The F Word

Workout date: 7/5/17

Late night attendance on Wednesday has increased in recent weeks.  Not because more folks are joining me at Coach Jenna's 7:30 class.  It's because the Bridgeport Barbell Club is in the middle of their eight-week Olympic lifting program.  And while I've enjoyed getting to see the progress being made by folks who I don't work out with all that often (Ellie, Anne B, Donna, and Chris S to name a few), I'm not so sure I've done much to return the favor.  Wednesday night's encounter with Fran was supposed to be an example of me showing off my progress with thrusters and pull-ups.  I wasn't going to wear out my arms on the thrusters because I was going to keep the barbell on my body between reps.  I wasn't going to exhaust myself on the pull-ups doing singles because I was patiently going to work through small sets of 2-3 at a time.  The end result would be a new PR for me on a workout I didn't care for very much.  My plan was to stop the clock with less than 8 minutes showing on it.  It all sounded good in my head.  If only things had gone to plan...

There were only three of us at the 7:30 class.  It was Conn (the pull-up king), Bryan (strong at pull-ups), and me (shivers every time he types the word pull-up).  It would be my 3rd time this year taking on this benchmark WOD and it was programmed exactly the same way it had been written in January and April.  Just to refresh your memory:

Wednesday's WOD:
EMOM for 4 minutes - 4 strict pull-ups

"Fran"
21-15-9
Thrusters (95/65)
Pull-ups

Fran is hard enough on its own, but those 16 strict pull-ups were thrown in there at the beginning just to make life a little bit worse.  I have gotten better at strict pull-ups (though I've still never done more than 5 in a row), but excelling at the EMOM which began this workout didn't pay any dividends when it came to taking on the main attraction.  I strung all 4 pull-ups in the first two minutes, went 3 and 1 in minute three, then went 2, 1, and 1 in the last minute of the EMOM.  EMOM complete.  Arms tired.

Whenever we've done Fran this year, we've worked in pairs.  No one wants to be bothered with having to count while going through the misery that is Fran, so your partner takes on that responsibility for you.  With only three of us in this class, there would be one heat with someone working solo and one heat with two people in it.  Conn and Bryan partnered up (Conn would go first and Bryan would go second).  That made Jenna my de facto partner.  She wasn't going to do Fran again (she had done it earlier in the 5:30 class), so I got my choice of which heat I wanted to go in.  I've always been a heat two kind of guy and that didn't change on this night.  Usually I choose heat two to procrastinate, but my decision this time around was based more on my fear of doing this workout with Conn.  In my 4 years at KOP, there isn't anyone I've seen work on pull-ups more devotedly than Conn.  He was probably going to be really good at a sprint workout heavy on pull-ups.  I felt like I had a better chance (think 5% vs 1%) of keeping up with Bryan than Conn, so I chose heat two.

Conn got to work on his thrusters and heat one of Fran was officially underway.  I always try to do a large set of thrusters (even did all 21 in a row on one ill-fated attempt at Fran) because I feel much more comfortable with thrusters than I do with pull-ups.  Conn was the opposite.  He's excellent at pull-ups, so he was very deliberate in breaking up his thrusters.  When he was done with 21 of them, he moved over to his comfort zone.  Conn is a tall guy, so when you look at him, "body weight ninja" doesn't exactly spring to mind.  That designation usually goes to the smaller athletes in the gym.  But there aren't very many athletes in our gym who look as smooth on the pull-up bar as Conn does.  He didn't move through his reps at breakneck speed.  He just calmly cycled through one pull-up after another.  It was the epitome of what I'd like my pull-ups to look like one day.

Conn went through the other two rounds of Fran the same way.  The thrusters looked like they were strategically broken up, while his form on the pull-up bar never wavered.  He did smaller sets of pull-ups as he got tired, but even his last pull-up looked better than any of mine would in heat two.  His time wouldn't be blazing fast (6:22), but if the coaches ever need someone to demo this workout, I would point them in his direction.

