15 Minutes Of Shame

Workout date: 6/6/16

There have been many times where I've come up with a plan of attack for a workout only to see it fall apart once the workout began.  Hey, mistakes happen.  I've never been the type of person who was terrified of making mistakes.  Good thing because I make tons of them.  Hopefully I've learned from the mistakes I've made along the way.  I haven't felt too bad about my failed plans for WODs because when I came up with said plans, I was basing it on sound logic.  On Monday, I took on a hero WOD using some very faulty logic and paid the price for it.  Perhaps I just had a case of the Mondays.

The hero WOD was DT.  It is a workout that I have enjoyed doing in the past, although more often than not I have done a scaled version of it as doing this WOD with RX weight is quite challenging.  There was one time last year where I completed DT with RX weight, but it was a modified version of the workout that I would be doing on Monday night.  As a result, I got way ahead of myself in terms of how fast I could do this workout, a mistake that would not only have consequences for me, but for at least one other person who came to the 6:30 class.

Here's a reminder of how DT works:

"DT"
5 rounds for time:
12 deadlifts (155/105)
9 hang power cleans (155/105)
6 push jerks (155/105)

We had a large group of 13 taking part in DT during Monday's final scheduled class of the day.  One of the first people I saw when I got to the gym was Anne (Matt B's mom).  I don't see her often enough at KOP.  She's a really nice lady who cracks me up every time I talk with her.  She let me know that her son would be making an appearance in class.  Also among the attendees were Fayth and Steph C, Megs and Neil, and Danielle.  Having arrived at the gym a little on the early side, I had a chance to talk with Danielle about whether she had done this before.  She confirmed that she had done it once before with 65 pounds on her barbell and finished in 9 minutes and change.  She was thinking about trying 85 pounds this time around, but was concerned it might be too heavy.  I had no such concerns.  In fact, I told Danielle that she would probably break 9 minutes using 85 pounds.  Ultimately she went with 75 pounds, but my prediction that she would finish under 9 minutes was accurate.

Danielle completing DT in 8 minutes flat

I didn't get a chance to talk with Megs and Neil before class, but here are some pics of them crushing this workout as well:

Megs is very serious about her deadlifts!

Neil doesn't always win Jeopardy, but when he does, he follows it up with a hero WOD

Both Megs and Neil finished in under 10 minutes.  Know who did not?  Me and Matt.  Poor Matt.  Before I go into how I led him down a very bad road, I want to say that Matt was completely right about this workout and I was very, very wrong.  I feel that's necessary since I spent the last few minutes before the start of this workout making fun of Matt's resistance to using 155 pounds.

Why was I so cavalier about using 155 pounds?  Because I had used that weight when doing Team DT with Rachel last year.  In Team DT, the duo does 10 rounds with partners alternating after completing entire rounds.  Rachel and I completed this workout using RX weights in 17:14.  Rachel tore through her rounds, while I held on for dear life to get through mine.  If you broke up that 17:14 into how long it took each of us to do 5 rounds, it probably would come out to about 11 minutes for me and 6 minutes for Rachel.

So when I showed up Monday night for class and saw that most times were between 10 and 15 minutes, I felt comfortable going with 155 pounds.  After all, I had done 5 rounds of DT using 155 pounds in approximately 11 minutes.  Why would I scale down when my RX time fit within the parameter we were looking for in this workout?  Matt had asked me if I was going RX and I confidently replied "yup".  As we got warmed up, Matt did some reps with 135 on his barbell and didn't look excited when he was done.  He asked me about the weight again.  "You're really using 155 pounds for this workout?"  Another yup in response.  Then I told him that I would use 135 if that would make him feel better.  It wasn't meant to be a dick response, I just knew that he was going to use whatever weight I used.  If he didn't feel comfortable going with 155, I was happy to go with 135 so that he could as well.

The first sign that my brain wasn't functioning properly came when I went to load up the barbell for my warmup reps.  I had somehow gotten it into my head that it would be easier to put 35 pound plates on the barbell for some lighter warmup reps before simply adding 25 pound plates to get to the RX weight.  Just one problem: that adds up to 165 pounds, not 155 pounds.  Thankfully the light bulb went on before we started.  Using 165 pounds would have been a total nightmare, especially based on how 155 turned out.

The next sign that I had not gauged this workout properly came when Giulz asked if I would complete it in 15 minutes.  15 minutes?  Please!  I let Giulz know that I was worried about how warm it was in the gym (it was another muggy mess), but that I'd definitely still keep my time under 15 minutes.  Even if I struggled in the heat, it wasn't going to add 4 minutes to my time.  I had done 5 rounds of DT in about 11 minutes, remember?

Or had I?  When this carnage was over with, I tried to figure out what went wrong.  It took a while to figure out, mainly because I needed a solid half-hour once again to just breathe normally.  Eventually I discovered the gaping hole in my workout logic.  While it was true that I spent about 11 minutes working during my 5 rounds of DT in the team workout, I totally ignored all of the rest I had gotten while Rachel was completing her rounds.  A more accurate estimate of my DT time using RX weights would have been the time on the clock when I completed my final round, which was around 16 minutes.  In that context, there was every reason to question whether I could finish this in under 15 minutes this time around.

Poor Matt.  You were completely right, buddy.  Not only did I sign you up for 155 pounds, but I signed you up for completing it in under 15 minutes.  My bad.

