I am pretty close with my fellow athletes at KOP. The Monday workout would bring a whole new level of closeness between those who partnered up for the WOD. Here are the details for Monday's WOD:
"Two Peas in a WOD" (aka "Who Wants To Be A Proctologist?")
Partner WOD
5 rounds:
400 meter run (Both partners must run together)
30 snatches (95/65)
50 foot handstand walk
The tricky part there is the handstand walk, as that is something most of us in the gym do not have in our arsenal. The scale was to have your partner hold your legs up while you walked on your hands. I had done this once before where my partner stood on the left side of me and held one of my legs while I balanced and walked along. Except I didn't balance so well and would eventually veer to the right during the handstand walk.
As I watched the 5:30 class finish up their workout, I was struck by the odd techniques being used for the handstand walk. In particular, there seemed to be one favorite, which I will call "the vertical wheelbarrow". Hmmm...how does one accurately describe this technique? I can't do it justice. So I'll let Chazz Michael Michaels and Jimmy MacElroy demonstrate it for you:
Cue the Vertical Wheelbarrow at 2:32 of this video
So yeah, that's an interesting look. But apparently it was very effective. As we got warmed up in the 6:30 class, this was the technique that #keithie was advocating for the handstand walks and it is the one we eventually used. I'm not sure I would have had the strength to do the "propped up on one side" version given all the snatches we were doing, so maybe safety trumped modesty in this workout. The other scale was a regular wheelbarrow, although #keithie said we should do 100 feet rather than 50 feet if we chose this scale.
With 6 girls and 4 guys in the class, partnering up by gender was easy enough. When all was said and done, we ended up with the following pairings:
Danielle/"Megs"
Rachel/Michal
Alex/Steph C
Borden/Brian
Sir Cline/Me
Me and my partner had different concerns about this workout. Sir Cline was worried about using 95 pounds for the snatches, originally opting for 85 pounds (and his own barbell) instead. But once he got warmed up, he became confident in his ability to handle 95 pounds, so we ended up sharing a barbell. My concern was that I wouldn't be able to keep up with Cline on the runs. Like all the runs. He was going to be faster than me fresh and he was going to be faster than me when I inevitably fatigued during this workout. I didn't want to slow him up, but there wasn't much I was going to be able to do about it. The good news is he would get a little rest before starting each round of snatches (silver lining?).
Round 1: We headed over to the barrier across from the gym and got underway. Naturally, Cline took off from the rest of the pack. I tried to pick it up a little from my normal pace, but I didn't want to go all out just to keep up with my partner. Cline was easily the first one back, while I had separated myself from the rest of the group running. We were the first team to start on the snatches. The second team back was Rachel and Michal. And thus, a short-lived rivalry began. Actually, that's not completely true. During the warmup, Cline and I crushed the girls in the wheelbarrow walks down the gym and back. We even trash-talked them as they slowly came back down the gym. Never be afraid to puff your chest out and let people know that you won the warmup!
Cline and I had agreed to alternate back and forth doing 5 snatches until we reached 30. During that first round, we moved quickly, although not as quickly as the girls. Each team finished their 30th rep at the same time and moved down to opposite ends of the gym for the handstand walk. This would be where Cline found out what a terrible vertical wheelbarrow partner I am. I kept struggling to grip his ankles in a way that would get him started quickly, but also keep him vertical as we went down the gym. I had to get him off the ground and then re-grip, which was a time waster. Then I struggled to keep him vertical because I didn't want to push too hard and have him flip over. Finally, I messed up our communication as well. When we practiced the vertical wheelbarrow during warmups, we had talked about each doing 25 feet per round. As we got to the 25 foot mark, I thought Cline said "good", meaning he was done and we should switch. But what he said was "I'm good", meaning he could go the entire 50 foot distance. So I put him down and we wasted more time switching before finishing the walk. The girls had opened up a lead on us.
Round 2: Cline and I actually ran together for round 2 and we didn't let the girls extend their lead during the 400 meters. But similar to round 1, the girls motored through the snatches at a super-human pace, while Cline and I could only muster normal human speed. Cline handled the entire 50 foot handstand walk (I only need to be told once!).
