Crampus

Workout date: 8/16/17

According to Wikipedia, Krampus is "a horned, anthropomorphic figure described as half-goat, half-demon, who, during the Christmas season, punishes children who have misbehaved".  Wikipedia is nice enough to provide a link for the word "anthropomorphic" so you can learn what it means.  I had no clue what it meant (I'm a numbers guy, remember?), but apparently it's when you give human traits to non-human entities.  Pretty sure that is the first and last time you'll catch me using the word "anthropomorphic" in this blog.

I'll have to wait until late December to see if I get a visit from that Krampus, but his warmer weather cousin, Crampus, has been dropping by quite frequently lately.  To be fair, his appearances have likely come at my behest.  Because of my sweating issues, I used to be very conscious of how much water I needed to drink before I'd come into the gym during the summer.  Back when Coach Paul was still at KOP, I'd bring in a 1.5 liter bottle of water with me to class, which he thought was ridiculous.  The crazy part was that I usually drank two of those before I even stepped foot in the gym.  I knew I was going to drop a lot of water weight during the WOD, so I had to hyper-hydrate in advance.  In recent months, I have not been as diligent about drinking liters and liters of water before class.  That probably explains why Crampus has been targeting me and my right calf repeatedly.

Wednesday's WOD was another benchmark workout for us.  It wasn't one that I particularly cared for, but one of my classmates was little-boy-on-Christmas-morning excited about it.  Wednesday's workout goes by the name of Mary:

"Mary"
20 minute AMRAP
5 handstand push-ups
10 pistols (alternate legs)
15 pull-ups

The bodyweight ninjas at KOP love this workout and we've reached the point where Bryan has officially earned that moniker.  I usually talk about how easy he makes bar muscle-ups look, but he's not too shabby when it comes to handstand push-ups and pull-ups.  I am supremely shabby at those movements, so I could not bring myself to match Bryan's enthusiasm when I saw him grinning ear-to-ear a few minutes before class.  Bryan was taking on Mary in her RX form this evening.  He had conquered the steep learning curve associated with handstand push-ups.  When we attempted Mary back in May, Bryan got his first ever RX handstand push-up.  Just three months later, he was ready to do them within a 20 minute workout.  Very impressive.

While Bryan's earlier experience with this WOD was memorable for the success he found with it, my earlier experience was not as wonderful.  In February, I did alright when using 2 ab-mats for the handstand push-ups.  As a result, I got greedy in May and tried to do my handstand push-ups with only 1 ab-mat.  It did not go well.  I had placed a second ab-mat to the side in case I needed it and it wasn't long before I was doubling the size of the cushion for my head.  My stubbornness in trying to get by with only one ab-mat was a big reason that my score was nearly a full round less than what I had gotten in February.  I wasn't messing around with one ab-mat today.  I was using two in the hopes that I could approach my February score again.

Marissa and Chris S were joining me and Bryan for Coach Jenna's 7:30 class.  Jenna warmed us up on all of the movements and made sure we had the appropriate scales if necessary.  You know it is a skill-intensive workout when pull-ups wind up being the easiest of the movements.  All four of us were getting upside-down for the handstand push-ups, with Marissa and I using two ab-mats while Chris was going with a single ab-mat and a plate.  Chris also needed the assistance of a box on the pistols.  That was the extent of the scaling we'd be using in this class.

The lineup (moving from closest to the lobby to further away) was me, Bryan, Marissa, and Chris.  Because I had no one to my left, the only person I really saw regularly was Bryan.  Occasionally I would look over during a break and see Marissa and Chris, but I had little feel for what round they might be on.  As for Bryan, I didn't always know precisely what round he was on, I just knew that he was 1-2 rounds ahead of me.  He put a large gap between us very quickly, lapping me well before the clock hit 10 minutes.  (He would lap me a second time before the AMRAP ended.)  How did those RX handstand push-ups go?  In May, he got his very first one.  On this night, he would do 40 of them in the workout.  Amazing!

How did that large gap between Bryan and I come about early on?  It was a combination of Bryan getting off to a really fast start and me spinning my wheels.  I had a very hard time kipping my handstand push-ups.  There were several times where I brought my knees down for the kip and fell away from the wall.  Even when I did do a rep correctly, I seemed to fall off of the wall right afterwards.  I'm pretty sure that I didn't string any handstand push-ups in the first three rounds that I did.  As much as I was struggling there, I was having an even tougher time at my favorite station.  The first round of pistols went okay, but Crampus showed up in round two.  The pistols on my left leg were easy, but the ones on my right leg were very painful.  I started missing reps on that leg, unable to maintain my balance as I tried to stand up from the bottom of the one-legged squat.  As I got into round three, I figured out that I was only going to have success on my right leg if I moved really fast.  The toll for moving quicker would be sharp pain, but I'd only have to deal with that pain for 5-10 seconds per round.  I began wincing as I did the pistols on my right leg, but I stopped failing on them once I sucked it up and just went for the rep each time.  On the pull-up bar, I grinded through single reps.  Slow but steady was the idea there.  Surprisingly, I did my best work in this WOD at that station.

When Jenna announced that 10 minutes had elapsed, I was still working on round 3.  In February, I had made it about midway through round 7 in 20 minutes.  In May, I got deep into round 6.  Based on the pace I had going, I wasn't going to threaten either of those scores.  Then a weird thing happened.  I started moving faster.  I strung a few handstand push-ups together.  I dealt with the pain from the pistols.  I was still going slow and steady on the pull-ups, but this was the station where I tended to fall off the most in the latter stages of the workout.  There was no slowing up this time around.  Each time I completed a round, I took a peek at the clock.  Little by little, I was closing in on my score from May.  There wasn't a lot of time remaining when I began round 6, but I completed all five of my handstand push-ups and then got through all of my pistols.  I ran over to the pull-up rig and tried to do as many reps as I could before time was called.  I ended up with 4 pull-ups in the sixth round.  Final score: 5+19.

It was my worst score in three tries this year, but in a way, I was prouder of this attempt than I was of my two previous tries.  I had to overcome a lot of adversity early on and rather than let that ruin the remainder of my workout, I found a way to pick up the pace during the back half of the WOD.  I only finished 5 reps short of my May score, but I guarantee you that if I had 21 minutes for both attempts, my August score would have surged ahead of what I could have done in May.

Despite my closing kick, I knew I would need to take Thursday off to let my right calf recover.  By taking Thursday off, I would actually end up getting four days of rest.  Jenn's grandmother had passed away earlier in the week and we would be in Alabama from Friday through Sunday for the funeral.  So I wouldn't be back at KOP until Monday night.

Monday preview: Just when you thought it couldn't get any more humid in the gym, there comes a night like the one we had on Monday.  Sweaty high fives.  Sweat angels interfering with burpees.  And slow, sweaty double unders.