If Wednesday's WOD had me licking my lips before I showed up, then Thursday's WOD was leaving me with a serious case of indigestion. It was my least favorite format (EMOM). What were we forced to do every minute on the minute? 7 KB swings. And I'm not particularly good at KB swings. In fact, there was a workout earlier in the year where we had to do 7 KB swings every minute on the minute and I had to quit before I finished. It was only the third time that I've voluntarily given up on a Crossfit workout, so taking on that WOD's cousin was not the most appealing proposition.
As if that wasn't enough, the workout also included a ton of hang power cleans. I mentioned in my last post that grip strength isn't something I'm noted for and nothing tests grip strength like hang power cleans. There were 90 of them in this workout and if I wanted to go RX, I needed to use 155 pounds. Having gone through the experience of doing 45 hang power cleans with that weight in June while doing DT, I knew there was no chance in hell that I'd be attempting to double that total while in the midst of an EMOM. 135 pounds seemed like a much better alternative. There were also 90 box jumps that needed to be completed, but I was comfortable enough with a 24" box that I knew I wouldn't need to scale that part of the workout. Here's the entire description of the WOD:
3 rounds:
30 hang power cleans (155/105)
30 box jumps (24"/20")
With 7 KB swings (55/35) EMOM
I was attending the noon express class on Thursday because I had a road trip later that evening (there was some traveling at the end of July as well!). Aimee was coaching the nine of us who showed up and I turned out to be the only male there. I had wandered away from Dudes After Dark and found myself a part of the Ladies At Lunch class. Among those in attendance were Pam and Giulz, who were definitely going to crush me in this workout assuming I could even finish it. I had already begun contemplating using less weight on my barbell than the 135 pounds I had originally settled on. Then I found out that when Aimee had done this workout earlier in the morning, she had needed almost 20 minutes (translation: 140 KB swings) to get everything done. Yeah, I was definitely scaling further. I decided to move down to 125 pounds for my hang power cleans.
Another summer workout at the gym, another ungodly humid sweatfest to deal with. One of the biggest problems I have as someone who sweats all the time is that I have a tough time holding on to things in the gym. I have a tough time holding on to the bar when doing gymnastics movements. I struggle to hold on to the barbell for long sets of cleans. And I'm terrified that I'm going to lose my grip and end up launching a KB at someone as my hands slide mid-swing. Two of those three concerns were going to be tested in this workout, so I made sure to have a small towel next to my box so that I could wipe off my hands any time I had doubts about my grip.
After a brief warmup (they don't call it "the express" for nothing), we got ready to tackle this beast. Even though I knew this was going to be a long workout, I told myself that I needed to push hard early on and take a big chunk out of the hang power cleans. The longer it took me to get through them, the more KB swings I would have to do, and the more energy I'd be wasting. Aimee got us started and, after doing my required 7 KB swings, I got through 15 hang power cleans before the buzzer let me know I had to return to my KB. Had I gone too light?
Ohhh Dave, you silly, silly man. You are about to quickly learn the folly of your ways. The day of reckoning draws near. Make that 14 minutes of reckoning.
It took a couple of more minutes to finish off those hang power cleans and as I moved into the box jumps, I tried to get myself comfortable with the idea that this was going to be a very long workout and that I would be doing a shit-ton of KB swings. I needed to keep pecking away. The problem was that I kept losing time transitioning from the barbell or the box to the KB and vice versa. So my minute may have really only been 50 seconds. Now throw in time needed to catch my breath after transitioning to the KB, a few seconds to dry my hands, not to mention the slower swings I was doing as I got tired and you can see how the amount of time I had each minute to do the "actual work" in this WOD dwindled very quickly. I finished off the first round of box jumps in the 8th minute. Had I kept up my first round pace (which I clearly was not going to do), I'd be working for 24 minutes (translation: 168 KB swings). Now you know why I began talking to myself early in this workout. Well, that and mental health issues.
Showing off my belly while the Queen gets work done
In that previous KB EMOM workout where I had to call it a day early, there was one scaling option I didn't consider that could have helped me finish the WOD. Typically when I scale at the gym, I'm thinking about using less weight on the barbell or perhaps making a movement easier (like when I use abmats for handstand push-ups). But another form of scaling is cutting down the number of reps that you're doing. My downfall in that workout was that I couldn't keep doing 7 KB swings every minute on the minute, so eventually I had to stop. I didn't realize until afterwards that I would have been better served trimming the EMOM. Perhaps I could have finished the workout using that scale. Don't ever let it be said that I don't learn from my failures because the game plan on this day was to drop from 7 KB swings to 5 KB swings if I began to falter. Sure enough, in the 11th minute, I decided that if I was going to make it to the end of this workout, I needed to scale the EMOM. And so I did.
It wasn't enough. By that point, I was already feeling some back pain as I worked through my KB swings and my hang power cleans. That discomfort grew worse over the next few minutes as I desperately tried to complete round two of my hang power cleans. The buzzer went off letting me know minute 14 had begun and that it was time to swing the KB again. I needed to catch my breath and then I did 5 painful swings. I came back over to my barbell, having done 18 reps in my second round of hang power cleans. I did rep #19. I did rep #20. When I went to do rep #21, I felt a lot of pain in my back. The barbell did not rise much above my hip before it fell to the floor. I had reached the point where it was not wise for me to continue. For the second time this year, a KB EMOM workout was leaving me with a DNF.
I spent the next few minutes off to the side, stretching out my back. I watched the rest of the class continue on with the workout and they had plenty more to do. Giulz wouldn't finish until the 23rd minute (161 KB swings). Pam wouldn't finish until the 27th minute (189 KB swings!). Afterwards, they were both feeling the effects of this insane workout. Giulz had pain in her neck and her back. Pam had pain in her back and had to clean off all of her equipment because both of her thumbs were bleeding. This WOD left mass casualties in its wake.
As my one contribution for the day, I texted Cline and let him know that he should scale more than he might think when it came to the hang power cleans, even though he's a KB swinging machine. Clearly there was the real possibility that people could get hurt in this workout so I wanted to spread the word: go really light! Even though Cline did that and even though (like me) he is not one who is fond of giving up on a workout before it is fully completed, he had to say "no mas" after taking 24 minutes to complete two rounds.
Let's hope this workout is never programmed again.
Tuesday preview: After a long weekend away, I get my first shot at a benchmark WOD that I missed the first two times it was programmed earlier this year. JJ provides fun with squat cleans and handstand push-ups.
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