Inverted Chipper

Workout date: 12/7/16

What could cause me to miss my beloved Dudes After Dark class?  No, alcohol was not involved.  We got our new dog, Griffin, in mid-November.  The little guy is a rescue and it has taken him a while to adjust to his new surroundings.  Jenn and I have been on the receiving end of some bites (I guess it would be weird if we were biting him) and we were having a professional trainer stop by.  She came highly recommended and we were eager to learn from her how we could make our home attack-free.  Tuesday night was the only available night on her schedule, so there would be no Dudes for me this week.

After being part of a huge class on Monday, I showed up Wednesday night and discovered that it would just be me and Esra taking part in Coach Jenna's 7:30 class.  I mentioned in my last post that I had class with Esra on Monday, but for the most part, I haven't had class with her all that often.  I usually ran into her when she was doing personal training with Aimee.  With only one other person at the 7:30, this class probably wasn't gonna feel that much different from her personal training sessions.

Jenna had us take part in the Advent challenge of the day before we got into the workout.  Today's challenge was max burpees in one minute.  The class was going to add a member for the next sixty seconds as Jess C decided that she wanted to take part in the burpee challenge with me and Esra.  I wasn't sure if I had ever done 20 burpees in a minute, so that was my goal for this challenge.  Jenna started the clock and the three of us hit the deck.  I did 45 seconds of solid burpees, then held on as best as I could for the last 15 seconds.  I did well enough to tie Jess, who I thought would smoke me in this challenge.  Final score: 23.

Jenna explained the WOD to us and described it as an inverted chipper.  With a regular chipper, you run through a series of movements, completing each of them fully before proceeding on to the next one.  You never come back to a movement in a chipper.  This workout had more of a down and back feel to it.  Here are the details:

Wednesday WOD:
50 calorie row
40 KB swings (53/35)
30 handstand push-ups
20 GHD sit-ups
10 deadlifts (315/205)
20 GHD sit-ups
30 handstand push-ups
40 KB swings
50 calorie row
*25 minute time cap

There was a lot of work in there, so it was difficult for me to estimate how much time this workout would take.  The 25 minute time cap seemed generous, but there have been plenty of times where I thought I'd complete a workout before the time cap only to come up woefully short.  Then I looked at the times from earlier in the day and saw lots of people had gotten time capped.  With that in mind, my goal for the WOD was to simply finish before the cap.

The inverted chipper had handstand push-ups in it, so I would not be able to complete the whole thing RX.  Cline was in the previous class and asked me if I wanted to use his barbell.  It had 275 pounds on it and that seemed like plenty for me.  I think I could have handled 315, but I was already scaling and lifting 275 ten times in the middle of this workout was going to be enough of a challenge.  For the handstand push-ups, I was going with 2 abmats and doing strict reps.  My handstand push-ups can be hit or miss, so I had my doubts about whether I could handle 60 of them.  Everything else I could perform as prescribed.

Jenna had us warm up on all of the movements.  We didn't spend a lot of time on each movement because this was a long workout and we needed to get underway.  Jenna made sure that we felt comfortable on the GHD machine, that we were okay with the deadlift weight we had chosen, and that our scaling option for the handstand push-ups was appropriate.  Then she sent us on our way.

I was in no hurry on the initial row.  We do lots of workouts that begin with some sort of row and I usually have the same mindset each time: don't go slow, but don't wear yourself out.  17 calories per minute meant three minutes for this initial row and that was a pace I could easily maintain while fresh.  I got off of my rower right around three minutes and headed to my KB.  I didn't waste any time getting into my first set.  The row hadn't taken much out of me, so I began to think about the KB swings the same way I had thought about the row.  Completing 40 swings over 3 sets was reasonable for me while relatively fresh.  While I was working on my second set, Esra came over and began swinging her KB.  I kept my breaks between sets fairly short and moved on to the handstand push-ups after three sets of KB swings.

The good news with the strict handstand push-ups is that if I'm able to do them, I run through them very fast.  I got upside-down to begin my first set and it quickly became apparent that I'd be able to make it through this first round of 30.  I completed 10 reps before needing to come off of the wall.  In a perfect world, I would have done two more sets of 10 reps.  In the "just feel lucky that you have handstand push-ups today" world, you take sets of whatever length you can get.  I could only get 8 reps in set #2, so the remaining 12 reps would have to be split up over two more sets.  I took my time in between sets, but I didn't get the sense that I needed to hurry.  The time cap was still a long way away.  I did my final two sets and walked over to the GHD machine.

