4-5 in a row for a while, so be it.
I found some space by the rings and began practicing. No more jumping like there was a 30 inch box in front of me that I needed to land on. I was only going to take small jumps each time. I'd have to make the rest of the movement coordinate with that. I also have a habit of doing two single unders before I go into double unders, yet I never see anyone else do that. So I was going to teach myself to go into double unders right after that first single under. Changing things up yielded a lot of results, although a lot more practice will be necessary as well.
First, forcing myself to go into double unders after that first single under gave me a sense of urgency and made me instinctively twirl the rope faster. My double unders have tended to be slower than the average person in the class, but I think that is because there was no sense of urgency. I had this big jump and there was time to float the rope around twice. With a little jump, I needed more speed. As I practiced, I was only getting about 5-9 reps, but they were faster sets. Eventually, I got a couple larger sets in, which is where Rachel noticed that I was not keeping my hands tight to my body as I got tired. Instead I was "spreading my wings", so to speak. As my hands got wider and wider, I was losing control of my ability to twirl the rope faster, inevitably bringing on the end of my set. For the rest of my practice, I concentrated on keeping my hands in tight.
After Michal came down to try out my rope, I noticed that she stays on her toes the entire time she does double unders. I stay on the front half of my foot, but this was much more exaggerated than that. It basically took away the ability to do large jumps, but it made me wonder how much more fatigued I would be doing it this way. Another thing to incorporate into my practice. I kept trying to do all of these things as I mixed in decent sets of 20-30 reps with the more typical sets of 8-10 reps. I truly believe that if I can get these things to click, then setting new PRs on strung double unders will take care of themselves. But in the short term, if it gets me through a workout without becoming exhausted halfway through, then that will be a victory.
Once I felt wiped out from doing double unders, I did do some bench press. I put 135 pounds on the bar and planned on doing rounds of 10 reps every 2 minutes. I wanted to get at least 3 rounds, although 4 would be great. With the strict time frame I gave myself, I wasn't sure how feasible that was. Round one went smoothly, but round two felt a little shakier. It got spicy in round three as the last couple reps took some extra oomph to press out. I thought about stopping then and there, but talked myself into giving round four a shot. After 5 reps, I needed to put the bar back on the rack. 35 reps over the course of about 7 minutes seemed alright with me.
Despite doing KB swings in the workout, I wanted to do some 80 lb KB swings for practice. Using the 70 lb KB has helped me a lot with my 55 lb KB swings in workouts, so this seemed like the natural progression. However, after finishing up the bench press, my chest and shoulders were feeling sore and I didn't think it was worth it to do more. 80 lb KB swings will have to wait for another night.
In the next blog post: Hey big talker, how bout you do 200 double unders to see how your theories work out? I mean, not just 200 straight, more like 200 double unders as you're making your way through 45 clean and jerks. See ya at 7:30.
It was a packed house at the 6:30 class on Monday night. I mean, take a look at this lineup!
Me
Cline
Borden
Derreck
Christine W
Ashlea
Dan G
Ashley
Michal
Rachel
Alona
Jen S
Jimmy
Matt B
Steph C
Fifteen people strong! Oh wait, there's one name missing from that list. And her name is Helen. There's a solid chance that we might not speak of her again after this blog post.
Helen has been one of our test day WODs this year, meaning every three months we will do this workout and see how much we have improved over the course of the year. I wasn't around when this was done three months ago, so this was my first time attempting it this year. The workout is 3 rounds for time of a 400M run, 21 KB swings (55/35), and 12 pull-ups. I think you know what the problem is already.
Perhaps it was because I felt guilty about using two bands during the baseline workout for the Mobility Challenge. Perhaps I was feeling empowered by all the work I had done on Sunday morning. Whatever the reason was, I got it in my head that I could handle 36 pull-ups without any sort of assistance. Is that pure crazy talk? Of course it is. But it didn't register in my noggin until we actually started doing the workout. What was the thought process? My brain, having clearly been seduced by delusion, thought that the worst possible scenario was that I would do the runs at a decent clip, hang on to the KB for all 21 swings in each round, giving me some extra time for the pull-ups should they go poorly. You read that correctly. Somehow that version of events was the "worst case scenario". I will just go ahead and put the crack pipe down.
What actually happened in the workout? Well, I wasn't too far off on the run and the KB swings for round 1. I finished that first run mid-pack, grabbed my KB and swung it 21 times in a pretty controlled fashion. This would be a bit of a test for me because in the past, I've been able to do 21 swings with the 55 lb (in this case, 53 lb due to lack of supply) KB for one round but not for multiple rounds. The fact that I was not straining to get through the end of the first round of KB swings gave me confidence I could string all of the reps in rounds two and three.
As I made my way to the pull-up bar, I was still mid-pack, as we were instructed to choose a KB weight that we could do 21 reps for, at least in round one. Everyone seemed to have chosen their weight properly. But as I tried to knock out one pull-up after another, I was struggling. I didn't have many no reps, but it was certainly an effort to get each rep. One by one, everyone else in the class headed out the door. I was not even close to mid-pack anymore. I finally completed my 12th rep and went for my run, already cursing this workout. On my way out, I ran into several people headed back towards the gym. Great! A workout with three rounds and I had found a way to get lapped.
Could I have pushed harder on the run? Probably. Was I royally pissed off? Absolutely. For most movements in the gym, I have seen progress, even if it has been slow. That is not the case with pull-ups. I've slowly gotten better at strict pull-ups, but those won't help me in a workout. And kipping is completely foreign to me. I've had many people try to help me with it to no avail. Spending time practicing it has not led to any improvement. It has been nothing but frustrating. The only solution at this point seems to be to lose weight, since swinging 211 pounds from my arms is not leading to positive results. So hopefully I'll be able to shed some pounds this summer. Oh, and maybe grow adult hands, instead of my current pair that hurt every time I hang on a bar for 10 seconds. That would help too.
Anyways, after falling well behind, I did my run, came back, swung the KB 21 times in a row again, and headed to the pull-up bar. I had caught up a little bit, but I also knew I was about to lose a ton of time once again. Sure enough, some ugly pull-ups ensued. And then the string of no reps began. The pull-ups were gone. There was no bringing them back at this point. Defeated, I headed over to the rings to do ring rows to complete my round. As I did, several people had already come back and were finishing up their third round. Some may have even completed the workout. Who knows? I was miserable and wanted this crap over with.
I headed back out, did my run, swung the KB 21 more times in a row (at least I handled that part ok), and did 12 ring rows. Since the ring rows aren't all that time consuming, my last round was by far the fastest and I finished with a time of 15:06. Pretty damn slow and I didn't even get an RX. Hooray failure! The only benefit may have been the loss of a significant amount of water weight due to the humidity in the gym.
After some mobility work and a grueling tabata for the core, I stuck around for strength. Except I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had done a ton of squats on Sunday, so they were out. Maybe deadlift or bench? I wasn't feeling that at the moment. The one thing bouncing around in my brain was double unders. I have made a lot of progress with double unders this year, but I have been measuring that progress by how many of them I could string together. In that pursuit, I haven't focused on how efficient my movement has been and any good form I might have had has slowly eroded away. I can still knock out the occassional set of 30, but I'm exhausted from it. Having watched the Crossfit Regionals online this weekend and how all of the athletes simply glided along while doing double unders, I set my mind to getting the rhythm for efficient double unders. If practicing that meant I could only get 4-5 in a row for a while, so be it.
I found some space by the rings and began practicing. No more jumping like there was a 30 inch box in front of me that I needed to land on. I was only going to take small jumps each time. I'd have to make the rest of the movement coordinate with that. I also have a habit of doing two single unders before I go into double unders, yet I never see anyone else do that. So I was going to teach myself to go into double unders right after that first single under. Changing things up yielded a lot of results, although a lot more practice will be necessary as well.
