Obsession Regression

Workout date: 1/20/17

Although I left Thursday's workout with some lower back pain, I was pleasantly surprised to wake up without it on Friday morning.  Even if I had woken up with some soreness, I was getting a few extra hours to recover because my schedule wasn't going to allow me to hit up the Friday nooner.  I would be making a rare appearance at the 4:30 class instead.  I had missed a sick Coach Jenna on Wednesday night, but showing up at the 4:30 meant I'd get a class with her before the week was up.

I liked the WOD that was programmed for us.  By no means was it filled with movements that I consider myself good at.  Instead it was filled with movements that I'm okay at, but could certainly use some improvement on.  The length of the workout was also appealing as it seemed like it would take about 10 minutes to complete.  Here's a look at what was in store for us:

Friday's WOD:
10 thrusters (135/95)
10 toes-to-bar
50 double unders
8 thrusters
8 toes-to-bar
40 double unders
6 thrusters
6 toes-to-bar
30 double unders
4 thrusters
4 toes-to-bar
20 double unders
2 thrusters
2 toes-to-bar
10 double unders

That looks like a ton of work, but each of those segments would go by fairly quickly if you were proficient at the movement.  If you weren't....well, this workout could end up taking you a while if you didn't scale it properly.  I've had my battles with 95 pound thrusters recently, so attempting to do 135 pound thrusters in a workout (even if there were only 30 of them) seemed like a bad idea.  I split the difference and went with 115, reminding myself that speed was my friend on that movement.  I hadn't done toes-to-bar recently, but again, there were only 30 reps in this workout.  That wasn't the most daunting task, especially since the 30 reps were broken up over 5 sets.  There was no need to scale those.  Finally, there was my 2016 obsession: double unders.  I practiced double unders several times per week last year, but with my focus now on handstand push-ups, I hadn't been spending a lot of time on them.  That didn't worry me too much though.  I was only 10 days removed from a workout where I had to do 5 rounds of 50 double unders.  The only round here where I'd have to do that many was the first one.  No need to scale this movement either.

13 must have been the lucky number for the week as that is the number of participants Jenna had in her class.  Helping Jenna out was KOP's former summer intern, Sarina.  She was back from a break at college.  Later on, Sarina would start the clock to get our workout underway, jot down our times when we were done, and say a lot of nice things to me about my not-so-nice double unders.  Before all that took place, we had our warmup.  Jenna walked us through front squats and push presses to simulate the two pieces of the thruster.  I noticed some pain under my left shoulder blade, so when we moved over to the pull-up bar, I tried doing some stretches before jumping up to the high bar.  Jenna had us go through a typical progression on the pull-up rig before we tried out toes-to-bar.  Finally, she made sure that we could handle that first set of 50 double unders in a reasonable amount of time.

There were a ton of fast people in this class, so I didn't spend too much time worrying about who I'd try to keep up with.  Instead, I'd be racing the clock.  I set a goal of 10 minutes for the workout.  I had some concern about getting hung up on the thrusters and the toes-to-bar.  I wasn't as concerned about how I would do on the double unders.  (Yup, you already know where things are going to go bad in this workout.  This is precisely why I have confidence in next to nothing.  As soon as I start feeling good about my ability to do something, that ability seems to vanish.)

Jenna told us to get ready, Sarina set the clock, and we got started with some thrusters.  Speed, speed, speed.  I've become a big believer that thrusters don't get any better by pacing through them.  My experience has taught me that going fast and dealing with any additional pain is worth it in the long run.  So I blitzed through those first 10 thrusters as fast as I could.  I may have been the first one done with them.  (Keep that in mind later on in this summary.)  I ran over to the pull-up rig and began my toes-to-bar.  I used to be really good at these, although I was highly dependent on my hips to string reps.  I've been learning how important it is to use my arms as much as I use my hips with gymnastic movements (duh!).  Toes-to-bar are a good movement for practicing that aspect of "pushing the bar down".  With any of the pull-up exercises, you're focused on pulling your body up (duh again!) along with pushing down on the bar.  When doing toes-to-bar, you don't really pull your body up in the same manner, so you can focus on pushing down more.  I strung together my first four reps using equal parts arms and hips.  I couldn't hold my form beyond that, but I didn't let go of the bar.  I held on for the remaining six reps, but I had to come to a dead hang between each of them.

