Welcome to my 100th blog post! I wasn't expecting to do anything special in today's class, but lo and behold, I managed to do something that elicited the response seen in the subject line. If you thought I sucked at pull-ups before...well then you are certainly in for a treat!
The main focus for today was Aimee's free pull-up clinic. And who needs help with their pull-up more than me? No seriously, if that was ever in doubt, the question was answered tonight. Definitively. The class was pretty all-encompassing, so the turnout was large. We ended up being divided into two groups: the first group was made up of people looking to work on their kip so they could string multiple pull-ups in a row, while the second group was looking to work on the more advanced butterfly pull-up technique. I was not in the second group.
As we worked our way through the basics, I didn't do too badly. However, things started to go south once I had to combine a bunch of things. Stay steady, activate the shoulders, swing your legs, pop your hips, head exploding, other things being said but I've exceeded my limit for processing instructions, and...failure. Soon my knees were coming up in "let's pretend we're doing toes to bar" fashion. Then I was basically doing strict pull-ups, trying to crane my head above the bar so that the rep would be legit, even though we weren't keeping score or anything. But despite this rapidly devolving situation, I wasn't prepared for how bad things were about to get.
It was warm, I sweat a lot, the sky is blue, yadda yadda yadda. I've started wearing grips so that my hands don't rip during pull-ups, but also to deal with moisture issues I have with my hands. I used to wear wrist bands after reading that people who get sweaty hands during workouts aren't really sweating from their hands. Rather, the sweat is running down their arms on to their hands, so if you can block that path (or use something to absorb the sweat along the way), your hands should remain fairly dry. In order to wear the grips, I had to secure them with my wrist wraps, which I assumed would serve the same purpose as the wrist bands. Until tonight that was the case. But tonight...not so much.
I was trying to string multiple reps together and had my grip slip a bit, so I dropped down from the bar. Everyone else in my group was still going (showoffs!), so it was obvious that I was the weak link. When it was our turn to go again, Aimee wanted us to focus on pushing away from the bar at the top. I tried to do it, but struggled, as I tried to do that neck crane thing again. Aimee wanted me to focus less on getting my head over the bar and more on simply kipping and pushing away from the bar at the top. The butterfly crew came up again as the kippers rested, but soon we were back to the bar. Instead of doing groups, Aimee wanted to start off the next round watching one person work on pushing away from the bar at the top. That person was yours truly of course. Not excited about having all eyes on me, I tried to focus on the task at hand and block everything out. Michal had been telling me to remain calm and Josh M. had been telling me to put all thoughts out of my head and just start doing pull-ups. I jumped up to the bar, began my swing, did a pull-up, and pushed away to come back down. Another swing to the top, then a push away and...oh boy.
I will temper this embarrassing moment by stating that I clearly did what I was asked not once, but twice. I got to the top of the pull-up and pushed away from the bar. However, after the second swing, I pushed away from the bar and lost my grip on the bar. That resulted in me hurtling myself into the wall behind the bar. Did I mention that all eyes were on me at this point? Awesome. I wasn't hurt at all, but it was enough to make me switch to a full grip on the bar for the rest of the clinic (and for the foreseeable future).
For the remainder of the class, I tried to keep improving, but I was probably a lost cause at that point. At the end, we had to go up in groups of three and do a max set. I managed a set of four, my biggest of the night, but that was child's play compared to the vast majority of the class. The kipping pull-up remains a mystery to me and now I can say that it may also be hazardous to my health.
Let's do something that won't result in me flying into a wall (I hope). Today's WOD was Grace, 30 clean and jerks (135/95) for time. Cline was joining me at open strength to take this on. We did some warmup and originally planned to do this head to head while Rachel and Michal counted for us, but they needed some non-Saturday morning dicking around time. So when Cline was ready to go, I got him started and counted his reps. Cline had mentioned beforehand that he was torn between using 105 and 115 pounds, but he went through the reps with 115 pounds with ease. In fact, he wasn't even using his hips to help clean the bar. It was more like watching someone do a sumo lift high pull as he wrenched the barbell up to his shoulders. He methodically went through all 30 reps stopping the clock at 3:43.
I got ready to go next and for some reason wasn't feeling super confident. I doubt it was the pull-up incident from earlier. It was probably more the case that I was thinking way too much about how to tackle a workout that would take less than 5 minutes. I had watched Matt B. and Rich A. do this earlier and they took completely different approaches. Matt did huge sets with small breaks in between while Rich did fast singles the entire time. I wanted to do a hybrid of the two strategies: one big set to begin with fast singles the rest of the way. And my big set would not be until I reached failure, it would be until it felt like a struggle to hold on to the bar, making it no longer worthwhile to expend that energy.
That big set would turn out to be 5 reps. I would have liked it to be in the 6-8 range, but once it started feeling heavy, I went right to the fast singles. I practiced some of the fast singles during the warmup and I had problems controlling the barbell after dropping it. Controlling the bounce was a little tricky and grabbing the barbell evenly was tough sometimes as well. The last thing I wanted to do was try to clean and jerk this weight with my hands uneven. So I tried to be fast when transitioning from one rep to the next, but it was probably slower than it should have been. As I was nearing the midway point, I cleaned the barbell up to my shoulders and tried to quickly jerk it, but got no pop from my legs and it went close to nowhere. I had to bail on it and regroup. And this really isn't the type of workout where you have time to regroup.