First, forcing myself to go into double unders after that first single under gave me a sense of urgency and made me instinctively twirl the rope faster. My double unders have tended to be slower than the average person in the class, but I think that is because there was no sense of urgency. I had this big jump and there was time to float the rope around twice. With a little jump, I needed more speed. As I practiced, I was only getting about 5-9 reps, but they were faster sets. Eventually, I got a couple larger sets in, which is where Rachel noticed that I was not keeping my hands tight to my body as I got tired. Instead I was "spreading my wings", so to speak. As my hands got wider and wider, I was losing control of my ability to twirl the rope faster, inevitably bringing on the end of my set. For the rest of my practice, I concentrated on keeping my hands in tight.
After Michal came down to try out my rope, I noticed that she stays on her toes the entire time she does double unders. I stay on the front half of my foot, but this was much more exaggerated than that. It basically took away the ability to do large jumps, but it made me wonder how much more fatigued I would be doing it this way. Another thing to incorporate into my practice. I kept trying to do all of these things as I mixed in decent sets of 20-30 reps with the more typical sets of 8-10 reps. I truly believe that if I can get these things to click, then setting new PRs on strung double unders will take care of themselves. But in the short term, if it gets me through a workout without becoming exhausted halfway through, then that will be a victory.
Once I felt wiped out from doing double unders, I did do some bench press. I put 135 pounds on the bar and planned on doing rounds of 10 reps every 2 minutes. I wanted to get at least 3 rounds, although 4 would be great. With the strict time frame I gave myself, I wasn't sure how feasible that was. Round one went smoothly, but round two felt a little shakier. It got spicy in round three as the last couple reps took some extra oomph to press out. I thought about stopping then and there, but talked myself into giving round four a shot. After 5 reps, I needed to put the bar back on the rack. 35 reps over the course of about 7 minutes seemed alright with me.
Despite doing KB swings in the workout, I wanted to do some 80 lb KB swings for practice. Using the 70 lb KB has helped me a lot with my 55 lb KB swings in workouts, so this seemed like the natural progression. However, after finishing up the bench press, my chest and shoulders were feeling sore and I didn't think it was worth it to do more. 80 lb KB swings will have to wait for another night.
In the next blog post: Hey big talker, how bout you do 200 double unders to see how your theories work out? I mean, not just 200 straight, more like 200 double unders as you're making your way through 45 clean and jerks. See ya at 7:30.
Monday, May 18, 2015
The Man With No Fingerprints
Workout date: 5/17/15
With three consecutive trips to the gym on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, it made sense to take a rest day on Sunday. But rarely do I do things that make sense. And Sunday's WOD included lots of overhead squats! So you know I was making my way over to the 10am class. The WOD was half-strength, half-skill. Although the skill was all-strength, making the WOD 150% strength. I think that's right.
The first part of the workout was a quest to find our 10 rep max for overhead squats. There has been a lot of overhead squatting recently and no one has been happier about it than me. After testing out my 1RM for overheads for the first time a few weeks ago, I would now get to try something a little bolder. Except I had no clue what my 10RM should be. My guess was in the 145-155 range. That would turn out to be a decent guess, as the online calculator I looked up on my phone gave me an answer of 153 based on my 1RM of 205. So my 10RM should be approximately 75% of my 1RM. Good to know. Except Keith would tell us a few minutes later that, for overhead squats, the number should probably be closer to 65%. That would drop me down to 135. I was determined to beat that.
The class was made up of Jill A., Jill C., Jill R., and Jill S. (Jill R. was Regi and Jill S. was Scott, but why break a pattern?) Like yesterday, we were in the annex, but the annex at 10:15 in the morning felt much different than it did at 8:30 the day before. It was sweltering in there. Scott and I had an awesome sweat battle going on throughout the class. The three girls grabbed racks and worked out near the open door in the back of the annex, while Scott and I worked from the racks near the front of the annex. Keith advised up not to do too many sets of 10. In fact, he told us that it wasn't necessary to warm-up with sets of 10. Sets of 4-5 reps at lower weights would be fine before testing our 10 rep max. With that in mind, I did a set of 5 reps at 95 and 115 before doing my first set of 10 reps at 135.
Taking the bar from the rack is such a huge benefit as opposed to having to snatch the bar up over my head. Yesterday's post covered all of the issues I have with my snatch. When using the rack, all I'm doing is jerking the weight and 135 is pretty easy to jerk. From there it is mainly stability. Given all that, I was confident that I could handle 65% of my 1RM for 10 reps. That first rep can be a little tricky as I'm feeling out how stable I am, but as long as I'm not under tremendous duress, I can usually start knocking out rep after rep rather fluidly. That was the case at 135 as I got through 7 or 8 reps quickly before stopping, re-establishing my balance, and completing the remainder of my reps. The set went so smoothly that I bumped the weight up to 155 for my next set, with the intention of trying 165 if that went well.
As I was taking a couple of minutes to recover from that set, I watched Scott do his next set. Scott is a big guy who is new to our gym, but will likely be throwing around huge amounts of weight in the very near future. He has some mobility issues as far as squatting goes, but he admitted during our warmup that he is getting much more depth now than he was when he first joined the gym. He put the bar over his head and began to squat, but he was struggling. I immediately noticed that he had the same problem that I did when I first began squatting: staying in the heels. He was way up on his toes for each rep, causing him to be off-balance, which is the last thing you want while attempting overhead squats. After dropping the bar, I asked him if he was wearing lifting shoes. He told me he wasn't, and after inquiring about his shoe size, I offered him my shoes for his next set. I was really glad that I did. He didn't get through the entire set of 10, but he wasn't even close to coming up on his toes during his reps. It was a much cleaner looking set. Scott asked me where he could get shoes like mine as he handed them back to me. Something tells me that with the right footwear, Scott is about to improve leaps and bounds with his squats.
The one downside in lending my lifting shoes to Scott was that I only allowed myself enough time to do one more set. I re-focused, grabbed the bar from the rack, and jerked it over my head. I did a smooth set of five, then paused. Another set of three before my next pause. I did rep #9, took one last pause, then got rep #10. The Googlewebs did tell me I should be able to handle about 155 and well...
The last 10 minutes of class were devoted to practicing legless rope climbs. These had come up in class before, but I haven't tried them because...I'm a big wuss. It took quite a while for me to wrap my head around climbing the rope using the J-hook because it meant having less security on the rope. Instead of the rope wrapped around your leg, you were only clenching it with your feet. Now I wouldn't even have that. I would only have my non-existent upper body strength. I mean, what could go wrong? It's not like my weak grip could give out while I was 10 feet off the ground, right?
As Keith was explaining the variations of rope climbs to us, I cut straight to the chase: what happens when we're dangling high off the ground holding on only with our hands and our grip is weakening? Answer: grasp the rope with your lower body. Perhaps I should have included the fact that my body awareness skills are not at their peak when I'm in a full panic. Another lesson for another day, I suppose. Jill A. was joining me in the adventure up the rope sans legs. On our first attempts, we both got about halfway up the rope. Jill took a couple more attempts and I was certain she was getting to the top because a) she has more upper body strength than me and b) she was under control so much that she could stop and restart again during her climb. My strategy? Get up that rope as fast as possible before I ran out of strength and plummeted to my demise. On my second attempt, I made much more progress, to the point that if I had the rope secured with my feet, I might have been able to reach up and touch the 15 ft mark. Holding on with one hand and attempting that was not an option. Suddenly my grip was failing and I started sliding down the rope with my fingertips taking the worst of it. Not good.
