Internet Connection

Workout date: 11/7/15

I used Friday as a recovery day, but I probably needed more than one day.  The squat clean/deadlift/rope climb workout did a number on my arms.  Add on my recent devotion/obsession with getting better at pull-ups and I have likely gotten to the point where it would be wise to let my upper body chill for a bit.  I have woken up with sore shoulders more regularly than I'm accustomed to and that was once again the case when I woke up pre-sunrise to get ready for Competitors Class on Saturday morning.

One of my biggest struggles when I first started Crossfit was waiting until 10pm for what the next day's workout would be.  Just tell us already!  Why do I have to stay up (ok, that's a lie, I'm a night owl) to find out what we're doing tomorrow?  With Competitors Class, you don't even have that luxury.  You show up at 7ish and whoever is coaching the class takes 10 minutes to write down all of the horrendous things you'll be doing.  What was on the docket for this Saturday?

Olympic lifting: 1RM Jerk
12 min AMRAP (individual): 3 snatches (135/105), 6 clean and jerks (135/105), 9 chest-to-bar, 54 double unders
10 min AMRAP (6 person team): 60 wall balls (20# to 10'/14# to 9'), 60 pull-ups, 60 burpees, 60 toes-to-bar, with 1 athlete rowing for max meters

Things got off to a bad start when...well, when I got in the shower.  I generally have decent mobility in terms of touching my hands behind my back (think of this as using one hand to soap up your upper back, one to soap up your lower back, and then have them high-five somewhere in the middle).  On this morning, I couldn't get them anywhere close to each other.  Fast forward to the warmup where I was trying to limber up using a PVC pipe and experiencing all sorts of soreness.  Not a good sign.

It was time to work on the jerk.  It had been written down originally as though we were doing 8 lifts.  Then it became seven.  Then a clock ran for a little bit, then stopped, then was reset and set in motion a second time.  It doesn't take much to confuse me this early in the morning on a weekend, but I honestly had no idea what we were doing.  My plan was to keep doing lifts until they told us we were moving on to the next section of class.  I set up a rack and put 135 pounds on the bar.  Seemed like a reasonable starting point as my 1RM Jerk is 230 pounds.  I took it off the rack and went to jerk it.  I got the bar over my head, but it didn't feel comfortable at all.  I tried to remain optimistic.  Perhaps I would loosen up as I went along.  Maybe my body was still waking up.  I added 20 pounds to the bar for my second lift.

Sure sign that you don't have your A game: failing on a lift that is 75 pounds lighter than your personal best.  I went to jerk 155 and my body did not cooperate.  I started considering whether or not it was a good idea to continue with the class.  I decided to take some extra time before lifting again, spending some time with a band trying to stretch out my shoulders.  When I felt ready, I came back to the rack and jerked 155 without too much problem.  Added 20 more pounds.  The jerk at 175 did not feel great, but it was a successful lift.  Let's add 20 more pounds!  195 pounds was still not very close to my personal best, but it felt like a ton that morning.  The lift was identical to my earlier failed attempt at 155.  I knew at that point that no amount of stretching was going to help me out.  Better to call it a day in terms of heavy jerks.

With that finished, we moved on to the individual AMRAP.  Everyone split into groups of two and we went in two heats so that each person had a judge to count their reps (and sadistically no rep them when they did not do a legit rep).  Why was that necessary?  Some of the attendees in Competitors Class were shockingly there to compete.  This was the final workout for the Crossfit Liftoff competition.  As a result, some strict judging was required.  The rest of us not competing simply went along with the same format.  My partner for this workout was Jenna, aka Intern, aka Internet.

I tend to go second whenever I partner up with somebody as I'm never terribly eager to lead things off, but I got the impression that Jenna wasn't keen on going first either.  So I went first.  I wasn't expecting much out of this workout.  With my shoulder mobility lacking, snatches, clean and jerks, and chest-to-bar could all be problematic.  Mix in the fact that I have been doing sparse double under practice and it all added up to a very low score.  It ended up going better than expected though.  I made two good scaling decisions in using 115 for the barbell weight and doing regular pull-ups rather than attempting chest-to-bar.  And I think I finally loosened up as I moved through this 12 minute AMRAP.