After Conn got a few minutes to catch his breath, it was time for me and Bryan to go.  The game plan for staying with Bryan was simple: Get ahead on the thrusters, try not to fall too far behind on the pull-ups.  I wanted to do sets of 3 pull-ups at a time each time I jumped up to the high bar.  I also wanted to push harder through the thrusters in rounds two and three.  On prior attempts, I've gotten to the round of 15 and had to break up the thrusters into three sets of 5 with a lot of rest in between.  If I could at least whittle that down to two sets, I might stay under 8 minutes for the first time.

Conn and Jenna were ready to start counting, so Bryan and I began thrusting.  (Wait, that doesn't right.)  One by one, we moved through our first 21 thrusters.  After watching Conn, it dawned on me that my pull-up prowess might improve if I didn't go crazy on that first set of thrusters.  So after 12 reps, I dropped my barbell.  I took a breath, shook out my arms, and then got to work on my remaining 9 thrusters.  Bryan was in front of me, but I wasn't paying much attention to him.  At least not until my 20th rep.  I still had one thruster to go when I saw Bryan drop his barbell and head to the pull-up rig.  So much for getting ahead on the thrusters!

I'm not sure if Bryan beating me on the thrusters threw me off.  I haven't even mentioned how brutally warm it was in the gym and how that never helps me when I'm trying to do pull-ups.  Whatever the reason may have been, I fell apart almost immediately on my first visit to the pull-up rig.  I did a set of three pull-ups to begin like I planned.  Then my next set was only two.  I might have gotten another set of two after that, but if I did, that was the last one of the day.  I couldn't keep my breathing calm as I swung on the bar and if you can't keep your core tight, you can't string together efficient pull-ups.  I got to a point where I didn't want to jump up to the high bar, much less hang on to it for multiple reps.  I was in a bad way early on and I knew it.

It seemed like it took me forever to complete those 21 pull-ups.  Jenna was encouraging me to keep jumping up to the bar and I tried to comply.  The problem was that once all of that was done, I had to come back to my barbell.  And the game plan was to push harder on this middle set of thrusters.  When I picked up the barbell, I told myself to do 9 reps, but I was lucky just to get through 6.  This was going to take three sets like it always does.  I went 5 and 4 over my last two sets and then went back for more pull-up pain.

I slowly moved through 15 singles on the high bar.  Jenna kept after me as I took one break after another.  I heard several people from the Barbell Club class cheering me on.  I just didn't have it though.  I knew I wasn't breaking 8 minutes.  I knew I wasn't getting a PR.  And my attitude got worse and worse the more that I struggled.  I was still working through those 15 pull-ups when Bryan finished up.  (His time?  6:27.  Guess my chances of staying with him were almost exactly as good as my chances of staying with Conn!)  It's never fun getting lapped, but having it happen in a workout that is only three rounds long is extra embarrassing.  I was in a very foul mood once that round of 15 was complete.

Anger doesn't work so well with gymnastics.  But with a barbell, it can be magic.  I dragged my surly self back over to the barbell with the intention of completing the final 9 thrusters unbroken.  It was unpleasant, but I made it happen.  It would have been cool if I followed that up with 9 fast pull-ups, but that wasn't in the cards for me.  I tried to keep jumping up to that bar without taking a rest, but I needed at least two breaks during those final 9 pull-ups.  Final time: 9:10.

Fran wasn't the only F-word that I was muttering once I was done.  I was aggravated that I had succumbed to another summertime workout.  And after I cooled off, I became upset about how I was really to blame for my lousy Fran times.  I've put in a lot of time practicing various things at the gym, but I hadn't put in the time on pull-ups.  They are a basic movement and they show up frequently in WODs, yet I wasn't devoting time to getting better at them.  I was kinda just hoping I got better.  It doesn't work like that and each poor attempt at Fran was reinforcing that truth.  I headed home Wednesday night resolving to work on my pull-ups more.

Thursday preview: Speaking of neglecting movements, when was the last time I spent some time on power cleans?  I'd get the chance on Thursday.  The WOD ends with a cash-out that may or may not have been designed by Dave Castro.