Jill reached that same point a couple of times, but was unable to finish the journey to the top. I decided that I had enough grip for one more attempt. I took a big jump and furiously pulled one hand after another. Near the top, I slowed, but the mark was so close! I made one big pull and got my hand just below the mark. The thought of dropping the barbell with one last step to lunge the other day entered my mind and I had no intention of doing that again. I pulled one more time and managed to get my other hand to the 15 ft mark. And immediately I started coming down the rope, with the skin on my fingers slowing my descent more than my legs were. I had made my first legless rope climb! And all it cost was a chunk of skin on the middle finger of my left hand. Small price to pay. (Ow!)
By that time the 10am class was over and 11am strength had begun. Michal and Rachel had shown up and were there for my successful legless rope climb. In fact, Michal had given me a pep talk ("just fucking do it!") in advance of my climb. This was Rachel's first time back at the gym in over a week, so naturally she was maxing out everything she did. After chatting with them for a while, I put my lifting shoes back on so I could try 10 overhead squats at 165. I had cooled down a bit from before, so I wanted to do some warmup with 135 to make sure I could handle this. And those few reps were not smooth at all. Perhaps I should reconsider. Then I thought about something that had pissed me off earlier in the week. That was enough motivation to go and load the bar to 165. I was attempting this even if I failed on rep #1.
Maybe it was the added attitude, but as I got the bar over my head and started doing reps, it didn't feel as bad as the reps I did with 135. Although I immediately noticed a problem. About 9 months ago, my wrists started bothering me as I did overhead squats. I had wrist wraps, but I never used them. But when you experience enough wrist pain, you become a convert. I wear the wraps a lot these days, but especially when I do overheads. I had taken them off for the legless rope climbs and forgotten to put them back on. And now I was experiencing what a difference they make. As I got to reps 7 and 8, my wrists were not pleased with me. But at that point, it was too late to stop. Like at 155, rep #9 was slow and followed by a pause, but it was also followed by a successful 10th rep. It might not have made the KOP blog (Keith had already submitted results), but I could say my 10RM for overheads was 165.
With that out of the way, I worked a little bit on back squats with a lower setup. They still didn't feel quite right, but I did a set of 5 at 185 and set of 5 at 215. Then I remembered that I needed to work on getting out of the hole on my squat cleans. Tom C. had recommended doing front squats with a pause, so I did 3 sets of 5 at 165 with a 3 second hold at the bottom. While getting ready for my last set, I mentioned to Rachel I would be on the rower next and she wanted to try and get on the white board for fastest 500M row. She needed to beat 1:39 to get there. She started out very strong, but was slowing a bit at the halfway point. Her split of 49 seconds was still on pace to get on the board though. The next 100-150 meters were not at the same pace, however. She came on strong again at the end, but hit 1:39 with about 20-25 meters to go. Despite almost stopping right then and there, she finished with a time of 1:42.6. I suspect it won't be long until she is on the board once again.
Inspired by that try and mildly curious about how fast I could go, I decided to give the 500M time trial a whirl as well. To get on the white board for the men, I needed a time of 1:31. My best time for 500M was 1:40.7, so I had no delusions about cracking 1:31 on this row, but I did want to see how close I could get. The answer was not very close. When Rachel started, her 500M split was below 1:39 almost instantly. At no point during my row was I under a 1:31 split. I did keep it together in the 1:32-1:33 range for quite a while though. I also struggled just beyond the 250M mark before trying to bring it home with a quality finish. My time:
A PR of 4.3 seconds, but miles away from the 1:31 I need to get on the board.
Sunday's rest day turned into a ton of work, but learning my 10RM for overheads, getting my first legless rope climb, and a PR on my 500M row made it worthwhile.
With three consecutive trips to the gym on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, it made sense to take a rest day on Sunday. But rarely do I do things that make sense. And Sunday's WOD included lots of overhead squats! So you know I was making my way over to the 10am class. The WOD was half-strength, half-skill. Although the skill was all-strength, making the WOD 150% strength. I think that's right.
The first part of the workout was a quest to find our 10 rep max for overhead squats. There has been a lot of overhead squatting recently and no one has been happier about it than me. After testing out my 1RM for overheads for the first time a few weeks ago, I would now get to try something a little bolder. Except I had no clue what my 10RM should be. My guess was in the 145-155 range. That would turn out to be a decent guess, as the online calculator I looked up on my phone gave me an answer of 153 based on my 1RM of 205. So my 10RM should be approximately 75% of my 1RM. Good to know. Except Keith would tell us a few minutes later that, for overhead squats, the number should probably be closer to 65%. That would drop me down to 135. I was determined to beat that.
The class was made up of Jill A., Jill C., Jill R., and Jill S. (Jill R. was Regi and Jill S. was Scott, but why break a pattern?) Like yesterday, we were in the annex, but the annex at 10:15 in the morning felt much different than it did at 8:30 the day before. It was sweltering in there. Scott and I had an awesome sweat battle going on throughout the class. The three girls grabbed racks and worked out near the open door in the back of the annex, while Scott and I worked from the racks near the front of the annex. Keith advised up not to do too many sets of 10. In fact, he told us that it wasn't necessary to warm-up with sets of 10. Sets of 4-5 reps at lower weights would be fine before testing our 10 rep max. With that in mind, I did a set of 5 reps at 95 and 115 before doing my first set of 10 reps at 135.
Taking the bar from the rack is such a huge benefit as opposed to having to snatch the bar up over my head. Yesterday's post covered all of the issues I have with my snatch. When using the rack, all I'm doing is jerking the weight and 135 is pretty easy to jerk. From there it is mainly stability. Given all that, I was confident that I could handle 65% of my 1RM for 10 reps. That first rep can be a little tricky as I'm feeling out how stable I am, but as long as I'm not under tremendous duress, I can usually start knocking out rep after rep rather fluidly. That was the case at 135 as I got through 7 or 8 reps quickly before stopping, re-establishing my balance, and completing the remainder of my reps. The set went so smoothly that I bumped the weight up to 155 for my next set, with the intention of trying 165 if that went well.
As I was taking a couple of minutes to recover from that set, I watched Scott do his next set. Scott is a big guy who is new to our gym, but will likely be throwing around huge amounts of weight in the very near future. He has some mobility issues as far as squatting goes, but he admitted during our warmup that he is getting much more depth now than he was when he first joined the gym. He put the bar over his head and began to squat, but he was struggling. I immediately noticed that he had the same problem that I did when I first began squatting: staying in the heels. He was way up on his toes for each rep, causing him to be off-balance, which is the last thing you want while attempting overhead squats. After dropping the bar, I asked him if he was wearing lifting shoes. He told me he wasn't, and after inquiring about his shoe size, I offered him my shoes for his next set. I was really glad that I did. He didn't get through the entire set of 10, but he wasn't even close to coming up on his toes during his reps. It was a much cleaner looking set. Scott asked me where he could get shoes like mine as he handed them back to me. Something tells me that with the right footwear, Scott is about to improve leaps and bounds with his squats.
The one downside in lending my lifting shoes to Scott was that I only allowed myself enough time to do one more set. I re-focused, grabbed the bar from the rack, and jerked it over my head. I did a smooth set of five, then paused. Another set of three before my next pause. I did rep #9, took one last pause, then got rep #10. The Googlewebs did tell me I should be able to handle about 155 and well...
Still, I was a little bummed that I didn't get a chance to try 165. If only there was an hour and a half strength class right after this one. <Sigh>The last 10 minutes of class were devoted to practicing legless rope climbs. These had come up in class before, but I haven't tried them because...I'm a big wuss. It took quite a while for me to wrap my head around climbing the rope using the J-hook because it meant having less security on the rope. Instead of the rope wrapped around your leg, you were only clenching it with your feet. Now I wouldn't even have that. I would only have my non-existent upper body strength. I mean, what could go wrong? It's not like my weak grip could give out while I was 10 feet off the ground, right?
