Ain't No Holley(back)man

Workout date: 11/30/15

Holleyman is a hero WOD that we've been doing every three months as part of the benchmarking program taking place at KOP this year.  I did it once back in May and it was not a pleasant experience.  It is the type of workout that takes a toll on you mentally as much as it does physically.  To refresh your memory, here is what Holleyman looks like:

"Holleyman"
30 rounds
5 wall balls (20#/14# to 10'/9')
3 handstand push-ups
1 power clean (225/155)

5 wall balls is pretty easy.  3 handstand push-ups is more difficult, but there are scaling options for that.  And while you're expected to do a heavy power clean, only doing 1 per round isn't the toughest task in the world.  Wait, what is that line at that beginning?  30 rounds???  Are you nuts?  Yeah, that 30 rounds piece is a bit of a soul crusher.  I'm not sure there is another workout that we do which replicates the experience of Chinese Water Torture quite the way this one does.  Just 9 reps per round, but you have to do it over and over and over...

When I did this back in May, I did stinkbugs in place of handstand push-ups.  Think of stinkbugs as push-ups that begin in the downward-dog yoga position.  For each rep, you touch your forehead down ahead of where your hands are.  I went with stinkbugs because I didn't have any version of handstand push-ups that day.  (Some days you have it, some days you don't.)  On Monday, I was attempting to do handstand push-ups with 2 abmats.  Now I hadn't done handstand push-ups for at least a month, so trying to do 90 in this workout was ambitious.  But I had it in my head that I would begin scaling once I felt them go away.  Except stinkbugs were not a scaling option this time.  Coach Aimee directed us to do seated push presses if we had to scale the handstand push-ups.  During warmups, we tested these out and the largest set of dumbbells anyone was using was 25 pounds.  So before the workout, I grabbed a pair of 25 pound dumbbells and placed them off to the side in case I needed them.

Once everyone was set, Aimee sent our huge class off on its 30 round journey.  How big of a class was it?  Here's a glimpse:

Look at that wall ball form!  Yeah, this is round one.

In order to keep track of my rounds, I'd move one bead over on my abacus after every three rounds that I completed.  That was also a good time to take a glimpse at the clock.  I completed the first three rounds in just under 2 minutes, which was a solid opening pace for me.  I knew I wouldn't be able to keep that pace the whole way, but averaging one minute per round would have been excellent for me. My time back in May was 33:45 and I wanted to go a little faster than that this time around.  During my second set of three rounds, I began to struggle on the handstand push-ups.  Michal was working next to me and she reminded me to stay calm as I began coming off the wall early.  It helps me every time I hear that, but on this day, my biggest issue was a lack of practice with my handstand push-ups. I made it through 6 rounds before deciding to scale down to the seated push press in round 7.

Most of what happened from that point forward was pretty repetitive.  I tried my best to keep moving even as fatigue set in.  After 15 rounds, I was slightly under 15 minutes, so 30 minutes was still in play, although I figured it was unlikely that I could maintain the same pace for the last 15 rounds that I had for the first 15 rounds.  I grabbed a quick drink of water at the halfway point and told myself to keep pushing through the hard rounds ahead.

As I got later into this workout, the power cleans became difficult.  I didn't remember having this much difficulty with them back in May (I used 185 pounds in that workout and in this one), but I was definitely exhibiting some ugly form as I approached the final 10 rounds.  Aimee was reminding me to get my elbows through, but I was becoming too tired to generate the speed necessary to do that correctly.  The one thing I was doing well though was talking myself out of resting.  My biggest roadblock at the gym is hitting a point where I can no longer breathe.  And when I can't breathe, I rest.  Having gotten used to doing big sets of wall balls, I convinced myself that I could handle 5 reps even if I was struggling to breathe.  Not only was I able to get through 5 reps, I was actually able to get my breathing back under control while doing the reps, since I have started focusing so much on breathing while I do that movement.

As I worked through the final few rounds, I knew I wasn't going to make it under the 30 minute mark, but I was going to be quite a bit closer than I had been back in May.  When I got to round 30, it was an all-out sprint.  Five quick wall balls.  Dropped to the floor to do 3 reps of the seated push press.  Hopped up, ran to my barbell, and did one last (ugly) power clean.  Final time: 31:18.  I'll take that.

About half of the class was still working, so it was time to cheer on the rest of the class as they finished.  Luis had been working right next to me the whole time and had only a few rounds left when I completed the workout.  He did handstand push-ups for all 30 rounds and basically muscle cleaned his barbell every time he was capping off a round (he's strong).  When he was done, I turned around and encouraged Nicole, a recent graduate from the Holiday Head Start program.  She was positioned right in front of me for the power cleans.  I felt bad at one point because I was just dumping my barbell after each clean and slowly creeping up into her workout area.  When I noticed her waiting for me to do my clean at the end of one round, it finally dawned on me how much I had moved up towards her barbell during the workout.  Oops.  I rolled mine back to where it should have been.  

The last two working were Rachel and Jon P.  Like Luis, both had done handstand push-ups for all 30 rounds.  And both were struggling to get through the handstand push-ups in the last few rounds.  More than 40 minutes had elapsed and these two had not given up.  Even if they failed, they would keep kicking back up on to the wall, determined to finish the workout without scaling any further.  It was great to watch.  My favorite moments at KOP aren't watching someone scale down a workout so that they can finish quickly.  My favorite moments are those when someone runs into adversity and doesn't quit.  42 minutes in and Rachel got her 90th handstand push-up before doing one last power clean to end her workout.  2 minutes later, Jon did the same thing.  Could they have chosen to do some seated push presses to finish quicker?  Sure.  But they decided to take on the tougher challenge instead.  Good for them!

Tuesday preview: Time to test my cardio yet again, but with overhead squats and box jump overs on the menu, I may have found a new contender for favorite WOD of the year.