Community Paper Towels

Workout date: 7/14/17

I took Thursday off to recover.  If I had to estimate, 40% of that recovery was physical.  The other 60% was necessary to heal the mental scars from the shoot through WOD.  It was easier returning to the gym knowing that the workout programmed for Friday night was one that I might be good at.  It was a benchmark WOD called Gwen that I had missed in January and April.  I had never done Gwen before, so let's get familiar with this lady together:

"Gwen"
15-12-9
Clean and jerks
*All reps must be unbroken.  The athlete cannot let the barbell rest on the ground.
**The athlete chooses one weight for all three sets.
***Athletes have as much rest time as they would like between sets within the time constraints of the class.

Cycling a barbell and unlimited rest?  That sounded like a good deal to me!  I just had to figure out what weight was appropriate for me.  About 3 weeks earlier, I had done a workout that was three rounds long, with each round ending with 9 unbroken clean and jerks at 135 pounds.  If I could handle three rounds of 9 while taking on other movements in between, surely I could handle 15-12-9 with unlimited rest.  Based on that logic, I decided that 135 would be too light for Gwen.  145 seemed like my magic number.

Coach Giulz had only three people in her 6:30 class on Friday night.  It was me, Chris S, and Actuary Mike.  Because there was going to be a lot of down time in this WOD and there was only one movement to warm up on, we did a lot of dynamic stretching to begin class.  When that was done, we grabbed barbells and faced the lobby.  Giulz was in front of her three students who had lined up in a triangle formation.  I was set up in the middle of the gym, behind both Mike and Chris.  Mike was to my front left, while Chris was to my front right.  In the middle of the three of us was a roll of paper towels.  It was still very warm in the gym and I knew that me and Mike would be sweating a lot.  Chris was probably going to be sweating too.  So I let my classmates know that I'd be placing a roll of community paper towels in the middle of the three of us in the hopes that it would help all of us be successful in this workout.

Giulz was explaining how important it was to move quickly in this workout, so she showed us a technique that I had learned from Keithie some time back.  We were to power clean the barbell, then quickly transition into the jerk.  Because you catch the power clean with a slight knee bend, it makes for a natural transition to the push jerk.  The weight we'd be using for Gwen would be on the moderate side, so it made sense that we wouldn't have to turn the clean and jerk into a two-part movement.  When the barbell is heavy, you will see athletes perform the clean, take some time to reset, then do the jerk.  That wouldn't be necessary today.

Giulz wanted to see us do multiple reps with the clean and jerk as we added weight to the barbell just to prove that we had chosen the proper weight.  I started with 95, then went to 125, before finishing at 145.  I did three quick reps with each.  To me, speed was a priority.  I lack grip strength, so if I was going to hang on for 15 consecutive reps, I needed to move with some urgency.  Mike settled on 110 for his barbell weight, while Chris was going to take on 135.

To say that the three of us had very different ways of attacking Gwen would be an understatement.  Mike was the first of us to attempt the set of 15 unbroken clean and jerks.  He had talked about doing 120 rather than 110 and I suspect that he might have been able to handle 120 had he tried it.  He was very methodical during his set of 15.  He didn't move with urgency like I felt I needed to.  He also never really stopped along the way to fix his grip.  He just plugged away through 15 reps, then dropped his barbell.

Chris was the exact opposite.  The way he did Gwen was equal parts impressive and painful to watch.  I'm not sure how far along he got before he decided to stop and fix his grip (he would fix his grip by pinching the barbell between his waist and his legs), but it had to have been before he got halfway through the set of 15.  I was patiently waiting for my turn, but Chris took somewhere in the neighborhood of 3-4 minutes to get through his 15 reps.  To his credit, the barbell never rested on the floor, but the way I imagined doing this workout was completely different from how he did it.  I'm pretty sure Giulz didn't envision it that way either because she looked annoyed as Chris pinched the barbell to fix his grip after every single rep late in the set.  Technically, he didn't violate any of the rules of the workout as he successfully completed his set of 15 clean and jerks.

With my two classmates having strung together 15 reps, I felt it was only right that I complete the trifecta by doing 15 straight myself.  I rattled off 6 very quick reps before slowing down my pace.  The next three reps were slower, but I was still able to maintain the Keithie technique.  Reps 10 and 11 were considerably harder.  I could feel my grip weakening.  It wasn't as though I couldn't handle the clean or the jerk, but I desperately wanted to let go of the barbell for a second to give my hands a break.  As I cleaned the barbell for a 12th time, my grip gave out on me.  The barbell came flying out of my hands.  It was extremely frustrating to do that much work and have it count for nothing.  (Thoughts of the Flight Simulator flooded my mind.)  I wasn't sure where I would go from here, but I knew I needed to take weight off of my barbell.

I may have learned a lesson during my failed attempt at the shoot through workout on Wednesday.  Choosing 145 pounds for my barbell weight wasn't truly a mistake because I had never attempted Gwen before.  Maybe that was the proper weight for me, maybe it wasn't.  But it wasn't a crazy estimate of what I should try during my 1st attempt at this workout.  Having failed on that first set though, I wasn't stubborn about what weight I would use to complete the workout and I wasn't stubborn about starting over.  I removed 20 pounds from my barbell and decided that I would continue on with the WOD as though I had been successful on the set of 15.  It was breaking one of the rules of this workout, but it was the right thing to do.  I didn't even wait around long to get on with the set of 12.  I was the last of our triumvirate to take part in the round of 15, but I would be the first one to begin the round of 12.

I must admit that I had concerns that 12 reps with 125 pounds would be too easy, but by the time I made it through 8-9 reps, I started to worry about my grip again.  And that is when I learned that Gwen is not really about how much weight you can clean and jerk.  Gwen was more like a hang clean workout.  It was a grip tester.  I had shown up thinking this might be a WOD that was in my wheelhouse, but the reality was that it was not.  I did hang on to the barbell through 12 reps, but it was tougher than I expected.

Mike went next and had no issues with his set of 12.  That left Chris, who must have used up 3 minutes to complete his set of 12.  For reference, I've completed Grace (30 clean and jerks using 135 pounds) in 2:35.  Grace doesn't require you to string all of the reps (or else I wouldn't be able to do it), but the fact that I could do 30 reps in less time than it took Chris to hang on for 12 should give you an idea of how long he had to fight to maintain his grip on the barbell.

Knowing that I got through 8-9 reps on my previous set before my grip started to wane made life easy for me on the final set.  I patiently waited for Chris to complete his set of 12, then got right into my last set of 9.  Part of me was still aggravated that I had messed up the set of 15, so I just wanted to have this workout over with.  I picked up my barbell and pumped out 9 very fast reps.  Not long after, Mike took care of his final 9 reps.  Chris still needed an extended session to complete his workout, but he showed a lot of grit never letting that barbell touch the floor during his three sets.

If I was going to attempt Gwen again, I'd probably use 135 pounds.  Could I handle 145 pounds?  Maybe.  I think going through this experience would give me a better shot with 145 pounds.  Then again, 125 pounds wasn't easy, so it would probably be wise to work my way up to that weight by starting with 135 pounds next time.

Sunday/Monday preview: I take another shot at the Flight Simulator over the weekend.  Then I tackle a very difficult WOD on Monday that includes clean and jerks, snatches, wall climbs, and rope climbs.