Dislocate Your Shoulder...It Will Be Worth It

Workout date: 3/3/17

The dumpster fire that is the 2017 Crossfit Games Open continued on Thursday night as the live announcement of workout 17.2 took place.  There was all sorts of controversy regarding 17.1 because the terrible Crossfit Games website crashed repeatedly over the weekend, forcing HQ to extend the deadline for score submissions by two days.  Then came Thursday night.  Apparently no one checked the audio because there was no sound coming from Rogue Headquarters in Columbus, Ohio.  For a time, it looked like we might have to read Dave Castro's lips to know what the workout would be, but they finally got the glitch repaired by the time Castro's big reveal took place.  What was on tap this week?  More dumbbells (the unofficial theme of the 2017 Open).  No double unders (at least one more week to practice those!).  Plenty of gymnastics (guess it's good to get toes-to-bar and bar muscle-ups out of the way in one workout).  Here are the details:

Open Workout 17.2

AMRAP in 12 minutes

2 rounds of:
50 ft DB walking lunge (50/35)
16 toes-to-bar
8 DB power cleans (50/35)

Then 2 rounds of:
50 ft DB walking lunge
16 bar muscle-ups
8 DB power cleans

*DBs are held in a front rack position during the lunges
**1 rep given for every 5 ft of lunges completed
***Tiebreaker time based on completion of last full round

When I watched the live announcement, they gave some good tips concerning the DB movements.  The DBs could be held on your shoulders (this would be the most natural way to hold them), but you could also hold them vertically on your traps.  It would take more finagling to get them in a comfortable position if you went this second route, but the good news was that it would save your grip. And the rest of this workout was very grip intensive.  The other tip revolved around the DB power cleans.  The last DB power clean would set you up for the DB lunges, so if you needed to take a break, it was better to take it after 7 reps.  You could then take a break and let the 8th rep set you up for the walking lunge.  This mirrored the strategy we use when doing the workout called DT.  It was a valid strategy for people who were going to do a lot of rounds.  But for people like me who couldn't do bar muscle-ups, it was probably a bad strategy, at least for the end of round two.  Thousands and thousands of people were going to end up with a score of 78 in this workout (34 reps x 2 rounds + 10 reps for walking lunge to start round three) and the only thing that would separate them would be their tiebreaker time.  If you did 7 power cleans at the end of round two, then rested before doing the 8th power clean, you were letting a ton of people waltz on by you.  When I got to this point of the workout, there was no doubt I'd be doing all 8 power cleans, even if I had to take a break and do an extra power clean to start round three.  The tiebreaker time was just too important in this workout.

Three weeks ago, I participated in the muscle-up clinic.  Both Theresa and Kevin B were in the same group as me and it was clear that they were going to have bar muscle-ups very soon.  Kevin actually got his first one before the clinic was over, while Theresa came very close several times over.  On Friday morning, each of them did 10 bar muscle-ups as part of 17.2.  I guess when it clicks, it clicks.  Theresa was the only one in the early classes to get her first bar muscle-up, but plenty of other folks were able to get their first toes-to-bar.  That list included Ben M, Tori, Meggan, Ina, Katie, Meredith, Tim H, and Justin D.

I planned on getting to the gym earlier this week than I had in week 1, hopefully ensuring my place in a heat before the masses arrived.  I was perfectly happy getting the workout done and then spending the rest of the evening judging/cheerleading.  There was a 99% chance of my final score being 78, so the only mystery was what my tiebreaker time would be.  I had hoped to get to the gym by 4pm, but I wasn't able to make it there until about 4:30.  That ended up being early enough as most of the heats had plenty of vacancies still.  I watched the heat that was taking place and saw Noel working through a set of lunges.  I knew Noel could do bar muscle-ups, so the tiebreaker wasn't going to be important to him.  However, he was having a very difficult time with the lunges, putting down the DBs several times.  Having the ability to do bar muscle-ups wasn't going to do him any good if he couldn't get back to the bar.  I had my first cheerleading duty of the day.  I started chirping to Noel that he had to go all out to get through these lunges done so that he could show off his bar muscle-ups.  He gave himself enough time to complete 6 bar muscle-ups before time was called.