Jill A was working out directly in front of me during this heat and I expected her to crush me, but I managed to stay with her for quite a while.  We were fairly synchronized through the snatches and clean and jerks in round 1.  The pull-up bar was where I expected her to leave me in the dust, but I wasn't too far behind her in getting to my jump rope.  Despite only managing smaller sets of double unders, I didn't lose a lot more ground to her before returning to my barbell.

When I got to the barbell, I made up the gap.  While I had moved at a very controlled pace through the barbell movements during the first round, I picked up my speed a little bit in round two.  I guess my jerk failure had left me thinking that 115 would still be dicey for 9 reps, but it wasn't all that bad.  I didn't string any of the snatches or clean and jerks, but I didn't take any sort of break between all of the singles.  Jill and I moved over to the pull-up bar in unison again.  The bad news for me is that Jill can butterfly pull-ups like crazy, whereas I had reached the "do 1 rep, drop off the bar, tell yourself to get right back on the bar, do another rep" stage of the proceedings.  As one might expect, I fell behind yet again.

My second double under round was not much different from the first in terms of how big my sets were.  I had a little more difficulty getting started, only managing 1 rep several times in a row before hitting myself with the rope.  Eventually I settled in and completed some sets of about 12-15 reps.  With 2 rounds down, the clock was nearing 9 minutes.  Finishing three full rounds was not looking realistic.

Knowing that I might be able to add some cheap reps to my final score if I could get to my jump rope a third time, I attacked the barbell movements.  Still did quick singles, but I was all over the barbell each time I dropped it to the ground.  Drop and go, drop and go, drop and go.  I was knocking out my 5th clean and jerk when Jill headed back to the pull-up bar.  Only a single rep behind her.  Not too shabby.  Of course, I knew my maniac pace on the barbell was going to leave me winded on the pull-ups, but that was a secondary concern at this point.

Nine more pull-ups.  I could handle that.  At least that was the line of BS that I was feeding myself as I stood there panting underneath the bar.  My pull-up form has actually been pretty good when it comes to doing singles.  I'm usually getting my chin well over the bar each time, so even when I'm tired I tend not to no rep.  Stringing pull-ups when I'm tired has not worked out so well and is something I need to continue to work on.  As time updates were being shouted out ("one minute!", "45 seconds!"), I kept telling myself to raise my arms and jump back on the bar.  With under 30 seconds remaining, I finished my last pull-up.

With time ticking down, I wasn't concerned about my double under form or needing a break.  I had to keep twirling that rope until time was called.  For once, I didn't mess up early on in my first set.  I was taking huge, inefficient jumps, but I didn't want the rope to hit me before the clock hit 12:00.  At around 15 reps, I wanted to stop as my legs were tired, but I knew there was only about 10 more seconds to go.  I kept jumping and jumping before someone mercifully yelled time.  It was my best set of the day as I finished off the workout with 26 consecutive reps.  Final score: 188.

It was now my turn to judge and score for Jenna and before we even started she revealed a couple of things that I was completely unaware of: that she struggled with pull-ups and double unders.  Because Jenna is a coach at the gym, I assumed that she could do these in her sleep.  That was not the case.  As was the case for me, these were still very much a work in progress for Jenna, so much so that she did not think she could complete 1 full round in 12 minutes.  That seemed extreme to me.  I know Jenna is a good athlete.  After a little more discussion, I found out that she was able to do some strict pull-ups and that, while she didn't string double unders, she could often alternate between single unders and double unders.  I let Jenna know that she was definitely finishing a full round.

Heat two started and Jenna had little trouble with the snatches or the clean and jerks.  When she got to the pull-up bar and attempted her first rep, I saw myself.  Jenna had told me that she struggled with kipping (sounds like someone I know).  When she went to do her first rep, she swung underneath the bar, then tucked up almost into a fetal position as she attempted to get her chin over the bar.  She was unable to, and not only that, came off the bar with a hurt shoulder for her troubles.  Jenna seemed uncertain that she was going to get 1 rep before the 12 minutes was up, never mind 9.  This all seemed way too familiar to me.

