What was that silly little Saturday preview I wrote about at the end of my last post? That didn't happen. With cold and flu season continuing its rampage of the Nichols household throughout the weekend, my lack of sleep finally caught up with me. There was no part of me that wanted to work out. There was even an enticing WOD programmed at the gym on Sunday, but I simply didn't have the energy to do it.
I tried to pull it back together on Monday night, but I'm not sure I can really claim to have done a real WOD. In fact, I'm not sure any of us can claim we did a real WOD. We did a bunch of work and we were wiped out at the end, but no one really knew what their time was for the workout. Here's what was scheduled for Monday:
21-15-9
Thrusters (95/65)
Toes-to-bar
*At the end of each round, complete a 100 meter prowler push (230/140)
Interesting...so this was like Fran, but with toes-to-bar instead of pull-ups. That was an exchange I could get behind. The real head scratcher here was the prowler push at the end of each round. The weight didn't sound particularly heavy, although I'm sure it would be after you wore yourself out with the other movements. What had me confused was how we would do the prowler push. The 6:30 class on Monday typically tends to be pretty large. There would be enough space for the thrusters and the toes-to-bar. But as for the prowlers, well...
The prowler push wouldn't be quick, so only having two of them available for a large class seemed problematic. I arrived for class about 10 minutes early, allowing me to see the end of the 5:30 class and the chaos that would be awaiting us. The 5:30 class had 11 people in it, matching the number of people who were waiting to take the 6:30 class. There were very few people inside the gym, so originally I thought it was a small class. Then I looked outside and saw people hanging out while the prowler was being pushed. The 100 meter push required going down a hill (not so bad) and then coming back up said hill (extremely bad). And people were struggling to get up that hill. Having looked at the blog earlier, I saw that the best times of the day were in the low teens. So when I saw coaches Laura P and Giulz finishing around 20 and 22 minutes respectively, I knew the prowler situation was a mess. Did I mention that it was dark out and raining as well?
Action shot from the 6:30 class
When Aimee took us outside to warm up on the prowlers, it was so dark that it was difficult to tell what weight was on the prowler. Throw in the need to have different weights for men and women, not to mention different weights for people scaling, and you can see how a bottleneck was sure to form.
Also causing a delay was yours truly. After going through the entire warmup, Aimee told us that we had 90 seconds to get ready to start. Except 90 seconds in Aimee time is about 17 seconds in real time. I hadn't put my grips on yet because I was trying to keep them dry before the workout began. I ran over to my bag, got out my grips, and began to put them on. All of a sudden Aimee said we were starting. I pleaded my case for letting me put on my grips and Aimee hooked me up by having the people on my side of the class start two minutes after the first group (sorry, people on my side of the class!).
For the workout, I was using 95 pounds for my thrusters, the high bar for my toes-to-bar, and 140 pounds for the prowler. Rachel had put 140 on one of the two prowlers and I wasn't dragging out more weight as that would have only slowed things at the prowler push even more. After a two minute delay, I got started on my thrusters. Planned on going 14 and 7 for my two sets and that is what I did. Then I got to the toes-to-bar, where I did 5 correctly strung reps, followed by 4 more correctly strung reps. Then I did 4 "I know this isn't the proper way to string these, but I'm tired" reps. Aimee had come over to watch me and wanted to see good reps even if I didn't hit the bar, so I did my best to go back to the technique she showed us. Only got 2 reps. Next set I got 3 good ones, before tiring and doing 3 lousy ones again to end my first round.
When I got outside, it was mass confusion. It looked like Rachel had grown tired of waiting on the prowlers and was going to use a sled instead. After Giulz stated that the sled was working something completely different, she came back to the prowler, although Keithie decided to stick with the sled. I was about 4th in line and had to wait a while. We were going one at a time for the full 100 meters and it was very slow. There was a lot of yelling about having people only go halfway with someone else waiting on the bottom of the hill to do half, but that made no sense in pairs. In that scenario, teammate #1 would push to the bottom of the hill, with teammate #2 pushing it back up the hill. Then what? Teammate #2 would have to push it back down the hill (meaning they did the entire 100 meters in a row, defeating the purpose of this exercise) with teammate #1 bringing it back up the hill. So nothing changed for teammate #2, except he/she got to jump ahead of teammate #1 for no good reason. You needed a minimum of 3 people to make the split prowler pushes work, although my guess is that having unequal numbers of people on each end would eventually lead to confusion. So 4 people would be best. You would also need to exclude people from hopping into your group in the middle of the sequence or things would get messed up. Got all that? (How did this not go incredibly smoothly?)