I started to get warmed up and spent some talking with Alicia.  She looked frustrated as she was getting ready.  She told me that she was close to getting a bar muscle-up, but couldn't quite get over the bar.  She did a couple of attempts in front of me and the girl was not lying.  She really just needed to rotate over the bar faster and she had it.  I had the same issue.  Everyone always preached how you needed to get your hips to the bar and then rotate over.  Well I had that first part down, but I couldn't commit to swinging my body over the bar with the velocity that was necessary to secure myself there.

There was one more heat before I would have my chance at 17.2.  In that heat, I watched Mooney do bar muscle-ups in a much different way than everyone else.  His hips were nowhere near the bar as he floated through one bar muscle-up after another.  He barely had his chin over the bar before he used his upper body strength to pull his body up and over the bar.  It was unfair, yet totally impressive.  He made it all the way into the second round of bar muscle-ups before time was called.

It was time for my heat.  I tested out how the 50 pound DBs felt as I held them in the front rack before attempting a few of the power cleans I'd be doing at the end of each round.  Those felt awkward.  It wasn't the weight as much as the movement.  We don't do a lot of DB cleans at the gym, so doing fast cleans with heavy DBs was going to be new territory for me.  I was lined up next to Brian S for this heat, with Gordy and Samson further to my right.  The heat began and I felt very comfortable with the lunges.  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the four guys were all moving in sync.  I reached the turnaround point, pivoted, and began marching back to the pull-up rig. Gordy did the same thing, with Samson and Brian just a step behind us.  I got back to where I started and dropped my DBs.  The easy part was over.  The tough stuff was about to begin.

I took way too much time transitioning to the toes-to-bar.  I was worried about where my DBs were, so I took a few seconds to move them.  Then I wasn't sure which way I wanted to face.  By the time I jumped up to start my set, I was behind all three of the guys next to me.  Then I botched the rhythm of the toes-to-bar.  Instead of punching my feet down to get a quick kip going, I began doing a loosey-goosey pendulum swing.  I should have dropped down from the bar after that first rep and started over so I could use the kip, but I didn't want to drop after only one rep.  I kept doing that pendulum swing until I reached 10 reps.  It was much slower doing it that way, something that was made obvious when Samson, Gordy, and Brian headed to their DBs for the power cleans.  I had 6 more reps to go which I completed by doing two more sets of three pendulum swings.  The three guys were already lunging away from me as they started their second round.  I got to my DBs and did 7 power cleans.  I wasn't looking down as I tried to hit the floor with the head of the DBs which explains why I nailed my feet several times at the bottom of the reps.  (Note: This was the second week in a row of me crushing my feet with DBs.  Last week, I was dropping the DBs from overhead late in the workout and they were bouncing on to my feet.  I should know better than to drop DBs like that, but I was tired and everyone else was doing it.  That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

The 8th power clean would lead directly into my second round of lunges.  This round did not feel nearly as easy as the first one did, but I was much happier about doing lunges than toes-to-bar or power cleans.  I set the DBs down at the turnaround point for a brief breather, then lunged back to the pull-up rig.  When I jumped up to the high bar this time, I reminded myself to kick down for the kip.  I got 3 good reps before dropping to the floor.  I did that once more before failing on the third rep of my third set.  I was switching to the low bar for the final 8 reps.  I did singles as fast as I could, knowing that my tiebreaker time was getting worse and worse the longer I spent doing toes-to-bar.  I finished rep #16 and got over to my DBs.  I sprinted through the 8 power cleans as if they were the last thing I needed to do in this workout.  For scoring purposes, that was mostly true.  I finished the second round at 6:01, meaning I had almost 6 minutes to lunge across the gym and back before pretending that I could do a bar muscle-up.

I was no longer in any hurry.  I took a break before lunging across the gym.  When I got there, I put the DBs down and joked around with a few of the guys before picking them back up and completing my last set of lunges.  I took some time underneath the pull-up rig to catch my breath.  Might as well recover first if I was going to make some real efforts at getting my first ever bar muscle-up.  With about three and a half minutes remaining, I took my first shot at it.  My hips were high, but the low bar gave me the Mutombo.  I made a few more attempts but there was no change in the outcome.

