A Bad One To Come Back To

Workout date: 8/31/15

I would love to say that a week in Maine along with a weekend in Albany for my fantasy football draft resulted in me coming back to the gym full of confidence about the condition of my back.  After all, it wasn't like I did anything athletic during that time.  Just a bunch of eating, drinking, acting like a tourist, mixed in with the occasional heating pad on my back.  The "twinge" I had in my back was effectively gone, but in its place was a general soreness that seemed to be lingering on.  Did it help matters that my chair collapsed during our fantasy football draft, resulting in me tumbling backwards off my buddy's small deck on to the grass behind me?  No, it did not.  Did I impress my friends by not spilling a drop of my beer during the fall?  Go ahead, Colonel Jessup, you tell them:

I might not be able to do pull-ups, but hey, I've mastered some important life skills.

Luckily, the 8/31 WOD was not something that would be taxing on my back.  But a week of beer and lobster rolls would leave me in bad shape for this one:

EMOM for 20 Minutes:  (Every Minute On the Minute)

Odd Minutes - 40 Double Unders

Even Minutes - 12 Burpees

I signed up for the 6:30 class, but so did 14 of my friends.  And as has been the case all summer, it was brutally hot inside of the gym.  As we warmed up, Giulz saw me and let me know that this workout was a bad one to come back to.  Not exactly what you want to hear before the workout.  Keith didn't need to show us how to do burpees, but he did put us through a double under progression during the warmup.  Finally, he had us see how many we could do in 45 seconds.  I struggled a bit, but managed to do 34 of them.  Then Keith informed us that we should aim for this number during the workout.  Somehow I didn't see myself knocking out 34 double unders ten different times during the workout when I barely managed that amount completely fresh (albeit with 15 seconds less than I would have in the WOD).

As I mentally prepared for the workout, my focus was on the double unders.  First off, there was no way I was doing 120 burpees during this WOD, so going after that was pointless.  And the burpees were more of a test of cardio, which I knew would be lacking my first day back.  Double unders were a skill that I was mediocre at, especially as I got tired.  So if I could manage to keep doing a solid number of double unders during the ten sets of the workout, I would be satisfied with the result.

We got ready to go and as I stood there with jump rope in hand, I realized how much trouble I was in.  To my right was Michal, who was going to smoke this workout.  To my left was Chloe, a girl from the Teens class who had already managed to get on the white board for most consecutive pull-ups and had gotten her first muscle-up without a problem.  She was certainly not going to have cardio issues.  That meant I would need to put blinders on as much as I could for the next 20 minutes and not get bogged down in how quickly my rock star neighbors were knocking out reps.

For round one, I decided to get crazy.  Having done 34 double unders in the warmup, I thought it was worth a try to make a run for 40 double unders in that first round.  After that, I could scale back my reps as necessary.  I think I was in the neighborhood of 53-54 seconds when I got my 40th double under.  I had won the battle and now I was about to lose the war.  My double under victory was short-lived as I hit the deck to perform the first of 10 burpees that I would complete during my first round of that movement.  And when the clock buzzed to tell me it was double under time again, I was in desperate need of some oxygen.  Not good at all.

My plan was to do 25 double unders per round the rest of the way, but I kept tripping over my rope during that second double under round.  Worried that I would run out of time, I decided to stop after 20 double unders, giving me a few seconds to pause before doing burpees.  The burpees were slow and I'm sure there were a couple that I crawled through, but I managed to finish 8 of them.  For rounds three and four, I did 20 double unders and 8 burpees.  However, the burpees were almost exclusively crawls now and I was being forced to use the first 10 seconds of the next double under round to get my breath.  At that point, I made the decision to trim the burpees down to 6 the rest of the way.

The fifth round of double unders was my next trouble point along the way.  I tried several times to get my first rep, but kept hitting myself with the rope.  Sweat was flying everywhere and I was tired.  I took a peek over to my right and saw Michal had finished 40 reps already.  It also reminded me how she regularly tells me to remain calm when I get frustrated during the workout.  I stood still and said to myself "calm...calm...calm".  I twirled the rope and got my first double under, following it up with 19 more in a row.  I had gotten my 20 reps with only a few seconds to spare.  And I was pumped as I threw my rope to the floor.  I would need to repeat this process during the sixth round and the eighth round as I struggled to go straight from the burpees into the double unders.  But each time I was able to completely calm myself, I was able to get 20 in a row.

By the end of the workout, I had done 220 double unders and 70 burpees.  Not outstanding, but not too shabby for my first day back.  I was tired, but pleased that I got through as many double unders as I did.  It would have been disappointing falling short of 20 reps in any of those rounds.

Afterwards, I tested my back for the first time since aggravating it a couple weeks before.  Jim and Leslie had told me to buy a weightlifting belt, but I hadn't grabbed one yet.  Rachel let me borrow hers and I put it on while doing a few sets of back squats.  I did 6 reps at 135 and 6 reps at 185 before really testing my back out with 6 reps at 235.  It wasn't pretty and wearing the belt felt strange, but I got through it.  More importantly, there wasn't any back pain to speak of.  I would just need to get used to wearing a weightlifting belt during open strength classes.

Tuesday: The back squat program begins again!