The Burpee Whisperer

Workout date: 4/30/15

I won the warmup today!!!  Ok, to be fair, I was the only one competing in the warmup.  And it didn't start as a competition to begin with, it was just your standard, run-of-the-mill warmup.  But then the competitive idiot inside me kicked in.  Let me explain.

After taking a rest day on Wednesday, I woke up on Thursday with my shoulders still on fire.  Any interest in practicing my terrible pull-up form went out the window.  An even worse idea would be the WOD, which was 2 rounds of 1,000 meters rowing, 50 thrusters (65/45), and 30 chest-to-bar pull-ups.  I watched Matt E. and Derreck do this workout while I was at the gym and saw 31-32 minutes of misery.  No thank you!

Instead, I was headed to the gym for strength class.  I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to work on, but I felt like deadlifts needed to be part of the routine.  I squat pretty regularly and Olympic lifts are programmed quite a bit, but I don't spend nearly as much time on my deadlift.  And when I look around and watch other people as they do strength class, I see quite a bit of deadlifting going on.  Hmmm...maybe I should be following their lead.  Beyond that, I was going to figure it out what else I wanted to do as the class went on.  I did know that I wanted to row to warm up, so I grabbed a rower.

Now when I began this blog, I talked about the rower I had at home and how I had these grand plans of getting on it every day and becoming much better at it.  Well...like most home exercise equipment, my rower has become more clothing rack than gateway to better cardio.  It hasn't helped that the renovations on our house will be continuing until hell freezes over (and the contractor can't even commit to that deadline).  But if I'm being honest, I haven't taken advantage of the fact that I could be improving myself at home if I simply woke up a little earlier and put some time in on the rower.

One of the distances I wanted to get good at was rowing 2,000 meters.  I decided to use this as my warmup distance for strength class, if only because I think of it as similar to running a mile on the track.  Another area that I am trying to improve upon is the damper setting I use for my rows.  If I'm rowing for distance, I tend to use a setting of 5-6.  If I'm rowing for calories, I use a setting of 8.  I tried rowing for calories with the damper cranked all the way up to 10 and it was a disaster.  But I'm trying to get in the mindset of "just because something didn't work earlier in your Crossfit career doesn't mean it won't work now".  To that end, I've been rowing with the damper on 7 recently when rowing for distance.  The next time I row for calories, I'll be trying the damper at 9.

So I got going on my row and 500 meters in I was around 1:50.  My concern with the higher damper setting is that I will get tired more quickly, but I felt fine.  In fact, I felt really good.  As I closed in on 750 meters and maintained a pace in the 1:50-1:55 range, I started to have greedy thoughts again.  My PR for 2,000 meters is 7:58, which is a fraction under 2:00 pace for 500 meters.  I was almost at the halfway point of my row, I was well under my PR pace, and I was not huffing and puffing.  Maybe I could PR during my warmup!

I began to focus more on keeping my pace than I would have had this been a normal warmup.  When I got to the 1,000 meter mark, I was around 3:45 (believe it or not, I wasn't keeping my eye on the exact splits because I was so focused on maintaining the same intensity).  During the third 500 meters, I started to waver a little as the 500 meter pace eclipsed two minutes a few times.  That got me to pull a little harder again so that it went back down below 2:00.  With 500 meters to go, I was around 5:45 and knew that I would be breaking 7:58.  Still, I didn't want to go nuts and spend all my energy on what initially started as my warmup.  Nice strong pulls and a steady rhythm: that's all I wanted during the last 500 meters.  I probably did go a little faster during those last 100 meters as the finish line was in sight.  When the distance to go hit 0, my breathing was pretty rapid, but I wasn't exhausted.  And I was very happy with this:



A 16 second PR?  Yes please!