Noel seemed convinced that I was going to get a bar muscle-up because he appeared in front of me with a camera in his hands ready to capture the moment.  I got some really good advice from Olan, who told me that the reason I was getting rejected by the bar was because I was pulling the bar to my chest rather than to my hips.  I didn't realize I was doing that until he said something.  It made sense that I was making this mistake because I was trying to pull myself in to rotate over the bar quickly.  That wasn't the way to get a bar muscle-up.  I needed to push down on the bar, then use my kip and some core strength for the rotation.  Pulling in on the bar for the rotation was simply going to leave me with a bunch of bruises on my chest.

I had a couple more close calls, but time was running out.  Jason came over and gave me some more good advice, although his advice was part-joke, part-serious.  He told me to try the chicken wing, the method where you throw one side of your body over the bar then try to pull the other side up once you've gotten half of your body over.  I hadn't tried that because I didn't think I had the strength to pull it off (although upon further reflection, this seems like the perfect style for someone lopsided like myself).  Jason told me I needed to throw the right side of my body over the bar as hard as I could.  How hard?  "Dislocate your shoulder...it will be worth it!"  Those were the words I heard with a little over 30 seconds left to go.  Normally that sentiment would sound crazy to me.  But having tried everything else, I kinda shrugged my shoulders and decided to give it a shot.  On my first attempt, I got the right side of my body over the bar and for a second I thought I might have finally done it.  The left side of my body was way too low though and I had to come back down.  With less than 15 seconds left, I needed to hurry to get one last attempt in.  I threw the right side of my body forward as hard as I could and this time I got further over the bar.  If only my right hand didn't slip as I rotated over.  I finished 17.2 with my arms draped over the bar, wondering what might have been if I had spent the entirety of those three and a half minutes attempting to dislocate my shoulder.  Oh well.  Final score: 78 (Tiebreaker time of 6:01).

I wasn't in a hurry to have a post-workout drink, but someone handed me a beer as I watched the next heat.  I spent some time yelling at Jason in hopes that he'd get the bar muscle-up I couldn't.  Then I finished up my cheerleading with Keely, who was visiting us from Canada.  She had a plan of doing 1 toes-to-bar every 30 seconds and try as I might, I couldn't get her to ditch her plan, even when time was running out on her.  She didn't make it through all 16 reps, but she had a smile on her face after the workout was over.

The next heat was the "78 heat", as six of the seven athletes ended up with that magical score of 78.  I judged Matt B during this heat, the second week in a row I got to cheer him on.  There were some very high scores in the next heat.  A lot of the focus was on Maggie and rightly so.  She would beat Aimee with a score of 125.  But quietly working at the other end of the gym was Andrew, who simply destroyed this workout with a final score of 162.

My second turn at judging came in the next heat as I agreed to be Mark Stipa's scorekeeper.  Mark was very quick through the lunges and his kip on the toes-to-bar was strong.  Even when he missed on a rep, he'd jump back up to the high bar after a short break and started pushing through his next set.  His tiebreaker time was almost a full minute better than mine (5:02).  Like many of us, he'd be spending the last few minutes of his workout trying to get that elusive first bar muscle-up.  After seeing his form on the toes-to-bar, I got the sense that he was going to be the first one in the afternoon to have a bar muscle-up breakthrough.  He made a bunch of attempts, but wasn't able to get over the bar.  Then, as he grew tired, something happened that I was very familiar with.  When he went to pull himself over the bar, his left hand was sliding towards the center of the bar.  That was exactly what I used to do when I got tired doing pull-ups.  I knew the cause of this problem and I knew the remedy.  Mark had a very wide grip that shortened the range of motion necessary for this movement.  Except I knew he was strong enough to handle a greater range of motion.  And I knew his hand was sliding because when you get tired with a wide grip, one of your hands will slide to the middle of the bar.  It's the body's way of saying "narrow your grip".  Matt and I told Mark to try and perform the bar muscle-up with a narrower grip.  The sliding hand went away.  And his attempts were much better.  He was also trying the chicken wing and you can see in the photo below how close he was to getting over the bar:

Mark's chicken wing almost got him his first bar muscle-up

I spent most of the next heat reminding Danielle that she could do toes-to-bar, even though she didn't seem to believe it herself.  It wasn't until the end of the workout that she seemed to regain her faith, making it through 12 toes-to-bar in under two minutes after spending over 7 minutes doing the first set of 16.  Cline was in the same heat and for the second week in a row, I did not get to cheer him on. That doesn't mean there wasn't an epic picture of him doing the workout:

