Your Core Is Weak

Workout date: 11/18/16

I didn't have the opportunity to do Annie (50-40-30-20-10 of double unders and sit-ups) when she visited KOP back in May.  And I was busy pouting about how much my body was betraying me during August.  That meant prior to Friday, the last time I had done Annie was in February.  I actually brought Annie home with me the last two times that we got together.  According to my spreadsheets, the last time we rendezvoused at the gym was in May 2015.  Given that this has been a benchmark WOD at KOP for the past two years, I was surprised to see that my Annie attempt on Friday would be the first one that I had made at the gym in 18 months.

I had high expectations for this round with Annie.  I've put in a lot of practice on my double unders the last few months.  This was the workout where I figured it would pay off the most.  There are only 150 double unders in the WOD, which is a low amount compared to some of the workouts we do at the gym.  The workout also had manageable sets, starting with 50 in round one and decreasing by 10 each round after that.  My consistency with double unders left me unable to crack 10 minutes for this WOD until I somehow did it in February.  I didn't feel like I was moving very fast during that attempt, so if I could clean up my double unders this time around, I thought I would be able to make a big dent in my February time of 9:31.  The goal wasn't to finish in under 9 minutes.  It was to finish in less than 8 minutes.

I couldn't resist making a second appearance at the nooner for the week.  There were 9 of us in class with Coach Aimee.  There was no Double Under Poker as part of the warmup, but she did want us to test out our double under prowess prior to beginning the workout.  If we were worried about getting stuck along the way, Aimee suggested a scale of double under attempts so that everyone was at least working on their double unders even if they weren't completing 150 of them.  Aimee recommended doing attempts for 90-60-30-20-10 (time in seconds) instead of doing 50-40-30-20-10 reps for the five rounds.  No one was escaping the 150 sit-ups that we had to do.

The majority of the class was doing the scaled version, even Mike Sim.  Wait what?  Mike didn't raise his hand when Aimee asked who was doing the RX version of the workout, then he said to her he'd be scaling.  That left me confused because I was pretty certain that he did double unders better than I did.  Turns out he was joking.  (It's possible that I only pick up sarcasm at night.)  Mike and I were the only ones going RX and my hope was that my newly honed double under skills would allow me to beat him in a WOD, something that I'm not sure I've ever done before.

Aimee started the clock and stage fright set in immediately.  I hit myself with the rope before completing a rep.  Next attempt: 1 rep before hitting myself with the rope.  Same deal on my next attempt.  Three sets had netted me 2 reps.  This was definitely not the pace I needed to break 8 minutes.  Meanwhile, Mike's rope hadn't stopped whistling since the WOD began.  I stopped for a couple seconds to get my head right.  Everyone always tells me that I need to be calm to be successful with double unders, yet here I was, pissed off less than 15 seconds into this workout.  I calmed myself and twirled the rope again.  48 consecutive reps later and I was moving on to the sit-ups.  Why couldn't I have just begun with a set like that?

I made the decision not to use DBs to anchor my feet because I feel like they become a nuisance after a while in this workout.  I was going to butterfly my feet instead.  Aimee told us to make sure we hit both hands to the floor when we laid backwards on the sit-up and to come all the way up at the top to complete each rep.  If I'm being totally honest, I think I've only hit my shoulders to the floor while doing the sit-up portion of Annie in the past, but I wanted to be totally legit during this attempt.  I made sure to let the backs of my hands slap the floor during each rep.  I didn't go incredibly fast during the set of 50, but I made sure my pace was consistent the whole way.

When I got to my rope again, I saw that Mike was already motoring through his set of 40.  I got over my yips by completing the 40 double unders in two sets, the first being 18 reps and the second being 22 reps.  I still felt like I had a shot at catching Mike.  That changed about halfway through the set of 40 sit-ups.  When I wrote about doing Wolverine this year, I mentioned how I was much slower on the sit-ups than I was last year.  At that time, I figured that I just forgot how terrible doing 600 sit-ups was.  I didn't get through 70 sit-ups during Annie before I experienced problems again.  Not good.  I didn't need to stop, but my pace slowed noticeably.  Every time I had done this WOD in the past, I embraced the sit-ups and feared the double unders.  Now the tables had turned.  I couldn't wait for the sit-ups to be over so I could jump rope again.

