Hole In One...Short

Workout date: 6/28/17

I started off the year thinking that handstand push-ups would be my obsession.  Somehow that changed before springtime came around.  I think it may have been because one of my goals was to get 5 consecutive handstand push-ups without any ab-mats and I was able to pull that off in early February.  The combination of reaching my handstand push-up goal early in the year along with the fact that handstand push-ups aren't programmed frequently led to me slowly losing interest in them.  Double unders took their place.  There is almost no chance that I'll ever get on the main whiteboard in the gym, but off to the side there is a smaller whiteboard which lists all of the people in the gym who have managed to string together 100 double unders in a row.  That seemed realistic to me.  I also had visions of one day finishing the Flight Simulator workout.  To reach both of those goals, I needed to keep practicing my double unders.  It wasn't long ago that I was excited about reliably doing sets of 12-15 dubs.  Now I can reliably do sets of 25 reps.  I've gotten used to staying calm as I work through larger sets.  I don't jump as high as I used to during double unders, which saves me energy and allows me to complete bigger sets.  Everything was heading in the right direction, so it felt like only a matter of time before I had a breakthrough.  Would it finally happen for me on Wednesday night?

I would get my chance as the cash-out for Wednesday evening called for each athlete to make 3 attempts at as many consecutive double unders as they could do.  But before we took that on, we had a 20 minute EMOM to go through first.  Ugh!  I hate EMOMs so much.  And 20 minutes was quite long for an EMOM.  At least this one didn't require burpees or KB swings.  Here's what Wednesday's EMOM looked like:

Wednesday's EMOM:
20 minutes long
Odd minutes: 4 back squats (about 70-80% of max)
Even minutes: 4 DB shoulder press (as heavy as possible)

Just as had been the case in my last two visits to Coach Jenna's Wednesday 7:30 class, me and Bryan were the only partakers.  I did run into some of the guys from the 6:30 class (Neil and Matt B) and their advice to me was to use 50 pound DBs for the shoulder press.  As I scanned the board to see what the guys in the 6:30 class used, I saw almost all of them went with 45 pound DBs.  When I brought this up, they assured me I could handle 50 pounds.  I had a hard time believing that one.  If this was a push press (where I get to use my legs), then maybe.  But this was a shoulder press, so I could only use my upper body.  Guys like Neil and Matt had much more upper body strength than me.  I'd try out the 50 pound DBs in the warmup, but I didn't think there was much chance I'd be using them in the actual workout.

Before we warmed up on the DB shoulder press, we were going to grab a rack and do some warmup sets of back squats.  My 1RM on the back squat is 330 pounds, so my range for this workout was going to be 231-264 pounds.  I pared that down to a choice between 245 pounds and 255 pounds.  Initially I was leaning towards 255 pounds, so I went through a progression of 135-185-225 on my barbell before testing out how 4 reps at 255 felt.  I made it through those 4 reps okay, but I didn't get the impression I could do 10 sets like that.  Maybe 5 or 6.  I didn't want to have to bail the barbell during this workout since you only had a limited amount of time, so I played it safe and went back to 245 pounds instead.

When it came to the DB shoulder press, I did my practice reps with 35 pounds as I didn't see any point in wearing out my arms with the weight I would be using in the workout.  I did want to see how the 50 pound DBs felt though before I committed to doing 10 sets with them.  So right before we were about to begin, I brought over the 50's and did a set of four reps.  It was definitely difficult.  More difficult than those back squats at 255 pounds.  I brought the 50 pound DBs back and replaced them with with a set of 45's.  I wasn't 100% sure that I could do 10 sets with these either, but the workout description did say "as heavy as possible" and this seemed to be the heaviest I had a shot with for all 10 rounds.

I typically give a detailed explanation of how my workouts go round by round, but there was really not much difference in any of the rounds we did over the course of this 20 minute EMOM.  On every odd minute, Bryan and I would take our barbells from the rack, do 4 back squats, and put the barbell back on the rack with a solid 40 seconds to spare.  We got even more rest than that after the DB shoulder presses.  I would say we were done with all four reps of that about 12-15 seconds into every even minute.  There were no shaky moments that I noted along the way.  About halfway through the back squats, I began regretting not going with 255 pounds.  That practice set was tough, but I started moving more fluidly through my sets at 245 as I got further into the EMOM.  I probably wasn't completely loose when I tried 255.  If I had it to do over again, I would have gone with the extra 10 pounds.  As for the DB shoulder press, I think I chose the proper weight there.  I had this weird habit of bringing my arms out and then back in as I did the first press of each set.  From there on out, I'd keep my arms pretty close to my ears.  My shaky form at the beginning of each set probably indicated how hard it was for me to get that 1st rep going, so going up to 50 pound DBs might not have worked out for me.

With the grunt work out of the way, it was time to put my double unders to the test.  The most consecutive double unders I had ever done was 81.  That might sound like it is close to 100, but the truth is that I started wearing out at around 60 reps and I fought as hard as I could to hold on through 81 reps.  If I was going to reach 100, I felt like I needed to get through 75 reps before fatigue set in.  If I got that far, I might be able to hold on for 25 more at the end.  More than anything, I wanted to make sure I got at least a score of 50 in this cash-out.  I was a little nervous about only having 3 tries at this.  I was going to be really disappointed if I couldn't put together at least 50 in a row during one of those attempts.

