Scaled The Balls Out Of It

Workout date: 5/24/16

If there is one thing that I've done recently that has helped me stay sane at the gym, it has been lowering my expectations on certain workouts.  It isn't something that comes easy to me.  I'm very competitive by nature.  I go into every workout hoping to knock it out of the park.  But gaining a better understanding of what movements I'm good at and what movements I struggle with has helped me manage my emotions.  It doesn't always come down to ability though.  You have to factor in how much recent workouts have affected you.  How much the stresses of daily life are taking a toll on you.  Even something as basic as not getting a good night's sleep can cause you to perform worse than expected in a WOD.

I went into Tuesday night with lowered expectations for a variety of reasons.  I had reached the 48 hour hangover period where the muscles in my body start letting me know that they hate me for the heinous workout I did two days ago.  Add on to that a pretty brutal partner WOD from Monday night and my body was in rougher shape than it typically is.  There was also the fact that the Tuesday workout was not what I would call a "Dave workout".  There was one aspect of the workout that was for me (overhead squats), but the vast majority of the workout spelled trouble.

Tuesday WOD:
80 double unders
8 overhead squats (135/95)
4 muscle-ups
60 double unders
6 overhead squats
3 muscle-ups
40 double unders
4 overhead squats
2 muscle-ups
20 double unders
2 overhead squats
1 muscle-up

That's 200 double unders, 20 overhead squats, and 10 muscle-ups for those of you who don't feel like doing the math.  Clearly my time in this workout would be based on whether or not I had double unders today, something that magically seems to come and go depending on the day.

Dudes After Dark was 80% dude this week, as Erika R joined myself, Matt E, Ryan A, and John McHugh.  That's right, Dudes After Dark was getting a jolt of intensity this week!  Coach Rachel warmed up our shoulders by splitting us into teams of 2 (Ashley M stuck around to participate) and having us toss a medicine ball down the gym to our partner who would then do 2 med ball cleans before tossing it back to us.  The first team to toss the ball 30 times won...a little extra rest while the other two teams finished.  This sounded like another horrendous shoulder warmup like the one I had experienced yesterday, but it turned out not to be all that bad.  Matt and I finished up first and got some additional rest before we started going through the movements.

For the movement progressions, we started off by covering the overhead squat.  Then we moved on to the muscle ups where all of us needed to find a scale.  Jumping muscle ups was mentioned and I was totally on board with doing those, especially since I'd only have to do 10 of them.  But Rachel advocated that I work on transitions instead.  Probably a good call since I suck at transitions, but it also led to me doing some sloppy reps during this phase of the workout.  The last thing we did was that double under test where we go for 30-45 seconds to see how many reps we can get.  I'll never understand this test.  There is no way that my performance for 30-45 seconds while fresh will be anywhere close to what it will be like when I'm trying to get through 200 of them in a workout.  However, this tends to be a staple of the warmup when we have double under workouts.  Right before class I had tried out my double unders and they seemed to be non-existent.  But when I did the test, I did 34 in a row before stopping.  I could feel myself getting tired before the workout had even begun.  Only 22 seconds had passed, but I was using the last 8 seconds for rest.  At this point, all of us knew how we were going to do the workout, so Rachel got us started with the first set of 80 double unders.

I couldn't quite match the 34 in a row I got during the test, but I did start off with a solid set of 27.  From there I did medium-sized sets while taking decent breaks in between.  There was no reason to rush into the next set as this workout could end up taking almost 15 minutes.  Plus, if I rushed and started failing, then I'd have a bad attitude for the remainder of the time that I was doing double unders.  Better to go a little slower and keep things positive.  Eventually I got to 80 and moved to my barbell.

I'm not sure why I didn't follow my double under advice when I got to the barbell, but I decided to rush into the overhead squats.  Probably just ego.  Hey, this is the thing you're good at!  You don't need to put any thought into doing this correctly.  I got the barbell over my head with a clean and jerk, but never moved my hands out wide where they are supposed to be.  Once I began my reps, I knew I was in trouble.  After 3 reps, I dropped the barbell.  So much for this being the easy part of the workout.  I got my head straight, then tried to correct what I had done wrong on my first attempt.  When I got the barbell overhead, I slid my hands out to the sides, giving me a much more stable position for the squats.  I held on for the last 5 reps, then went to the rings.

The transitions I did in this workout are hard to explain.  The idea is to practice the transition you have to make in the muscle-up, that moment when you go from swinging below the rings to pulling yourself above the rings in anticipation for pressing out of the dip.  The scale I used involved lying on the floor with the rings low enough that I could reach them with extended arms.  Once my body was in the correct position, I would pull my knees toward my chest and then shoot my legs forward, while at the same time pulling my upper body over the rings.  If it sounds complicated...well, it is.  It is also super fast, so if you're having a hard time envisioning a guy who weighs more than 210 pounds pulling this off, don't feel bad because I wasn't able to pull it off.  My "successful" transitions were the ones where I got my body most of the way over the rings before my feet hit the floor.  If I didn't manage that, then I didn't count the rep.  On the first set, my first three transitions were pretty solid.  My fourth attempt was crappy, so I re-did that one before heading back to my jump rope.

Matt had said to me before the workout that he expected the round of 60 to be the worst and his prediction was 100% correct.  I tried to get a big set of double unders, but I think all my sets were single digits during this round.  As I had done during the round of 80, I took decent sized breaks if only to keep myself from becoming frustrated.  I'm sure I spent more time on this round than the initial round, but there wasn't much I could do about it.  Just chipped away until I got my 60 reps done.  From there, I went back to my barbell and learned from my earlier mistake.  There was no point in squatting before my hands were in the correct position, so I got the bar overhead, slid out my hands, then did my 6 reps.  Three transitions afterwards and I was on to the round of 40.

Maybe double unders just seem daunting when you have to do a lot of them, because I seem to be more proficient with them when the amount I have to do decreases.  After struggling throughout the round of 60, I began the round of 40 with 17 in a row.  And since the finish line was starting to come into view, my breaks were smaller.  It took me three more sets to get to 40.  The four overhead squats were not a problem and I did two decent transitions.  One more round to go.

If my double under confidence grew knowing I only had to do 40 in the previous round, it skyrocketed at the thought of only having to do 20.  Sure enough, I got the rope twirling and it didn't stop until I tossed it down after completing my 20th rep.  I hurried over to my barbell and did 2 overhead squats.  Then I probably hurried too much to get the final transition out of the way.  It was the ugliest transition I did during the entire workout, not coming close to getting over the rings.  I laid back on the floor, shook out my arms, and took my time.  I wasn't going to call time until I did a rep that resembled the ones I had done in the prior two rounds.  Once I was set, I attempted the transition again and hit that "almost but not quite over the rings" position.  That was my scale, so the workout was complete.  Final time: 13:34.

That wasn't a bad time for me.  We had been told to try and keep the workout under 15 minutes and I had managed to do that while doing all 200 double unders as well as the 20 overhead squats with RX weight.  The transitions weren't wonderful, but it was an attempt to work on a movement that I currently don't have in my arsenal.  It might not have looked as good as Aimee's time of 6:44 (done with real muscle-ups), but it was still a productive workout for me.

As we were putting our equipment away, Rachel asked us for our times and what scales we used.  When she got to John, the ever-quoteworthy member of our class said "aaaaaahhhh...I scaled the balls out of it!"  That might be the best way anyone has ever described a workout that I've participated in.  One of the many reasons I miss seeing John in class.

Wednesday preview: All of the cleans.  All of them!