Softcore Punk

Workout dates: 11/2/15 and 11/3/15

A bit behind on the blogs, aren't you Dave?  Well, it's for a good cause (I think).  Over the last few days, I have been putting together a spreadsheet that will supplement the blog.  In it, all of my workouts from 2015 will be listed along with my performances in those workouts.  It will also include a tab showing how I did in workouts that I repeated during the year and a tab showing where I was at the beginning of the year and where I am now.  With the end of the year closing in, I thought it was important to have something that could wrap up the year concisely.  Because let's face it, even I don't want to go back and read nearly 200 posts all over again.

I'm not sure if I'll include a link to it on the blog before year-end.  Part of me is excited to share it because it was a real eye-opener to me as I was putting it together.  Another part of me thinks I should wait and produce it in late December for maximum effect.  I'm still torn on that.  What I can say is that it is nearly complete and I won't have to spend a lot more time on it.  And that means I can get back to blogging.  So let's get back to where I left off: the aftermath of Wolverine.

I decided not to gross all of you out with the pictures of my ripped hands post-Wolverine, but I had several people at the gym look at them and say "oh, that's bad".  It hasn't been until recently that I've really done a lot of pull-ups, but there have been occasions in the past where I've ripped my hands.  It's the reason I started buying grips for my hands.  That and because I'm a huge wimp and can't deal with ouchies on my handsies.  Seriously though, having ripped hands limits a lot of what you can do at the gym.  You can tape them up while they are healing, but you still feel the pain.  And if you put them through trauma while they're healing, then your healing period is probably going to go on longer than it would have if you just sat at home letting them recover.  Except I'm not much of a "sit at home, let things recover" kinda guy.

My plan was to take Sunday off and hit the gym again on Monday, but I decided to skip the WOD.  It is pretty rare that I'll skip a WOD on a day that I plan to work out on, but the workout was heavily focused on hang power snatches, something that I've done a lot of recently.  Maybe I've grown accustomed to "constantly varied" and can't handle doing the same specific movement 3-4 times in the same month, but when I saw the WOD on the KOP blog, I immediately thought "pass".  The alternative was to go to Open Strength.  I needed to do a 6x2 back squat session anyway.  I could come up with other things to work on afterwards.

One problem: Monday Open Strength now begins in the annex and it was very popular this night.  I had gotten there in time to secure a rack to do my back squats, but soon things were crowded in there.  Several people seemed to be biding their time waiting for a rack to open up.  I decided to change my plans.  I didn't want to hog a rack while other people needed it.  And I could finish my back squats quickly, opening up a rack for someone else.  I would do that, then go back over to the main gym and find some real estate to do skill work.  The 6x2 session wasn't much different than previous installments.  I did the sets quickly, but 265 pounds still feels heavy-ish.  I put my weights away, let one of the guys know that he could have my rack, and headed over to the main gym.

Oops.  When I got to the main gym, the regular class was going on, but there were also several other classes (Intro/fundamentals?  Personal training?  Steph's women's class?) taking up space.  My plan was to hide in the area by the rings as no one was usually over there unless they were stretching.  I could work on some ring dips, something I don't practice nearly enough.  Except there was a class in there.  The only area that was unoccupied was a section near the wall under the low pull-up bars.  I had no desire to do anything pull-up related, so I decided to see how many wall balls I could string in a row.  My goal is to one day get 50 in a row, a goal that doesn't seem so far-fetched after stringing 40 in a workout a few weeks ago.  As the regular class got started on their cash out, I went to work on the wall balls.  Focusing on my breathing and my form has helped me tremendously with wall balls.  And since this wasn't part of a WOD, there was no sense of panic as I got past 20, then 30 reps.  As I neared 40 reps, I began to struggle, but I told myself that if I got 40, I could find the energy to do the last 10.  I may have lied to myself.  #41 required a jump to get the ball barely over the 10' line.  #42 and #43 needed even more of a jump to reach that height.  #44 was borderline as far as the entire ball clearing the line.  I let the ball drop.  I was breathing heavy and there was almost no chance that I would have gotten the ball high enough for rep #45.  So my new high mark for consecutive wall balls stands at 44.

The next night gave me a WOD I was interested in doing.  When I write out what the WOD was, you'll wonder why, since it clearly was going to work all the parts of my body that Wolverine had damaged.  Here's the 11/3 WOD:

30 Front Squats (205/135)
60 Toes-To-Bar
90 KB Swings (55/35)

Inner monologue:  60 toes-to bar?  Are you nuts?  That requires hanging from the bar in the same manner you do pull-ups.  Which means beating up those torn hands!  That WOD also sounds like a lot of core strength is required and you destroyed what you call a core during Wolverine.  Remember how you can't laugh or sneeze without feeling pain?  That's what that is, dummy!

My inner monologue can be so mean sometimes.  Anyway, I wanted to take this on for two reasons.  First, I had practiced stringing toes-to-bar recently and thought I might be able to get through a large number quicker than I had in the past.  It wasn't that long ago that completing 120 pull-ups seemed like an impossibility.  Maybe I could make progress on 60 toes-to-bar.  Second, I have struggled a lot with KB swings in the latter portion of the year.  Struggles mean a lot more practice is needed and if 90 reps didn't scream "a lot more practice", then I don't know what would.