As Keith was explaining the variations of rope climbs to us, I cut straight to the chase: what happens when we're dangling high off the ground holding on only with our hands and our grip is weakening? Answer: grasp the rope with your lower body. Perhaps I should have included the fact that my body awareness skills are not at their peak when I'm in a full panic. Another lesson for another day, I suppose. Jill A. was joining me in the adventure up the rope sans legs. On our first attempts, we both got about halfway up the rope. Jill took a couple more attempts and I was certain she was getting to the top because a) she has more upper body strength than me and b) she was under control so much that she could stop and restart again during her climb. My strategy? Get up that rope as fast as possible before I ran out of strength and plummeted to my demise. On my second attempt, I made much more progress, to the point that if I had the rope secured with my feet, I might have been able to reach up and touch the 15 ft mark. Holding on with one hand and attempting that was not an option. Suddenly my grip was failing and I started sliding down the rope with my fingertips taking the worst of it. Not good.
Jill reached that same point a couple of times, but was unable to finish the journey to the top. I decided that I had enough grip for one more attempt. I took a big jump and furiously pulled one hand after another. Near the top, I slowed, but the mark was so close! I made one big pull and got my hand just below the mark. The thought of dropping the barbell with one last step to lunge the other day entered my mind and I had no intention of doing that again. I pulled one more time and managed to get my other hand to the 15 ft mark. And immediately I started coming down the rope, with the skin on my fingers slowing my descent more than my legs were. I had made my first legless rope climb! And all it cost was a chunk of skin on the middle finger of my left hand. Small price to pay. (Ow!)
By that time the 10am class was over and 11am strength had begun. Michal and Rachel had shown up and were there for my successful legless rope climb. In fact, Michal had given me a pep talk ("just fucking do it!") in advance of my climb. This was Rachel's first time back at the gym in over a week, so naturally she was maxing out everything she did. After chatting with them for a while, I put my lifting shoes back on so I could try 10 overhead squats at 165. I had cooled down a bit from before, so I wanted to do some warmup with 135 to make sure I could handle this. And those few reps were not smooth at all. Perhaps I should reconsider. Then I thought about something that had pissed me off earlier in the week. That was enough motivation to go and load the bar to 165. I was attempting this even if I failed on rep #1.
Maybe it was the added attitude, but as I got the bar over my head and started doing reps, it didn't feel as bad as the reps I did with 135. Although I immediately noticed a problem. About 9 months ago, my wrists started bothering me as I did overhead squats. I had wrist wraps, but I never used them. But when you experience enough wrist pain, you become a convert. I wear the wraps a lot these days, but especially when I do overheads. I had taken them off for the legless rope climbs and forgotten to put them back on. And now I was experiencing what a difference they make. As I got to reps 7 and 8, my wrists were not pleased with me. But at that point, it was too late to stop. Like at 155, rep #9 was slow and followed by a pause, but it was also followed by a successful 10th rep. It might not have made the KOP blog (Keith had already submitted results), but I could say my 10RM for overheads was 165.
With that out of the way, I worked a little bit on back squats with a lower setup. They still didn't feel quite right, but I did a set of 5 at 185 and set of 5 at 215. Then I remembered that I needed to work on getting out of the hole on my squat cleans. Tom C. had recommended doing front squats with a pause, so I did 3 sets of 5 at 165 with a 3 second hold at the bottom. While getting ready for my last set, I mentioned to Rachel I would be on the rower next and she wanted to try and get on the white board for fastest 500M row. She needed to beat 1:39 to get there. She started out very strong, but was slowing a bit at the halfway point. Her split of 49 seconds was still on pace to get on the board though. The next 100-150 meters were not at the same pace, however. She came on strong again at the end, but hit 1:39 with about 20-25 meters to go. Despite almost stopping right then and there, she finished with a time of 1:42.6. I suspect it won't be long until she is on the board once again.
Inspired by that try and mildly curious about how fast I could go, I decided to give the 500M time trial a whirl as well. To get on the white board for the men, I needed a time of 1:31. My best time for 500M was 1:40.7, so I had no delusions about cracking 1:31 on this row, but I did want to see how close I could get. The answer was not very close. When Rachel started, her 500M split was below 1:39 almost instantly. At no point during my row was I under a 1:31 split. I did keep it together in the 1:32-1:33 range for quite a while though. I also struggled just beyond the 250M mark before trying to bring it home with a quality finish. My time:
It's the number on the bottom
Sunday's rest day turned into a ton of work, but learning my 10RM for overheads, getting my first legless rope climb, and a PR on my 500M row made it worthwhile.
Impressively Slow
Workout date: 5/16/15
You know the Saturday morning drill by now: alarm goes off, sun isn't up, me hating life, extra-long shower to wake me out of my zombie-like state, drive to the gym arriving about 10 minutes late. You should assume that takes place every Saturday that I work out. It will not be happening next Saturday though as I got tickets for the Crossfit East Regional in Hartford, CT. Very excited to go see it live. If I didn't go, I'd just be watching it on my laptop anyway, so why not take a road trip and see it in person? Life's too short to constantly pass up such opportunities.
Perhaps it was due to a lack of Viking rage, but our Competitor's Class on Saturday was low-key in comparison to most weeks. Well, Giulz screaming "FIX IT!" at Michal was not low-key, but the rest of the class was. Instead of tackling some monstrous 45-minute WOD, the class was much more focused on Olympic lifting, with a team cash-out at the end. In keeping with the theme of mobility this month at the gym, we started off with 10 minutes of mobility work. Then it was time for 60 minutes of Olympic lifting. 60 minutes?!?! This was definitely going to cut into our dicking around time.
I initially thought that we would work on both the snatch and the clean and jerk given that much time, but everyone stuck to one lift. Michal worked on her clean and jerk, while Keith, Marisa, Giulz, and I tried to become better snatchers. As I slowly progressed higher in weight, I focused on two things: 1) being able to squat snatch the bar and not try to rush out of the hole and 2) getting a big pull as I went under the bar. What I didn't realize was an old criticism of my technique would come back to haunt me as I lifted.
When I was doing the Olympic lifting program, I heard over and over again how slow I was during my lifts. And it was true. The coaches even tried to take a video of me once as I attempted a snatch, only the phone's battery ran out before I finished the lift. It's that bad. As the program went on, I worked on gaining more speed and eventually I did. However, I was regularly practicing my speed back then. Nowadays? Not so much. So it's not a surprise that my pokeyness has returned.
I started the hour-long lifting session with 95 pounds on the bar, but I was at 135 when the annex began to be filled with snarky remarks about how slow I was. At 145, I had a successful lift, but was greeted with "wow, that was really slow". Apparently I was not very good at hiding my displeasure with these remarks, as Giulz and Michal both quickly followed with "...but, umm, it's impressive that you can still complete the lift going that slow". Ahh yes, I do love me some backhanded compliments!
I did a couple more lifts at 145, now completely focused on my speed. I went up to 155 and had a successful lift, although I could tell I must have been slow on that lift as well. Finally, I attempted 165, but failed as the combination of moving like a turtle and not pulling resulted in the bar levitating only to about my chin level. Add "working on speed with my Olympic lifts" to the long laundry list of things I need to improve on.
Did I mention there was a Coach Plentus sighting? With the Level 1 training going on in the main gym, Plentus was there to take part, but stopped over to the annex to say hi to everyone. Always good to see him!
The cash-out was designed for 4 people, but we made it work for 5. Instead of two teams of one male and one female, Michal and Giulz combined to form one super-female alongside their ordinary counterpart, yours truly. Keith and Marisa joined forces on the other team. The cash-out was 8 minutes long and consisted of 2 minutes of work at 4 different stations. For the first two minutes, my team would be performing KB swings, while the other team did pistols. During the next two minutes, my team would do pistols, while Keith and Marisa did double unders. For minutes five and six, Keith and Marisa would take on more pistols, while my group did burpees. Finally, it would be back to pistols for me, Michal, and Giulz, while Keith and Marisa did bar muscle-ups. For each team, only one gender could be working at a time.
