Pull-Up Progress and K&Q Preview

Workout date: 7/15/15

Wednesday would be my last WOD before the annual King and Queen competition at KOP on Saturday.  Us old guys need our rest!  I must admit that if I was drawing up what I hoped the WOD would be, it would not have looked anything like what was programmed.  But I was intrigued by it and thought at the very least I could practice some elements of the workouts that will show up during King and Queen.

Wednesday's WOD was:

7 rounds:
3 ring dips
6 chest-to-bar pull-ups
9 KB swings (70/53)
*Every minute on the minute, do 3 bar touching burpees (jump from the bottom of the burpee and tap a pull-up bar above your head)

Burpees and KB swings will be prominent at King and Queen (as will be shown later).  Ring dips for me fall into a similar category as squats do: something I should probably be doing more of.  And the chest-to-bar pull-ups...well, this would be a testing ground.  Having recently completed 50 pull-ups in a workout, I now wanted to see how many of the chest-to-bar variety I could complete.  My max was 10 from the 15.2 Open workout.  Could I do all 42?  Nah, I didn't think so.  But getting through 3 rounds would be cool.  Just sayin...

The average time for this workout was in the neighborhood of 15 minutes with much lower times for those folks with strong pull-up form.  Since I was on the other end of that spectrum, I figured I'd need more than 15 minutes.  I didn't have a set time in mind, but if I was pushing 25 minutes, I'd likely be unhappy.  I'd only do chest-to-bar pull-ups until I felt that I was getting to the point that I was not keeping up the stimulus of the workout.  From there, I'd go to regular pull-ups.  If those failed, I'd go to ring rows.

This workout was a tough one to keep track of from the perspective that you're always moving.  It's a little bit like the dreaded Kalsu.  There is no point in taking a break because you're simply creating more work for yourself.  Case in point: I got an abacus to keep track of my rounds for this workout, but I found that I didn't really have time to slide the beads over between rounds.  Losing time during a workout like this one has a multiplicative effect: you end up doing more work, which makes you more tired, which slows you down, which forces you to do more work, and so on and so on.

The 7:30 class was just me, Rachel, and Linda, so we had plenty of room to operate.  We had the option of doing burpees under the pull-up bar or the monkey bars, depending where we were in the workout.  The monkey bars were closer to the rings, so if you were about to do dips, you did the burpees there.  Otherwise, you did them by the pull-up bars, where we would do the chest-to-bar pull-ups and the KB swings.

Since this workout really was a long, ab-crushing blur, I'll give you a recap of each of the movements instead:

• Bar-Touching Burpees: These were the silent killers of the workout.  Not bad in the early rounds, but when you've just finished pushing through these other exercises to the very last second of the minute and then have to do these, they suck.  Crawling began a few minutes in.  During the occasional times when I had no time to get to the next movement before the end of a minute, I got a few extra seconds to compose myself and tried to do these quicker.  I am not looking forward to doing even more of these on Saturday.
• Ring Dips: Not bad actually.  I'm always amazed at how well I do at ring dips given that I didn't have triceps until I was 36 years old.  And I already mentioned that I don't practice these a lot.  But sets of 3 were manageable.  I think it was round 5 where I did one ring dip and the buzzer went off to do burpees, so I had to break that set up.  Same thing happened in the last round, although I couldn't string the last 2 dips when I got back to them.  Still, getting through 21 ring dips was something I was proud of.  It wasn't quite 50 pull-ups, but it was in that realm.
• Chest-To-Bar Pull-Ups: The gauntlet!  After knocking out 3 burpees and 3 quick dips, I got to my pull-up bar.  I did 1 rep.  Then another.  Knocked out two more.  And then I failed several times before the burpee buzzer.  After doing burpees for minute two, I got my 5th chest-to-bar.  I made a couple more attempts and couldn't get the clincher for round one.  I did not want to spend two minutes on this workout without even touching the KB, so I made the decision at that point to switch to regular pull-ups.  And like they did last week, these went pretty smoothly.  I am still not stringing them, but I can deal with that another day.  For now, I am happy to know that I can do workouts at the gym that require pull-ups without using a band.  That is major progress for me.  I got through the final 37 pull-ups using my newfound (but still very ugly and uncontrolled) kip.  I originally thought this workout would be tremendously taxing on the arms, but it was my abs that were hurting.  Reaching up to the pull-up bar turned out to be a bit of a relief.  Who knew I could (sorta) like pull-ups?
• KB Swings: This was the aspect of the workout I was most confident about.  The 70 lb KB is not pleasant to swing, but it is no longer unbearable.  Having practiced sets of 10 with it, doing sets of 9 sounded very reasonable.  Unfortunately, because I was slow on the pull-up bar, I'd often get caught in the middle of a set when the burpee buzzer went off.  However, for the last round, the KB swings were all I had left.  Keith told me to hold on to the KB the whole way and I made sure that I did.

