Luke, Luke, I Am Your Partner

Workout date: 6/20/16

I was just kidding about that whole "coming in on the weekend" business I mentioned at the end of my last post.  I did some rock star sleeping on both Saturday and Sunday morning.  I'm not sure why I've been so tired recently, but there might not be anything better than going to bed and not setting an alarm.  Waking up and not knowing whether it's the afternoon already is awesome.  Missing breakfast?  Not so awesome, but my body probably needs rest more than it needs a three-egg omelette on the weekend.

The WOD on Monday was one that I hadn't done in over a year and not one that I had particularly fond memories of.  But I was itching to work out.  Plus it was a WOD that involved the chance to lift some heavy weight, something that has been missing from a lot of the workouts over the last few weeks.  How heavy?  Could it be 400 pounds for the first time?  Maybe...

Monday WOD:
Deadlifts
1-10-1-20-1-30
Score is total weight used in each deadlift set

This deadlift workout had a little mix of everything.  You have those three single reps in there to break up the much larger sets that you have to do.  Ideally, you should be increasing the weight for those single reps as you move along in the workout, but you're decreasing the weight for the big sets because the number of reps in those sets are increasing.  When I did this last year, I went 365-385-365 on my single reps (I tried 395 for the final single rep and failed).  For the larger sets, I went 275-205-165.  In total, my score was 1,760.  I remember hating the round of 20 in particular.  I also recalled that the round of 30 was about breathing more than anything else.  As always, I wanted to improve on my prior performance, but I knew this would be a workout where I would likely change weights on the fly based on how I was feeling during it.

There were 17 of us packed into the gym for the 6:30 class.  Coach Rachel was filling in for Aimee as she was part of KOP's contingent at the Masters Pam-Am weightlifting competition in Puerto Rico.  Our warmup involved teams of 3 (one team was stuck with only 2 members) switching between Russian KB swings, KB deadlifts, and whatever movement Rachel called out for the person traversing the gym to get from one KB to the other.  My teammates were Luke and recent birthday boy Borden.  When that portion of the proceedings came to a close, Rachel instructed us to whittle our groups down to two.  Luke informed Borden that he wasn't receiving a rose at tonight's ceremony, so Borden needed to find a new suitor to deadlift with.

It made sense for Luke and I to work together because we're pretty close in terms of how much we can deadlift.  Okay, that might be giving myself a little too much credit, because I've seen Luke deadlfit over 400 pounds and I've idled out at 385 pounds for the last 18 months.  But Luke hurt his back a couple of weeks ago, so I wasn't sure how heavy he might go for this workout.  I found out pretty quickly though.  As we began doing warmup reps at lighter weights, Luke and I agreed that we didn't want to waste too much energy before getting into the real sets.  We progressed through 135, 185, 225, and 275, but I could tell Luke was ready to get into his first 1 rep max.  I wanted to do one more practice rep at 315, but Luke passed on it, saying he was done warming up.  After my warmup rep at 315, he loaded 385 on to the barbell, making me think that his back issues were a thing of the past.

Luke clearly channeled his inner Dave because early on he had a problem with overthinking the lifts. On his first attempt at 385, he made several mini-attempts to get the barbell off the floor, switching his grip whenever it wouldn't move.  Finally he gave up on it and walked away for a minute.  When he was ready for another try, he got the barbell off the floor, but couldn't get it above his knees.  He was going to need to drop some weight for this first rep.  Luckily for him, his partner needed less weight anyways.  I took 20 pounds off and went for my first rep at 365.  Definitely very heavy, but I was able to stand it up.  Luke then came over and stood up with 365 like the barbell was empty.  If he could clear his head like he did before that rep, then 385 was not going to be a problem for him when he went after it again.

It was time to do the 10 rep set and I stuck with the 275 pounds I used a year ago.  I thought about trying to go a little heavier, but I knew that if I went too heavy, there was no chance of me getting 405 pounds on my last single rep of the workout.  I also wasn't entirely sure how smoothly I'd get through 10 reps at this weight as I couldn't remember how this part of the workout went last time.  So 275 was good enough for me.  I flew through the 10 reps in this set although I must admit that my grip was starting to fail toward the end.

(Possible no rep alert!  During this set, I also got a little worried about whether I was properly stringing the reps.  After each deadlift, you are supposed to tap the barbell back against the floor and go immediately into your next rep.  You are not allowed to bounce the barbell off the floor in an attempt to make the next rep easier.  I used to gently tap the barbell off the floor between reps, but you waste a lot of energy controlling the barbell on it's way down to the floor.  Now I simply let gravity do all the work, which causes the barbell to slam against the floor.  When doing this set, I noticed I was making a lot more noise than everyone around me because of how hard my barbell was crashing into the floor.  Am I bouncing the barbell?  Not intentionally, but if I am doing it, hopefully someone let's me know in the future.)