We got started and things were fine early on.  The key to this workout is that one movement leads into the next.  You do a deadlift to get to the hang power clean.  You do a hang power clean to get to the push jerk.  So if your grip begins to tire, you should drop with one rep remaining.  Then when you pick the barbell back up, that last rep will lead you right into the next part of the workout.  To save your grip even more, you can use a mixed grip for the first 11 deadlifts, then switch to a regular grip from there.  I did 11 deadlifts, then dropped my barbell.  I changed my grip, did the last deadlift, and then proceeded into the hang power cleans.  I might have been able to do 8 reps in a row if I was stubborn, but I felt breaking the reps up from the start made more sense.  I did two sets of four before doing the last rep as a transition to the push jerks.  Probably the worst thing you can do in this workout is drop the barbell while doing the push jerks.  It's very important to get all six in a row to save energy.  I cycled through 6 reps and dropped my barbell.  The first round took approximately 2 minutes.

At this point I did something that I hadn't done in the past when taking part in DT.  I had been thinking about where I could make up some time in this workout and the answer had to be the deadlifts.  Samson came over before we started and gave some good advice.  He told me that I should go right into the deadlifts after completing the push jerks, no matter how tired I was.  155 was a light weight for the deadlift and there was no reason to think I couldn't lift it to my waist over and over again, even if I was exhausted.  So when round 1 was done, I went right into my deadlifts.  I was struggling to breathe, but every rep I got done here was one less rep I'd need to do after I took a break.  I wanted to get through all 11, but after 6 reps I had to drop.  This allowed me to catch up with Matt, who was working directly in front of me.  He had gotten through the toughest part of the round (the hang power cleans) quicker than me, so I was behind him at the start of round two.  Getting a chunk of the deadlifts done immediately made us even again.  I did the hang power cleans and push jerks the same way I did them in round one.  At the end of two rounds, I was slightly behind again, but the clock said we had completed those rounds in just over 4 minutes.  See, 15 minutes was gonna be a piece of cake!

I went right into the deadlifts to start round 3 and did 6 reps again.  Except now a longer break was needed.  My breathing was very rapid and I couldn't continue on until I got it under control.  Matt looked like he was having a similar issue.  I did the same rep scheme in getting through the rest of the round, but the longer breaks meant this wasn't going to be a third consecutive two-minute round.  The clock had ticked past 7 minutes when we got through round three.  I was exhausted and had little interest in doing two more rounds of this, but finishing in under 15 minutes was still not a major concern.

Round 4 brought concern.  I only got 4 deadlifts in after the push jerks.  I took a very long break because I thought splitting the next 7 deadlifts into 2 sets was a bad idea.  I wasn't continuing until I felt confident that I could do all 7 reps.  I was now ahead of Matt because Matt had walked away from his barbell.  Like far away.  Standing in front of it was probably making him nauseous.  I could relate.  The barbell felt like it was 255 pounds at the moment.  My hang power cleans were becoming very ugly.  I had to save a couple of the reps by going full starfish when I caught them.  I kept looking at the clock and saw that my pace had slowed to a crawl, but I couldn't go on until my breathing returned to semi-normal.  I had 1-2 shaky push jerks, but I held on through the set of 6.  Almost 11 minutes had elapsed.  That round took nearly 4 minutes.  The final round was probably going to be even slower.  Why did I say that I would finish this in 15 minutes?

I could only manage 2 deadlifts right after the push jerks.  My next set wasn't much better, but I got 4 reps.  Matt was having some issue with his barbell in front of me (turns out that the metal ring in the center of one of his plates popped out when he had dropped his barbell from overhead), so he moved up to another barbell that was no longer in use.  I rested up before holding on for 5 deadlifts.  Part of me was racing Matt and part of me was racing the clock.  Matt was still on his deadlifts when I did my final one and went into my hang power cleans.  Only instead of doing a set of 4, I did a set of 2.  Crap.  It was all falling apart.  My breathing.  My grip.  My ability to do math.  I needed rest badly, but the clock was charging towards 15 minutes.  Gotta keep moving.  I did a set of 3 hang power cleans, took a nice long break, then did 3 more.  As I knelt next to my barbell, I saw the clock was approaching 14:30.  Even if I wanted to break up my push jerks, I couldn't at this point.  I needed to pick up that barbell, do 1 hang power clean, and follow it up with 6 push jerks.

I wasn't physically ready to do those reps, but I picked up the barbell anyway.  I did a so-so hang power clean, then proceeded to do some of the worst push jerks I've ever done in my life.  Instead of using legs and arms, I was using mostly back.  On a couple of the reps, my back was very hyperextended.  It was like I was trying to injure myself.  There was no time to worry about that though.  If I didn't keep moving, I wasn't going to finish under the 15 minute deadline I agreed to.  I did one last terrible push jerk and dropped my barbell.  Final time: 14:52.

Matt was done two seconds later.  Obviously he would have been done before me if he hadn't required a new barbell for round #5.  He's a trooper.  He had no interest in using 155 pounds, but he did it anyway.

Matt working hard while I rest in the background

Giulz walked by as I laid dying on the floor.  I looked up to her and said with all the fake confidence I could muster, "told ya we'd keep it under 15 minutes".  She laughed and shook her head to convey the message that I was a complete idiot, a sentiment that was totally justified.

Because of the poor form I used to get the last six push jerks done, my back was hurting when I got home.  I decided that Tuesday would need to be a rest day no matter what was programmed.  It is never good to play around with potential back injuries.  In order to restore some balance in the universe, I was making the good decision to rest after having made the terrible decision to go RX on DT.

Wednesday preview: 35 minutes of rowing and burpees.  Mother Nature finally throws me a bone.