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.