Over the last few months, this blog has gone from one that gets updated daily to one where I don't post for a week or so, then need to play catch up as quickly as I can. I apologize for that. It isn't my intention for things to work out that way, but there are times when Crossfit ends up taking a backseat to other things going on in my life. (Probably explains why my progress ends up being quite a bit slower than the more dedicated folks in the gym.) Since I try to keep the topic of this blog to Crossfit-related matters only, there end up being some gaps along the way.
The latest gap was once again due to my other passion: handicapping horse races. The National Handicapping Championship takes place at the end of January each year and I didn't qualify this time around until a few weeks before the big event. Having 800,000 reasons to focus on that rather than writing my blog, I spent most of my free time over the last couple of weeks preparing for the NHC. And how did it go? Well, let's just say I have 0 reasons to be delinquent on writing this blog.
Despite not writing about Crossfit before the NHC, I did make time to hit the gym prior to my weeklong stay in Las Vegas, so there is plenty of material to write about. By my count, I have 9 blog entries that need to be written on workouts completed through February 2nd, so there should be plenty for you to read assuming that I don't fully deplete my coffee supply.
When I last wrote, I was getting ready for some heinous workout called Chelsea that I had never done before. It is probably not a coincidence that this was the point where I thought "I'd rather be developing track profiles and sifting through past performances of horses that might show up NHC weekend" than writing about how this workout went down. It was pretty bad. Here's how Chelsea works and I think it will be obvious quickly why it is not a workout that I look forward to doing again (even though I know I might end up doing it 3 more times this year as it is part of the yearlong gym benchmark series):
"Chelsea"
30 Minute EMOM
5 Pull-Ups
10 Push-Ups
15 Air Squats
*Once the athlete fails the EMOM, the rest of the workout is performed as an AMRAP
Pull-ups and push-ups are about as appetizing a combination as peanut butter and ketchup. But the truth is they show up together quite frequently in WODs, so there's no point complaining about it. The more I practice workouts like this one, the better chance I'll eventually develop the big boy muscles needed to have success with these WODs.
7:30 class on Wednesdays mean fun with Coach Jenna and joining me were two other gluttons for punishment: Ashley M and Matt B (not Matt Bohen). We got to watch the final few minutes of the 6:30 class and the workout appeared to be just as awful as I had imagined it in my head. Cline was in that class and I asked him how he did. He got 2 rounds of the EMOM, then completed 13 more rounds in the remaining 28 minutes. I thought that was pretty good. Prior to arriving to the gym, I had decided that my goal would be to complete 2 rounds of the EMOM, with an option for a 3rd if I was somehow "feeling it" this evening. Cline had apparently found time to indulge in some crack cocaine as he let me know that he thought I could complete 5 rounds of the EMOM. Between my iffy pull-up form and the fact that I lose the ability to do bigger sets of push-ups after doing said pull-ups, I couldn't conceive of any scenario where I'd make it through 5 rounds. But I'd give it the old college try.
Jenna walked us through some of the strategy for the workout, letting us know that we might want to take a mini-break once we failed the EMOM portion of things, but that we should be prepared to keep moving at a fairly constant pace (for example, two minutes per round) once we began the AMRAP. She also let us know that we should have some way of tracking our rounds, whether it was by abacus or by whiteboard. Originally, I wasn't interested in doing that, figuring I could just keep track in my head. But this was a 30 minute workout and I was certainly going to become extremely fatigued during it, so I grabbed a whiteboard. At the top of the left side, I wrote "Legit" for my EMOM rounds. On the right side, I wrote "BS" for my AMRAP rounds.
We got started and round one was no picnic. I strung 3 pull-ups before dropping and then jumping back up to the high bar to get my last two. When I hit the floor, I did a set of 5 push-ups, took a second to shake out my arms, then did the remaining 5 push-ups. Got up, worked through the 15 air squats and round one was done. There was about 10-15 seconds remaining before round two would begin. When the timer went off to indicate the second minute had begun, I got back on the pull-up bar, but only managed two reps. From there it was three quick singles. I got back to the floor and once again divided my push-ups into two sets of five reps. As I stood up, I saw I only had about 15 seconds for my air squats. I tried to blitz through them, but the timer went off again as I got to my 14th air squat. So much for 2-3 rounds of the EMOM, much less 5 rounds. I had only gotten one.
I finished the last two air squats and then ran over to the main whiteboard in the front of the class. If this was where I was supposed to take my mini-break, I might as well have some fun with it. I wrote a 1 next to my name, indicating my EMOM score for the workout. Then I speed-walked back over to the rig and got ready to tackle the AMRAP portion of the workout. In general, this is how the rest of the workout went:
- Pull-ups: Quick singles. And these were legitimately quick singles. Each time I got back to the pull-up bar, I paused before starting. But once I started, I would do a rep, drop down, then force myself to get right back up on the bar. While I was disappointed in my ability to string these during the workout, I was proud of myself for not letting pull-ups be the area of the workout where I lost a lot of time.