For the round of 30 double unders, I needed two sets again (19 and 11 reps).  After a rough start, I was now moving through the double unders as quickly as I had hoped.  The problem was with the sit-ups.  The slower pace I used on the back half of the round of 40 was needed to get through the entire round of 30.  Mike was tearing through his round of 20 sit-ups as I wrapped up my third set of sit-ups.  When I got up to jump rope again, Mike began his final round.  I rushed to get started and ended up getting no reps on my first attempt.  No point in rushing to catch Mike now, dummy!  I calmed myself for a second and then started again.  Got all 20.  I began the round of 20 sit-ups at a slow pace for the third consecutive round.  As I did the first few sit-ups, I made a decision.  I was going to sprint through the final round of 10 sit-ups, so why not experience that in advance?  With 10 sit-ups down, I began doing the last 10 sit-ups of this round as fast as I could.  My breathing wasn't going to be calm when I got back to my rope, but with only 10 double unders left, I decided it was worth a shot based on the time I saw on the clock.

That gamble paid off.  I was able to get all 10 double unders on my first attempt.  I dropped to the floor and did the last 10 sit-ups as fast as I had done them to end the previous round.  Final time: 9:04.

That was disappointing to say the least.  Once I began struggling with my sit-ups, I knew 8 minutes wasn't going to happen.  And a big reason why I made that early push at the end was because Mike was yelling to me that I could finish under 9 minutes if I moved fast.  It was close, but I couldn't quite move fast enough to hit that mark.  Overall, the double under improvement was there, but my sit-up woes counterbalanced it.  I turned my weakness in this workout into a strength, but while that was happening, my strength morphed into a weakness.  Such is Crossfit.

The cash out was something that has been programmed as the main WOD on other days: finding a 3RM back squat.  Given that we had just done a workout, I wasn't expecting a stellar result here.  My PR is 300 pounds, but I haven't done a lot of back squats recently, so I thought the number was realistically closer to the 275-285 range.  After doing Annie, my hope was to get 265 and then take a crack at 285.  Mike asked me if I wanted to share a rack with him and I accepted his offer.

We each did a warmup set at 135 before starting our real sets at 185.  Neither of us had difficulty at 185 or 205.  Mike had told me in advance that he wasn't going to go very heavy on the back squats, so even though he didn't have any problems with his third set at 225, he decided not to continue on after that.  I made it through 225 as well.  This was the set where I had to start getting focused.  The barbell was beginning to get heavy and I needed to keep proper form or else I might fail.  That meant getting my breathing right, not letting my knees bow in, and staying in my heels.

On the set of three at 245, I came up on my toes as I stood up from the second rep.  I didn't feel like I was in trouble, but I did angrily shake my head before I did the third rep.  I couldn't afford to be doing that crap as I added more weight to the barbell.  I finished up that set, then added on 20 more pounds.  This was probably going to be my last successful set, so I had to get everything right.  I took the barbell from the rack, took my time as I went through each rep, and got through the set at 265.  I had time for one more set at 285, but even if that didn't go my way, I was happy about taking care of 265.

Some of the other folks in class began putting their weights away as I got ready for the attempt at 285.  The set at 265 let me know I could go a little heavier, but that might have meant 275, rather than 285.  I made the larger jump just because I felt like I had reached my goal and I was now playing with house money.  Why not go big?  I removed the barbell from the rack and immediately noticed that it didn't feel as heavy as I expected it to.  That was a good sign.  It was also nice getting through the first rep without a major struggle.  The next two reps didn't go as smoothly as that first one, but I avoided getting stuck along the way.  Annie may have been a disappointment, but a better than expected 3 rep back squat of 285 salvaged the day.  (I actually think I had a shot at 295 if there was more time left in class.)

After class had ended, I spoke with Aimee about my sit-up problems.  And she gave me a very blunt assessment.  "Your core is weak", she told me.  It's possible that I winced when she said it, because she immediately followed that line with some softer words explaining what I could do to strengthen my core.  A strong core is necessary for so much of what we do at the gym that I need to get on that.  Gonna have to use some of that double under practice time to focus on my squishy middle instead.

Saturday preview: A Dave-friendly WOD of rope climbs and front squats followed by a handstand push-up clinic.  I learn that I can kip upside-down as long as I have a ton of people watching and receive very explicit instructions.