CAM

Workout date: 4/4/17

On Monday night, I took my first steps towards fighting off bronchitis.  I stopped at the store and picked up some Nyquil Cough Suppressant.  I was coughing a lot and I typically don't sleep well, so hopefully this would kill two birds with one stone.  I woke up on Tuesday morning feeling like the Nyquil had definitely helped on the sleep front.  I felt a little better in terms of the illness that had been plaguing me.  If I was operating at about 60% on Monday night, I was up to around 65% come Tuesday.

When I first saw the Monday WOD, I was slightly concerned about the difficulty of the bar muscle-ups.  That was child's play compared to what awaited me on Tuesday night.  The Tuesday WOD was going to be pure misery for me as it was chock full of pull-ups (still #1 on my list of "things I hate to do in Crossfit").  I used to cringe when I saw workouts that included 40-50 pull-ups in them, but now KOP has given their members complimentary upgrades on pull-up WODs.  My Tuesday night unhappy meal was super-sized to 105 pull-ups with a side of 105 power cleans.

Tuesday's WOD:
30-25-20-15-10-5
Pull-ups
Power cleans (135/95)

Bryan and I were sharing texts about this one a few hours before we came in to take this on.  There had been some sub-20 minute times in the earlier classes, but we both agreed that would be impossible for guys like us.  30 minutes seemed like a more realistic goal for this workout and even that might have been generous.

There were 8 of us in attendance for Dudes After Dark.  Joining me and Bryan were Cline, Noel, Actuary Mike, Esra, Julie Foucher, and Neil.  LC stayed inside the gym for the entirety of this workout as she coached this class.  Very strange.  One of the first announcements that we got from her was that there would a time cap on this workout.  Uh oh.  There wasn't any mention of a time cap on the blog.  I couldn't imagine the time cap would be any higher than 30 minutes, so I might have to meet the goal I had come up with earlier in the day if I was gonna finish this workout.  Turns out the news was worse than that.  The time cap would be 25 minutes.  I guess the silver lining in that news was that it was unlikely I'd have to do 105 pull-ups in this workout.

Ms. January was hanging out as we got warmed up and I let her know that I was none too pleased about having to do so many pull-ups.  I was testing out what weight I would use for the power cleans and the RX weight of 135 pounds didn't seem unreasonable.  It was probably going to feel a lot different after doing so many pull-ups, but as long as I could keep moving using that weight, it seemed like the right one to use.  Ms. January asked me how heavy I was going on the power cleans and I told her I was going with 135.  She then responded, "ahhh...you're going full HAM on this workout".  I had seen and heard the acronym "HAM" before, but I didn't know what it meant.  A lot of people in this situation will just play along and act like they got the reference, but I'm the awkward guy who blurts out, "what does HAM mean?"  Ms. January explained that it stood for "Hard As a Motherfucker".  Now that I knew what it meant, I was able to correct Ms. January.  I let her know that I would not be going HAM in this WOD.  I would be going CAM (Capped As a Motherfucker), because there was no way I'd be done in 25 minutes.

After getting a generous amount of ribbing from Maggie about my "cute little chalk bag", I took up residence at the portion of the pull-up rig that was nearest to the front of the gym.  The plan at the beginning was simple: do sets of 2 pull-ups at a time, remain calm, grind my way through this workout.  Attempting to knock out big sets at the beginning wasn't going to help me any.  If I could maintain my composure through the entirety of the first round (and if I was lucky, through round 2), then I might at least come close to staying under the 25 minute time cap.

The plan went fairly well.  I thought I could finish that first set of 30 pull-ups in 3 minutes if I kept an even pace.  I had 5 sets of 2 done after a minute.  When I finished the next 5 sets of two, only 2 minutes and change had elapsed on the clock.  As I came down from the high bar after finishing my 30th pull-up, the clock was closing in on 3 and a half minutes.  A little slower than I hoped for, but not too bad.  Plus I was still pretty calm as I moved over to my barbell.  Was I the last one to my barbell?  Of course, but I knew that was gonna be the case.

While I had a very clear picture of how I wanted to attack the pull-ups, I couldn't say the same when it came to the power cleans.  If I was feeling good, I could probably do 5 in a row before dropping the barbell.  I wasn't sure that was the best way to go though.  The pull-ups were already taking a toll on my grip.  Holding on to that barbell for larger sets was only gonna make it worse.  I gave consideration to doing quick singles to save my grip, but doing 105 singles seemed a little extreme to me.  I decided that I wasn't going to form a strategy until I picked up the barbell for the first time.  I did my first power clean, then tapped the floor before going into my second rep.  I got the second rep, but I could feel the effect of the 30 pull-ups I had completed prior to getting to my barbell.  Rather than continue on, I dropped the barbell.  I figured I could copy what I was doing on the pull-up bar, doing two reps at a time with the barbell.

That plan turned out to be short-lived.  I greatly underestimated how hard it was going to be to hold on to the barbell for even two reps.  When I completed my 5th set of 2 power cleans, I changed gears and went to singles.  I would do 5 quick singles, then take an extended rest.  When I got through 30 power cleans, I was even further behind the class than I had been at the conclusion of the 30 pull-ups.  The clock had just passed 7 minutes.