On my team, we decided to do 5 reps of the non-pistols exercises before switching. It made more sense to do an even number of pistols before switching, so we did sets of 10 there. Even though I was concerned about my ability to keep up throughout the entire 8 minutes, I felt remarkably fresh the whole time. I have used the 70 pound KB more and more, so getting through 5 reps, having a brief break, then doing 5 more wasn't unbearable. Pistols are one of those weird exercises that everyone hates except me, so I relished the opportunity to knock out sets of 10 for two minutes. Burpees have been a struggle for me lately, but I could manage throwing my body at the ground and snapping back up 5 straight times given a little rest in between each set. More pistols? Sounds good to me. Even without lifting shoes on, I moved through my sets pretty quickly, only losing my balance every now and then.
I have no idea what our scores were at the end, but frankly, I didn't care. To be able to move through that workout without slowing down for eight minutes was a victory to me.
You know the Saturday morning drill by now: alarm goes off, sun isn't up, me hating life, extra-long shower to wake me out of my zombie-like state, drive to the gym arriving about 10 minutes late. You should assume that takes place every Saturday that I work out. It will not be happening next Saturday though as I got tickets for the Crossfit East Regional in Hartford, CT. Very excited to go see it live. If I didn't go, I'd just be watching it on my laptop anyway, so why not take a road trip and see it in person? Life's too short to constantly pass up such opportunities.
Perhaps it was due to a lack of Viking rage, but our Competitor's Class on Saturday was low-key in comparison to most weeks. Well, Giulz screaming "FIX IT!" at Michal was not low-key, but the rest of the class was. Instead of tackling some monstrous 45-minute WOD, the class was much more focused on Olympic lifting, with a team cash-out at the end. In keeping with the theme of mobility this month at the gym, we started off with 10 minutes of mobility work. Then it was time for 60 minutes of Olympic lifting. 60 minutes?!?! This was definitely going to cut into our dicking around time.
I initially thought that we would work on both the snatch and the clean and jerk given that much time, but everyone stuck to one lift. Michal worked on her clean and jerk, while Keith, Marisa, Giulz, and I tried to become better snatchers. As I slowly progressed higher in weight, I focused on two things: 1) being able to squat snatch the bar and not try to rush out of the hole and 2) getting a big pull as I went under the bar. What I didn't realize was an old criticism of my technique would come back to haunt me as I lifted.
When I was doing the Olympic lifting program, I heard over and over again how slow I was during my lifts. And it was true. The coaches even tried to take a video of me once as I attempted a snatch, only the phone's battery ran out before I finished the lift. It's that bad. As the program went on, I worked on gaining more speed and eventually I did. However, I was regularly practicing my speed back then. Nowadays? Not so much. So it's not a surprise that my pokeyness has returned.
I started the hour-long lifting session with 95 pounds on the bar, but I was at 135 when the annex began to be filled with snarky remarks about how slow I was. At 145, I had a successful lift, but was greeted with "wow, that was really slow". Apparently I was not very good at hiding my displeasure with these remarks, as Giulz and Michal both quickly followed with "...but, umm, it's impressive that you can still complete the lift going that slow". Ahh yes, I do love me some backhanded compliments!
I did a couple more lifts at 145, now completely focused on my speed. I went up to 155 and had a successful lift, although I could tell I must have been slow on that lift as well. Finally, I attempted 165, but failed as the combination of moving like a turtle and not pulling resulted in the bar levitating only to about my chin level. Add "working on speed with my Olympic lifts" to the long laundry list of things I need to improve on.
Did I mention there was a Coach Plentus sighting? With the Level 1 training going on in the main gym, Plentus was there to take part, but stopped over to the annex to say hi to everyone. Always good to see him!
The cash-out was designed for 4 people, but we made it work for 5. Instead of two teams of one male and one female, Michal and Giulz combined to form one super-female alongside their ordinary counterpart, yours truly. Keith and Marisa joined forces on the other team. The cash-out was 8 minutes long and consisted of 2 minutes of work at 4 different stations. For the first two minutes, my team would be performing KB swings, while the other team did pistols. During the next two minutes, my team would do pistols, while Keith and Marisa did double unders. For minutes five and six, Keith and Marisa would take on more pistols, while my group did burpees. Finally, it would be back to pistols for me, Michal, and Giulz, while Keith and Marisa did bar muscle-ups. For each team, only one gender could be working at a time.
On my team, we decided to do 5 reps of the non-pistols exercises before switching. It made more sense to do an even number of pistols before switching, so we did sets of 10 there. Even though I was concerned about my ability to keep up throughout the entire 8 minutes, I felt remarkably fresh the whole time. I have used the 70 pound KB more and more, so getting through 5 reps, having a brief break, then doing 5 more wasn't unbearable. Pistols are one of those weird exercises that everyone hates except me, so I relished the opportunity to knock out sets of 10 for two minutes. Burpees have been a struggle for me lately, but I could manage throwing my body at the ground and snapping back up 5 straight times given a little rest in between each set. More pistols? Sounds good to me. Even without lifting shoes on, I moved through my sets pretty quickly, only losing my balance every now and then.
I have no idea what our scores were at the end, but frankly, I didn't care. To be able to move through that workout without slowing down for eight minutes was a victory to me.
Assless Chap
Workout date: 5/15/15
Most of the plans/strategies that I come up with for workouts end up failing at the gym. That never stops me from coming up with new ones though. I think the reason behind that is because I love trying to figure things out. I can be wrong over and over again. I can fail more times than I'll ever remember. But there's an excitement that comes with trying something new. The hope that maybe this time, you figured out the solution, even for something minor.
Friday's workout was 4 rounds for time of rowing 30 calories followed by a 50 ft front rack walking lunge (155/105). The workout had a 20 minute time cap. I've always thought I was decent at rowing, but more and more recently I've seen people left and right getting off the rower before me. I've felt the need to pace on certain workouts while others haven't needed to. And as I racked my brain trying to figure out how I could improve, it occurred to me that I haven't had my damper very high when I've rowed. Let's change that up! It seemed to work when I rowed 2,000 meters recently and saw an almost 20 second improvement to my PR. This would be my first time trying it for calories.
Maybe I was too caught up in becoming a better rower, because the pain in this WOD would come from the lunges. I had done a workout during the Barbulls program where we had to do heavy lunges at the end and I remember it being miserable, even though I only managed 4-6 reps per round. As we practiced prior to this workout, I determined that approximately 12 lunges would carry me through the 50 feet. I could manage that using 155 pounds, right? Well, for a little while at least.
During the warmup, we had to row 30 calories and I got to test out rowing for calories with the damper on 9. Honestly, it went pretty smoothly. I used big pulls, didn't have to row incredibly fast, and managed to complete 30 calories in about 1:40. The best times of the day at RX weight averaged about 3:30 per round. I could do 12 lunges in a minute and a half, right? (I'm really laying on the failure foreshadowing pretty thick tonight.)
There were four of us in class: myself, Michal, Brent, and Ashley. Michal and I would be rowing alongside one another and lunging in the same direction, while the same would be true for Brent and Ashley. We got going and I would be the first one off the rower. I ran down to my end, cleaned my bar up into the front rack, and began lunging. It was heavy and unpleasant. I made it 8 steps and then dropped. At about this time, Brent and Ashley both got to their bars. We had to do a little maneuvering to get around one another, but I made a sharp right after Brent passed by and did my final 4 lunges. As I walked back to my rower, the clock was ticking towards 3 minutes. Not too bad.
