Ass To Heels

Workout dates: 5/11/16 and 5/12/16

I've settled into a habit of falling behind on this blog, then trying to fire out 3 or 4 posts in order to catch up with the workouts that took place in the week since I last wrote.  I'd prefer to keep up-to-date on things (falling behind by a day wouldn't be so bad), but it has become difficult recently.  With two other "pursuits" taking up considerable time (especially on the weekends), I've found myself struggling to keep up with this blog.  And here we are again, a week behind.

If I'm being completely honest, part of the problem is that Crossfit (and writing this blog) has slowly slid to third in that pecking order.  There is a distinct lack of motivation for me when it comes to Crossfit at the moment.  If I take on something substantial (like the recent front squat program), then there is motivation to make sure I get a pay off at the end of it.  Putting in two months of hard work and not improving my front squat would have been a huge letdown.  Getting a 35 pound PR made it worthwhile.  But there are only so many programs you can repeatedly take on.  Last fall, I tried to do a second back squat program immediately after I completed my first one and it was too much to handle.  I need variety in my training, but some things hold more appeal when it comes to training.  I have recently been practicing dips at home, but getting to the point where I can do 11 in a row instead of 10 in a row doesn't provide the same thrill that adding 10 pounds to my overhead squat would.

Don't you have 7 goals remaining on your 2016 wish list, Dave?  Yes, I do.  And I'm sure there will come a point where I find some extra motivation to go after them, but right now I look at them and just feel "meh".  I have almost no interest in doing any sort of competition, which is very strange because I'm ultra-competitive at heart.  There is simply something missing at the gym these days.  I think part of it is that most of the people that I used to have mini-rivalries with are either no longer at the gym or very rarely take class any more.  There has been a new wave of members to join the gym and I've developed friendships with a fair amount of them.  Perhaps new mini-rivalries will develop and a spark will get me going again.  But for now, you might have to get used to a wave of blog posts each Tuesday or Wednesday when I feel guilty about having neglected the blog for a week.

(Note: It doesn't help that I'm writing this after, as one member put it, "the most depressing class ever".)

Wednesday's WOD was essentially the dumbbell version of DT.  As much as I like DT, performing it with dumbbells didn't sound like a whole lot of fun.  Later in the week, I saw Danielle's badly bruised shoulders that came about as a result of this workout.  Let's just say I felt validated in my decision to only attend the split jerk clinic on Wednesday night.  I wasn't sure how a split jerk clinic could last an entire hour, but that probably exemplified my ignorance of what goes into this very technical movement.  In the end, there was some extra time left over to practice the split jerk at ever-increasing weights, but if you had asked me prior to the clinic how long I thought you could go over the finer points of the split jerk, my answer would have been closer to 15 minutes rather than the actual 40-45 minutes we spent on it.

There was another large turnout for this clinic, so once again we split into groups to practice.  I paired up with Mike San., a former Barbull buddy that I rarely get to work out with because he is a morning guy and I am most definitely not a morning guy.  And I can't call him Mike S anymore because the gym has reached a saturation point on first names and last initials.  To make things worse, Mike Sim. and Mike San. both work out in the mornings.  (I don't think Jill Hil. and Jill Her. run into the same problem.)  For the most part, Mike and I received assistance from Faby and Tom C during the clinic, while Sarah S and Steph V were helping out groups on the ends of the gym floor.  Faby was the demo guy for all of the progressions as Steph explained what he was doing and why we should do those progressions to improve our split jerk.

The first progression involved doing a split jerk with just the barbell, then doing three shoulder presses from that position.  The idea behind this progression was to make sure that your feet were in a steady enough position that you could press a barbell without losing your balance.  I have to admit that getting my feet into the proper position during the split jerk is my biggest difficulty when doing this movement (or at least I thought it was prior to this clinic).  The front foot needs to stomp forward while the back leg results in a bent knee and your foot up on its toes.  If your stance is too narrow, you can easily topple over.  If your stance is too wide, you may not be able to bring your feet back together to complete the lift.  Neither of those are desirable, especially when you have a large amount of weight over your head.  So it's pretty important not to screw this up.  Yet I screw it up frequently.  The good thing about practicing this was that we were only using an empty barbell, so if I screwed things up, I wouldn't have to fear for my life.