I was probably relishing this accomplishment a little too much, as I went down to the other end of the gym and started socializing more than continuing with strength.  And I watched the end of that crazy WOD that was going on.  Eventually, I did set up weights for my deadlift.  My plan was to try and do 3 heavy sets of 10 reps.  With a 1RM of 385, I went over to the chart on the wall to see what I should be able to do for 10 reps.  The chart said 295.  Now I wasn't sure if that meant "if I go all out, I should be able to get 1 set of 10 reps" or whether that meant "this is the weight you should use for multiple sets of 10 reps".  I didn't want to fail on the second set (or, gasp, the first set), so I decided to go with 275 instead.

I started with a set of 10 at 135 which was easy enough.  The set at 225 wasn't terrible, but it made me realize that 275 was not going to be fun.  The first set at 275 made me reconsider a little bit.  It wasn't that it was easy, but I could have done maybe 14-15 reps during that first set, which was better than I was expecting.  (What did I have for breakfast yesterday???)  Anyway, having the strength to lift the weight was not going to be the issue.  Grip strength, on the other hand, would certainly be an issue.  As I did set #2, I could feel my hands burning as I held on to the bar for the last three reps.  In fact, the last rep was really painful to hold on to.  However, there was only one set left and I was determined not to fail.  Once I make it that far, I become really disappointed if I don't finish things off.  So after some massive chalking of my hands, I grabbed the bar and made my way through the final 10 reps.  Were my hands in pain?  You betcha.  But it was nice knowing that I could handle that weight for 3 sets of 10 reps.

There was only about 15-20 minutes left in class and I needed something else to do.  I wasn't eager to get on the pull-up bar.  It seemed too late to do sets of anything that required a barbell.  What else could I work on?  Oh yeah!  The fact that I suck at burpees!  Even though that seemed completely unappealing, I knew I needed to do it.  After all, there would never be a day when burpees seemed appealing.  So I stretched a little, went to the middle of the gym, and waited for the clock to tick to a full minute before I went.  30 burpees as fast as I could go, no crawling.  I hit the deck and started rattling them off.  I probably made it to around 20 before the urge to crawl entered my head.  But with only 10 left, I tried to think back to the other night when Lizzie was helping me through the end of my burpees.  My pace slowed a bit, but I finished off burpee #30, then looked up to see I had done it in 1:46.  Not blazing speed, but not awful for me.

Then the strangest thing happened.  For those of you who know Jim C., you know that he is chock full of helpful information, but he's also very quiet.  Almost without fail, if he is going to give me a tip on something I am doing wrong (and there's lots of stuff I do wrong in the gym), he'll give me a quizzical look, then slowly walk over, and quietly let me know how I can improve what I'm doing.  That is not what happened last night.  Now to be fair, I expect Jim to have input on ways to improve when it comes to things like Olympic lifts, since that is what I see him working on every day at the gym.  I was not expecting him to have burpee advice.  And I could not have imagined he would be borderline-giddy about doling out such advice.

While speaking with Jess and Jim, Jim launched into a high-energy explanation of what I was doing wrong.  (I should also point out that Jim had just finished a milkshake that Keithie had brought over for him from Frosty Falls, so he could have been on a sugar high.)  He explained that I was doing a squat thrust (true), then pulling myself all the way in before jumping, all of which was requiring more strength than truly necessary when doing a burpee.  How should it be done?  Before I knew it, he was throwing himself down on the ground to demonstrate.  Throw your body at the ground, shoot those hips way up when rising from the bottom.  This was definitely more efficient than what I was doing.

This illustrated an important point to me.  When I snatch, I am conscious of all the steps I need to go through to do the movement efficiently.  When I try to kip (heavy emphasis on "try"), I am focused on doing all the little things properly so that I have a shot at knocking out multiple reps while on the bar.  But when it comes to something basic like the burpee, I go brain-dead, not realizing there are important aspects to the movement that will make me do it more efficiently.  And because I am not being efficient, I am exhausting myself in longer met-cons, which results in a finish many minutes after the top people in class are done.  I have taken the simple things for granted and it has affected my performance.  Lesson learned.