The events of Monday night left me beaten up on Tuesday. I had bruises all over my right bicep and along the right side of my ribcage. As happy as I was to get my first ever bar muscle-up, I was good with not attempting another one until all of my wounds had healed. It might have been wise to view Tuesday's WOD in the same light. It was a toughie with a time cap of 22 minutes. My body probably needed rest more than a workout, but this WOD included a moderate amount of handstand push-ups and I couldn't resist my 2017 obsession. Here's a look at the entire workout:
Tuesday WOD:
60 wall balls (20#/14# to 10'/9')
30 KB swings (53/35)
15 handstand push-ups
10 burpee ring muscle-ups
15 handstand push-ups
30 KB swings
60 wall balls
*Time cap: 22 minutes
Getting a bar muscle-up was the second goal that I achieved from my top 10 list this year. Stringing together 5 handstand push-ups was the first. I didn't need to string that many in a row for this workout though. Thinking back to when I got those 5 in a row, I recalled that the first three were solid and the last two were a struggle. So if I stuck with sets of three, I might be alright. Having to do 5 sets didn't seem too terrible. Of course, I'd need to go through that routine twice in this workout, but I planned on hedging my bets by keeping an ab-mat nearby in case I got tired and needed some extra support during the handstand push-ups.
LC had 9 people to coach at Dudes After Dark this week. (Actual dude count: 7) We started things off with a series of relay races where members of each team would run down the gym with a medicine ball, do a certain exercise, then race back and hand off the ball to their teammate. My team only had 4 members, so whoever led things off for our team would have to do double duty and be the anchor leg as well. We won some, we lost some. What had my attention the most was how much I had already begun sweating on this semi-balmy mid-60 degree evening.
We warmed up on wall balls and KB swings next. I'm not sure if we did a lot of reps, but it felt that way to me. I wasn't feeling good about my chances in the workout if the warmup was already taking a toll on me. We moved on to practicing handstand push-ups. It wasn't until I made my first attempt that I realized it's been a while since I'd done these. How long? I checked when I got home later and saw that it had been nearly a month. That's why it felt strange when I got upside-down and dropped on to my noggin. I may have been rusty, but my form wasn't completely off. I was able to do 2 handstand push-ups during the warmup, each with a bit of press out necessary at the end. My head wasn't coming through my arms like it was supposed to, something that I knew would be a problem later on if I didn't fix my form. My gaze turned to the ab-mat that I had set to the side. I had a suspicion that I'd be using it earlier than I wanted to.
The last thing to practice was the burpee ring muscle-up. Cline took the words out of my mouth when he mentioned how relieved he was that this was a burpee ring muscle-up, since ring muscle-ups clearly weren't challenging enough on their own. There were a couple of people in class who could do this movement, but most of us were scaling. LC mentioned burpee bar muscle-ups as a scaling option and I did my best to get Bryan to choose that option. He declined. I was happy to hear that burpee jumping muscle-ups were an option and went with that.
Maggie and Ms. January made fun of me for setting up shop at the very front of the gym as that left a lot of space between me and the rest of the class. I thought someone might need space for handstand push-ups later on, so I put my wall ball in one section and set up a mat for handstand push-ups in the two sections next to me. No one ended up needing the space, so I had a ton of room to myself. Perhaps everyone was avoiding the sweaty mess that would soon descend on this region.
LC started the clock and everyone got to work on wall balls. I was concerned about how fatigued my shoulders would get during this workout, so I tried out a new method with the wall balls. Rather than keep my arms extended upwards in preparation for catching the ball as it came down from the wall, I quickly dropped them and then raised them again right as the ball was falling to the level of my head. At first I liked this method because I wasn't holding my arms up for an extended period of time. I did 20 wall balls, then took a break. When I began my next set, I started to fall out of love with this method. Continuously dropping and raising my arms was work. I defaulted back to keeping my arms up for the entire set. I think I needed 5 more sets for the last 40 reps. I didn't take long rests in between sets, but I definitely felt the need to break up the reps more than I typically would. I felt sluggish and sweaty. Before I got to my KB, two things were certain in my mind:
- I was getting time capped in this workout.
- I was simply there to get some work in. My time wasn't going to matter much. I just needed to try and grind through the workout.
The KB didn't feel terrible, but I still broke up the reps into three sets. I completed 12 reps in the first set, then 9 in the following two sets. At least I didn't waste a ton of time here. I turned around and returned to the wall. I got upside-down and tried my first handstand push-up. It was not even close. Real handstand push-ups were not going to happen in this workout. In fact, I was certain that trying these with 1 ab-mat would end in failure as well. There weren't any extra ab-mats available, so I walked over and got a 15 pound plate to act as my second ab-mat. Even if I was not on my A game this night, I should have been able to do a total of 30 handstand push-ups with this setup. That would have been accurate if I ignored the fact that I was sweating profusely.