Once we felt comfortable with how our feet should be positioned, we moved on to a progression that I had never done (or seen) before: the tall jerk.  It was a rare movement where I was actually encouraged to be on my toes.  This progression is meant to help you with your speed once you come out of the dip in your split jerk.  In the tall jerk, you stand on your toes with the empty barbell at the level of your forehead.  You then rapidly move from this point to the final position, with your feet split apart and the barbell pressed out overhead.  Starting on my toes and getting underneath the barbell quickly?  Yup, that's all me.  I may have discovered my new favorite movement to practice.

From there, we moved on to the pause jerk.  Just as the name indicates, you begin the dip for the split jerk, pause for a couple seconds, then execute the split jerk.  As I watched Faby demo this progression, I noticed something that he did in his dip that was very different from how I did my dip. When Faby lowered into the dip, his knees did not move forward.  Instead they moved out to his sides.  Obviously Faby knows what he is doing since he practices these lifts all of the time, but I was having a hard time reconciling this in my mind.  Wouldn't you get more drive from pressing straight down and up rather than pressing out to the side with your legs?  I got Tom's attention and pointed out how much Faby's knees went to the side as he dipped and he confirmed that was exactly what you want to do when starting your dip.  "You should think ass to heels", Tom explained.  That was a cue that resonated with me, as each time I thought about it that way during my dip, my knees more naturally went out to the side.  The biggest benefit from doing this was that I stayed in my heels more as I went to dip.  If your feet are pointing directly forward, it is much easier to get up on your toes than if your feet are pointing in more of a 45-degree direction.  It was all starting to make sense to me!  Kinda.

It was finally time to put it all together as the last part of the clinic was working on the complete split jerk.  Mike and I started off with 75 pounds on the barbell, doing 3 split jerks at a time before placing the barbell back on our rack and letting our partner have a shot at it.  At one point, Steph came over to watch me.  She was standing directly behind me, so as I backed up from the rack, I looked over my shoulder to make sure I didn't run into her.  Unfortunately, I didn't check my passenger-side mirror as Tom was standing to my right watching the group next to us.  And so I accidentally clocked Tom in the head with my barbell.  Sorry Tom!  (He said he was ok afterwards.)

As we began adding more weight to the barbell, we also added another member to our group.  Luis was working in a group of 4 at the near end of the gym and asked if he could work with me and Mike as the group he was in wasn't planning on adding much more weight to their barbell.  Wasn't a problem for us.  Eventually Luis started following me on the barbell as we felt comfortable using the same weights.  We went through 95, 115, 135, and 145.  At that point I looked at the clock and saw there was still about 10 minutes remaining.  Should we keep lifting?  Faby gave us the green light, so we kept adding weight to the barbell.

We moved up to 165 and my form at that weight wasn't anything to write home about.  But as tends to be the case with me, the struggles I have with a lift don't always correspond to how much weight is on the barbell.  I wish I was a lot more consistent and that a bad/failed lift meant there might be too much weight on the barbell, but instead it seems to be pretty random as to why I mess up lifts.  That was evident when we went up to 185 and 205, where I had very strong lifts that looked a million times better than the one I did at 165.

Everyone seemed like they were getting ready to go, but Mike, Luis, and Faby encouraged me to keep going after the lift at 205 went so well.  I added another 20 pounds and took on 225.  Now we had reached the point where the weight on the barbell was affecting my form.  It was a successful jerk, but I definitely felt (and I'm sure looked) wobbly as I got the barbell overhead.  That was it for me for the night.  I could have given 235 a try (my 1RM is 230), but I wasn't going to hold everyone up just because I was having a good night.  If I had the ability to jerk 235, I would be able to come back on another night and make it happen.