I felt somewhat obligated to write that last paragraph because Luke and I were a complete contrast in styles when it came to the bigger sets.  As Luke did his set of 10 at 275, he went very slowly and never slammed the barbell into the ground.  In fact, he would pause for a split-second and re-grip a lot between reps.  (Note: You are allowed to do this as long as you don't take more than a second or so in the bottom of the movement.)  Unfortunately Luke got in his head again and had to stop after 6-7 reps.  We took 50 pounds off the barbell and Luke made it through 10 reps at 225 easily enough.

It was time to load up our barbell again and I got my first crack at 385.  It was much more difficult than the lift at 365, but I did manage to get it off the floor better than expected.  The real struggle was handling it once it was above my knee.  That is typically the easy part for me, but I had to work hard before pinning my shoulders back and standing upright with the barbell.  405 was going to take everything I had.  As for Luke, his struggles with 385 were a thing of the past as he got it on the first try in round two.

My original plan was to go with 225 for the 20 rep set, but I wimped out again, opting to go with 215 in the hope that I'd be a little fresher for my attempt at 405.  The set at 215 went remarkably well.  I did 18 fast reps before needing to hold at the top and get my breath back.  I did two more reps and happily dropped the barbell.  Luke began with 185 on his barbell, but once again lost focus in the middle of his set and had to scale down.  He moved to 145 and had no problems taking care of 20 reps at that weight.

It was time to get excited!  I'm sure I've attempted 405 dozens of times, but I felt like there was a real chance I might get it today.  385 came off the ground faster than I thought it would.  I had three days off prior to this workout, so I was relatively fresh.  One lift and I would be halfway through my list of goals for 2016.  I got into a positive mindset, chalked my hands, dried off my head and arms, and got ready to go.  I walked up to the barbell, pulled as hard as I could, and it didn't move very much at all. I walked away for a minute and went through my routine all over again.  On my second attempt, it felt like the barbell moved more than it had the first time, but I couldn't get it above my knees.  405 was not happening today.  I let Luke know that I was moving down to 385.

While I got ready to do 385 again, Luke stepped up to take a crack at a second successful rep at 385.  Just like he had done in the prior round, he stood it up without looking nearly as strained as I do on most of my deadlift attempts.  It was a nice comeback from the start of the workout.  He had failed twice at 385, but then he regrouped and had two successful lifts at that weight.  Watching Luke manhandle 385 inspired me to go up and do it myself.  So I walked up to 385, lifted it off the ground, got it above my knees and...couldn't complete the lift.  That was annoying.  I may have run out of juice with both a 1 rep and a 30 rep set still to go.  After another break of a minute or so, I attempted 385 again, only to fail before the barbell got above my knees.  Not good.  I stripped 20 more pounds off the barbell and tried 365.  While it didn't go as smoothly as it had to start the workout, I did manage to stand up with it.  Just the 30 rep set to go and I could be done with this WOD.

All of my failed attempts on the third single rep had set us behind the class.  The other groups were either putting away their weights or they were giving their scores to Rachel at the front of the class.  Nick and Samson had left out their barbell for us so that me and Luke could do our 30 rep sets at the same time.  Luke used 95 pounds for his set, while I went with 165.  Remember to breathe, Dave!  This last set was going to be all about cardio.  I did my first rep and was surprised at how light it felt. I needed to move quickly and get this over with.  I did 20 fast reps before stopping at the top to get my breath.  From there, I thought I could get the last 10 in a row, but I had to stop again 5 reps later.  I was very tired, but I knew I could hold on for 5 more reps.  Just needed to keep moving.  I thought about stopping with 2 reps to go, but instead pushed through two slow reps to finish off my workout.  Final total: 1,770 pounds.

It was a 10 pound PR and I guess I should be happy about that, but it felt like I missed a bunch of opportunities in this workout.  Didn't get 405.  Plus I used less weight than I could have on the larger sets in order to give myself my best chance at finally eclipsing 400 pounds on the deadlift.  I think I'll ignore that goal if this workout comes up again and attempt to do 295-225-185 on the big sets instead.

Tuesday preview: Benchmark day as Elizabeth returns, bringing many squat cleans and dips with her.  She'll be followed by some heavy two-rep hang squat cleans.