The best pain face in the gym

My last turn at judging took place in the second-to-last heat of the night.  I would be judging the meme captain of the Purple Crush team, Kris.  She was pretty understated when I asked her how she felt going into the workout, so I didn't have a good sense of how she would do on this one.  Turned out she would do just fine.  She had no issues with either of the DB movements.  When it came to the toes-to-bar, she took her time and did singles.  She had some misses along the way, each one punctuated by an F-bomb.  But even the misses were very close.  As she did her toes-to-bar, I kept an eye on Esra, who was working behind her.  She was trying to get her first toes-to-bar.  Unfortunately, she didn't get it, but like Kris, her misses were not far off.

The clock started to become an issue as Kris was wrapping up her second round of toes-to-bar.  It seemed like she was going to finish the toes-to-bar before the clock struck 12, but I wasn't sure if she'd make it through the power cleans to end round two.  And if she got through those, would she have enough time to do all of the lunges and get a 78?  When she got her 16th toes-to-bar, I urged to hurry to her DBs and do all 8 power cleans.  She was able to hold on through all of those, leaving under 40 seconds left to lunge.  I knew she would need a break after the power cleans, but I tried to shorten it by counting down a three-second rest period before she had to pick the DBs back up again. She got them up into the front rack and lunged as quickly as she could.  She got all the way down to the turnaround point and then made it 60% of the way back to finish with a score of 76.

Kris would sprint through some lunges to complete her 17.2 experience

I mentioned last week that the MVP of week 1 was Meredith.  The MVP of week 2 wouldn't take center stage until the last heat of the night.  There were 6 people in the final heat, but the focus would narrow down to two of them as the heat went on, with the MVP nearing tears mid-way through the workout.

There was a time when I wrote about LC and Michal all the time because they were working out alongside of me.  Nowadays, I tend to write about LC as the leader of Dudes After Dark and I write about Michal as the person who makes fun of me while she's taking a break during her lifting sessions.  The Open provides one of the rare times that I can write about them doing Crossfit.  They were lined up next to each other in the final heat and it wouldn't take long before everyone's attention was on them.  The DB portion of the workout would favor LC and the gymnastics movements would favor Michal.  It was no surprise that they would be neck and neck in the final stages of 17.2.  But who would come out on top?

LC opened up a huge lead early on.  The DB lunges might as well have been air squats.  She was efficient with her toes-to-bar and I'm not sure anyone moved faster through the power cleans than she did.  Her tiebreaker time at the end of two rounds was an obscene 3:43.  She did one more round of lunges and then faced a movement that she's had some recent struggles with: the bar muscle-up.  I often see LC doing personal training with Aimee.  They're always working on something muscle-up related.  Occasionally it is on the rings, but more often it has been over at the bar.  Rachel had bar muscle-ups a year ago, getting 3 in the Open workout that required them.  After the Open, her focus turned to Olympic lifts and I think lack of practice caused the bar muscle-ups to go away.  As this year's Open has drawn closer, she's been practicing off the hook, so I expected her to knock out a bunch of them in this workout.

Michal was still working on her second round of toes-to-bar when LC made her first attempt at a bar muscle-up.  She was higher than I was on any of my attempts, but wasn't able to rotate over.  That scene was repeated over and over again during the next 2 minutes.  LC had the same face that I had on Wednesday night when my double unders disappeared.  She looked slightly panicked and very frustrated.  Her face was screaming "why is this happening to me right now?"

Michal would finish her second round exactly two minutes after LC, but I became convinced that she was going to end this workout with a higher score.  LC looked stuck, while Michal was gradually reeling her in.  Michal lunged across the gym and dropped her DBs.  LC still didn't have a bar muscle-up.  Michal lunged back across the gym to the pull-up rig.  That two minute lead was gone and they were essentially tied.