I tend to feel comfortable on the GHD machine and 20 reps was another manageable amount of reps. (Perhaps that was the idea behind this workout: make the reps manageable for every movement.)  I started off with 14 reps, took a breather, then did the last 6.  Hopped off the GHD and came over to my barbell.  I've done 10 consecutive deadlifts with a weight of 275 pounds before, so I wasn't worried about getting stuck here.  Guess I should have been worried because right on cue, I got stuck on the deadlift.  As soon as I attempted the first rep, I knew I was in trouble.  I hung on for a total of 3 reps, dropped the barbell, and took a step away from it.  That did not feel like 275 pounds.  I walked back to the barbell and held on for 2 reps, but I needed a longer break after that set.  I was definitely glad I didn't use 315 pounds because I would have needed to do all singles.  That's what I ended up doing for the last 5 reps at 275.  Each of those reps was really painful.  I was incredibly thankful that this was the one movement in this workout that we didn't have to do twice.

With my lower back and hamstrings hurting from the deadlifts, I drunk-walked my way back to the GHD machine.  The clock had just reached 10 minutes as I put my feet into place.  Unless I completely fell apart on the handstand push-ups, I was going to be well under the cap.  Now I was getting greedy thinking about what my final time could be.  Could I keep it under 20 minutes?  I got to work on the GHD and made it through 12 sit-ups.  The GHD was so much more painful after having to do those deadlifts.  I took a pretty long break before completing the last 8 reps.

The second round of handstand push-ups was the last major hurdle to overcome.  I knew my sets weren't going to be as big as they were the first time I visited the wall, but I wasn't worried about how many sets it was going to take me to reach 30 reps.  My only concern was that I'd flip upside-down and my arms would say "no mas".  Because once the handstand push-ups were gone, they probably weren't coming back.  I forget whether it took me 5 or 6 sets to complete the 30 handstand push-ups, but I didn't press my luck by going after a really big set at the beginning.  Took my time, kept shaking out my arms, and chipped away little by little.

As I came back to my KB, I took a glance at the clock.  The prospects for finishing in under 20 minutes were not looking strong.  I was definitely feeling fatigued and it seemed likely that I would need four sets to get through these 40 KB swings.  Did 10 reps in the first set, took a short break, and then did 10 more.  I'm guessing I took a longer break before set #3 because I was able to hold on for 12 reps.  That left one final set of 8 to do before I could row my way to the finish line.

The clock was at around 17:30 as I strapped my feet into the rower.  On that first row, I felt good about my prospects of doing a controlled 50 calorie row in three minutes.  This row was not going to be controlled and it certainly was going to take longer than three minutes.  If I could keep it under 3:30 though, I'd stay below 21 minutes.  My arms and legs were tired, but I tried to get the most out of every pull I made.  My glance kept switching from the monitor on the rower to the clock overhead as I tried to estimate whether I was on pace for 21 minutes.  With about 20 calories to go, it looked like I wasn't going to make it.  I picked up the pace a little before going into a final sprint with 10 calories left.  Still wasn't enough.  21 minutes wasn't happening.  Final time: 21:10.

Was I disappointed about not keeping my time under 21 minutes?  Absolutely not.  I was thrilled with my time.  It also got me thinking about how I could have stayed almost four minutes under the time cap when many better athletes in the gym didn't finish.  I think it all comes down to the handstand push-ups.  Doing 60 legitimate handstand push-ups must have taken so much more time than the version I did, which had a very short range of motion.  That's definitely the next step for me.  The strict handstand push-ups with two abmats are no longer challenging me enough.  I need to find a way to drop down to 1 abmat when doing these in future workouts.

Esra was wrapping up her KB swings when I slid off to the left of my rower at 21:10.  Once those were done, she got on her rower, trying to finish up before the time cap.  I cheered her on from the floor during those last couple of minutes.  She made it through 28 calories before Jenna called time.  It seemed like Esra was moving in tandem with me for most of the workout.  Whenever I switched movements, she seemed to be switching as well.  I think I was just faster on each of the two rows that we had to do.

Thursday preview: Gee, I have my choice between 30 bar muscle-ups and 30 ring muscle-ups for the workout?  Let's pretend I can do either of those!