I was in the 7:30 class with Julia, Michal, Brian, and Sheila.  At least there would be a lot more room to operate than what I had encountered the night before!  I chose 155 for my front squat weight.  Originally I was going to go with 165, but my warmup with 135 felt a little heavier than I expected and I didn't want to choose a weight that was going to crush me before I even got to the sections of the workout that would likely be the most challenging.  With that same idea in mind, I didn't go crazy with a really huge set to begin the workout.  My first set was 12 reps.  I took a break, then did 10 more.  Another break and then I knocked out the last 8 reps.  The weight wasn't difficult from a strength perspective, but the front squats had tested my cardio more than I had planned.  My breathing was rapid as I made my way over to the high bar.

In the past, I've gone to the low bar to do fast singles for toes-to-bar.  Same thing with pull-ups.  I've used the high bar because I can't string reps on the low bar, but if I'm at the point where I can only do singles, there is no point in using the high bar.  However, I don't want to rely on that as a crutch anymore.  I'm sure there have been times when I could still have strung a few reps together in a workout, only to give up and go to the low bar because it is easier.  I need to dig a little deeper when it comes to bar movements.  I did all 120 pull-ups on the high bar during Wolverine.  And I was doing all 60 toes-to-bar on the high bar for this workout.

My hope was to knock out a big set of around 10, take a break, then follow it up with a couple sets of 5.  That would complete a third of the reps in a short amount of time.  Naturally, that did not happen.  I got on the bar and found that I could only manage 4 quick reps.  Uh oh.  For the next two sets, I did 4 reps again, using the efficient "stomping" form along the way.  But that would be all for that technique.  When I went to do my 4th set, I couldn't hold my core tight enough to do the "stomping" motion, so it was time to kip my reps.  Since I wasn't ready to switch techniques, I only managed 3 reps that round, bringing me to 15.  Over the next three sets, I kipped 4 reps, before only getting a set of 3 again.  I was halfway done.

Now it might sound like I'm moving pretty quickly thus far.  That could not be any less true.  The strain on my core combined with my already rapid breathing from the front squats meant I needed longer breaks between sets.  Sheila and Julia had already moved on to their KB swings.  I managed another set of 3 reps to get to 33, then watched Michal and Brian move in unison to their KBs.  I was not pleased.  I still had 27 reps to go and I was moving slowly.  How far behind everyone was I going to be when this workout ended?

I tried to keep plugging away with sets of 3.  My kipping swings were solid the entire time I was on the bar, but my core didn't always allow me to get my toes up to the bar.  From rep 33 to rep 58, I had 7 sets of 3, with 2 other sets of 2 followed by a no rep.  Sheila had finished sometime early in that sequence and was cheering me on.  Julia finished near the end of that sequence.  Coach Rachel had asked me if I wanted a box so that I didn't have to keep jumping to the high bar, but that felt like a crutch too, so I said no.  With 2 lousy reps left, I jumped to the high bar and did rep 59.  Took a big kipping swing, pulled my knees towards my chest, flicked my toes...and hit nothing but air.  A third no rep.  It drives me nuts that I keep failing right at the very end.  It's a terrible pattern I've fallen into.  I took a second, jumped back up, and got the 60th rep.

I came over to my KB with a plan of doing 6 sets of 15 reps.  My shoulders were burning at this point, but I thought I could push through and get 15 reps repeatedly.  During my first set, 15 reps wasn't that bad.  I could have done more, but burning my shoulders out with a huge first set didn't seem wise.  Michal had finished and moments later, Brian was done.  I was on my own for the last 75 reps.  I did another set of 15 reps.  I took my time between sets because I needed oxygen and because there didn't seem to be much point anymore in thinking about what my final time would be.  I was WAY behind.  On my next set, I began to struggle and only got 10 reps.  Same thing with set #4.  50 reps down, 40 to go.

Michal was yelling that I wasn't grunting enough, but the truth of the matter was that grunting, like laughing and sneezing, was causing my core to hurt.  With 40 reps to go though, I wanted to push and find more.  I began grunting during set #5, but only managed 12 reps.  Getting 28 reps in two sets wasn't going to happen, so I made sure I got 10 reps the next two rounds.  Finally, I only had 8 to go.  I took a slightly shorter break before that last set, just wanting this nightmare to be over.  I got through all eight reps and laid down on the floor.  Final time: 22:45.  Six and a half minutes after Brian finished.  More than 11 minutes after Sheila had finished.

Doing this workout having not fully recovered from Wolverine was probably not the wisest decision, but I got the work done, slow as I may have moved.  That is really the only way I know how to do things: keep working, keep challenging myself, keep trying to improve.  If there was one positive takeaway from this workout, it was that the 55 lb KB didn't feel all that heavy, despite my shoulders being tired out from the toes-to-bar, so maybe I'll improve on my KB swings going forward.

Wednesday preview: 5x5 back squat day.  Then bench press and pull-ups.