Maybe LC needed her boo's companionship.  Maybe she needed to know someone was breathing down her neck.  Or maybe she just needed a bunch of practice to get in the groove.  Because as soon as Michal made her way to the pull-up rig and drew even with her, LC swung on her bar and catapulted herself up and over it.  She finally got a bar muscle-up.  And when it happened, the gym exploded.  There was a lot of time left in the workout, but people were rushing over to congratulate her.  LC looked happy, but also like she wanted to burst into tears.  From that point forward, LC would not let Michal draw even with her again.  Every time Michal got a bar muscle-up, LC would get one as well.  They even did a couple at the same time:

The stars of 17.2 doing synchronized bar muscle-ups

When the clock hit 12 minutes, Michal had done 7 bar muscle-ups for a score of 85.  That was a really good score for someone who claims to not do Crossfit anymore.  However, it was not enough to come out ahead of the MVP for week 2.  LC might have spent several minutes not getting a single bar muscle-up, but when the dust settled, she wound up with 11 of them for a score of 89.

At the end of the night, I was convinced that I wanted to do this again.  Most people were complaining about sore butts from the lunges or tired forearms from all of the grip strength required.  I wasn't one of them.  The lunges felt fine to me and I didn't hang on to the bar long enough to destroy my grip strength.  And truth be told, this was really only a 7 minute workout for me because I got nothing done in the last 5 minutes.  On the other hand, what was the point of doing this all over again if I was just going to end up with another 78?  I decided I'd take the weekend to think about whether or not it was worthwhile to do 17.2 a second time.

Monday preview: I set a deadline for my decision.  Will I do 17.2 over again or will I take part in the Monday WOD?

One Rope Good, One Rope Bad

Workout date: 3/1/17

The Open has caused me to go from working out five times a week to only coming in four times a week.  Because the Open workouts are likely to be demanding, it makes little sense for me to do a workout on Thursday and then attempt the Open workout on Friday.  So for the next month, Thursdays are going to be rest days.  (I think a lot of the other athletes in the gym do something similar.)  That meant the workout on Wednesday would be my last before finding out what awaited us in 17.2.  Dave Castro had posted a "clue" on his Instagram page with regards to 17.2, but it was another one of those extremely vague, probably means nothing types of clues.  It looked like two fish under water to me.  Removing "fish" and "water" from that description left you with "two under", so I assumed this was Castro's way of telling us we'd be doing double unders on Friday.  The Wednesday workout would give me the opportunity to practice them:

Wednesday WOD:
12 minute AMRAP
3 rope climbs (15')
12 push presses (135/95)
50 double unders

Hey now!  A workout with a lot of rope climbs, a barbell, and double unders?  That sounded like something I could get behind.  It was also only 12 minutes long.  Medium-length workouts were the ones I tended to perform best at.  All the tea leaves seemed to be pointing in the right direction.  How could this go wrong?  (It goes wrong.)

There were only two of us in Coach Jenna's 7:30 class, but it was her two favorite athletes!  At least that's what Jenna told me and Julie Foucher.  Josh M was there for a while as well although he was just lingering around after the 6:30 class.  He still had plenty of energy though.  For some reason he was consumed with climbing the rope upside down.  It was actually pretty impressive to watch him sort of caterpillar his way up to the 15' mark feet first.  He urged me to try it, but I did not have a death wish.  I was perfectly happy climbing the rope right side up.  Julie also wanted to climb the rope, but she is too far along in her pregnancy to do so safely.  She was going to do rope pulls instead.

I had looked at scores from earlier in the day and saw that 3 full rounds was a strong score.  That meant 4 minutes per round.  I figured 3 rope climbs would take me a minute at most.  The 12 push presses would take about 20 seconds if I strung them all, closer to 45 seconds if I broke them into two sets.  The double unders would take about a minute to do.  Adding that up, it seemed like 3 rounds shouldn't be that difficult for me.  Was this simply my workout, one where I could legitimately expect to put up one of the top scores of the day?  Possibly.  However I thought it would be better to skip doing this RX in lieu of trying to complete 4 full rounds with a lighter push press weight.  17.1 told me that my cardio needed improving, so I wanted this to be a lighter sprint where I'd have to keep moving really fast to reach my goal.

Everything seemed fine during the warmup.  Climbed the rope easily enough.  Jenna corrected my form on the push press as I was exaggerating shooting my head through as I pressed the barbell overhead.  I did a few reps with 115 pounds and it felt like a weight I could do 12 reps of, at least in round one.  I might need two sets for the later rounds, but that was okay as long as I kept my break short.  At the jump rope, we started with single unders and then moved to double unders.  I might have hit myself with the rope once during the warmup, but I felt very comfortable with my double unders.  My only concern prior to the workout was my mental state.  To get 4 rounds, I needed to attack this workout and continue to be aggressive for all 12 minutes.  If I did that, I'd be fine.  Or so I thought...