With a brief break to clear my head, I got back into it. As I made my way into the twenties, the bar was definitely getting heavier and I was taking an extra second to make sure my setup was correct before launching into that next rep. Cline was yelling all sorts of stuff to me about breaking my PR, breaking three minutes, about being a motherfucker...it was all a bit of a blur. All I knew is that it felt like I had been going for 10 minutes and it seemed like these guys were simply being nice about cheering me on. After completing the last rep, I finally looked at the clock and saw 3:10. Not quite under three minutes, but I nice PR for me, especially since my goal was 3:15 for the workout.
After some standing in the rain and a little bit of rest, Rachel and Michal informed me that they wanted to do a cash out. Coach Intern Rachel still needs some training on what "cash out" means, as she seems to be confusing it with "WOD". I talked her down into something that would only take about 10 minutes to complete and we came up with the following:
1,000 meter row
Then 15-10-5 of
Heavy Russian KB swings
Handstand push-ups
Despite being tired, I was okay with a workout involving my new friends, the 80 lb KB and the banded handstand pushup contraption. Now I honestly don't know how long the workout actually took, but here are the highlights. Rachel beat me off the rower. Even though they were only Russian swings, I could only do sets of 5 during the round of 15. I got into the handstand pushup contraption with no assistance the first time, but only got 5 reps. Then I needed Josh M.'s help to get back in it for rounds 1 and 2, along with Michal's help (she was done already) in round 3. I did handstand pushups to end round 1 and did the same for round 2. I did all 10 KB swings unbroken in round 2. And I slowly got through the finish with a large amount of sweat (even for me) pouring down on the mat below.
Three activities was enough for me to celebrate my 100th blog post. I was so tired that I didn't really want to eat afterwards, although not re-fueling my body probably would have been a bad idea. And naturally, I slept like the dead when I finally put head to pillow later on.
Tuesday WOD: Overheads and deadlifts. Sounds appealing, but could they be suckering me in to believing this is something I will like. We shall see.
I got ready to go next and for some reason wasn't feeling super confident. I doubt it was the pull-up incident from earlier. It was probably more the case that I was thinking way too much about how to tackle a workout that would take less than 5 minutes. I had watched Matt B. and Rich A. do this earlier and they took completely different approaches. Matt did huge sets with small breaks in between while Rich did fast singles the entire time. I wanted to do a hybrid of the two strategies: one big set to begin with fast singles the rest of the way. And my big set would not be until I reached failure, it would be until it felt like a struggle to hold on to the bar, making it no longer worthwhile to expend that energy.
That big set would turn out to be 5 reps. I would have liked it to be in the 6-8 range, but once it started feeling heavy, I went right to the fast singles. I practiced some of the fast singles during the warmup and I had problems controlling the barbell after dropping it. Controlling the bounce was a little tricky and grabbing the barbell evenly was tough sometimes as well. The last thing I wanted to do was try to clean and jerk this weight with my hands uneven. So I tried to be fast when transitioning from one rep to the next, but it was probably slower than it should have been. As I was nearing the midway point, I cleaned the barbell up to my shoulders and tried to quickly jerk it, but got no pop from my legs and it went close to nowhere. I had to bail on it and regroup. And this really isn't the type of workout where you have time to regroup.
With a brief break to clear my head, I got back into it. As I made my way into the twenties, the bar was definitely getting heavier and I was taking an extra second to make sure my setup was correct before launching into that next rep. Cline was yelling all sorts of stuff to me about breaking my PR, breaking three minutes, about being a motherfucker...it was all a bit of a blur. All I knew is that it felt like I had been going for 10 minutes and it seemed like these guys were simply being nice about cheering me on. After completing the last rep, I finally looked at the clock and saw 3:10. Not quite under three minutes, but I nice PR for me, especially since my goal was 3:15 for the workout.
After some standing in the rain and a little bit of rest, Rachel and Michal informed me that they wanted to do a cash out. Coach Intern Rachel still needs some training on what "cash out" means, as she seems to be confusing it with "WOD". I talked her down into something that would only take about 10 minutes to complete and we came up with the following:
1,000 meter row
Then 15-10-5 of
Heavy Russian KB swings
Handstand push-ups
Despite being tired, I was okay with a workout involving my new friends, the 80 lb KB and the banded handstand pushup contraption. Now I honestly don't know how long the workout actually took, but here are the highlights. Rachel beat me off the rower. Even though they were only Russian swings, I could only do sets of 5 during the round of 15. I got into the handstand pushup contraption with no assistance the first time, but only got 5 reps. Then I needed Josh M.'s help to get back in it for rounds 1 and 2, along with Michal's help (she was done already) in round 3. I did handstand pushups to end round 1 and did the same for round 2. I did all 10 KB swings unbroken in round 2. And I slowly got through the finish with a large amount of sweat (even for me) pouring down on the mat below.
Three activities was enough for me to celebrate my 100th blog post. I was so tired that I didn't really want to eat afterwards, although not re-fueling my body probably would have been a bad idea. And naturally, I slept like the dead when I finally put head to pillow later on.
Tuesday WOD: Overheads and deadlifts. Sounds appealing, but could they be suckering me in to believing this is something I will like. We shall see.
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