Then You Gotta Breathe

Workout date: 10/11/16

This Monday’s blog ran a little long due to the weight loss update, coverage of two heats of Christine, and the latest on my progress with double unders.  I completely forgot to include a well-deserved shout-out.  About a month ago, we did a workout that included 50 box jump-overs at the end.  During the warmup for that WOD, Steph C did her best impression of yours truly when she tripped over her box and hit the floor.  Unfortunately, an attempt to break her fall instead resulted in her breaking her hand.  For as many times as I have tripped over my box, I consider myself very lucky to have never experienced such an injury.  And I’m sure I would be avoiding box jumps for quite a while if I ever did break my hand in that fashion.  Not Steph.  With a cast protecting her hand, she came in on Monday night and would not be deterred by the 63 box jumps that were part of the workout.  Ballsy stuff and definitely worthy of a shout-out.

Prior to arriving at Dudes After Dark on Tuesday night, I once again spent 10 minutes or so practicing double unders.  It did not go as well as I hoped.  I’ve set a goal for myself to get at least one set of 50 consecutive double unders when I practice, but I couldn’t even get to 30 this time around.  Best I got was 27 in a row.  That was definitely frustrating.  I’m trying to build some consistency and I didn’t come close to my daily goal.

Sometimes when you show up to the gym feeling frustrated, it can be a good thing, especially when it’s a strength day.  Use some of that rage to crush some heavy weights.  The Tuesday WOD was not one where rage was going to help.

Tuesday WOD:

25 minute AMRAP

25 thrusters (45)

25 burpees

25 sumo deadlift high pulls (45)

A 25 minute workout that prominently featured burpees.  Oh boy!  After looking at the WOD, I began thinking about what a solid score would be.  My best guesstimate was that 5 rounds would give you one of the better scores for the day.  That ended up being fairly accurate.  While watching the end of the 6:30 class, I had the chance to talk to Samson, who had done the 5:30 class.  He was able to complete 5 rounds and some of the thrusters to begin round 6, which was one of the best scores of the day.  His advice: just keep moving.  He told me I shouldn’t worry about doing the burpees fast because I’d just get tired over the course of 25 minutes.  If I kept moving, even if I was crawling, I’d be fine.  Fair enough.

I wasn’t as worried about the other two movements.  The thruster weight was the same that we use for Jackie, a workout where I've been able to string 25 thrusters in a row.  In that workout, I’ll use an empty barbell.  For this workout, I opted for a 15 pound barbell with 15 pound plates on it instead.  Why the switch?  Because this workout included sumo deadlift high pulls.  The bottom of each rep involves tapping the weight against the floor.  I was not going to do that with an empty barbell.  I wouldn't need to go all the way to the floor, I would only need to mimic the motion by bringing it down to mid-shin.  That might sound less painful, but in reality it's worse than using the barbell with plates.  We go to mid-shin with PVC pipe when we are warming up and holding it just a few inches above the floor takes a toll on your hamstrings.  When you have plates on the barbell and can tap the floor, you get a split-second of relief.  Since this was a 25 minute workout, those moments of relief were going to add up and I planned on taking advantage of every one of them.

There was a lady sighting at Dudes After Dark as Christa joined the mostly-male contingent who arrived for the 7:30 class.  Coach Rachel was busy wrapping up an intro session that started at 6:30, so Steph got us warmed up.  By the time we were almost done with our warmup, Rachel had become free, so she walked us through the finer points of the thruster and the sumo deadlift high pull.  Since this was a longer WOD, we couldn’t spend a ton of time on the warmup, but this was also a workout where we didn’t need to.  The barbell movements were very light and we had all experienced burpees before.  Rachel warned us that this would be a burner and I don’t think any of the seven attendees doubted her.  She had that “let’s get started” look on her face and we gave her that “let’s get this over with” look in response.  It was time to go.  25 minutes of cardio awaited.

When I do Jackie, I’ve learned that I might as well go through the thrusters quickly.  Pacing them hasn’t done me any favors and it’s a light enough weight that I can move rapidly without much concern.  I talked myself out of doing that before this workout began.  Jackie is more of a sprint and does not include burpees.  This WOD was a marathon and if I wanted to complete 5 rounds, that meant 125 burpees.  Nice and steady was the way to go.

We began with a set of thrusters.  I had Angelo behind me (he had crushed Christine on Monday with a time under 11 minutes) and Ranjith in front of me.  Actually, Ranjith was facing me.  I was a little worried that we’d have some sort of “rep for rep” thing going on, but I think he accidentally started with the sumo deadlift high pulls and from that point on, we were never really in sync.  I stuck to my plan of not moving quickly through the thrusters.  As the set went on, I began to toy with the idea of doing all 25 without putting the barbell down.  Might as well try and save some time in round one that I’ll need when I’m exhausted in round five.  (Spoiler: Or round two…)

I was able to hold on for all 25 thrusters and turned 90 degrees, going from facing the barbell to parallel with the barbell so I could begin my burpees.  I noticed that Angelo was still doing thrusters and a thought blossomed in my mind: you need to stay in front of Angelo for the next 24 minutes.  To be fair, I don’t know Angelo and it’s possible that this workout was one that may have not been his specialty.  However, it’s really hard to finish Christine in under 11 minutes unless you have an engine.  This was my chance to test my engine against his.

