I was very sore when I woke up Thursday morning. How sore? I knew that the Thursday WOD prominently featured overhead squats and I still had no desire to drop into KOP later that evening. My body was screaming to me that it needed a rest day and I'd be doing nothing but risking injury if I had come in and done that workout. I'm an incredibly stubborn person, but I think I do a pretty solid job of listening to my body. I like to remind myself how miserable I would be if I didn't listen to my body, got injured, and had to stop working out for a prolonged period of time. Not only would I go stir crazy, I'd probably pack on the pounds as well. When I had my heart problem in college and couldn't exercise, I put on a lot of weight. Most of that still hasn't come off. Better to sit out a day and remain injury-free than morph into this:
The upside to taking a day off on Thursday was that I'd be attending Friday class with Coach Keithie for the second week in a row. The workout we'd be taking on looked serious. It was 5 rounds long, had a variety of movements, and included the always-ominous mandatory rest period between rounds. Yikes. Here is Friday's WOD:
Friday's WOD:
5 rounds of a 4 minute AMRAP:
12 strict handstand push-ups
12 wall balls (20#/14# to 10'/9')
15/12 calories on the rower
12 burpees to a 10# plate
*Rest 3 minutes between rounds
Fight Gone Bad is a pretty brutal WOD and you only get a minute rest between rounds. I've participated in some horrible workouts where you get two minutes rest between rounds. 3 minutes rest? This was probably going to be worse than I could imagine.
There was a silver lining to the workout though. When I used to practice handstand push-ups, I always did them strict because my kip is somehow worse when I am upside-down. (The right-side up version, which I use for pull-ups, is undeniably ugly.) With the assistance of 2 ab-mats, I could steadily work through a large set of strict handstand push-ups. The only problem with going strict was that I became dependent on those 2 ab-mats. I wasn't strong enough to use only 1 ab-mat. Trying a strict handstand push-up without any ab-mats was totally out of the question. If I wanted to do real handstand push-ups, I needed to practice kipping. Whenever a WOD has come up with handstand push-ups in it, I've tried to kip all my reps. As a result, it's been months since I've done strict handstand push-ups. I'm not sure how much everyone else was looking forward to doing the strict version, but I was happy to go back to ol' reliable.
Keithie had 8 of us in his 6:30 class. With the workout lasting 32 minutes on its own, there wasn't a lot of extra time available for fun and games, so we got into the different movements that we'd be repeating over and over again in the WOD. First up were the strict handstand push-ups. Could we do a kipping handstand push-up as a scale? Nay, said Keithie. The workout was written this way for a reason. We could use up to 3 ab-mats to assist us with our strict handstand push-ups, but kipping was out of the question. If strict handstand push-ups were not in our wheelhouse even with 3 ab-mats, then the next scaling option would be a seated DB press. Everything else in the workout was fairly self-explanatory. We were used to doing wall balls. Everyone knew how to row. We don't do burpees on to a plate all that often, but the 10 pound plate is so thin that jumping up on to it was not all that different from the tiny jump we normally do to complete a burpee.
This WOD required a full lane for each athlete, so we were cutting it close with 8 athletes in class. There was enough room for all of us to work without getting claustrophobic. I was towards the front of the gym with Ryan A to my left (if I was facing the wall) and Lindsey and Steph C to my right. Down towards the far end of the gym were Michal (a rare Crossfit appearance from her!), Cline, Conn, and Tia. I didn't have a good sense on my own of what a good score would be, so I looked at the earlier scores on the whiteboard. Scores tended to vary based on how much you scaled the strict handstand push-ups. Those that went RX (no ab-mats) had slightly lower scores because that movement is so draining. The scores got higher as people added ab-mats. There were very few scores over 300, so anything approaching that would be very good. For the guys, there were 51 reps per full round (48 for the ladies because they only had to do 12 calories on the rower). To be on pace for a score of 300, you had to complete a full round and an additional chunk of the strict handstand push-ups during each AMRAP. Sounded reasonable.
Remember the 3 minute rest period, dummy. Oh yes, I almost forgot. Things were probably going to fall apart quickly. I asked Keithie if this would be like Fight Gone Bad where I might put up a big score in round 1 and then see that score plummet thereafter. He gave a very noncommittal answer to my question, something along the lines of "ehhh, that might happen". I took that as a yes, so I began to mentally prepare for a lower score in rounds two through five. As far as each station was concerned, this is how I looked at the four obstacles in front of me:
- Strict handstand push-ups: should do better than average here
- Wall balls: average early on, below average as I got tired
- Rowing: better than average early on, average as I got tired
- Burpees: below average from start to finish
I honestly believed that I would be the first one moving on to the wall balls during each of these AMRAPs, but I quickly learned that I wasn't the only one proficient with strict handstand push-ups. Keithie got us started on our first AMRAP and I belted out 12 consecutive strict handstand push-ups over my 2 ab-mats. I came back down on to my feet and grabbed my wall ball. So did Ryan and so did Lindsey. They had no problems blazing through 12 strict handstand push-ups either. Uh oh. If I wasn't ahead after the station I was best at, there wasn't much chance I'd be keeping up with these folks as the round drew on. At the wall balls, I strung all 12 of my reps, but that was necessary to stay even with my neighbors. We all walked over to our rowers together. This was where Ryan pulled ahead. I'm not sure anyone accumulates calories on the rower as fast as he does. The guys had to row 3 extra calories, but Ryan was easily ahead of Lindsey in getting to the burpee station. I managed to have a fairly strong row. For the third straight station, I was neck and neck with Lindsey.
