Burpees Are Push-Ups In Disguise

Workout date: 2/23/16

Monday was a good time for my buddy's farewell happy hour because I would have been pretty useless at the gym.  The WOD included finding a 1RM clean and jerk, then a cash out with very tall box jumps and rope climbs.  On a typical day, that would have been a workout that I probably would have enjoyed quite a bit.  But the workouts from Friday through Sunday left me sore to the point of being in pain.  Monday's WOD could have been "get free ice cream if your name is Dave" and I still would have skipped it.  I simply would not have had enough strength to hold on to a cone or a dish.

I wasn't 100% yet when I came back to the gym on Tuesday night for Dudes After Dark, but I wasn't in pain either, so I thought I'd give the WOD a shot.  The first half of the WOD was skill work as we went through a series of progressions for the muscle-up.  Then the metcon was 5 rounds of 5 muscle-ups (or the most appropriate scale) and 20 burpees.  100 burpees didn't sound great, but as was the case with the workout on Sunday, it was something I thought I could grind my way through.

Dudes After Dark was once again crashed by Julie and Michal, making me wonder whether they were trying to become full-fledged members of our fraternity.  (Perhaps they're starting Sisters After Sunset?)  The lineup of guys included myself, Cline, Matt E, and Mike Rot (because there are two Mike R's now, this was how he was recently listed on the blog).  Mike Rot is a two-time graduate of KOP on-ramp classes, but New Year, New You may have gotten him hooked on joining KOP for good.  The six of us headed over to the rings where Coach Rachel walked us through different ring dip holds, transitions from the floor, and jumping muscle-ups.  Even though Michal has done a muscle-up and I've made attempts at muscle-ups, we weren't going beyond the jumping muscle-up in terms of practice.  Michal and I decided to do jumping muscle-ups for the workout, while the rest of the class would do a pull-up/banded dip hybrid for their scale.

I'll try my best to walk you through the play-by-play of the workout, but I'll warn you in advance that this WOD became a blur quickly.  And there wasn't a whole lot of variation between rounds, so I'm not sure you'll get much out of a detailed description of what went down.  The first round of jumping muscle-ups wasn't too bad.  I had moved my rings up to a higher point than I had used for most of the warm-up, so these were intended to be difficult.  Rachel asked me right before we started if I was good with jumping muscle-ups and I said yes, although I added the most I had ever done in a workout was 21 and this WOD required 25.  I just assumed I'd be able to find 4 more reps within me even if I got tired.  Rachel did warn us in advance about how bad the jumping muscle-ups got after the burpees, but it didn't register until I began my first round of burpees.

Why were the burpees so bad?  Sure, doing 20 in a row knocks the wind out of you a bit, but that wasn't the reason why.  No, the reason this was such a deadly combination with the jumping muscle-up is because burpees are push-ups in disguise.  If this workout was written as 5 rounds of 5 muscle-ups and 20 push-ups, I would have strongly considered finding something else to do with my Tuesday evening.  That just sounds awful.  I'm not someone who loves burpees, but at least they sounded more like a cardio segment that broke up the jumping muscle-ups.  Wrong, wrong, wrong.  Every time my chest hit the deck, I needed to push up out of that position.  And each of those push-ups took a little more energy out of my triceps.  I don't have particularly strong triceps to begin with and I needed that energy to dip out of the transition when finishing my jumping muscle-ups.  Once your dips go, it is extremely hard to get them back.  I hadn't been sure if I could do 25 jumping muscle-ups fresh.  But with taxed triceps?  I was in deep doo-doo.

I moved through the first round of 20 burpees at a decent pace and I was still with the rest of the class as I began round two.  Rounds two through five all followed the same pattern for me.  I did 5 very slow jumping muscle-ups, needing to shake my arms out after each attempt.  Along with the 5 successful attempts, I had 1 attempt per round where I got through the transition, but could not dip all the way out of that position.  I think I also had an unsuccessful attempt along the way where I didn't even make it into the transition.  Once I realized that dipping out of the transition was no guarantee, I began to take more rest between attempts, shaking my arms out in the hope that I would not waste energy with a failed rep.  Everyone else had made a lot of progress in their second round of burpees when I completed my second round of jumping muscle-ups.

