Summer Is Coming

Workout date: 5/4/15

On Game of Thrones, everyone lives in fear of winter.  Well maybe not the Starks, but that family seems to be the piñata of Westeros, so being okay with years-long winters isn't a huge help for them.  Here in the real world, I live in fear of summer.  For someone who is a sweaty mess of a human being when the temperature is below 70, summer ends up being my worst nightmare.  There is no amount of water that I can consume to properly replenish all the dehydration I experience during a workout.  And because I'm bald, I'm going to have to spray massive amounts of sunblock all over my head, which will eventually drip down into my eyes and blind me mid-workout.  That is unless I wear a headband, which is pretty close to the worst look a bald guy can go with.

But there is no denying the truth: summer is coming.

Last night's workout was my first real taste of summer, if you don't count the sauna I worked out in during the Festivus Games.  But the WOD was find your 3RM back squat, followed up by chest-to-bar practice, so I wasn't terribly worried about the heat.  In fact, when I got home from work, I started to enjoy a snack that I normally wouldn't eat prior to the workout as I had no concerns about puking during the WOD.  As I got a few bites in, I got a text on my phone from Giulz.  It read "does anyone wanna do a metcon with me at 6:30".  Now my initial plan was to stay for strength after the WOD, so doing a metcon and then finding my 3RM back squat during strength sounded reasonable to me.  I wrapped up my snack and told Giulz I was in.  Michal said she was in as well.  I asked what the metcon was and then drove to the gym when I didn't receive an immediate response.  When I got to the parking lot, I looked at my phone and saw the response: "Marisa is programming it".  Shit.  I want my snack back.  And I'd like to do the WOD instead.

Let's just say that Marisa's programming style is ambitious.  Her workouts have chapters.  Today's monstrosity would be a partner WOD (Marisa and Michal, me and Giulz) consisting of the following:

Chapter 1 - 3 rounds: 400M run (both partners), 40 overhead squats (95/65)
2 minute intermission
Chapter 2 - 3 rounds: 20 pull-ups, 40 shoulder-to-overhead (135/95)
2 minute intermission
Chapter 3 - 3 rounds: 100 double unders, 20 deadlifts (205/135)

A few things worth noting: Marisa clearly has an obsession with the number 3 and one round of all this madness (ok, maybe two since it was a partner WOD) would have been plenty.  This seemed like a disaster.  The fan inside the gym was on, but I was starting to sweat already.  And unfortunately, we were working out at the opposite end of the gym from where the fan was.  Giulz and I talked, especially about the second leg.  She told me she wouldn't be able to do a lot of shoulder-to-overheads and everyone knows about my pull-up prowess (or lack thereof).  So we agreed to shoulder the load on the movements that our partner would struggle with.

We got going and I thought we would stay with Team M&M for most of the first leg.  And honestly, we didn't end up all that far behind them.  But they were very efficient on their overheads, while I was not.  I had a little bit of trouble with where I was standing (on the far end of the gym, there is a drop in the floor and I was walking up and down it when doing that involuntary cha-cha your body does when you get tired doing overhead squats) and actually dropped one rep short of the set of 10 I was supposed to do at one point.  Giulz and I alternated those sets of 10 to get to 40 and then ran.  We finished our first leg right around the point the M&Ms finished their rest and moved on to leg two.  I stared at our barbells and wondered who was going to change the weights while I spent two minutes questioning my poor decision making skills again.  Oh, I guess that would be us.  Damn.

I changed the weight on my bar just in time for the second leg to start.  Giulz was killing it on the pull-ups.  I was not.  When we got to the barbell, Giulz knocked out solid sets of 4 reps while I tried to do as many as possible to make it as much of a team effort as I possibly could.  The M&Ms called over to us to let us know that the reps for shoulder-to-overhead should be trimmed down from 40 to 30, which was a minor relief.  In general, we did about a 75%/25% split on these two movements with Giulz doing 75% of the pull-ups and with me doing about 75% of the shoulder-to-overheads.  And surprisingly, we weren't losing much ground on the M&Ms.  However, Giulz and I were both exhausted when that 90th shoulder-to-overhead was done.  Time to change weights again.  Or vomit.  Whichever was more convenient.

I knew leg three would be where the M&Ms got separation because I'm the weakest at double unders normally and that disparity is even worse when I'm tired.  And I was 20 minutes beyond tired.  Poor Giulz was dealing with a cramp, but was still knocking out much larger sets of double unders than I could.  Meanwhile, the M&Ms were probably knocking them out 100 at a time.  As a result, they were done way ahead of us.  When it came to the deadlifts, we were slowly making our way through those, eventually getting to a point where we alternated singles back and forth.  But towards the end of round 2, I tried to hold on and do a big set.  And when we hit the final round, I grabbed the bar and did 7 to start things off.  We eventually got to 18 and Giulz, who really carried our team yet again, knocked out the last two reps.  Final time: 49:17, nearly 9 minutes after the M&Ms had finished.

After 49 minutes of misery, I had no desire to do strength.  I grabbed a chair and sat in the middle of the gym, settling in to watch Rachel and Keithie do the workout we had just finished.  And they really killed it.  It took them only 31 minutes and change to finish that whole thing, as they blazed through the second leg much faster than the two teams who had done it at 6:30.  While they were finishing up, Michal let me know she wanted to still do back squats.  Seriously?  Ugh.  I agreed to do 5x5 at about 75% rather than find a 3RM, because I definitely did not have the legs to pull that off.  The only thing is that Michal starts bargaining these things down.  She wanted to lower the weight.  Then she wanted to do 5x3.  Eventually I decided to go with 5x3 of 225 (approximately 82% of my 1RM).  I did warm-up sets at 135 and 185, then got into the sets of 225.  At first, it felt a little wobbly, but sets 2, 3, and 4 went smoothly, except for 1 rep where I got on my toes.  For my last set, I did the first two reps fine, but really got on my toes for the final rep.  Rachel and Keithie were now watching and Keithie decided to give me a tip which really might help me get to 300 pounds on my back squat.

I have worked hard on staying in my heels during back squats and tonight was a bit of an anomaly since I had done a 49 minute metcon and my poor form probably came about as a result of that.  But that is still a bit of an issue when I go very heavy.  What Keithie showed me was a way of back squatting while holding the bar lower on my back.  I hadn't tried this before and it felt weird (I did a set of 3 at 225 to test it out), but I can certainly say there was no point where I felt like I would tilt up on my toes.  I will need more practice with this style, but it may be the adjustment that helps me get beyond the plateau I have reached with my back squat.

Next blog post: rope climbs galore!  Hopefully I have recovered enough for a WOD involving 21 rope climbs and a mile and a half of running.