That's when the unexpected happened. I knew Ryan hated burpees and that I could probably close the gap on him at this station, but I never thought I'd be able to keep up with Lindsey. I wasn't hitting my chest to the floor, popping up on my feet, and jumping to the plate with a boatload of energy. I was already crawling through my burpees. It wasn't a slow crawl, but I figured others in class would put some distance between themselves and me because of it. I didn't anticipate that everyone else would need to crawl as well. Who was the fastest crawler of them all? Yours truly. I completed my 12th burpee before Ryan and Lindsey. There was over a minute remaining in this 1st AMRAP and I was headed back to the wall.
I was breathing heavily as I got ready to go upside-down again, but I was having visions of a big score for AMRAP #1. With over a minute left, I might be able to string 12 more handstand push-ups and 12 more wall balls. A score of 75 would put me in the running for a total of 300 even if the anticipated drop-off happened in the later AMRAPs. I kicked up on to the wall and began doing my handstand push-ups. It didn't go like it did about 3 minutes ago. It took everything I had to make it through 5 reps. When I came off the wall, I needed some time to shake out my arms. I kicked up again and was unable to do another rep. It was frightening to think that my arms were fried already because there were still 4 AMRAPs remaining. I spent a good 20 seconds or so shaking out my arms before kicking up again. I snuck in 3 more reps before time was called. 1st AMRAP score: 59.
For a score of 300, I needed to average 60 reps per AMRAP and I couldn't get that done in the very first AMRAP. The second time through the handstand push-ups was a wake up call in terms of how tough this workout was. I wasn't sure I'd get any more post-burpee handstand push-ups going forward. I was definitely concerned as to whether I could get through 12 in a row at the beginning of the remaining AMRAPs. As I "enjoyed" my 3 minute rest period, I revised my goal for the workout. I wasn't focused on my total score any more. All I wanted to do was prevent my score from declining wildly over the next 4 AMRAPs.
I learned at the end of the 1st AMRAP that my arms might no longer work when I returned for a second shot at the handstand push-ups. At the beginning of the 2nd AMRAP, I learned that the three minute rest period that had freaked me out was included in this workout to provide your arms with enough recovery time so that you could perform handstand push-ups when the next AMRAP began. Once again, I was able to string 12 strict handstand push-ups. It appeared that Ryan and Lindsey were able to do the same. The three of us did 12 straight wall balls and headed to our rowers. We exited the rowers the same way we did during the 1st AMRAP, but my speedy crawling skills came through for me again. I was the first one back to the wall. Unfortunately, I was only able to do 1 handstand push-up. Based on what I learned from the mandatory rest break, I decided not to hurry back on to the wall. I was only going to get more reps if I let my arms have some recovery time. I had over a minute left when I got done with the burpees. I waited until 20 seconds remained before getting upside-down again. The strategy worked as I was able to get 8 quick handstand push-ups before time was called. 2nd AMRAP score: 60.
I was able to put up scores of 59 and 60 in the first two AMRAPs because I finished off the burpees with more than a minute remaining. I wouldn't be able to pull off that trick in the last three AMRAPs. I was able to string all 12 of my handstand push-ups at the beginning of the AMRAP (although my hands began sliding outward during the 4th AMRAP and I was really lucky to hold on long enough to get through 12 reps before I fell off the wall). I strung all of my wall balls. I started to slow up on the row as Lindsey kept joining Ryan on the burpees before I could complete 15 calories. Yet somehow, I was able to pass them both on the burpees every round. Having caught them during the first two AMRAPs, I was going to be upset with myself if I didn't catch them during the last three AMRAPs as well, so I kept crawling as fast as I could. I tacked on 4 handstand push-ups at the end of the 3rd AMRAP. I did slightly better on the 4th and 5th AMRAPs, finishing them both with 5 handstand push-ups. 3rd AMRAP score: 55. 4th and 5th AMRAP scores: 56. Total score: 286.
If you asked me what I thought my final score would likely be as I took my three minute rest between the 1st and 2nd AMRAP, I would have guessed somewhere in the range of 260-265. I was really pleased to end up with a score of 286. Burpees have always been one of my least favorite Crossfit movements, but they bailed me out on this day. It just goes to show that if you keep moving, you can crawl your way to a decent score.
Monday preview: The final event from this year's Regional competition comes to KOP. Except we don't have all of that fancy equipment from Rogue Fitness. We still make it work though.
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