KOP Catwalk Team

Workout date: 4/17/17

It has become rare for me to cherry-pick my workouts.  There are all sorts of things that I struggle with at the gym, but that doesn't stop me from showing up and stubbornly taking them on.  However, there is a special circle in hell for the worst of humanity and in that circle, the damned must do EMOMs for eternity.  I'd need a really compelling reason to do them while I'm still on this earth.  To that end, when I saw that the Thursday WOD was a 21-15-9 rep scheme of tall box jumps, handstand push-ups, and GHD sit-ups where you also had to do 5 burpees every minute on the minute, I decided to begin my weekend early.

Plans with Jenn on Friday kept me from stopping by KOP and Saturday was a day for cheerleading at the gym rather than working out.  Girls On Girls VI was being held at KOP and the home gym had 9 teams of ladies participating.  I even got to name one of them.  Raj and Kris had joined forces to form "Better Than Danley McGambone", a tribute to their rivalry with fellow KOP athletes Danielle Gambone and Ashley McLeod.  Fittingly, Raj and Kris finished in 5th place in the Scaled division, one spot ahead of Danielle and Ashley.  (Technically they finished in 4th as they did very well in the championship WOD and moved up a spot.)  Danielle and Ashley now have a picture of me on their dart board.

There was an in-house rivalry on the RX side as well.  Aimee and Cate are a force in any competition they enter, but LC and Maggie weren't gonna let them be dubbed the top team from KOP without a fight.  Early on, LC and Maggie had the lead, with LC putting up a 220-pound clean and jerk (ridiculous!) with Maggie hitting a PR of her own at 180 pounds.  Aimee and Cate got revenge in the second WOD, edging out LC and Maggie.  Going into the third WOD, LC and Maggie had a slim lead on Aimee and Cate.  As they battled it out in adjoining lanes, the two teams kept passing the lead back and forth depending on which movement they were on.  When time was called, it was no surprise to find out they tied on the final workout.  That was enough to land LC and Maggie in 4th place, but Aimee and Cate would end up as the Danley McGambones of the RX division, finishing in 6th.  Things did not go as well as hoped in the Championship WOD for LC and Maggie, and they would slide to 5th place at the end of the day.

I could have worked out on Easter Sunday, but...I didn't.  I just didn't.  Don't even have a good excuse.  Guess some habits are just hard to break.  It wasn't until Monday that I came back into the gym.  I hit up the 6:30 class like I normally do.  To my surprise, there were only 8 of us there for class.  I often preach that the worst WODs are the ones with mandatory rest included.  It wasn't a good sign for the 8 of us that we would be getting a 5 minute break in the middle of this workout.  Here's what we'd be facing:

Monday's WOD:
3 rounds of
15 power snatches (75/55)
25 front squats (75/55)
*5 minute rest period
Then 3 rounds of
12 deadlifts (275/185)
Calories on the rower (15/12)

Coach Giulz had us start off our warmup on the rower where she told us to try getting 10 calories with the damper at different settings.  The lesson learned?  That it takes about the same amount of time to row 10 calories no matter what setting the damper is on.  So you should put the damper on the setting you feel most comfortable with.  Sadly, the row was the least of my worries when it came to this workout.  Doing medium-sized sets of heavy deadlifts while tired was higher up on my list of concerns.  As for the first section of the workout, I thought I could grind through all of that at a reasonable pace.  There were 10 less reps of the snatches each round, but those would likely be tougher as 75 pounds was a very light front squat weight for me.  Or so I thought.

There were still rowers set up from the 5:30 class, so we ended up having about 10 rowers at the far end of the gym.  They were organized in 5 pairs, with one rower facing head on with its counterpart.  As a result, there should have been no issues with grabbing someone else's rower during the workout.  <Angry foreshadowing>  As far as the barbells were concerned, we were only allowed one.  In the first segment of the workout, we'd be using the same weight for the power snatches and the front squats.  Then we'd need to add weight to our barbell for the deadlifts during our 5 minute rest period.  I'm kinda slow about changing plates during workouts, but even I don't need more than 5 minutes to add weight to a barbell.

Giulz covered the proper form for the power snatches, the front squats, and the deadlifts before having us get ourselves organized for the workout.  We were allowed to grab the extra plates that we'd need for the deadlifts and lay them near our barbell.  Giulz also made us perform several reps of the power snatches and the front squats with the weight we were planning on using in the workout to prove that we had chosen the weight that was right for us.  Just before we got started, Giulz told us what Keithie had done in an earlier class.  He had strung the first 15 power snatches, brought the barbell to his shoulders, flipped his grip, and proceeded on to the front squats.  She told us that if we wanted to be cool, we should pull off the same trick.  Noted.

The quest to be cool started out promising enough.  I hung on through all 15 power snatches.  I had to bring the barbell down to my waist in order to change my grip, but what I lost in style points here, I tried to make up for with a little flip into a hang squat clean to begin my front squats.  I hung on for 9 front squats before taking my first break.  That would be my favorite number in this workout for some strange reason.  For all three rounds of the front squats, I would begin with two sets of 9 reps before completing the remaining 7 reps in a final set.  As for the power snatches, those would also require three sets in each of the last two rounds.  I broke them up into 5 reps per set.

