Tire Slags

Workout date: 12/1/16

It's pretty rare that I feel so lousy that I'm not willing to go to the gym and at least struggle my way through a WOD, but Wednesday turned out to be one of those days.  It would actually be the start of a Rasputin-like cold that would haunt me for most of the winter.  I did get enough rest on Wednesday night that I felt okay participating in the Thursday night WOD.  I showed up for the 7:30 class with Coach Giulz, as did four others.  The workout would be one part strength, one part cash out, and one part Advent challenge.  That's right.  Thursday was the first day of December, so for the next 24 days, we'd all be participating in short challenges to win tickets for various prizes (personal training sessions with coaches, alcohol, photo shoots, etc.) that would be raffled off on Christmas Day.

Giulz was running the Advent challenge for the 6:30 class after they had completed the cash out, so she had the 5 of us who were there for the 7:30 class jump in and have it become part of our warmup.  The first Advent challenge was 1 minute to do as many air squats as possible.  This was the first challenge in 2015 as well and I got a score of 58.  I didn't think I could go all out for a minute during that first attempt, so I paced the first 30 seconds a bit before realizing that I had enough left in the tank for the last 30 seconds.  This time around, I was simply going to go berserk from the start and hope that I could maintain a breakneck speed for the entire minute.  I also wanted to make sure I opened my hips all the way because Giulz had pointed out during Brawl In The Fall that I hadn't been doing so.

I'm sure I looked incredibly goofy over the next 60 seconds, but I did go all out.  To ensure that my hips were fully open at the top, I swung my arms and got up on to my toes.  As I tried to keep up my speed, I lost control of my form.  I went from being up on my toes to getting air.  Every rep was completed with a hop at the top.  I felt ridiculous as I was doing it, but there was no stopping it once I got going.  I imagine I looked like a skier frantically trying to slalom his way down the hill.  My crazy form resulted in a gain of 6 reps from last year as I completed 64 air squats during that minute.  It wasn't enough to win the challenge for the day (there is almost no chance I'll win any of these challenges), but I gave it my best shot.

The strength portion of the workout would be next.  We would be working towards a 1RM snatch.  My best snatch has remained at 175 pounds for some time.  It's a plateau that I'd like to get beyond, but being stuck at 175 for the snatch hasn't bothered me as much as, say, hitting the wall with my deadlift.  I know the snatch is an extremely difficult movement and if you're not practicing it, you can't expect to see a lot of progress with it.  The deadlift involves some technique, but it's really just lifting a barbell from the floor to your waist.  I should have made some progress on that front in the last two years.

Giulz let us know we had 25 minutes to complete all of our attempts, which seemed like plenty of time.  I was going to start light with 95 pounds and work my way up from there.  Chances were good that I wasn't going to get beyond 175, but I would at least get plenty of practice in today.  All of my attempts would be squat snatches, because I didn't see any benefit in power snatching if I was working on my technique.

95 pounds was a weight that I had snatched a million times because it is often the weight we use for overhead squats in WODs and the quickest way to get it overhead is to snatch it.  I had no problems with my first lift.  I jumped up to 115 for my second lift.  Probably didn't move with as much speed as I should have, but I caught the weight in a full squat and took my time standing up with it.  If there is one area where I have improved with my Olympic lifts, it would be remaining patient in the bottom of my squat (whether I'm cleaning or snatching).  I've actually gotten so patient (too patient?) with that aspect of the lift that at times it seems like I'm dividing the lift into two parts, with the break in between segments being that time where I hang out in the bottom of the squat.

From that point forward, I was only going to bump up the weight 10 pounds at a time.  My lift at 125 felt very much like the one I had performed at 115.  With the next jump bringing me to 135 pounds, I heard Andrew say to me "alright, bringing out the big weights" as I toted two 45 pound plates to my barbell.  He asked me what my best snatch was and after replying that it was 175, he expressed confidence that I'd be surpassing that number today.  At least one of us thought that I'd be hitting a new PR!

I've only worked out with Andrew a time or two, so I didn't have a good sense of how much he could lift.  (Note: He's also "shadowing" classes in preparation for becoming a coach, so I've interacted with him in that respect as well.)  Because he's smaller than me, I assumed he would lift a little less than me.  I couldn't have been more wrong.  As I got ready for my next attempt at 135, I looked at his barbell in astonishment.  He had 185 pounds on it.  There was a moment where I thought maybe the plates on the end of his barbell were 15 pound plates rather than 25's, meaning he was "only" snatching 165 pounds.  Nope, that was 185 on there.  Andrew might have been smaller than me, but he made up for it with incredible speed.  He whipped that barbell overhead, not even needing to squat snatch it.  It was scary easy for him.  After the lift, he let me know that he was unable to go into a full squat because he's recovering from an injury.  So despite being less than 100%, he had gone 10 pounds heavier than my best snatch.  I suddenly felt like the small one.

