Monday's workout was a beast. When I first saw it posted online, I thought it would be difficult, but I had no idea it would crush me as badly as it did. Making things worse was that my poor performance took place in front of a packed house. And you know what that means. Lots of pity clapping at the end. I could go without some pity clapping for a while. But there were some bright spots along the way, not only for me, but for some others in the class, so on to the recap we go.
What was this terrifying workout we faced on Monday?
3 Rounds:
21 Toes-to-Bar
15 Shoot Throughs
75 Double Unders
(1 Minute Rest Between Rounds)
63 toes-to-bar? 225 double unders? Rest between rounds? That was all adding up to trouble. My hope was that I could get through the first round in a decent time so that if I fatigued in the final two rounds, I'd still have a respectable final time. And I really didn't think the shoot throughs would be that bad, but they ended up being the worst part of the workout. (Shoot throughs are a four-step movement using paralettes. You plank over the paralette before doing a push-up. Then you shoot your legs forward without letting them hit the ground. This leaves you in a dip position, which is the third part of the movement. To finish the rep, you must shoot your feet backwards to the starting position without hitting the ground. All easier said than done.)
The 6:30 class was friggin' huge. As in 16 people showed up for the class. Our gym really isn't big enough to do a workout like this with 16 people, so we split into two heats, with the second heat starting two minutes after the first heat. That helped a little bit, but it eventually became chaotic anyways. At least for me it did. Perhaps I take up too much space. Before the heats began, we warmed up with some double under practice and Ms. Anne Bohen got her first double under ever. A huge congratulations to one of the nicest ladies in the gym! We also did that thing where we do as many double unders as we can in one minute to gauge how we'll do in the workout. I did 52 (non-consecutive) and was left feeling tired like I normally do after that exercise. What has two thumbs and is ready to do 225 more? Not this guy.
We practiced shoot throughs and because there were only enough paralettes for 7 people, everyone else needed to use boxes. The paralettes were supposed to be about a foot over the ground, so I used 13" boxes to try and simulate them. The boxes were much more awkward than the paralettes. Am I making excuses already? You betcha! Last but not least, we got some toes-to-bar practice in as well. Stay on the high bar Dave, stay there!
I was working next to Matt Bohen for this workout. I love working out with Matt not only because he's a nice guy with a good sense of humor, but also because he's a little stronger than me and a lot younger. So it's a challenge to try and keep up with him. I drew heat 1 while he was in heat 2, so I'd actually be attempting to stay two minutes ahead of him. Didn't even manage that for one round, never mind 3 rounds. At least I started off impressively. When #keithie sent us on our way, I jumped up to the high bar and did 10 very efficient toes-to-bar before dropping to the floor, eliciting some "yeah Dave"s along the way. I basked in those 20 seconds of glory, as the next 32 minutes and change would not go so swimmingly. After a set of 6 and a set of 5 (neither as efficient as the initial 10), I was on to the shoot throughs.
When I got to the shoot throughs, I was unsure of where to place my hands. With the paralettes, you don't have to think about this. The paralettes look like pipes and you simply grasp the pipes. There was nothing to grasp on the boxes. You were planting your hand somewhere. When I started, I had my hands placed in the mid-section of the box, but that didn't feel right. So I moved my hands back closer to my body. That was somewhat better. Not as good as having something to clutch on to would have been, but you make do with what you're given. I was very slow on the shoot throughs. Even worse, I wasn't doing them RX. As I got tired, it was nearly impossible to keep my feet off the ground on the final backwards shooting through of my legs. It would have taken forever (my final time was close to that anyways) to manage 15 clean shoot throughs each round, so I accepted early on I was scaling.
The second heat got underway as I worked on my shoot throughs and before I finished my 15, Matt was chipping away at his shoot throughs. When I got to the double unders, things became very frustrating. It started off with my inability to do more than 1 rep before failing. For the first 5 reps, I did one double under, then hit myself with the rope. Doing 225 singles was not a recipe for success. Finally, I put together a set of over 20 in a row to feel mildly respectable again. The only problem was that I then needed some rest. In the meantime, most of heat two was now jumping rope with me and things got crowded. First I moved so I wouldn't run into Anne as she was jumping rope. Then I moved for Matt. Then Brian accidentally walked into my rope as I had a set going. It reached a point where I walked to the other side of the boxes and did my double unders in a narrow alley by the rings. I was at 61 reps when I strung together 14 in a row to end the first round. Despite starting two minutes after me, Matt finished his first round a few seconds before me. The plan of getting one good round in was out the window.