Final time: 18:41.  Not fast, but I was happy that I kept plugging away at this combination of movements, as none of them are really specialties of mine.  Linda finished right after me and Rachel soon after her, so it wasn't like I was 5 minutes behind the rest of the class either.  I went home feeling good about things.

****KING AND QUEEN PREVIEW****

For those unfamiliar with the King and Queen competition, it is the annual in-house competition at KOP.  Think of it as a mini-Crossfit Games for those of us who aren't headed to Carson, California in this lifetime.  Coaches are not allowed to participate, only the common folk.  This will mark my 3rd time competing in King and Queen.  Honestly, I wasn't terribly keen on the idea.  Being a scorekeeper/cheerleader sounded much better to me.  I would still get to hang out with everyone.  In years past, this competition had given me an idea of where I measure up in the gym, but I go so much these days that I know that information without doing 5 WODs over the course of a day.  But there was a push to get people to sign up, so I signed up.  And if I'm competing, you better believe I'm giving everything I've got to do well.

Below are the five WODs, along with how I think I will do in them.

WOD #1: Seven Minutes in Heaven

7 Minutes of Burpees requiring a jump to a target 6 inches beyond your normal reach

I am at a distinct disadvantage in this event.  I never played Seven Minutes in Heaven when I was younger.  I got to play Ten Seconds to Leave This Table and Eat Somewhere Else quite a bit, but I think the rules of that game may have been slightly different.

Burpees suck.  There's no getting around that.  Seven consecutive minutes of burpees sounds like punishment to me.  Wednesday's WOD gave me a little practice in terms of doing burpees and jumping to a target which was nice.  However, I suspect that I will be below average in this event.

WOD #2: Ringing of the Bells

50-40-30-20-10

KB Swings (55/35)

Anchored Ab-mat Sit-ups

Of the 5 WODs scheduled for Saturday, this is the one I am most unsure about. 

Pro: I have been training with the 70 lb KB and even occasionally the 80 lb, so the 55 lb KB should feel reasonable to me. 

Pro: For a guy with a belly, I tend to do sit-ups better than one might expect.

Con: 150 reps of each?  That's a lot of volume.  And it's expected to be hot on Saturday.

Con: I had trouble with anchored sit-ups the last time I tried them.  Need to practice these a little bit just to get used to the difference between these and butterfly sit-ups.

If this ends up being a bad event for me, I might as well skip the rest.  I think I will have a slightly above average result here.

WODs #3 and #4: Pillars of the Kingdom

1,000 meter row

3 minutes of ground to overhead using 185/125, 115/75, or 75/55

1,000 meter row

WOD #3 score: total time

WOD #4 score: total weight lifted

Yes, a WOD with some strategery!  I am a decent rower, but nothing special.  Shane has been helping me with my technique and I will continue practicing before Saturday, but I imagine that I will be mid-pack as far as my WOD #3 placing goes.

For WOD #4, it is an interesting dilemma.  Let's just start by saying there is no way in hell I could do 185, so scratch that.  But the decision between using 115 and 75 is tricky, especially with the 3 minute time domain.  My guess is that there probably won't be a huge difference in my score using either one so I probably shouldn't overthink it.  But I do think this is an event where I should do well.  Hopefully I will score big points on WOD #4.

WOD #5: A Crown of Thorns

Front Squat Ladder (must clean weight first)

After cleaning the barbell, athlete has 20 seconds to do 2 front squats

Weight ascends along the ladder

Men: 75-95-115-135-155-185-205-225-245-265

Women: 55-65-75-95-105-125-140-155-165-175

This one is billed as a front squat ladder (which I love!), but for me, it's a clean ladder.  I mentioned in an earlier post that my 1RM front squat is 45 pounds heavier than my 1RM clean, so if I manage to clean the weight, I would suspect that I'll be able to do 2 front squats with it (although I could just be flat out tired at this point in the day).  I will be highly disappointed if I don't get past 205.  Getting 225 would be tremendous for me.  Walking to station #9 would be the highlight of my day.  Along with WOD #4, this should be one of my better events of the day.

Nothing to do now but some light practice on form and to rest up for the big day.  Expect a very long blog post on Sunday night recapping how everything went down.