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.