I turned my focus back to my own barbell.  I got the lift at 135, but at 145, my poor mechanics (and let's face it, my lack of Andrew-like speed) resulted in my first failed lift.  The barbell didn't feel heavy, I just let it get out in front of me and I wasn't able to control it.  The same thing happened when I moved up to 155.  Poor form on the first lift before I corrected it on the second try.  Meanwhile, Andrew power snatched 205 before failing on multiple attempts beyond that weight.

I had my doubts about getting 165 after failing on reps at 145 and 155.  165 was a weight where I felt I needed near-pristine form for a successful lift and it didn't seem like I had that today.  The clock was approaching 20 minutes, so I had given myself enough time for three solid attempts at this weight.  Attempt #1: Not even close.  That wasn't good.  I was hoping that the first attempt would give me something to build off of even if I failed.  Because I botched that first try so badly, I didn't need a lot of time to rest before trying again.  (If I had caught the first try in a full squat before failing, I would have needed more rest.)  I got back into my setup and kept thinking about how fast Andrew had moved to get under his barbell.  I needed that type of speed.  Solid form, be fast.

Attempt #2: Perhaps second time was the charm on this day.  As had been the case with 145 and 155, my second attempt was much improved.  I found myself sitting in the bottom of the squat, holding 165 pounds over my head.  There was a split-second of disbelief before I remembered that I needed to complete the lift by standing up with the weight.  That was the easier part of the equation.  A few seconds later, I was standing with 165 over my head.  I wasn't going to make Andrew's prediction of a new PR come true, but I was excited to get 165 on a night where I didn't feel like my form was very good.

Adding 15 pounds for a PR attempt would have been a little crazy, but I thought it was worth trying to tie my PR of 175.  I added the 5 pound plates laying next to my barbell and got ready for one last attempt.  The clock was closing in on 24 minutes, so I had over a minute left.  I didn't need to rush this final lift.  Just as the clock ticked past 24 minutes, I got into my setup.  As I began my lift, I suddenly became distracted and dumped the barbell.  When we're doing all of these lifts, there is usually music blaring and the music stays on until time is up.  Right as I went to lift, Giulz cut the music and yelled "let's put the barbells away".  She thought everyone was done, so she was making the announcement a minute early.  As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she noticed that it had an effect on the lift I was performing.  She apologized and told me I could take another lift, but I declined.  Distraction or not, I was pretty certain that lift at 175 was not going to end up over my head.  Final score: 165.

The cash out required partners.  Since we had an odd number of people in class, I thought we'd have a team of two and a team of three.  However, Keara bowed out of the cash out, leaving me and Andrew as one team and Julie and Phani as the other team.  This cash out involved a piece of equipment that we don't use all that much at the gym: the tire sled.  It is a piece of wood with a large stake protruding from the middle of it that you throw a tire on top of.  A long chain with a handle at the end extends away from the sled.  The person on sled duty drags it by pulling the handle and walking backwards as they face the sled.  Sounds easy enough, but once the sled has decided it doesn't want to move any more, it is hard to get it going again.  (Damn you, inertia!)

For the cash out, one partner would swing a KB while the other performed the tire sled drag (or "tire slag" as Giulz kept calling it) to one end of the gym and back.  The team's score would be the number of KB swings completed in 7 minutes.  Andrew and I had 90 pounds on our sled and a 55 pound KB for our swings.  Knowing how awful the sled was, I was more than happy to go first on the KB.  It turned out that Andrew and I would be carbon copies of each other during this cash out, as we each got three turns on the sled and did about 20 KB swings each time we weren't on the sled.  I discovered a technique that worked for me on the sled, which was to shimmy back and forth like a wobbly water skier (I did a lot of fake skiing during this class!).  By pulling this way, the sled never seemed to settle and the last thing you wanted was to have the sled stop on you.  There were only about 10 seconds left when I completed my third tire slag, so Andrew didn't get very far on his fourth turn.  I grabbed the KB and snuck in a few extra swings before the buzzer.  Final score: 123.

This would be my last workout of the week as I'd be participating in an annual day-drinking tradition (The Disappearance!) on Friday and entertaining guests over the weekend.  Gotta have your priorities during holiday season.

Monday preview: Based on the feedback I've gotten since video of this spectacle went viral, my performance in the Monday Advent challenge may be the most impressive thing I've done in the last two decades.  That may say more about my failures in life than my ability to jump.  But it's still a cool video.