All of that might sound well-organized.  It might sound like I didn't struggle too much.  That couldn't be further from the truth.  I knew I was in trouble the first time I put down my barbell.  Not only was I breathing heavily, a glance around the room let me know that I was the first one to require rest.  Maybe I wasn't ready for a workout like this one after 4 days off.  Maybe it was the fact that I still wasn't 100% healthy yet (when will this congestion go away?).  Whatever the case may be, I was having a hard time recovering between sets.  Most of the earlier times in the day hovered around the 20 minute mark, but I would have to wait until almost the 16 minute mark to begin the second half of this workout after needing close to 11 minutes to finish the power snatches and front squats.

I was pretty sick of my barbell at that point, so I decided to begin my 5 minute intermission by walking over to the rower I used in the warmup and getting it set up for the second half of this workout.  I made sure the monitor was set to calories.  I slid the footholds to where I wanted them.  I moved the damper to the setting that I was most comfortable with.  When I had it set up just the way I wanted, I staggered back over to my barbell.  I had two sets of 45 pound plates that I was adding on once I stripped off the 15 pound plates that I needed for the first segment of the workout.  That got me to 225 pounds.  I also had two 10 pound plates in case I wanted to go for 245.  (I could have left the 15 pound plates on and tried to RX this workout at 275, but that seemed like overkill.)  Since I wasn't moving all that fast, I decided to go with the heavier weight for my deadlifts.  If I was way behind everyone already, why worry about spending a little extra time on the deadlifts?

Rather than waste energy trying to hold on to the barbell, I decided that I would just do singles for my deadlifts.  I would do three singles, then take a break.  I completed my fourth set and was relieved to finally get the chance to sit on my rower.  Except one of my classmates was using it.  Seriously?  Why?  Why couldn't she use the rower she had used in the warmup?  Or one of the extra rowers that were out?  So aggravating!  Now I had to jump on an empty rower and hope that I wasn't stealing someone else's.  I would also need to adjust the footholds and the damper on the new rower.  I was less than pleased as I began my first row.

For rounds two and three, I kept up the same pattern of doing four sets of three singles on the deadlift before returning to my rower.  When I was completing my final round of deadlifts, I was the only one working as everyone else in class was now done.  I got lots of encouragement when I headed to the rower the final time, but that was the easy part of the workout.  I blew through 15 calories using up all the energy I had left.  Final time: 24:24.

That performance was definitely not going on the Greatest Hits album.  Perhaps I could make up for it with some solid work at Open Strength.  After recovering from the WOD, I took another crack at trying to set a PR on my clean and jerk.  I made it through lifts at 135 pounds and 165 pounds without much of a problem, but as I rested before my lift at 195 pounds, it dawned on me that there was one other reason why I might be struggling at the gym this night.  Knowing that a long cardio workout was awaiting me, I decided not to eat a whole lot before class.  By 8pm, I was feeling weak and very hungry.  Guess I should have eaten more than I did.  I made my next lift at 195, but it felt a lot heavier than it should have.  I was not optimistic about my chances at 215 pounds.

It's possible that I jinxed myself by thinking that way.  I walked up to 215 pounds and made a pathetic attempt at a squat clean that went nowhere.  On my second attempt, I was able to slowly stand up with the clean, but then I had an awful jerk.  I told myself that I'd take one more shot at it.  Three strikes and I was out.  On the third attempt, there was a little less struggle with the squat clean.  I probably used some anger when going into the jerk, but it helped out as I finally got it overhead.  Needing 3 shots to get 215 didn't give me a lot of confidence that I would get 230, but that was the next step in my progression and I felt like I had earned the chance to give it a go.

None of my attempts at cleaning 230 were as bad as that first one at 215.  Then again, none of them were as good as my second and third attempts at 215.  After my first failure at 230, Michal came over to give me some advice.  She also asked me if I had eaten a lot today.  Thinking that she was giving me a lecture for gorging myself before coming to the gym, I enthusiastically told her that I had hardly eaten at all.  She explained how that was no good either.  (Why is eating so hard?)  She told me that the next time I came into lift, I should have some carbs in me (Crossfit blasphemy!).  After I spoke with Michal, I went over and talked with Kris.  She let me know that she had some "Scandanavian Swimmers" (Trader Joe's version of Swedish Fish) if I was interested.  That sounded like carbs to me, so I bummed three Swimmers off of her before making my next attempt.

The three attempts that followed were better than my initial one, but none of them resulted in a successful clean.  Michal seemed to have high hopes that I was going to get the lift because she was taping me on her phone each time I made an attempt.  After I was done, she told me that the best part of each attempt was the long walk I made as I approached the barbell.  She said she loved the attitude I had as I marched up to it.  I may not be on the KOP Dance team, but if the gym ever forms a KOP Catwalk team, I'll likely get a callback.  Michal and Kris had several laughs at the videos of me moodily walking up to my barbell, with Kris saying she was going to Boomerang the video.  (Note: I have no idea if the video was Boomerang-ed.  This might show my age or my lack of awareness with social media.  All I know is that it didn't pop up on Facebook.)

I put my barbell away feeling like I still hadn't done much useful for the evening, so I decided to cap my night off by practicing double unders with Kris and Actuary Mike.  I only did three sets, but they were solid ones.  The first set was 26 reps long, the second was 22 reps long, and I finished things off with a nice long set of 56 in a row.  That last set finally made me feel like I had done something right, so I put away my jump rope and headed home to fill my empty belly.

Tuesday preview: The rarely seen bench press workout is programmed, although it is paired with strict pull-ups because everyone should have tired arms while they bench press.