It's hard for me to articulate how much the amount I sweat affects me in Crossfit workouts. Usually when I complain about sweating, someone will point out to me that they were sweating during the workout as well. That's when I glare at them because they have a couple of droplets on their brow and a barely moist t-shirt on. When you look at my shirt at the end of a workout (or even at the end of a warmup), the word saturation comes to mind. Sure, there are some hard to reach regions on my shirt where sweat seems incapable of migrating to. But for the most part, I look like I was just involved in a water ballon fight when I reach the conclusion of a WOD. To me, there is no movement where sweat is more detrimental to my performance than handstand push-ups. It is tough enough getting upside-down and doing a push-up. Having your hands slide sideways while trying to do this makes the movement damn near impossible.
That was my predicament when I got to the handstand push-ups. I set up my ab-mat/plate combination, got upside-down, and started successfully kipping push-ups. Except I could only manage three at a time before my hands would start sliding away. (My plan was to do sets of three reps prior to the workout, so I guess I got what I asked for.) When that happens, it is not as simple as coming down from the wall, taking a break, and then kicking back up again for the next set. Those damp areas where my hands were needed to be dried. Every. Single. Time. Knowing this, I went over to the paper towel area after that first set and grabbed myself an entire roll. I'd be wiping down my mat a lot during the remainder of this workout.
I eventually got through my 5 sets, but I probably spent more time cleaning my mat than doing handstand push-ups. When I got over to the rings, I heard a voice cheering me on. It was Andrew. He was already done with the workout. Yup, I was that far behind. I was also too tired to remember how to do jumping muscle-ups correctly. All I could remember was that I needed to jump into the transition piece and dip out of it. I'm sure I got very little out of these reps in terms of learning how to do a real muscle-up. I completed 10 reps at the rings and walked back down to my mat.
The routine for the next 15 handstand push-ups was simple enough: do 3 reps, wipe down the mat, dry off my hands, move on to the next set. If only it were that easy. I managed 2 sets of 3 reps, then I hit the wall. Not the actual wall. The psychological one. Because I was kipping all of these reps, I was transferring most of the work from my shoulder to my core. With 9 handstand push-ups to go, my core felt fried. I would get upside-down, draw my knees to my chest, then weakly flail my feet upwards. I must have done this 3 or 4 times. The only conclusion I could come to was that I was done. I guess I could have grabbed some DBs and did 9 reps of the seated press as a scale, but really, I just didn't want to continue on if I couldn't finish these.
After a bunch of failed attempts, I took a longer break before kicking back up on to the wall. The time cap was closing in and I wasn't certain that I'd get back to my KB before 22 minutes was up. I thought about Danielle and her struggles with toes-to-bar during 17.2. I remembered how defeated she looked once her toes-to-bar started to go away. I also remembered how her confidence came back once she got that next successful rep. If I could get one handstand push-up, I could hang on for a set of 3. I got upside-down, brought my knees down, and shot my feet up as hard as I could. Boom! Got a rep. Sure enough, I got two more before coming back down. I was going to get through these. All I needed to do was be patient and keep the faith.
I was extremely relieved when I finished off that 15th handstand push-up. I was also royally pissed off that it took me so long to do them. LC gave us the one minute warning as I raced over to my KB. I couldn't do a set of 12 again. I had to swing that KB until my body quit or until the clock hit 22 minutes, whichever came first. I've had a lot of success with angry barbell movements. Why not try using my rage to swing the KB? I decided to go full Gordon Pibb:
It's just not believable, Cotton!
My first swing was so out of control that I almost lost the KB behind me. After that, I kept the KB under control. As I did one swing after another, I kept thinking about how much time I had wasted on the handstand push-ups. This rage had to last me for a full 60 seconds. I blazed past 12 reps without putting the KB down. Ms. January and Faby started yelling at me not to put the KB down. I wasn't 100% sure whether I'd be able to complete all 30 reps before the time cap, but I was going to try my best to find out. When I reached 22 reps, I could feel the rage begin to fade away. All I wanted to do was put the KB down. But I was 8 reps away and there was less than 20 seconds left on the clock. I couldn't put it down now. That would be so wimpy! I'm sure I had my pain face going and there was likely lots of grunting, but I held on for those last 8 reps. As I put the KB down, the final 5 second countdown began. I ran over to the wall, picked up my ball, did a quick squat, and fired it high. It hit above the 10 foot mark just as LC called time. Final score: 22:59 (time cap of 22 minutes plus one second for each of the 59 wall balls I did not complete).
I went to the bathroom and changed into my second shirt. When I came out, I showed Ms. January how soaked the one I wore in the workout was. She told me that it wasn't sweat, it was simply my fat crying. I assured her that if my shirt was that wet, it was more likely because I was actually crying, not because my fat was crying.
There were a lot more negatives than positives in this workout, but as I drove home, I decided to focus on that last minute with the KB. I haven't done many sets of 30 reps with the 53 pound KB, yet I was able to hold on for a set that large at the very end of a long workout. That was something that I could build off of. It shouldn't require being angry, but if that's the mindset I need to get through difficult moments in a workout, then maybe I should be thinking that way more often.
Wednesday preview: It's a barbell workout! I almost forgot what those were like. Triples of power cleans, front squats, and push jerks with ascending weights are programmed within mini-AMRAPs.
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