Shoulda Stayed In Bed

Workout date: 6/27/15

I've made no secret of the fact that I'm not a big fan of Competitors Class.  It's way too early.  I'm not training for any competitions.  And if I still regularly finish last in normal classes during the week, then you can imagine how swimmingly well I perform at something called "Competitors Class".  I go because the company is good and I'm promised breakfast afterwards.  If you dangle breakfast or ice cream in front of me, I'm pretty much at your beck and call.

Saturday was an example of how out of place I am in that class.  Now to be fair, I had been riding high on a wave of great performances (for me) throughout the week, so maybe I just began flying too close to the sun.  Or maybe those performances took a lot more out of me than I realized.  Whatever the case may be, I was a mess on Saturday.  My hands, which have become extremely calloused, were so sore that I reached a point where I was in pain every single time I picked up a barbell.  My stamina level was zilch.  And when I got home, Jenn told me that I needed to take a nap because I looked "deathly pale".  Apparently my body isn't shy about letting me know when I need a rest day.

The first hour of Competitors Class was simply lifting.  Didn't even have to be Olympic lifting.  I wanted to focus on two things during that time: back squats with proper breathing and squat cleans.  For the back squats, I was going to keep the weight relatively low in order to practice pushing my abs out while holding my breath.  I started with 135 pounds on the bar and did some reps there.  It still feels very weird, but it does feel like a more solid position in general as I'm doing the reps.  Will probably take some time to get right.  I eventually moved up to 185 and 225 to test out the technique and I found that the weight did not seem to matter much when it came to how many reps I could do while holding my breath.  The answer seemed to be four no matter what.  So I'll need to practice pausing and breathing again at the top when necessary.

Since I wasn't looking to max out my back squat, I stopped at 225 and moved on to squat cleans.  I stripped the bar back down to 135 and started there.  I wrapped my hands around the barbell and...oh dear God, that hurts a lot.  I tend to experience a lot of hand pain whenever I'm doing pull-ups, toes-to-bar, or any other body weight movement hanging from the bar, but it's unusual for me to have it when using a barbell.  Clearly, the toll of hanging from the bar for WODs and for practice have made my hands extra sensitive.  I did some squat cleans at 135, 165, and 185 and the worst part of the experience by far was holding on to the bar.  I think my form was pretty good (that was the original intent of doing squat cleans: making sure my form was correct), but it was hard to focus when my hands were throbbing.

Know what would probably make my hands feel better?  How about a long team WOD?  We had thought that the class would only be Giulz, Rachel, Michal, and myself, but the newest Souka, Mark C., came out to join us for class.  Mark will be part of this year's Sweaty Souka team participating in the Brawl in the Burbs at KOP on August 15th.  Because we had 5 people, we divided into a team of 3 (Rachel, Mark, and myself) and a team of 2 (Michal and Giulz).  One person would work at a time for each team, except Mark and I would try to synchronize our movements.  At least until one of us got exhausted and fell apart.  Here was the workout:

3 rounds:
40 deadlifts (185/125)
20 box jumps (24"/20")
40 overhead lunges (115/75)
20 manmakers (45/25)
120 double unders

What the heck is a manmaker?  It involves a set of dumbbells.  You place them in front of you on the floor and do a plank over them before doing a push-up.  From there, you do a row (pull the dumbbell up alongside your chest) on each side of your body before coming back on to your feet again.  Then you do a squat clean followed by a thruster.  Super fun!

Our plan for the workout was to have Rachel do 10 reps, then have Mark and I do 10 reps of the deadlifts, box jumps, and overhead lunges.  For the manmakers, we would do 2 each before switching.  When it came to double unders, Rachel would do as many as she could (a lot), before I would take over and do as many as I could (a little), while Mark did single unders as I jumped rope.

The first round of deadlifts wasn't so bad.  I didn't even notice my hands all that much.  Standing behind Mark, I tried to match his cadence on the deadlifts exactly, as if I was one of those Regional athletes doing a synchonized team workout.  We all held on to the bar for 10 reps each time and we were off to the box jumps.  Rachel did her 10 reps fairly quickly.  I tried once again to stay in lock step with Mark, but he's a little quicker than me on the box jumps, so I was about a rep behind him.

The overhead lunges were something I was looking forward to, although the practice reps I did left me a little uneasy.  I am comfortable balancing myself with weight overhead, so this seemed like a movement I could be good at.  And for the first round, that was the case.  Rachel did her 10 lunges, then Mark and I did our 10 lunges, with me being a little bit faster.  The same held true for our second set of 10 lunges.  But I was starting to feel the burn.

When we got to the manmakers, the thought was "just keep moving".  I had done these as part of the Barbulls program (they were dubbed Plentus-makers) and they were not pleasant.  Especially with 45 pound dumbbells.  The first half of the movement isn't awful, but transitioning into the squat clean and then the thruster is kinda horrific.  There was a very good reason that we were doing only 2 reps of these at a time.  Almost immediately I was behind Mark when it was our turn to do these.  I made sure that I was at least on the second rep before he finished his second rep, but my speed had slowed to a crawl.  Eventually we got through the 20th rep.

Rachel was in the zone and started knocking out deadlifts before she noticed that I was yelling at her that we needed to do double unders.  No matter, she grabbed her rope and managed to knock out 30-40 reps.  When it was my turn, I managed 5 reps.  Then I managed 4 reps.  Then I hit myself with the rope and called myself an asshole.  I did manage to get one bigger set in the teens in before turning it back over to Rachel.  She did another 40 or so and to get us to 102 reps.  I managed to pull it together to do 18 reps to finish off round one.

I was toast.  I had no idea how I was getting through round two much less round three.  Rachel and Mark held on for all 10 reps twice for the deadlifts, but I needed to break up my second set into two rounds of 5.  If I was slightly slower than Mark on the box jumps the first time around, I was glacially slow the second time around.  The team was now waiting around for me to finish.  Not good.  I got a tiny break as Rachel did her overhead lunges, but when it was my turn to lunge, it did not go well.  I did 2 lunges then dropped.  After taking some time to regroup, I managed to get the last 8 reps, but that left me a wreck with 10 more reps still to go.  Giulz came over and informed me that we would only be doing two rounds instead of three, which was the best thing anyone could have said to me at that point.  In the second set, I went 4 and 6 to get my 10 reps as my teammates patiently waited on me.

The manmakers were grueling.  Two reps doesn't sound like much, but those dumbbells felt like anchors as I worked my way through each piece of the movement.  The squat cleans sucked and the thrusters were even worse.  The sweat lake was forming between the two dumbbells as I slowly pushed through my reps, trying not to delay Mark and Rachel from finishing the workout.  At last we were done and only 120 double unders were keeping me from laying on the floor.  Rachel took care of the first 40 reps.  I did a set of 17 and a set of 6.  Rachel took us from 63 reps to over 100 and I finished out the round.  I don't remember our exact finish time, but it was a shade under 27 minutes.  If we did round three, it would almost certainly have been pushing 50 minutes.

I had earned my breakfast and I had earned a rest day.  Sunday was the Bridgeport Barbell Classic, where I would get to use real brains rather than fake brawn.  It would be a long day, but at least there would be no physical exertion involved.