I haven't even gotten to the worst part yet! Due to the rain, it was very difficult to get traction. So as bad as it would have been to push the prowler up the hill in perfect conditions, it was tremendously more difficult with your feet slipping. During my first push back up the hill, I had my feet slip twice, killing all of the momentum I had generated in trying to move the weight up the hill. Once you got back to the flat area, it was fine, but this was the main reason that athletes were not completing their prowler pushes in a timely manner.
I believe I was about 13 minutes in when my first round was complete. During my time outside, I waited for my turn, helped people change weights, and even ran down to the hill to encourage Rachel on as she pushed the prowler up the hill. There was a lot of time to kill in there. Back inside, I did 3 sets of 5 reps on my thrusters. Then I did 5 sets of 3 reps on the toes-to-bar. The first set was the sloppy kind and, of course, Aimee was watching. I did the next two sets properly and, of course, Aimee was not watching. After messing up the 4th set and doing the crappy reps, I got ready for the final 3 reps. Aimee was down at the other end watching someone else. So I waited a little bit. Not like a few minutes or anything, but probably 20 seconds or so. When she finally looked down towards where I was working, I gave her the thumbs up and pointed to the bar. That got her attention. Then I did three good reps and ran out the door for more prowler fun.
During the second prowler push, we got the team system going a little bit, although plates needed to be changed off and on in between legs as different people used the prowler. Perhaps having a little rest between my initial trip down the hill and return trip up the hill helped. When it was my turn to go back up the hill, I slipped when I went to push. Went nowhere. I got myself pumped up again and drove into the prowler. As I made my way up the hill, my feet didn't slide out from under me. As I hit the crest of the hill, I was moving with good speed. So I decided I would put everything I had into this push and try to make it all the way back to the starting line without stopping. Was there some Mr. Intensity-like yelling involved? Yes sir! But I made it all the way back without stopping. Crowning achievement of this workout.
When I got back inside, I was all smiles. Aimee thought I was done, but I told her I had one more round. "Get going then!" was the response I received. Except I'm pretty sure I mentally checked out at the end of that second prowler push. I did the thrusters in two sets, 5 and 4 reps. On the toes-to-bar, I sandwiched a good set of three in between two sloppy sets of three. I was the last one to go on the prowler and received the unfortunate news that someone had taken the 45 pound plates off at the bottom of the hill and left them there. Not sure how that happens, but it was what it was. Rachel helped me out by pushing the prowler down to the bottom of the hill for me. When we got there, I put the 45 pound plates on and tried to push. I was much slower going up the hill in my third attempt. After finally getting to the original starting line, I had to turn around and go back down the hill. That should have been a breeze, but I was tired and couldn't have cared less about the workout at this point. Eventually I got back down there. Final time: Unknown. Luke and Rachel pushed the prowler back up the hill together and then we stripped the prowler of the weights and brought everything inside. The clock said 31:30 when I came in and I imagine it took over a minute to walk back and strip off the weights, so I told Aimee my time was "30-ish". It really didn't matter. No one in the afternoon classes had accurate times anyway.
When I was fully recovered, I went to the annex where Rachel was going to teach me a pull-up training technique that she had learned in her kids training course. No, I have not yet reached the competency of a child in my pull-up development. Maybe one day. The technique involved setting up a band on one of the racks below the pull-up rig. The band was supposed to be around shin high. Rachel wanted me to try it out as a way of preventing me from pulling up my knees during my kip, but it turns out this might have been a more effective tool in getting me to do the "Superman/Hollow Rock" transition during my swings. Either way, it is going to force me to get better eventually. What it did last night was force me to do strict pull-ups as my kip still sucks.
The one thing I did do well afterwards was my toes-to-bar practice. I was mildly annoyed at myself for doing so many crappy sets of toes-to-bar, so I tried to do a huge set of proper reps in the annex. My grip was definitely slipping, but I held on for 11 consecutive reps with proper form, which bested my old top score of 10. See, all I need is an hour of rest between sets.
Tuesday preview: Sumo deadlifts and possibly my last chance to string 50 wall balls before the year is up.
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