Unfortunately, that first round took a toll on my rowing. I'm not sure of my exact splits on the rower, but I could see that my pulls were registering at about 70-80% of the power I had in round 1. Again, I would be the first one off the rower, but Brent would cut into my lead on the lunges. This time, I did 6 lunges in my first set and 6 lunges in my second set. The experience was very similar to round one in terms of how unpleasant it was. Round three would be like round two with the pulls on the rower about the same. I was once again the first one to the lunges and I split the lunges 6 and 6. But those last 6 lunges were excruciating. I was not looking forward to the final round.
I got back on the rower one last time. I wanted to keep the same pace as the last two rounds, but I needed to recover as well. The beginning of that last row was kinda slow, but when I had less than 10 calories to go, I did my best to pull harder and end the ordeal. The rowing finally ended and I psyched myself up to get through only a dozen more steps. My glutes were on fire, but if I could fight through 12 lunges, I'd be all done. I slowly made my way down the gym, somehow managing 6 steps before dropping the bar. We were officially dealing with pain. My glutes had decided that they were calling it a day. I cleaned the bar, got 2 more lunges, than dropped. Another clean, another lunge, another drop. The finish line was 3 steps away and I was feeling really stupid about not being able to get there. I cleaned the bar, determined to get those last 3 lunges. I did 1 lunge, then another, and...then I dropped. So demoralizing. I couldn't make it 1 more step? This was a new low for me. After composing myself, I cleaned the bar one more time and did one last shaky lunge to finish. Final time: 16:37. I hadn't even noticed that Brent had passed me while I was trying to get that last lunge. Ashley was done a little bit after me. And Michal, who claimed she couldn't complete the workout under the 20 minute time cap, finished with 82 seconds to spare.
Generally I'll be tired after a workout and have the occasional soreness, but I tend not to really feel the effects of a workout until two days later. That was not the case with this workout. My lack of strong glutes was coming back to haunt me now and I knew I'd be in trouble for a couple of days. Did I mention Competitors Class would be the next morning? Ugh.
As for the rowing experiment, it went well enough that I'll be continuing with it going forward. Who knows, maybe one day I can get strong enough where I can be a big boy and throw the damper all of the way to 10!
Most of the plans/strategies that I come up with for workouts end up failing at the gym. That never stops me from coming up with new ones though. I think the reason behind that is because I love trying to figure things out. I can be wrong over and over again. I can fail more times than I'll ever remember. But there's an excitement that comes with trying something new. The hope that maybe this time, you figured out the solution, even for something minor.
Friday's workout was 4 rounds for time of rowing 30 calories followed by a 50 ft front rack walking lunge (155/105). The workout had a 20 minute time cap. I've always thought I was decent at rowing, but more and more recently I've seen people left and right getting off the rower before me. I've felt the need to pace on certain workouts while others haven't needed to. And as I racked my brain trying to figure out how I could improve, it occurred to me that I haven't had my damper very high when I've rowed. Let's change that up! It seemed to work when I rowed 2,000 meters recently and saw an almost 20 second improvement to my PR. This would be my first time trying it for calories.
Maybe I was too caught up in becoming a better rower, because the pain in this WOD would come from the lunges. I had done a workout during the Barbulls program where we had to do heavy lunges at the end and I remember it being miserable, even though I only managed 4-6 reps per round. As we practiced prior to this workout, I determined that approximately 12 lunges would carry me through the 50 feet. I could manage that using 155 pounds, right? Well, for a little while at least.
During the warmup, we had to row 30 calories and I got to test out rowing for calories with the damper on 9. Honestly, it went pretty smoothly. I used big pulls, didn't have to row incredibly fast, and managed to complete 30 calories in about 1:40. The best times of the day at RX weight averaged about 3:30 per round. I could do 12 lunges in a minute and a half, right? (I'm really laying on the failure foreshadowing pretty thick tonight.)
There were four of us in class: myself, Michal, Brent, and Ashley. Michal and I would be rowing alongside one another and lunging in the same direction, while the same would be true for Brent and Ashley. We got going and I would be the first one off the rower. I ran down to my end, cleaned my bar up into the front rack, and began lunging. It was heavy and unpleasant. I made it 8 steps and then dropped. At about this time, Brent and Ashley both got to their bars. We had to do a little maneuvering to get around one another, but I made a sharp right after Brent passed by and did my final 4 lunges. As I walked back to my rower, the clock was ticking towards 3 minutes. Not too bad.
Unfortunately, that first round took a toll on my rowing. I'm not sure of my exact splits on the rower, but I could see that my pulls were registering at about 70-80% of the power I had in round 1. Again, I would be the first one off the rower, but Brent would cut into my lead on the lunges. This time, I did 6 lunges in my first set and 6 lunges in my second set. The experience was very similar to round one in terms of how unpleasant it was. Round three would be like round two with the pulls on the rower about the same. I was once again the first one to the lunges and I split the lunges 6 and 6. But those last 6 lunges were excruciating. I was not looking forward to the final round.
I got back on the rower one last time. I wanted to keep the same pace as the last two rounds, but I needed to recover as well. The beginning of that last row was kinda slow, but when I had less than 10 calories to go, I did my best to pull harder and end the ordeal. The rowing finally ended and I psyched myself up to get through only a dozen more steps. My glutes were on fire, but if I could fight through 12 lunges, I'd be all done. I slowly made my way down the gym, somehow managing 6 steps before dropping the bar. We were officially dealing with pain. My glutes had decided that they were calling it a day. I cleaned the bar, got 2 more lunges, than dropped. Another clean, another lunge, another drop. The finish line was 3 steps away and I was feeling really stupid about not being able to get there. I cleaned the bar, determined to get those last 3 lunges. I did 1 lunge, then another, and...then I dropped. So demoralizing. I couldn't make it 1 more step? This was a new low for me. After composing myself, I cleaned the bar one more time and did one last shaky lunge to finish. Final time: 16:37. I hadn't even noticed that Brent had passed me while I was trying to get that last lunge. Ashley was done a little bit after me. And Michal, who claimed she couldn't complete the workout under the 20 minute time cap, finished with 82 seconds to spare.
Generally I'll be tired after a workout and have the occasional soreness, but I tend not to really feel the effects of a workout until two days later. That was not the case with this workout. My lack of strong glutes was coming back to haunt me now and I knew I'd be in trouble for a couple of days. Did I mention Competitors Class would be the next morning? Ugh.
As for the rowing experiment, it went well enough that I'll be continuing with it going forward. Who knows, maybe one day I can get strong enough where I can be a big boy and throw the damper all of the way to 10!
Sunday, May 17, 2015
You're A Zero
Workout date: 5/14/15
I was really excited about being back on Thursday. It wasn't just getting out of Plano (wait, maybe that was most of it), it was coming back to everything I enjoy about the box: the people, the intensity, the testing of my mobility by forcing me to do 55 pull-ups. Ok, not so much the last part. Thursday marked the beginning of the Mobility Challenge at the gym. Why was I participating in another challenge at the gym when I had almost no chance of winning? Because there is a $5 entry into the contest with the winner getting a bunch of cash. And if something has a whiff of gambling about it, I'm in.
I pulled into the parking lot and discovered that there was no parking available. Wow, there was going to be a lot of money at stake in this contest! After looping around and parking near the annex, I came into the gym to find a line of people in the lobby waiting to get measured for the challenge. I wasn't exactly sure what those measurements would be, but as long as I didn't have to take my shirt off, I'd be okay with it. When it was my turn, I made my way in to see Dr. Turner and he had me do two movements while taking measurements from each side of my body. The first movement involved reaching one arm back over your shoulder, wrapping your other arm behind your back and trying to get your hands to touch as best you could. Is that possibly the worst description ever? Yeah, but it's the best I could do. As I strained to get my hands to touch, Dr. Turner announced "you're a zero!" That seemed uncalled for. I felt slightly better when he explained that was my score for the test, although zero sounded like a lousy score. After testing the other side, I was instructed to stand against a wall like a scarecrow as my range of motion in yet another awkward pose was tested. My baseline scores? Zero, unknown, unknown, unknown. Even if I knew the scores, I would have no clue what they meant. I'm off to a strong start in this challenge!