Round one of the burpees was a quick lesson on how awful burpees were going to be in this workout.  I didn’t have to resort to crawling during that first set, but I could feel the effect the thrusters had on my body.  My heart rate was definitely up and my legs were already starting to feel the burn.  I was about 5 burpees ahead of Angelo, but this was definitely the part of the workout where he was going to cut into my lead.  Just keep moving.  Up, down, up, down.  The first round of 25 burpees was complete.

I didn’t want to waste a lot of time transitioning between movements, but I definitely took a couple seconds to calm down after finishing the burpees.  I wasn’t sure how bad the sumo deadlift high pulls would feel after the thrusters and burpees.  The answer: not bad at all.  It was a light enough weight that I didn’t have to pop my hips wildly to get it up to my collarbone again and again.  I thought about taking a break after 15 reps, but this movement wasn’t killing me.  I held on to the barbell and completed all 25 reps.  Round 1 was in the books.  A peek at the clock showed me it took 4:05.  Not awful, but there was almost no chance of me finishing 5 rounds.  I was going to get slower as the rounds wore on and I had only banked 55 seconds from the 5 minute pace I would need per round.  Oh well, try and stay ahead of Angelo.  Solid idea, inner monologue.  Goal revised.

As I began round two, I knew I wouldn’t be stringing 25 reps of anything.  If I toughened up, I might have been able to do it with the sumo deadlift high pulls, but I thought it was best to break those up as well.  For the thrusters, I went 10-10-5.  For the burpees, there was some crawling involved, but I tried my best to keep moving, even if that meant dropping to a knee and flopping to the floor from there.  It should be no surprise that I spent the bulk of my time each round on the burpees.  When those were done, I came back to my barbell and went 15-10 on the sumo deadlift high pulls.  Time after round two: about 10 minutes.  Doing this for 15 more minutes was going to suck.  But at least I was still ahead of Angelo.

Technically I was still on pace for 5 rounds and that was completely due to the fact that I was zoned into my breathing.  Every time a thruster went overhead, I exhaled.  Each time I was about to drop into a front squat, I inhaled.  Bottom of a burpee?  Time to exhale.  Clapping overhead?  Inhale.  Breathe out on the high pull, breathe in when you tap the floor.  The only time I can remember being this focused on my breathing is during wall balls and that does not go on for 25 minutes straight.  Perhaps my body went into survival mode and did it on its own (we’ve covered how often I forget to breathe during workouts), but whatever the case may be, breathing properly got me through this workout.

Round 3 was a mirror image of round two.  10-10-5 on the thrusters.  Crawling (but moving) through the burpees.  I was now about 7 burpees ahead of Angelo.  15-10 again on the sumo deadlift high pulls.  It was almost like I had come up with a solid plan for getting through each round.  Only my energy and time remaining were starting to dwindle.  At the end of round three, I was beyond 16 minutes and finding it hard to maintain my pace.

Round 4 of the thrusters was meant to go 10-10-5 again, but I couldn’t make it through the second round of 10.  I was able to reach 8 though and as a result, I went 10-8-7.  More slow burpees followed, but there was no one doing fast burpees at this stage.  Correction: there was no one consistently doing fast burpees at this stage.  Rob C. told me later on that he was doing sets of 3 fast burpees and then taking a small break to nibble away at each round of 25.  I think Angelo was doing something similar because he looked like he was doing his burpees much quicker than I was.  Yet I was always the first one back for the sumo deadlift high pulls.  How tired was I at this stage?  I only did 5 sumo deadlift high pulls in my first set of round four.  I took a longer break after this happened and that helped me finish the round with two sets of 10.

I had reached round 5!  Except there was only about two minutes remaining.  I needed to push and complete what I could.  I knew the thrusters were going to be painful, but I told myself that the first set had to be as many as I could possibly hold on for.  I got up to 15 before needing to drop the barbell.  You might think I then did the final 10 in one set.  You would be wrong.  The gas tank was closing in on E and I could only get 5 reps before dropping again.  The good news is that I kept the next break very short before taking care of the last 5 reps.

Only about 35 seconds to go.  I tried my best to pretend that Alona was next to me and that I was racing her through our last round of burpees.  My legs were smoked.  My breathing was heavy.  But I got through 8 burpees in round 5 before time was called.  Final score: 4+33.

That wasn’t bad.  I finished 12 reps behind Rob, but I was 17 reps ahead of Neil and 16 reps ahead of Angelo.  This was typically the type of workout where I would fall apart along the way, but I think my pace ended up being consistent from the beginning of round two onward.  I focused on my breathing, kept moving, and everything turned out alright in the end.  Except for completing 5 rounds.  Maybe next time.

As Rachel was cleaning up the gym, I decided to get out my jump rope.  Tim is always preaching at Endurance about how we need to get used to working when we haven’t fully recovered yet.  I definitely wasn’t fully recovered from this, so might as well train a little bit.  My first set was 4 reps.  My second rep was also 4 reps.  Rachel had finished wiping down the whiteboard and was headed to the locker rooms to turn off the lights.  I began my third set and made it past 4 reps.  Made it past 40 reps.  It got ugly at that stage, but I wanted my 50 in a row.  As soon as I got the 50^th rep, I stopped.  Maybe I could have gotten a couple more, but I wasn’t beating 68.  Besides, I was tapped out.  I had reached my daily goal and that’s all I needed on this night.

Wednesday preview: 3RM push press and a cash out featuring dips and power cleans.