Annie Meets Two Jerks

Workout date: 2/14/16

I was late to class on Sunday morning.  After driving more than 4 hours for the fourth time in a week on Saturday night, I decided to indulge in the snooze button a little too much the next morning.  The end result was some razzing from Cline and having Coach Rachel bestow me with a new middle name of "I'm late".  Wasn't so bad.  The extra snooze was definitely worth it.

The main focus of the Sunday WOD was a combo lift, to be followed by a cash out that seemed eerily similar to a benchmark workout we will be taking on sometime later in February.  The combo lift was a push jerk followed by a split jerk without re-racking the weight.  For all of the workouts that I have done over the years at KOP, this is one type of workout that I haven't done all that often.  Coincidence?  Probably not.  This type of workout requires discipline and I'm sure there have been plenty of times where I've seen it scheduled on the gym blog and thought "pass".  Beyond that, it doesn't really seem like much of a functional movement to me.  Is there ever a metcon where you do a push jerk and then immediately follow it up with a split jerk?  Not that I can recall.  So what it boils down to is that this is good Olympic lifting practice.  And since I haven't done a whole lot of that recently, I figured I should probably go in on Sunday and get that work in.

The amount of weight you can use is capped by how much you can push jerk (most people can split jerk more than they can push jerk).  I had a little difficulty remembering how much that was because I have gotten so used to split jerking whenever I have heavy weight on my barbell.  It's a little bit like the struggle I have with single unders now.  I practice double unders so much that it feels awkward doing single unders when I have to.  My natural inclination was going to be to split jerk as I put more weight on the barbell, but I would need to be disciplined (there's that word again!) and only do a push jerk for the first half of the lift.

With 5 of us in class and only 4 racks on the rig, I asked Ben if I could share a rack with him.  He was okay with that.  I didn't know how much Ben could jerk, but we're fairly similar in size, so I figured we could work together and not have to adjust the weights all that often.  Ben later told me his best jerk was 215 (mine is 225), so that ended up being true.  We began with 135 on the barbell.  This was one of the rare times where I didn't have a specific number in mind as far as what my last lift would be.  I needed to feel out the preliminary lifts and figure it out from there.  The WOD was written as though we were making 7 attempts at this, but then there seemed to be talk about only doing 5, so I was going to make jumps in weight based on the idea that I would only have 5 attempts.

The lift at 135 was a good start for both of us.  I wasn't sure whether Ben would want to go up to 145 or 155 next.  Turns out the answer was neither.  He surprised me when he said that we should add 30 pounds to the barbell and do 165 next.  Somebody was definitely feeling more confident than I was about this combo lift.  My confidence wasn't boosted by my attempt at 165, as I instinctively split jerked the barbell with my first lift.  Wrong order dummy.  I could have racked the barbell and started over, but I figured that the lift still counted as long as I did 1 push jerk and 1 split jerk, order be damned.  So I followed the split jerk with a push jerk and then racked the barbell.  Rachel was completely confused by what I had just done, so I explained that I was an idiot and everything was fine.  Ben followed me with a successful attempt at 165, although he admitted that the 30 pound jump may have been a little ambitious.

Sanity returned when we only made a 10 pound jump to 175 for our next attempt.  I also managed to complete the lifts in the proper order this time around.  My brain may have needed one more snooze. The push jerk definitely felt weird, but it was still manageable.  And once I got the push jerk out of the way, I felt confident with the split jerk.  Ben looked better at 175 than he did at 165.  Perhaps it was because his body wasn't dealing with the shock of a huge jump in weight.  We moved on to 185 where things didn't feel that much different for me, as I did an awkward push jerk and then a confident split jerk.  Ben was successful at 185 as well, although it was the first time in the workout that he looked like he was truly struggling with the weight.

Rachel mentioned that we should be working on our final lifts, which was great because I was setting up for my 5th attempt.  I told Ben that I wanted to take a crack at 205 and asked him if he wanted to do the same or if he'd rather use a different weight.  Once again, my multiple choice question required a third option.  Ben let me know that he was good with 185 as his final number for the day.  205 would just be for me.  I tried to get pumped up for the lift as I wasn't sure I had ever done a push jerk with this much weight before.  The lift was a struggle as I had to work hard to press out the weight as I stood up, but it counted as a good Crossfit jerk.  I was a bit less confident on the split jerk after having to work so hard to get the push jerk, but my comfort level with split jerks is so much higher than it is with push jerks that the second half of the combo ended up being relatively easy.  I was very happy with a score of 205.

The cash out involved a bunch of sit-ups and a bunch of double unders.  Sounds like Annie to me!  Okay, it wasn't exactly Annie, which alternates between double unders and sit-ups with a rep scheme of 50-40-30-20-10.  There was no alternating in this cash out.  We had to do 100 sit-ups followed by 200 double unders.  Since we hadn't done anything during the first part of the workout that had left me out of breath, I thought I'd be able to handle the 200 double unders by steadily knocking out sets of 15-20 reps.  Turns out I may have overestimated both my cardio and my ability to be consistent with the jump rope.

At least I was consistent with the sit-ups.  Since Cline was across from me (and because he's really good at Annie), I would sneak glances over at him to see how I was doing with my sit-ups.  He was definitely moving faster than me, but he was also taking some breaks as well.  As I got closer to the finish of the sit-up segment, I wasn't sure whether he was ahead of me or whether I was ahead of him.  The only thing I knew for sure was that I wished my feet had been anchored.  The butterfly position was doing a number on my groin area.  I got to 80 reps without stopping, but each rep was definitely unpleasant at this point.  I told myself that 20 more sit-ups wasn't all that much and that I couldn't stop now.  I kept grinding away, expecting to see Cline pop up to do double unders at any moment.  When I reached 95 reps and Cline hadn't finished yet, I felt good about my pace.  Being within 5 reps of him on the sit-ups was sort of an unofficial interim goal within the cash out.  When I got to my jump rope before him, I was really pleased with how I did on the sit-ups.

The lead would be short-lived as Cline had only 3 sit-ups to go and he was going to destroy me on the double unders.  While I was able to get some sets of 15-20 reps in (even managed 26 in a row at one point), I needed a break between sets.  And despite doing a good job of getting back into my next medium-sized set when practicing double unders, I could not find that consistency when I needed it.  Time and time again, I'd mess up the first rep of the set.  Occasionally, I'd get 1-3 reps before getting the medium-sized set going.  When Cline finished up his 200 double unders, I still had about 80 to go.  Rachel had told us that we should finish the cash out in under 10 minutes, but that was looking shaky at best.  When the clock reached 9:30, I still had about 40 reps to go.  10 minutes wasn't happening.  After hitting myself with the rope with 4 reps to go, I decided to go old school and get the last 4 reps in by jumping like a speeding car was coming at me.  At least I was done.  Final time: 10:36.

Once I had recovered, I decided to try and practice toes-to-bar, but I didn't have enough left in the tank to make the practice worthwhile.  I did a couple of sets, then called it a day.

Monday preview: Bar muscle-ups and push jerks with a weight I could move at a solid clip.  Plus post-WOD practice turns into a game of "what can Dave fail at?"