Round 3: Again, Cline and I ran together and we discussed the upcoming snatches. He wanted me to do more of them in the next round, so we decided to divide it up 4-6-4-6-4-6. I had worried about stringing together a lot of snatches because that always feels awkward to me, but I wasn't having as much trouble this night. I had good form, staying in my heels. I was feeling it in my hamstrings, which was a good sign. The weight felt borderline light. After stringing sets of 5, I was able to string sets of 6 in this round. But I was getting winded. When I finished up snatch #30, I came over to the start of the handstand walk and let Cline know I needed a few seconds to get my breath back. He did the entire walk again.
Round 4: The girls had built a lead of more than 200 meters. My legs felt very heavy. Cline was running ahead of me, only turning around to tell me things like "lengthen your stride". As we headed back toward the gym, I tried to pick it up so that Cline wouldn't be waiting on me to do snatches. For the third round in a row, we passed Alex and Steph near Frosty Falls, indicating we were about 150 meters ahead of them. During my second set of 6 snatches, I got to the third rep and came way up on my toes and did my ugliest rep of the night. Of course, it had to be right when #keithie was walking by so that I could look extra stupid. I dropped the barbell for the first time, re-grouped, and did the last 3 snatches before stringing my last 6. Then I told Cline I would do the handstand walk. He was much better than me as the support guy. About halfway through the walk, my sweaty hand slipped. Cline kept pushing my legs and my shoulder buckled. I needed to come down, dry my hands, and restart. There were no problems the rest of the way.
Round 5: "Let's go Dave! Push!" Cline had loads of energy as I plodded along on the final run. I wanted to go faster, but the tank was near empty. Plus my mind was thinking "you still have 18 more snatches". Rachel and Michal were finishing their last run as we headed out. As I turned around at the 200 meter mark, I saw Alex flying through her run, as she was her team's Cline and Steph was her team's Dave. When she went by me, I yelled to Cline to get moving as Alex was coming after him. It didn't really matter that much, since they would both have to wait on their partners to finish the run, but I wanted to give Cline some incentive to go fast and not wait on his dawdling partner. I did my best to stay ahead of Steph. When we got to the snatches, I repeated the pattern of round 4, needing to break my middle set of 6 into two sets of 3. This was due to a mixture of fatigue and my rapidly deteriorating grip strength. On the last set of 6, I was not dropping no matter what. We were slightly ahead of Alex and Steph when Cline began the final handstand walk. I did my best to keep him vertical with the little energy I had left as he went the length of the gym. Final time: 28:00.
It is remarkable that it took 28 minutes to do that workout because it felt like there were no breaks along the way and I don't have the stamina to maintain a solid pace for that long. Were there breaks along the way? Sure, but I think we pushed each other to make sure those breaks were kept to a minimum. While my cardio still leaves a lot to be desired, I was happy with how I did during the snatch portion of this workout. I did 84 reps at 95 pounds and never stopped due to fatigue. My form was solid for the most part. The feeling in my hamstrings left no doubt about that.
At Open Strength, I practiced my pull-up form despite not having my new grips yet. I was working on doing a re-grip of the bar while kipping my pull-ups. At a certain point during a set, your hands start to slide off the bar and you need to be able to re-grip seamlessly to keep the set going. I tried to do sets of 3 and then re-grip, but each time I went to re-grip, I'd mess up that third rep and kill my momentum. My pull-up coach told me that I should think about it like revving up a motorcycle and I tried that, but after several attempts of doing reps and "motorcycling", I was still at a loss on how to re-grip. I might have more confidence with this when I have new grips to protect my hands, so I'll revisit this again when they come in.
I wasn't sure what else to do during Open Strength, but I felt like I should do something. Overhead lunges felt like something I needed to do, but I was doing my heavy back squat session on Tuesday, so it seemed like a bad idea to do those on Monday night. I settled on some long overdue bench press work, doing 3 sets of 8 reps at 155 pounds before calling it a night.
Tuesday preview: A workout with multiple four minute rest periods. You know what that means.
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