- Push-ups: Who knew I'd ever get to a point where I'd say that pull-ups weren't the worst part of a workout? Well they weren't this night, although I have to add the caveat that the push-ups were worse mainly because of the pull-ups being done right before them. Early on I would do two sets of five, but that eventually became 4-3-3, then 4-2-2-2, then 3-3-2-2. Very late in the workout I had to crank out some singles, but that was because I refused to snake my push-ups. I wanted to do RX push-ups the entire 30 minutes and I did it, even if it meant spending more time on this section than I would have liked.
- Air squats: I thought I'd be fairly consistent with my air squats, but the fatigue from the other movements took its toll here as well. In approximately half of my rounds, I methodically got through my 15 reps without a break, focusing on my breathing as always. But for the other half of the rounds, I would break up the set somewhere near the middle and shake my legs out before continuing.
When we hit the 15 minute mark, I was working on my air squats in my 7th round of the AMRAP (8th round overall). If I could manage to keep this pace, I'd end up with a score of 1+14 or 1+15, which would not be too bad. Of course, most people do not keep up the same pace on the back end of a 30 minute workout and I was not the exception. The push-ups started taking longer and longer to get through. I was racing the clock to get done with my 13th round of the AMRAP, in hopes that I could get through one final set of pull-ups before time ran out. I did get back to the rig, but I only got four pull-ups in before time elapsed. Legit score: 1 round. BS score: 13 rounds. (Extra BS score: 4 reps.)
It wasn't the greatest score, but I always tend to struggle with WODs that focus primarily on body-weight movements. I was happy that I got through 74 pull-ups and maintained good discipline about doing legitimately quick singles. But my arms were toast. This was the third workout in a row that was very taxing on the upper body. When I saw at 10pm that evening that the next day's workout would be yet another WOD requiring arm strength, I decided that I'd be going for Open Strength the next day.
Trying not to get in the way of others, I grabbed a bit of a real estate on the lifting platform the next night to practice my snatches. Earlier in the week, I had a surprisingly good result with my 1RM snatch at the end of a WOD and it got me thinking that maybe I wasn't that far away from getting back to where I was during the Olympic lifting program I had taken the year before. Those dreams were quickly extinguished once I got lifting on Thursday night. I did 3 snatches at 95 pounds, then 3 at 125 pounds, and 3 at 145 pounds. The plan was to do 2 reps at 155 pounds, but I tried over and over again to no avail. Maybe my arms were still smoked from Chelsea. Or maybe the performance earlier in the week was a little more flukey than I wanted to believe. Either way, there was no duplicating my snatch of 165 pounds as I couldn't get beyond 145.
After that, I spent some time working on double unders. There were several girls there practicing double unders, in particular Fayth and Steph, who were getting the hang of them just in time. The Girls On Girls competition was coming up on Saturday and Fayth and Steph were teaming up for the event. With double unders part of the final WOD in the competition, they were getting in some last minute practice. Meanwhile, my struggles from the lifting platform had carried over to the jump rope. I was having a very hard time putting together anything resembling a big set. But as is often the case, the light bulb will randomly go on for me at a certain point, even if it is meant to flicker out soon after. Having not been able to string together 25 reps yet, I finally got a big set going. Got past 25 reps. As I closed in on 40 reps, I got nervous as I always do. 53 was my largest set and I had done it twice this year. Could I hold on for 54? When I got to 50, my jumping was totally inefficient and my legs were burning, but I needed to hold on for as long as I could. I managed to hold on all the way until I completed my 58th rep. That was exhausting, but I had moved ever closer to getting 100 in a row.
Once I could breathe again, I decided that I would like to attempt some butterfly pull-ups. Do I know how to do these? Nope. But I watched a YouTube video on it. I felt like I was in the same boat as Queen Pam with my pull-ups: we have the strength to do pull-ups, but struggle tremendously when it comes to pushing away from the bar when we kip. Butterflies eliminate the push away, so perhaps I'd be a lot more efficient with pull-ups if I could learn this technique. How did it go? Well mainly I did a lot of flailing. My form wasn't good, but the circular motion of the butterfly pull-up reminded me of doing double unders. I had slowly gotten better at those once I had gotten the rhythm down, so perhaps the same would be true of butterfly pull-ups with enough practice.
Friday preview: Another attempt at getting 265 pounds as my 3RM front squat record. Also, some chest-to-bar pull-up work.
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