I asked Jenna if she could set up as though she was about to attempt a kipping pull-up.  I watched where she placed her hands and noticed they were very wide.  This used to be the way I set my hands on the bar.  The idea was that the wider you made your arms, the less range of motion.  In my mind, less range of motion was optimal because I sucked at pull-ups.  If I only needed to do half of the range of motion of a normal grip pull-up with this technique, then I was all for it.  The problem was that I'd get tired and my right arm would wildly swing in to the left.  It was impossible to kip like that, although I could still manage a strict pull-up or two when in that position.  Eventually I figured out that my body was telling me to narrow my grip as I had the strength to handle a greater range of motion, as evidenced by my ability to do strict pull-ups.

I relayed this information to Jenna.  I asked her to try the narrower grip.  I also told her that I often did the fetal position thing too and that she should shoot her feet towards the floor violently when ever she came to the stopping point in her kip.  I let her know I'd yell "shoot!" each time she got to that point.  With these adjustments in mind, she was ready to try again.  She swung underneath the bar, came into the fetal position, and began to pull her chin to the bar.  I yelled "shoot!" and she shot her legs towards the floor.  The extra momentum allowed her to pull her chin well over the bar.  She attempted to swing back down and do another rep, but couldn't manage a second one.  After a short break, she repeated this process a second time.  The first rep would be great, but the second rep was not working out.  I told her that it might be best to concentrate on fast singles, as she was wasting energy trying to string her reps.

From that point on, Jenna was a machine.  She made seven more attempts and put together seven successful reps.  She was now just 54 double unders away from finishing round one with plenty of time to go.  She grabbed her jump rope and started putting together smallish sets like the ones I had been doing.  My only concern for her was that she likes to jump backwards as she does her reps and I worried that her rope was going to catch a bench or a GHD.  With about 5 minutes left in the workout, Jenna had done what she said she couldn't do: finished a full round.  I may have been more psyched than she was.  I let her know she was finishing a second round of pull-ups.

The snatches and clean and jerks were once again not much of a problem for Jenna and we were back at the pull-up bar.  I knew it would be tight getting in all 9 reps before the clock hit 12 minutes, but she could do it.  One by one, she was knocking out pull-ups, but with the breaks in between, I wasn't sure she was going to finish.  With 30 seconds left, she still had two reps to go.  She got on the bar, swung through, shot down her legs, and completed rep #8.  Jenna had been composing herself between reps, but with under 15 seconds left, she knew she had to go right after that final rep.  She rushed it a bit and couldn't quite get it, ending an impressive streak of 17 successful pull-ups in a row.  Time ran out.  But I wanted her to get two full rounds.  It didn't matter that the clock had struck 12.  She needed to know that next time she had pull-ups in a workout that she could look back on this and remember that she completed two full rounds of pull-ups.  Jenna took her time, got back on the bar, and knocked out one last solid pull-up.  It was my favorite part of the class.

After reading all of that, you would think that we were done for the day, right?  Not exactly.  Aimee, Cate, Giulz, Keith, and Possum are competing in the Winter Warmer event next weekend and wanted to practice one of the workouts.  They asked me to join in, mainly to be the rower, while they cycled through a series of wall balls, pull-ups, burpees, and toes-to-bar.  I was more than happy to stay on the rower.  I spoke with Possum and we worked out a system of alternating on the rower.  Keith was going to sub in as well, but I told him that he should probably stick with the skill components of this workout, mainly because that would keep me away from the skill components.  (Did I mention that I was by far the least skilled and least athletic member of this team?  Because I was.)  My contribution would be to row for as long as I could at a fast pace.  Originally we thought that would be 500 meters, but switching rowers takes up precious time and I wanted to keep the switching to a minimum.  So I rowed for 700 meters (or 750 if you count the runout as we switched).  While Possum did the next 750 meters, I helped out with 10 burpees to break things up for Aimee, Cate, Giulz, and Keith.  When I got back on the rower, I went for another 700 meters, with Possum rowing the remainder of the 10 minutes.  We ended up with 2,603 meters total.  Not sure how many skill reps were completed.

Monday preview: No Sunday workout as I went out of town for my annual football game with my buddies.  But Monday brings the final attempt at a workout I only managed to do RX for the first time 3 months ago.  Her name is Helen.