I had lost some time on the toes-to-bar, but I was going to make it up on the double unders, right?  Wrong.  My jump rope was not in great shape from practicing in my driveway, so I had a couple moments where the frayed rope got caught in my clothing.  Beyond that, I was simply unable to put together any big sets.  My longer sets were about a dozen reps in length, which was small compared to what I had been reliably doing at the end of 2016.  It seemed like anyone in class who was behind me coming to the double unders had jumped ahead of me by the time I finished round one.  Approximately three minutes had elapsed when I was done jumping rope.  One-third of the total reps were in this first round, so I was still on pace for 10 minutes.  I had that going for me, which was nice.

I didn't have faith that I could get all 8 thrusters in the second round, so I split them up 4 and 4.  Probably a wimpy move on my part, but my double under failures might have affected my mental state more than I realized.  At the pull-up rig, I did 5 sloppy toes-to-bar.  (I'm just going to use the term sloppy to describe when I come to a dead hang before every rep.)  After a break, I completed the remaining three reps.  It was back to my jump rope.  I tried to convince myself that the first round was a fluke.  I could string together 40 dubs right here and feel great about everything again.  Or I could do less than 5 and wonder why I no longer had the ability to do double unders.  It took a bunch of sets to get through those 40 reps.  I could see others in class moving on to round 4 while I was struggling to get to round three.  The clock was just beyond 6 minutes when I completed this round.  60% of the reps were done, so I was only slightly behind 10 minute pace.  A decent finish and I could still reach my goal.

If I was going to finish under 10 minutes, I couldn't break up the thrusters from here on out.  I did 6 fast, unpleasant thrusters and got over to the pull-up rig.  I was starting to get tired, so I needed to split up the toes-to-bar.  I'm able to push through barbell movements when I'm fatigued, but I can't say the same when it comes to gymnastic movements.  I did two sets of 3 sloppy toes-to-bar before returning to my jump rope.  The round of 30 was a continuation of my double under struggles as it took me at least 4 sets to complete it.  I was closing in on 8 and a half minutes with two rounds to go. 10 minutes was out the window.

It was hard not to be frustrated at this stage of the proceedings, but at least I was close to the finish line.  I strung all 4 thrusters together.  I hung on for 4 sloppy toes-to-bar.  It would have been really cool to get 20 double unders in a row now that the pressure was off, but that wasn't in the cards for me.  Took me 3 small sets to finish the round.  The last round was a sprint.  2 quick thrusters, 2 sloppy toes-to-bar, and mercifully, 10 consecutive double unders.  Final time: 11:12.

There was no hiding my aggravation once I was done.  Sarina tried to cheer me up by telling me that my double unders looked good even though I knew they royally sucked.  I was also still experiencing that pain under my shoulder blade and that wasn't helping matters any.  It was a pretty lousy end to the week.  I was looking forward to a couple days off from the gym.

Update before the preview: On Saturday morning, I woke up with a lot of back pain.  It didn't go away over the weekend.  I had planned on going to the gym on Monday and Tuesday before I headed off to the NHC in Vegas, but skipping those two days meant I would give my back a full week and a half to heal.  That seemed like the best course of action, so I didn't return to the gym until after my trip to Vegas.  It took me a couple of days to figure out where the back pain had come from.  I thought it might somehow be related to the shoulder blade pain I felt in this workout.  Then it dawned on me that I had messed up my back with my ill-advised jump in weight during the back squats on Thursday.  So if you take anything away from this pity party of a post, don't repeat my mistake and get yourself injured.

Post-NHC preview: My final weigh-in from my very own weight loss challenge.  A brief summary of how I did not become a national champion.  My favorite workout is programmed, but my back pain lingers on.