The masses were going through some stretches in the parking lot, but we eventually made our way back into the gym for the workout portion of our baseline. The test would involve pull-ups (no!) and overhead squats (yes!). It would be 10 rounds for time, with 11 reps in each round. It would start with 10 pull-ups and 1 overhead squat, with each successive round including one less pull-up and one more overhead squat, until you reached the final round of 1 pull-up and 10 overhead squats. We could choose how we wanted to do the pull-ups (band please!) and how much we wanted to use for the overhead squats (the heavier, the better). We would also be working in teams of two due to the high turnout. I partnered up with Seshu and we decided he would go first. I knew immediately that I would need a band for the pull-ups as 55 legit ones is beyond my current ability. Seshu did as well. In fact, he was using two bands (one blue, one black) and not wrapping them around the top of the bar (as I'm accustomed to doing), but attaching them to the rack below. This allows you to place both of your feet into the band rather than just one. I had seen others do this, but this would be my first attempt at it.
My dilemma was whether to go with one band or two. Initially I thought I would go with only the blue band, but then Keith instructed us to make sure that we could do 55 reps of each movement when deciding how we were going to set up our stations. Not having a lot of confidence in my ability to knock out 55 reps with one band, I decided to go with the same setup as Seshu: two bands, with the rack set up at four and five notches from the bottom. For the overheads, I would use 95 pounds, which was on the higher end of the spectrum. I cheered on Seshu as he went through his workout and noticed two things during his heat. First, I am way behind on my pull-up development as there weren't very many people using bands. Second, the average time seemed to be about 10 minutes. If I was chickening out by using two bands, I needed to be finishing this workout in well under 10 minutes.
In my heat were Regi and Justin, one on each side of me. Justin is great at pull-ups, but hates overhead squats. We've decided that if there ever is a team workout with these two movements, we would join forces so that he could crush the pull-ups and I could destroy the overheads. Speaking of destroying overheads, Regi holds the female overhead squat record in the gym, so she was going to blaze through this workout as well. Only she didn't need two bands for her pull-ups like some people. I was facing Regi during the workout, which would later scare the hell out of me. The workout started and I blazed through the first 10 pull-ups, jumped down to my bar, did a squat snatch and pressed out my 1 overhead. Off and running!
As round after round passed, I tried to quickly get through the pull-ups, then squat snatched my first overhead and made my way through those. Except every time I was making my way to my bar, Regi was getting to hers as well. Damn, I'm barely staying with her and I have an advantage! (Yes, I know getting beat by the ladies of KOP is not exactly new territory for this blog, but it would be nice to win every once in a while.) I was cycling through my overheads quicker than Regi, but she was making up ground at the pull-up bar where I was slowing down despite the bands. As we got to the final round, I did my 1 pull-up and headed to the overheads. Having to do 10 for the final round was not pleasant, but the key to overheads is maintaining your balance. While my speed had decreased, I was going to make sure that I did not put down that bar before finishing the workout. I pressed up overhead #55 and I was done with a time of 7:24, narrowly edging out Regi, who finished the workout legitimately a few seconds later. As I turned around, I saw Justin finishing off his overheads and he really did not seem to be enjoying them. He only had 4 left though. He put the bar back over his head and knocked them out quickly enough.
Should I have used one band? Probably. If I had it to do over again, I would have. But this workout needs to be completed the same way at the end of the challenge, so my only chance at improvement will be doing this even faster a month from now. That means some serious cardio is in store for me. Time to drop some weight anyway.
As for being able to become more mobile while holding awkward poses...well, I'm not sure how I'm going to make that magic happen. I'll probably just remain a zero. Hopefully some super-flexible, pull-up and overhead squat machine will put my $5 to good use.
I was really excited about being back on Thursday. It wasn't just getting out of Plano (wait, maybe that was most of it), it was coming back to everything I enjoy about the box: the people, the intensity, the testing of my mobility by forcing me to do 55 pull-ups. Ok, not so much the last part. Thursday marked the beginning of the Mobility Challenge at the gym. Why was I participating in another challenge at the gym when I had almost no chance of winning? Because there is a $5 entry into the contest with the winner getting a bunch of cash. And if something has a whiff of gambling about it, I'm in.
I pulled into the parking lot and discovered that there was no parking available. Wow, there was going to be a lot of money at stake in this contest! After looping around and parking near the annex, I came into the gym to find a line of people in the lobby waiting to get measured for the challenge. I wasn't exactly sure what those measurements would be, but as long as I didn't have to take my shirt off, I'd be okay with it. When it was my turn, I made my way in to see Dr. Turner and he had me do two movements while taking measurements from each side of my body. The first movement involved reaching one arm back over your shoulder, wrapping your other arm behind your back and trying to get your hands to touch as best you could. Is that possibly the worst description ever? Yeah, but it's the best I could do. As I strained to get my hands to touch, Dr. Turner announced "you're a zero!" That seemed uncalled for. I felt slightly better when he explained that was my score for the test, although zero sounded like a lousy score. After testing the other side, I was instructed to stand against a wall like a scarecrow as my range of motion in yet another awkward pose was tested. My baseline scores? Zero, unknown, unknown, unknown. Even if I knew the scores, I would have no clue what they meant. I'm off to a strong start in this challenge!
The masses were going through some stretches in the parking lot, but we eventually made our way back into the gym for the workout portion of our baseline. The test would involve pull-ups (no!) and overhead squats (yes!). It would be 10 rounds for time, with 11 reps in each round. It would start with 10 pull-ups and 1 overhead squat, with each successive round including one less pull-up and one more overhead squat, until you reached the final round of 1 pull-up and 10 overhead squats. We could choose how we wanted to do the pull-ups (band please!) and how much we wanted to use for the overhead squats (the heavier, the better). We would also be working in teams of two due to the high turnout. I partnered up with Seshu and we decided he would go first. I knew immediately that I would need a band for the pull-ups as 55 legit ones is beyond my current ability. Seshu did as well. In fact, he was using two bands (one blue, one black) and not wrapping them around the top of the bar (as I'm accustomed to doing), but attaching them to the rack below. This allows you to place both of your feet into the band rather than just one. I had seen others do this, but this would be my first attempt at it.
My dilemma was whether to go with one band or two. Initially I thought I would go with only the blue band, but then Keith instructed us to make sure that we could do 55 reps of each movement when deciding how we were going to set up our stations. Not having a lot of confidence in my ability to knock out 55 reps with one band, I decided to go with the same setup as Seshu: two bands, with the rack set up at four and five notches from the bottom. For the overheads, I would use 95 pounds, which was on the higher end of the spectrum. I cheered on Seshu as he went through his workout and noticed two things during his heat. First, I am way behind on my pull-up development as there weren't very many people using bands. Second, the average time seemed to be about 10 minutes. If I was chickening out by using two bands, I needed to be finishing this workout in well under 10 minutes.
In my heat were Regi and Justin, one on each side of me. Justin is great at pull-ups, but hates overhead squats. We've decided that if there ever is a team workout with these two movements, we would join forces so that he could crush the pull-ups and I could destroy the overheads. Speaking of destroying overheads, Regi holds the female overhead squat record in the gym, so she was going to blaze through this workout as well. Only she didn't need two bands for her pull-ups like some people. I was facing Regi during the workout, which would later scare the hell out of me. The workout started and I blazed through the first 10 pull-ups, jumped down to my bar, did a squat snatch and pressed out my 1 overhead. Off and running!