Jenna got us started and I did my first rope climb.  My feet slipped a little right as I was about to reach up and hit the 15' mark.  I had to pause for a second and fix that problem, but it didn't slow me down too much.  If anything, it was a reminder that I couldn't ignore my form just because I was trying to do this workout quickly.  Message received!  I did two more quick rope climbs and walked over to my barbell.  I picked up the 115 pounds and began doing push presses.  I got through 10 of them before it started to hurt, but I wasn't putting it down with two reps to go.  I strung all 12 reps and moved to my jump rope.  I only got a couple of reps with my first set, something I attributed to the fact that I was rushing.  I was trying to average one round every three minutes and with the later rounds likely to be slower, I needed this first round to be lightning fast.  My second set wasn't much better than the first, causing me to stop and take a break.  I needed to be calm.  When I felt like I had calmed down, I started again.  The third set was better, but I still only got about a dozen reps.  This was a disaster compared to my round of 50 double unders at the end of the Filthy Fifty a week ago.  I had done 35 minutes of work in that WOD when I got to my jump rope, but I rallied and completed the 50 double unders with a set of 15 and a set of 35.  That form was nowhere to be found today.

I had to scrape my way through medium-sized sets to reach the end of the round.  The good news is that the clock showed only 2:40 had elapsed despite all of my double under troubles.  I might have been struggling with the rope that I owned, but I was fine with the rope that hung from the gym's ceiling.  My next three rope climbs were all fast, though I needed a little more of a breather between ascents.  When I returned to my barbell, I knew I was going to need to break the 12 reps into two sets, so I led off with a set of seven before completing the push presses with a set of five.  I was really happy with how round two was going.  If I improved on my double unders even a little bit, I was going to finish this round in under three minutes.  It was time to put round one out of my mind and perform double unders like I knew I could.

Or not.  Somehow round two went even worse than round one.  Couldn't put together 10 in a row.  Kept hitting my sneakers over and over again.  I took a few profanity breaks along the way.  I just didn't get it.  I've been practicing double unders and I felt like I was at a stage now where I could reliably do sets in the 20-25 rep range.  That wasn't happening in this workout.  I tried everything I could think of to make things right, but for whatever reason, I simply didn't have it on this night.  By the time I finished round two, 7 minutes had gone by.  Four rounds was off the table and three rounds was very much in doubt.

My aggravation with the double unders carried over into the rope climbs.  I think I was flustered more than tired, but I had to stop after the second pull on my second and third climbs in round three.  The good news is that I had learned from the mistake I had made on the very first climb of this workout.  I was able to stop 12 feet up in the air without much concern because my feet had formed a tight clamp on the rope.  I wasn't going to fall or start slipping down the rope.  I was locked in.  When I felt ready, I did the last pull for each of those climbs, smacked the 15 foot mark, and slid back down to the floor.

My third round of push presses went exactly the same way my second round had gone.  I started off with a set of 7 reps and finished them off with a set of 5 reps.  That left me with nearly 3 minutes to do 50 double unders and complete round three.  No sweat, right?  On any day but this one.  I encountered all of the same problems that plagued me in round two.  I think my best set was 9 reps in a row.  There were more profanity breaks.  I started to look at the clock and began wondering whether I was going to fall short of 3 rounds.  That would have been pathetic.  50 double unders should have taken me about a minute to complete.  Now I was doubting whether I could complete 50 in three minutes.  If I couldn't finish 50 reps in 3 minutes, then I was in deep trouble when they showed up in the Open.

I used up most of that 3 minutes to get to 50 reps and the end of round three, but I made it.  There was about 20 seconds left when I got to the rope, which was plenty of time for 1 climb.  I'm pretty fast on the rope, but not fast enough to squeeze two climbs into that small window.  Final score: 3+1.