I considered doing the Thursday WOD prior to Endurance class, but the workout included tons and tons of running.  No point in showing up to Endurance tired out from running.  It was a beautiful Thursday afternoon to do some running as we gathered at the track.  And Tim was back!  Unfortunately, there was also the return of an Upper Merion lacrosse game on the football field just as there had been the week before.  For some reason, the lacrosse teams take up not only the sideline, but the inner lanes of the track as well.  Last week, we simply ran around them, going out to lanes 5 and 6 as we did our 800M and 600M runs.  Tim had some longer runs planned for us, but upon seeing the lacrosse game, decided that we should do a hill workout in the adjoining neighborhood instead.  We did a warmup lap, some stretching, and a couple of striders before jogging over to the hill.

I've done the hill workout before and didn't recall it being particularly pleasant.  This year's renewal was not much different.  The group doing the workout included Alex R, Matt E, Flounder, Luke, Jen S, Kris, and Jill Her. (apologies to anyone I forgot).  The workout was similar to one that we did on flat ground at the end of Endurance season last year.  There would be three rounds, with one 40 second run, one 25 second run, and one 10 second run.  Rest was minimal as we started the next sprint almost immediately once we returned to the starting line.  Between rounds, we got the shortest two and a half minute rest I've ever experienced in my life.

On our first run, I was doing pretty well, only trailing Luke as we neared the crest at the top of the hill.  Both Luke and I were starting to fade at this point and I began to wonder whether we had run so far that we couldn't hear Tim's whistle, letting us know that the 40 seconds was up.  Matt was much steadier and ended up passing us a few seconds before the whistle blew.  Wow, 40 seconds up a hill seems much longer than one would think.  I was in trouble already as I slowly jogged back towards the starting line.  On the 25 second run, I expected Alex to be in front of me, but I was surprised when I was able to run past her, as Matt proved to be the only one I couldn't stay with again.  The 10 second run was right in my wheelhouse, as I was able to sprint past everyone despite not feeling 100% after those first two runs.

For round two, I was behind Matt on the 40 second run, behind Matt and Alex on the 25 second run, and behind no one on the 10 second run.  Couldn't we just do a bunch of 10 second runs, Tim?  No such luck.  I was still huffing and puffing when round 3 began and this time I couldn't keep up with Alex on the longest run of the round.  Matt was still proving the most adept at hill running as he ran away from the rest of us.  On the 25 second run, I ended up behind Matt and Alex once again.  I thought I might redeem myself on my favorite run, the 10 second sprint.  It was the last sprint of the afternoon and even though I was out of breath, I knew I could sprint for 10 more seconds.  But Matt wasn't going to let me beat him a third time on the shortest sprint.  I had reeled him in the first two rounds, but couldn't complete the trifecta.  With the workout over, we jogged back to the track where Tim had us do a modified tabata sit-up cash-out.  There were only four rounds, but each round was 30 seconds long with 15 seconds rest.  I got 17 sit-ups in each of the first three rounds and I pushed like hell to get 19 sit-ups in the final round for an even score of 70, but fell one rep short.  Getting 69 wasn't so bad though as it made Flounder giggle.

I was tired, but I felt like I should get some extra work in at the gym if at all possible.  I needed some recovery time before doing anything, so I watched the 6:30 class do the WOD.  And I watched the girls over by the rings go through their new routine for developing a handstand walk.  Eventually I got my butt up and did some shoulder press because I felt like it had been a while since I had worked on that.  I ended up completing a set of 5 reps at 75 pounds, 95 pounds, 115 pounds, and 125 pounds.

Friday preview: A WOD with lots of shoulder presses in it.  So glad I got that extra work in Thursday night!