The barbell club was taking up most of the front part of the gym with their Olympic lifting class, so Bryan and I headed back towards the rings area to do the cash-out.  I did a couple of warmup sets of 10 without a problem, so I wasted little time in declaring that I was about to make my 1st attempt.  It ended quickly.  I only got 5 reps before the rope clipped my foot.  That was a waste.  I took a couple of minutes to put that out of my mind before making it known I was officially starting attempt #2.  Not much better.  I doubled my first attempt, but 10 was a sorry score for me.  I had wasted two attempts.  I had one chance left to put up a decent score.

Bryan looked like he was still practicing, so I took my time before going into my final attempt.  I dropped my rope on the floor and just walked around.  I was trying my best not to think about how much pressure I had inadvertently put on myself when I screwed up the first two sets.  It was all about staying calm.  You can get to 50.  Just get in a rhythm and block everything else out.  After a few more minutes, I was ready to go.  I let Jenna know this was attempt #3.

I began twirling the rope and was relieved that it didn't hit me during the first 10 reps.  By the time I reached 20 reps, I was feeling less tense.  There was no reason the rope couldn't have hit me on rep #21, but I had this confident feeling I was getting to 50.  I got past thirty, then forty reps.  I was still going strong when I made it to 50 reps.  I'd say the pressure came off when I was 20 reps into this set, but it had completely vanished once I got to 50.

It was time to be greedy.  50 was in the rear view mirror and 100 in a row was in my sights.  Whenever I make it to 50 reps, I give myself the same pep talk.  You've reached the downhill portion. You've done the hard work.  Remain calm and you can get there.  Fatigue hadn't set in yet, so that was good.  It seemed like there was a real chance that I might to get to 75 reps before tiring out like I thought I needed to in order to make it to 100.

Perhaps that was wishful thinking in the afterglow of making it to 50 reps on my last set.  Less than 10 seconds later, I had passed 60 reps, but a tidal wave of fatigue was washing over me.  I was trying to stay calm, but I kinda knew the end was near.  My goal was to try and hold on until I passed my best score of 81 in a row.  It started to get ugly when I got to the 70's.  I definitely clipped my foot on one of my reps, but the rope made it under my feet somehow.  I was almost there.  I'm not sure how I did it, but eventually rep #82 passed below my feet.

I had been in the "hold on as long as you can phase" for a while now, but the rope had still not come to a stop.  I was starting to jump in every direction: side to side, frontwards and backwards.  My rope speed had slowed significantly, so I was forcing myself to jump much higher to ensure that the rope would travel under my feet twice before they came back down to the floor.  I had another instance where the rope hit my foot, but the set continued on.  I'm not sure why I remember this precisely, but when I got to 91 reps, I remember thinking "I'm getting to 100!"  It seemed like I was destined to at this point.

My form had gotten spectacularly ugly.  My rope speed was slow.  I looked like I was doing a max height box jump rather than double unders.  I was hopping all over the place.  Towards the end, I was doubled over rather than upright.  I hit my shoe for at least the third time during this super-long set.  Yet the rope kept moving.  95...96...97...98...99.  I was about to do it.  Just one more rep.  It was definitely going to go under my feet.  The last 25-30 reps had no chance of making it, yet they did.  Rep #100 wasn't going to be any different.

Except it was.

I was on the verge of one of my biggest accomplishments in the gym.  My name was finally going up on that 100 double under board.  And then the rope stopped.  I had dodged bullets for the last 30 seconds, but when it came to the rep that mattered most, I was unable to get out of my own way.  The rope hit the top of my feet, finishing me off after 99 in a row.  I collapsed forward on to the floor.  I desperately needed some cooler air, so I crawled over to the open garage door.  While I knelt next to the railing, I felt like puking.  I managed not to.  Jenna, Bryan, and Kris were all watching but had no idea what my score was.  Jenna came over to check on me and jokingly said "tell me that wasn't 99 you got".  That nauseous feeling returned.  When I told her it was exactly 99, she let out an "oh no!" before making sure I felt okay.  I let her know I'd be fine, but I was a mix of emotions at that point.  I was tired.  I was happy.  I was disappointed.  I kinda didn't want to do double unders ever again.

After I laid by the open door for a bit, I got up and retrieved my jump rope.  I fought the urge to throw it in the trash can I passed on the way to my bag.  I was so close to getting my name on that board and now it felt so far away.  Technically I was only one rep away, but the set I had just done felt very fluky and I had little faith that I could surpass it (never mind replicate it) any time soon.  Those last 25-30 reps were miracles.  And from January to early June, my best set had only gone up from 78 to 81.  This set of 99 was definitely an outlier.  The whole thing felt like a missed opportunity.  I had once again snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

Kris tried to cheer me up by putting a post-it note with "Dave N - 99" on the bottom of the double unders board, but I knew that it would be taken off of there by the next day.  There was really only one way I was going to feel better about this situation: ice cream.  Jenna couldn't go to Frosty Falls that night and ice cream doesn't agree with Bryan, so I headed over with Kris and Jim C.  I tried to put a positive spin on what I had just done by equating the 99 double unders to a hole in one in golf.  It is customary for a person who has gotten a hole in one to buy drinks in the clubhouse, so I was ponying up for ice cream this evening.  As disappointed as I was in falling 1 rep short, I needed to recognize that set of 99 as an accomplishment, not as a failure.

Thursday preview: I end up in class by myself.  A very difficult WOD includes double unders (oh no, not again!), the assault bike, and the GHD machine among other things.  By the end, I row like I've never rowed before.