Sleeping past 6am on Saturday mornings has become a luxury that I'm quite fond of. Jenn and I bought this really nice bed years ago and it is probably the thing we treasure most in the house. We even gave it a nickname: the burrito. (Because there is nothing better than being all wrapped up in the burrito. We also may eat a lot of Mexican food.) When I was attending Competitors Class regularly, my phone alarm would go off at 6am and I would begrudgingly slide out of the burrito and make my way into the bathroom to go stand comatose in the shower for a solid 20 minutes. That would help wake me up, but my body really just wanted to go back to sleep. I slowly got my gym gear on and headed downstairs. Adios burrito. I'll be back in a few hours for a nap.
Now that there isn't a good reason for me to go to Competitors Class anymore (one could argue there was never a good reason for me to be there, but I digress), I get the rest that my body craves. On some Saturdays, I don't even have to worry about the alarm waking me up. I sleep in and it's fantastic. That didn't happen this past Saturday though. Giulz asked if I could help out at Competitors this weekend as she needed males to test out a potential workout for an upcoming event at the gym. The male population at the gym nowadays is pretty low (practically non-existent for the coaching staff). Finding guys within that population who want to spend two hours working out on a Saturday morning is very "needle in a haystack"-type work. So I decided I would sacrifice a morning of sleeping in to help the cause. The only problem was that two males were needed and it wasn't clear who that second male would be (if anyone) until I got to the gym on Saturday morning. Who could it be?
Welcome back Josh M! He would be part of the gender-symmetric four-person team doing the practice WOD later on in the class. We'd be doing some Olympic lifting to kick things off though.
Olympic lifting portion of Competitors Class:
6 min EMOM
2 clean and jerks (ascending weight)
2 min rest
2 snatches (ascending weight)
There was so much about this that looked problematic to me. Not that the other folks in class couldn't handle it. But me? I could see myself having all sorts of issues with this one. Among the stumbling blocks:
- I hate EMOMs. True story.
- We had to do two lifts, then change the weight on the barbell in the course of 60 seconds. Then we had to be ready for the next set of lifts. I told Josh that changing weights was going to be the hardest part of this for me. I strongly suspected it wouldn't be long before I fell behind the clock.
- Were we squatting all of these lifts? For reasons that have never been clear to me, Crossfitters are told to assume that a lift must be squatted unless it is written otherwise. (What is so hard about writing the word "squat" if you want people to squat? I don't get it.) Based on this literally unwritten rule, I was going to squat during all of my lifts.
As I thought through all of this work, I came up with a game plan. You couldn't wing it on this one or you were definitely going to fall behind. So I decided on 135-145-155-165-175-185 for my clean and jerks and 105-115-125-135-145-155 for my snatches. Then I set up a bunch of plates near my barbell to try and minimize the amount of time I would need to take during the weight transitions.
How did it go? I guess I would have to say better than I expected, but I didn't finish the entire thing. I did my 2 clean and jerks at 135, added 10 pounds to the barbell, turned around to the clock and saw that it took me nearly 50 seconds. Oh boy. I certainly wasn't going to get quicker at this as I moved up in weight, so I'd need to do my best to maintain this pace. I got through the lifts at 145 and 155 and made my transitions before the minute was up. After two clean and jerks at 165, I went to add 10 more pounds, but the buzzer went off as I was finishing putting the extra plates on the barbell. Only round 5 and I was already behind. Same thing happened after the round at 175, although I was much further behind, barely completing my two clean and jerks at 185 before the minute elapsed.
Luckily, I now had two minutes to strip the barbell and put 105 on it as I got ready to snatch. I slowly changed the weights as I tried to calm my breathing. I know I'm glossing over the lifts to emphasize how quickly I needed to make the transitions, but those lifts were certainly not easy. I was supposed to be resting during these two minutes, but I spent a good bit of it scrambling to put the correct plates on the barbell. The only thing I had going for me was that the snatches would likely be quicker than the clean and jerks, leaving more time for the transitions. But could I keep running around in between sets and still complete all my lifts?
In a word: no. I got through 105 okay, but one of my lifts at 115 was shaky. Same thing at 125. I was struggling to get 135 on my barbell when the buzzer sounded to begin the next minute. Josh noticed I was having a hard time and came over to help me with the weight change. It was much appreciated. I wish I could have shown that appreciation by successfully getting through the set at 135, but that didn't happen. I caught the first snatch in the bottom of the squat and was too tired to stand it up. I knew it was time to stop. I had watched Regional athletes do squat snatches at breakneck speed over the last three weekends. I was not them. I needed some time in between my lifts. There was no chance I was going to catch up during my rounds at 135, 145, and 155. I was probably going to have a lot more failed reps that I didn't have time for in this format. So I took a seat and watched Josh complete his last two rounds. Josh was confused when he finished his sets and saw that the girls on the platform were still working. Jill A, Giulz, Laura A, and Jenna were all continuing on at the end of 14 minutes. In fact, they were still lifting at the end of 24 minutes too. They were either alternating lifters each minute or were taking more rest than was written into the workout. Whatever they did, it was a lot smarter than what me and Josh had done.