As round after round passed, I tried to quickly get through the pull-ups, then squat snatched my first overhead and made my way through those. Except every time I was making my way to my bar, Regi was getting to hers as well. Damn, I'm barely staying with her and I have an advantage! (Yes, I know getting beat by the ladies of KOP is not exactly new territory for this blog, but it would be nice to win every once in a while.) I was cycling through my overheads quicker than Regi, but she was making up ground at the pull-up bar where I was slowing down despite the bands. As we got to the final round, I did my 1 pull-up and headed to the overheads. Having to do 10 for the final round was not pleasant, but the key to overheads is maintaining your balance. While my speed had decreased, I was going to make sure that I did not put down that bar before finishing the workout. I pressed up overhead #55 and I was done with a time of 7:24, narrowly edging out Regi, who finished the workout legitimately a few seconds later. As I turned around, I saw Justin finishing off his overheads and he really did not seem to be enjoying them. He only had 4 left though. He put the bar back over his head and knocked them out quickly enough.
Should I have used one band? Probably. If I had it to do over again, I would have. But this workout needs to be completed the same way at the end of the challenge, so my only chance at improvement will be doing this even faster a month from now. That means some serious cardio is in store for me. Time to drop some weight anyway.
As for being able to become more mobile while holding awkward poses...well, I'm not sure how I'm going to make that magic happen. I'll probably just remain a zero. Hopefully some super-flexible, pull-up and overhead squat machine will put my $5 to good use.
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Monkey Business
Workout date: 5/12/15
I had told my new friends from Crossfit BYOB that I would try my best to make it back for the 7:30 class the next day. If I could get out of my work obligations by, say 7:20, I would be fine. How hard could that be?
Fast forward nearly 23 hours and I was desperately trying to make my way to my car after one of the most awkward work dinners I have ever had. (Note: the phrase "you're Korean...well, close enough" should never come out of someone's mouth during a business meal.) It was now 7:15 and I was not feeling confident that I'd get to the gym on time. Maybe there would be traffic on the way to the restaurant. It was not looking good. I finally broke free and raced over to the gym. I made it there with three minutes to spare. Erica was at the front desk and I asked her where I could change out of my work gear. A quick change and a 6:30 class running late ensured that I would be ready for the beginning of the 7:30 class.
The workout had a similar feel to the one from the day before. We started with a 400 meter run, then went through a series of drills. We then did 3 sets of back squats at 70%, 80% and 90% of whatever 95% of our 1RM was. Having done this fairly recently, I knew what numbers I would use. It also let me know that the weights I used on the shoulder press the day before were a tad light. Oops. For the final set, we were to try and knock out as many reps as possible. I really wanted to try the new setup that Keith had taught me where you hold the bar lower on your back, but I felt awkward about trying it here. Most of the people in class seemed to be on the newer side and the owner was stressing proper form to everyone. Trying something different might lead to confusion and I was a guest at the gym.
I did a warmup set at 135, then did sets at 185 and 210. 235 would be my last set and I wanted at least 6 reps. I might have had a higher goal if I had my lifting shoes with me. Since there was a good chance that I could start rolling up on my toes, I felt that six reps would be a victory. I methodically moved through rep after rep, trying to maintain solid form the whole way. I reached 5 reps. Then got a sixth. And then kept going. It was only after fighting through rep #9 that I put the bar back on the rack. I was very pleased with that result.
The cash out had four parts to it: 2 minutes of double unders, then 1 minute of slam balls, followed by 1 minute of burpees, before finishing with 2 more minutes of double unders. Between each movement, we got 1 minute of rest. I was not psyched about 4 minutes of double unders, especially after sucking it up on Annie recently. I'm also starting to suspect that my rope might be too long, so I might be trimming it back in the near future. We got going and my performance was typical of how I've done with double unders the last month or so: some small sets, one big set, fatigue, etc. I finished up with 59 reps before getting 60 seconds of recovery time. For the slam balls, I used a 30 pound ball and did 27 reps before moving on to burpees. My goal for the burpees was to try and incorporate the tips that Jim C. had given me. I was getting tired, so it wasn't spectacular, but I did manage 17 burpees during that minute. Finally, it was time for more double unders. And I was sucking wind now. Only managed 33 reps the second time around.
That was it for my Crossfit BYOB experience, although there is an ugly rumor I may have to return in a month. Before I left, I wanted some t-shirts and came across this guy in the corner:
I asked if he was for sale as well, but sadly he was not. Apparently he comes out when they have kids classes there and has basically become the box mascot. Such a bummer. I was really hoping to top this picture:
I had told my new friends from Crossfit BYOB that I would try my best to make it back for the 7:30 class the next day. If I could get out of my work obligations by, say 7:20, I would be fine. How hard could that be?
Fast forward nearly 23 hours and I was desperately trying to make my way to my car after one of the most awkward work dinners I have ever had. (Note: the phrase "you're Korean...well, close enough" should never come out of someone's mouth during a business meal.) It was now 7:15 and I was not feeling confident that I'd get to the gym on time. Maybe there would be traffic on the way to the restaurant. It was not looking good. I finally broke free and raced over to the gym. I made it there with three minutes to spare. Erica was at the front desk and I asked her where I could change out of my work gear. A quick change and a 6:30 class running late ensured that I would be ready for the beginning of the 7:30 class.
The workout had a similar feel to the one from the day before. We started with a 400 meter run, then went through a series of drills. We then did 3 sets of back squats at 70%, 80% and 90% of whatever 95% of our 1RM was. Having done this fairly recently, I knew what numbers I would use. It also let me know that the weights I used on the shoulder press the day before were a tad light. Oops. For the final set, we were to try and knock out as many reps as possible. I really wanted to try the new setup that Keith had taught me where you hold the bar lower on your back, but I felt awkward about trying it here. Most of the people in class seemed to be on the newer side and the owner was stressing proper form to everyone. Trying something different might lead to confusion and I was a guest at the gym.
I did a warmup set at 135, then did sets at 185 and 210. 235 would be my last set and I wanted at least 6 reps. I might have had a higher goal if I had my lifting shoes with me. Since there was a good chance that I could start rolling up on my toes, I felt that six reps would be a victory. I methodically moved through rep after rep, trying to maintain solid form the whole way. I reached 5 reps. Then got a sixth. And then kept going. It was only after fighting through rep #9 that I put the bar back on the rack. I was very pleased with that result.
The cash out had four parts to it: 2 minutes of double unders, then 1 minute of slam balls, followed by 1 minute of burpees, before finishing with 2 more minutes of double unders. Between each movement, we got 1 minute of rest. I was not psyched about 4 minutes of double unders, especially after sucking it up on Annie recently. I'm also starting to suspect that my rope might be too long, so I might be trimming it back in the near future. We got going and my performance was typical of how I've done with double unders the last month or so: some small sets, one big set, fatigue, etc. I finished up with 59 reps before getting 60 seconds of recovery time. For the slam balls, I used a 30 pound ball and did 27 reps before moving on to burpees. My goal for the burpees was to try and incorporate the tips that Jim C. had given me. I was getting tired, so it wasn't spectacular, but I did manage 17 burpees during that minute. Finally, it was time for more double unders. And I was sucking wind now. Only managed 33 reps the second time around.
That was it for my Crossfit BYOB experience, although there is an ugly rumor I may have to return in a month. Before I left, I wanted some t-shirts and came across this guy in the corner:
I asked if he was for sale as well, but sadly he was not. Apparently he comes out when they have kids classes there and has basically become the box mascot. Such a bummer. I was really hoping to top this picture:
"Carmelita" and "Derek" (names changed to protect the innocent)
I paid for my t-shirts, said my goodbyes, and got ready to head home. Needed to get back to KOP for the start of the Mobility Challenge! More on that in my next post.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)