You won't believe this, but in round two, I actually went slower! (Ok, it's totally believable). Samson was hanging around and told me that I needed to snap my legs and really kick the bar on my toes-to-bar as I had abandoned that late in my first round. I gave him a grumpy reply, indicating that I was already tired and that my form was disintegrating. But he was right. Each time I jumped up to the high bar, I tried to do sets of 3 reps. I also tried to kick that bar with a quick flick of my feet. It was slow going, but I was determined to stay on the high bar. Towards the end of my 21 reps, I began experiencing grip issues as my hands had become extremely sweaty. That would be a round 3 problem.
The second round of shoot throughs was miserable. Despite accepting that this was going to be a scaled workout for me, I was still trying to meet RX standards when doing these. I tried to be consistent with sets of 2 before shaking out my arms. But as my energy levels dropped, there was no avoiding my feet hitting the ground on the final backwards shoot through. Again, I tried to keep up with Matt as much as possible and I did, having only 2 shoot throughs left when he got to his double unders. Double unders continued to be frustrating, but I didn't have nearly as much of a problem at the beginning of this round as I had in the first round. I was also a little more consistent in putting together longer sets. At the end of round 2, I had only lost a few more seconds to Matt. There was still a shot of catching him in the final round.
My sweat issues came to the forefront in round three. My grip kept slipping as I desperately tried to hold on to the high bar in hopes of doing 3 reps per set. As I felt the bar get slimy, I simply moved over one space and used the neighboring bar. After all, nearly everyone was done with their toes-to-bar. Some people were done with the entire workout. So I had fresh non-slimy bars to choose from. The problem was that no amount of drying off my hands was working. I ended up using 4 different bars to get through the final 21 toes-to-bar. With 3 reps remaining, I did 2 reps then felt my hands slipping. I attempted to re-grip, not wanting to drop off the bar with only 1 rep to go. I did my kip, swung my feet towards the bar, and missed by a solid 12 inches. Not great. I dropped down, wiped off my hands one more time, and got the last rep in.
Matt was working on his shoot throughs as I became keenly aware that we were amongst the last people in the class to still be working. I ripped off my tape and my grips because those things were soaked and I no longer needed them. The top of my boxes were also becoming slimy and I didn't need to slip while doing these. I managed a set of three to begin as I wanted to use my anger at missing the last toes-to-bar to fuel me through these final 15 shoot throughs. It was very short-lived though. Soon I was back to sets of 1 or 2, depending on how tired I was. With 6 reps to go, Matt was headed to his jump rope. I focused on finishing these 6 reps in 3 sets. My form had gotten very ugly, but I was doing my best to at least have 1 good rep in those sets of 2. While I neared the end of the shoot throughs, Matt went all rock star on me. He put together a huge set of unbroken double unders, to the point where I wondered whether he was going to do all 75 in a row to cap off the workout. I'm not sure how many he actually did, but I knew he would be close to finished when I got over to my rope.
I left my little alley and took up residence near Matt for the final set of double unders. We were the only two still working, so I saw no reason not to do my last set in the large open area that used to be filled with 6:30 athletes jumping rope. Chip away, chip away, chip away. That was all I could tell myself. As expected, Matt was done soon after I started, leaving me by myself to weave together small sets and not-so-small breaks. The pity clapping was reaching a crescendo as I neared 70 reps. The rope hit me at 72 reps and I shook my head and laughed. 73, 74, fail. One more head shake and one more frustrated laugh before doing the 75th rep and being done with it all. Final time: 32:48.
To put into perspective how bad that final time was, I will let you know that the best time of the day for that workout was 13:49. I finished almost 20 minutes later. Yikes. For the most part, people finished in the 18-22 minute time frame, meaning I was 10 minutes worse than average. Yikes once more. But I am trying to take a more positive view on things and it didn't take me very long to key in on the positives of this workout. I stayed on the high bar the entire time, no matter how tired I got doing toes-to-bar. I strung together a very professional looking set of 10 toes-to-bar at the beginning of the workout, showing me that I have the ability to do stuff like that if I continue to practice. Finally, I did 225 double unders. At the beginning of the year, I would have thought about scaling a workout with 25 double unders. Now I managed to do 225 of them (albeit very slowly). So there's been a lot of progress on that front.
After all of that misery, it was time to go home, right? Nah, Monday classes are almost always followed up by some strength work. And since the back squat program was my greatest success of 2015, why not start up another one? To be clear, I will be much more laid back about this one. I still want to do it correctly, but I don't have some big goal that I'm chasing after as I did when I was pursuing 300. I'm doing a second iteration simply because I think the strength I'm building from squatting will help with other movements. So I kicked things off with a 6x2 session at my new "light" weight of 265 pounds, a 30 pound increase from the last program. Did it feel light? Not exactly. Then again, it didn't feel as bad as I was expecting either. Instead of thinking about it as 265 pounds, I thought about it as 80% of my PR. And I knew I should be able to handle that.
Tuesday preview: Could I reach another major goal of mine in the same week that I conquered 300 pounds on my back squat? Maybe...
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