Next up was the practice WOD. When I read what it was, I was totally confused as to why Giulz needed two guys. Perhaps just for authenticity? It was 100% body weight movements, meaning there weren't different standards for males and females. Here's what it looked like:
Practice WOD:
10 minute time cap
Team of 4 split into two pairs (MF, MF)
75 chest-to-bar pull-ups (partner holds dead hang from pull-up bar)
50 handstand push-ups (partner holds handstand hold)
75 pistols (partner holds bottom of a squat)
One pair works as much as they want, then must tag in other pair if they want to switch
I was psyched about the pistols! The other stuff, not so much. I mean, I could do all of that "partner holds" stuff. But the real movements I was gonna struggle with. Jill ended up being my better half for this workout, while Giulz and Josh made up the other pair. I would need to use two abmats for the handstand push-ups, but I did everything else as it was written.
Giulz led things off by doing 10 chest-to-bar pull-ups, then they tagged in me and Jill. Jill did 10 and we tagged out. Josh did 10 before tagging us back in. And then it was my turn to go. I warned Jill that I could only do fast singles, but she said she was okay with that. What I failed to mention to her was that I needed to do a gigantic kip in order to hit my chest to the bar during the pull-up. Hanging only one bar away, poor Jill almost caught a size 12 to the face each time I wildly swung to do my reps. She only had to deal with that 5 times though before I tagged out. The next time I was up, she did the dead hang from 2 bars away. Smart girl! Giulz and Josh did most of the work the rest of the way as I only did 5 more chest-to-bar pull-ups before we reached 75 as a team.
From there it was on to the handstand push-ups/holds. Only having to do 50 didn't seem too bad, especially when you got to cheat by using 2 abmats. My problem was that I got too excited the first time I had to kick up on to the wall to do my push-ups. I didn't want Jill to have to hang upside-down forever, so I rushed getting into the handstand. Failed on my first attempt. Failed on my second attempt. I was blowing this. I took a second to compose myself, then finally got upside-down properly before doing a set of handstand push-ups. I don't remember how many reps we did during each of our sets, but I think we split these up much more evenly than we had the chest-to-bar pull-ups.
At long last, it was time for some fun! I had told Jill prior to the start that I was more than willing to do all 75 pistols or sit in the bottom of a squat while someone else did 75 pistols. Both parts of this section sounded peachy keen to me. Giulz and Josh finished the handstand push-up segment, so Jill and I were first up on pistols. Jill knew I was excited about this part, so she let me go first. I felt a little unsteady at first, but then I got my rhythm and did 15 reps. I could have kept going, but I was worried that I wasn't going as fast as the rest of the group might be able to go, especially Jill. She loves pistols just as much as I do. So after 15 reps, I let her go and sat in a squat. Jill took on a huge chunk of the reps before tagging in the other pair. Like me, she was more than happy to go all the way to 75, but got worried that it might be time to tag in Giulz and Josh. They were not nearly as excited about the pistols as Jill and I had been and were more than happy to leave the last 20 reps to me. I bounced back and forth on one leg until I finished off the 75th rep. We were well under the time cap, finishing in about 8 and a half minutes.
There was no final cash out written down originally, but Giulz came up with one on the fly. It would be three rounds long, spending one minute at each of the following 6 stations:
- GHD sit-ups
- Double unders
- Rope climbs
- Push-ups
- Pull-ups
- Rest station
As written, there were 5 working stations and 1 rest station. The way I did it? 2 working stations, 2 kinda-working stations, 1 pseudo-rest station, 1 actual rest station. Hey, I was pretty tired at this point and I did the best I could. And if I'm being completely honest, I was only interested in the rope climbs, so I used most of my energy there. I began each round on the double unders and I was good about trying to get a lot of work done there since I could use a lot of double under practice. During my minute on the rope, I did two 20-ft rope climbs in rounds one and two. I could only get one 20-ft and one 15-ft climb in during the final round. At the push-up station, I tried to do sets of 5, but needed some downtime between those sets. That meant 10-15 push-ups each time I was there. The pull-up station was the pseudo-rest station as I had little energy left each time I got there. Plus I didn't have my grips on and I wasn't about to rip at the end of this workout. I RX'd the rest station. Finally, I treated the GHD sit-up station like the push-up station, doing sets of 6-8 before needing a break. I typically did 2-3 sets during the minute there.
After 18 minutes rotating around, we were finally done. I crawled over to the nearest fan and parked myself there for a while. In fact, I might have only gotten up to take this picture:
I tried to smile, but I was too tired to make it happen
It was a rare Competitors Class visit, but I made it through the workout, even though it was crazy hot inside the gym yet again. I went on a coffee/breakfast run for some of the crew, then headed home for a date with the burrito. I missed her so.
Monday preview: Having missed a rest day on Saturday, I took Sunday off despite it being Open Gym. I returned on Monday for DT. First my brain malfunctions, then my body does.
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