The good news was that based on my pace in round one, I would finish this workout in 24:30, 30 seconds under the time cap.  The bad news is obvious: there was zero chance I'd be maintaining this pace for the remaining five rounds.  When I began the round of 25 at the pull-up rig, I continued with my sets of 2, but they were fading fast.  I got through 4 sets of 2 with longer breaks in between sets before I gave in and went to singles here too.  Just like with the power cleans, I'd do 4-5 in a row, then take an extended break.  Those breaks included the dreaded squatting position.  It's my favorite way to rest, but it's also a sign that I'm in big trouble.  Ms. January kept encouraging me to get moving again when she saw me in that squat, but I knew I needed the rest.

When I got back over to my barbell for the second time, it was unclear to me whether the other members of the class were lapping me or on the same round as me.  Probably the former.  I continued to do the sets of 5 singles with long breaks as a reward for making it through that many.  I was tiring out quickly and as I looked at the clock, I began wondering whether I'd even make it through the round of 20.  It was that bad.  I had prepared myself for being time capped, but not making it through the first three rounds in 25 minutes?  That was pitiful.  As I moved through the last of the power cleans in the round of 25, I began slamming the barbell down to the ground after each clean.  It became therapeutic for me.

I was moving very slowly when I came back to the pull-up rig for the round of 20.  I got through 8 pull-ups before LC came over and offered some advice.  I had been jumping up to the high bar for all of my pull-ups and she suggested that I might save some of the energy in my legs if I simply used the low bar for singles.  In theory, this was good advice.  When I can't string toes-to-bar anymore, I go from the high bar to the low bar.  Why not do the same for pull-ups?  The simple answer is because I do terrible pull-ups on the low bar.  The toes-to-bar analogy isn't as good as the analogy I can make with my jump rope.  When a coach tells me to do single unders after I've been practicing double unders, I always mess it up.  I'll have the rhythm of doing double unders trapped in my head, so when I transition to single unders, my tempo is off.  That is kinda what happens when I go from the high bar to the low bar for pull-ups.  When I do stuff on the high bar, I move vertically.  When I do stuff on the low bar, I move horizontally.  That plays well for chest-to-bar pull-ups, bar muscle-ups, and single reps of toes-to-bar, but not so well with regular pull-ups.  As I tried to do single pull-ups on the low bar, I basically did the chest-to-bar variety each time.  I wasn't saving much energy by doing that.  I guess I couldn't make the switch in my mind to go vertically on the low bar.  As I struggled through those reps, Esra (who was done) stood by me and cheered me on, trying like Ms. January had to get me out of my resting squat.

After completing 12 semi-chest-to-bar pull-ups to finish the round of 20, I got back to the barbell.  There was still time for me to finish the round before the time cap.  I'd have to shorten up my breaks though.  As I pushed to maintain my habit of completing 5 singles before getting a break, my grunts became louder and louder.  (Neil would tell me after the WOD that he could hear me all the way in the back of the gym and that my grunts made him glad that he used 115 pounds instead of 135.)  I was still slamming the barbell down after each clean.  It was my way of accentuating the fact that I was one rep closer to finishing the round of 20.  After I slammed the barbell the 20th time, I took a peek at the clock and headed back to the pull-up rig.  About 35 seconds remained before the time cap.

With so little time remaining, it seemed pointless to me to continue on using the low bar.  I wasn't saving my legs for anything at this point.  So I went back to the high bar and completed as many singles as I could.  That added up to 4 pull-ups.  Final time: 25:56 (25 minute time cap plus one second for the 26 pull-ups and 30 power cleans that I did not complete).

Was there any chance that I could have completed this workout in 30 minutes?  Nope.  I'm not so sure I could have finished in 35 minutes.  Maybe I would have picked up some momentum as the number of reps in the final rounds got smaller, but I doubt my pace would have gotten a whole lot faster.  Should I have scaled this workout?  Well I thought about that, but I couldn't think of a scale that made sense.  Here were my options:

• Scale the pull-ups using a band: I think I'm at the point now where using a band for regular pull-ups would be a step backwards.
• Scale the weight for the power cleans: I thought about doing this in order to save my arms for the pull-ups and maybe that was the way to go.  But it seemed weird to me to scale the movement that I was proficient at in order to earn more time for the one that I sucked at.  It would be like using a 20" box to save time/energy on box jumps even though I'm perfectly capable of using the 24" version.
• Scale the reps for the pull-ups/power cleans: This option made the most sense to me, but with the time cap in place, isn't that what I ended up doing anyways?  If I scaled down from 105 reps to 75 reps, I would have finished around 24:25.  I would have beaten the time cap, but I would have basically done the same amount of work (actually 4 pull-ups less).  So why not just do as much as I could in 25 minutes?

It's no secret that I struggle when it comes to deciding on whether I should scale a workout.  Even when I do decide to scale, I'm not certain of the proper way to do so.  This workout was a textbook example of that dilemma.

Wednesday preview: Back squats galore!  Michal shares the secret to walking on your hands.