Having expended a lot of energy on the rings and not wanting to burn out my triceps during the burpees, I began moving slowly through the burpees as well.  I started off rounds two through four with a set of about 6-8, before needing to break up my reps into smaller sets (usually two).  I could look at the floor and gauge how much sweat was pouring off of me, another barometer of how exhausted I was becoming.  My fear of being lapped was something I was trying to use as fuel to keep me moving.  There would definitely be some pity circle action this evening, but if I could limit it to the final round of burpees, it wouldn't be too bad.  Having people yell at me as I struggled through my final jumping muscle-ups would be less desirable.

As I went through round three of jumping muscle-ups, I saw a couple others complete their third round of burpees and move on to round four.  I was about to be lapped, but there wasn't much I could do in terms of speed on the jumping muscle-ups.  If I didn't take my time, I was just going to fail on the next rep.  I began my third round of burpees as a few others wrapped up their third round.  I was starting to lose some time on my burpees as well, but nothing good was going to come from rushing through those.  I needed to be able to breathe and have some energy in my triceps if I was finishing 10 more jumping muscle-ups.

Round four was exactly like round three, only everyone in the class had moved ever closer to lapping me.  As I got through the final few burpees in the penultimate round, Julie completed her workout.  Mike Rot, Cline, and Michal were in hot pursuit.  Matt was not going to lap me, but he had a sizable head start on round 5 when I finally got back to my rings.  I got through 3 jumping muscle-ups before those who had finished began giving me encouragement.  Every jumping muscle-up attempt sucked big time, but they sucked so much worse when I couldn't dip all the way out.  But my mental approach at this point was that the last few jumping muscle-ups would mark the end of the misery in this workout.  I was going for broke when I got to the burpees.

When I finished the last jumping muscle-up, I was the only one still working.  No longer needing to conserve tricep strength for the jumping muscle-ups, I attacked the remaining burpees.  Wasn't sure if I could finish all 20 going rapid fire, but I was going to give it a whirl.  I tried to breathe as I threw my body down to the floor and bounced back up over and over again.  I made it to about 13 reps before I noticed I wasn't taking in as much oxygen as I would like.  I was too close to the end to stop though.  Seven more times I hit the deck, then jumped up and clapped.  Final time: 18:42.

I tend to sit on the floor a lot after workouts, but I try not to lay on my back after it is all over.  I had to make an exception after the burpee barrage I went on to conclude this WOD.  I was exhausted and just needed to lay there for a minute.  Overall, I was happy with the workout.  It was a tough one for me, but I managed to get through all of the jumping muscle-ups, plus I had a strong finish.

That was it for Dudes After Dark.  Now a quick Open preview.  The Open officially begins on Thursday night, although the spectacle each week at KOP will take place the day after the workout is announced.  Friday Night Lights will run each week from 4:30 on and with 103 people signed up at our gym, there will be non-stop action for hours.  Here are my random predictions for the Open as well as my personal goals:

• Winners of the team competition: Tequila Sunrise
• Top individual in the gym: Gordy Jamieson
• Movement that will almost certainly show up in 16.1: Double unders
• Reason: We had a lot of double under volume last week, plus Annie will be programmed sometime this week.  16.1 would be the worst time for double unders to show up in an Open workout, so naturally they will.
• Movement that will show up in 16.2: Bench press
• Reason: This is the hyped "garage gym" workout.  And what movement exemplifies working out in your garage more than the bench press?
• Movement that will show up in this year's Open that has not previously been programmed: Pistols
• Reason: A man can dream.  This likely won't happen, but I can't get through the Open thinking that all 5 workouts will suck.  I'd love to see rope climbs, but pistols seem like the safer bet in terms of "new movements that Dave would like".
• Personal goal #1 for 2016 Open: Feel good about my performance in 3 of the 5 workouts
• Personal goal #2 for 2016 Open: Crack the top 35 in the gym in the individual standings

Wednesday preview: Not psyched about doing tons of pull-ups, but it seems inevitable.  With plans to rest on Thursday, this should be my last workout before the Open craziness begins.