I have had my share of workouts where I laid on the floor afterwards disappointed in my performance.  This wasn't one of them.  I wasn't disappointed at the end of this.  I was furious.  I couldn't help but be mad when this fiasco was over.  There was no doubt in my mind that I could have finished 4 rounds if I was even remotely competent on the double unders.  This was a skill I had spent a ton of time on, yet it had disappeared on me at the point in the year when I needed it most.  I left the gym on Wednesday night feeling like double unders were an absolute certainty for 17.2 on Friday.  Was there any chance I could remember how to do them over the next 48 hours?

Friday preview: 17.2 is announced and I get a reprieve on double unders.  The workout involves more dumbbells and plenty of gymnastics.  Ain't no one confusing me for Simone Biles.

Foods After Dark

Workout date: 2/28/17

Free food should never be tough to give away.  Taking it a step further, free Chipotle should never be tough to give away at KOP.  I had gotten some coupons for free Chipotle in the mail that I thought I could use with my fellow athletes since no restaurant gets more mentions at our gym than Chipotle.  The coupons were only good in February.  Early on in the month, the Nutrition Challenge was going on, so no one seemed eager for burritos.  Not a problem, I'll just hold on to the coupons until the Open starts up.  People will definitely be more interested in going out then.  I brought the coupons with me when I went to the gym for the 17.1 announcement.  Ghost town.  I asked Josh M about going, but he had plans later on.  He said he'd take me up on it if we left immediately and skipped the Open announcement.  I didn't want to do that, so I still had coupons with no takers.  The plan after 17.1 was to go to the brew pub across the street.  No Chipotle that night.  It wasn't until I talked with LC after Open Strength on the 27th that a plan was put together.  Dudes After Dark would be going for Chipotle post-workout on the 28th.  Just in the nick of time.

LC doesn't play when it comes to Chipotle, so she was running a tight ship during this particular edition of Dudes After Dark.  The workout was a strength couplet: find a 5RM back squat, then find a 5RM deadlift.  LC told us exactly how much time we would have for the back squat, how much time we would have for the deadlift, and what time she wanted clean up to begin so that we could go eat.  The seven of us in attendance would need to abide by that timeline or risk being locked in the gym for the night.  (Note: That may be something that only happens to me.  The scars haven't fully healed yet.)

In keeping with LC's commands to move through this workout rather briskly, I am going to zip through this recap in the same fashion.  The truth is that there aren't a lot of scintillating things you can write about five-rep sets of the back squat and the deadlift.  I also wasn't paying a lot of attention to the weights that my classmates were lifting.  So this recap is going to be on the brief side.

My 5RM for the back squat coming into the evening was 285 pounds, with my 5RM deadlift a bit higher at 345 pounds.  We were supposed to do 5 working sets (non-warmup sets) for each lift, so I went with my usual plan where if things go well during the first 4 sets, I'll have an attempt at a PR during my final set.  Here's an optimistic look at what I'd be doing for the evening:

• Back squat: 185-225-255-275-295
• Deadlift: 225-275-315-335-355

On the back squat, I started out with a warmup set at 135.  Then I moved on to the working sets.  185 and 225 went smoothly.  I knew the set at 255 would tell me whether I had a real shot at a PR.  The answer seemed to be no.  Something just felt off as I did that set at 255.  There wasn't a point where I thought I was going to fail.  It was more like I was doing something wrong, but I couldn't put my finger on what it was.

That didn't give me a lot of confidence going into the set at 275.  The first rep was fine, but I got wobbly on the second rep.  There was definitely something wrong with how my feet were set up.  After standing up that second rep, I took some time and reset my feet, bringing them closer together.  That felt like an improvement.  It wasn't enough of an improvement though.  I dropped down into my third rep and felt wobbly once again as I tried to stand up.  I didn't fight for too long before dumping the barbell.  No PR today.

LC had mentioned at the start that we could do drop sets if we maxed out on, say, set #3.  I don't often do drop sets, but technically I was still on the hook for one more set.  I decided to drop back down to 255 for another set at that weight.  Before I got into that set, I took some time to think about my setup.  Bringing my feet in felt like the right move even though it preceded a failed rep.  The more I thought about having a wide setup vs a narrow setup, the more it dawned on me that my feet weren't the only part of my body I had positioned incorrectly.  I had been doing sets with my hands in close and my feet wide when I typically have my hands wider and my feet closer.  As I did that second set at 255, I could tell that I had made the right adjustments.  The first four reps were no trouble at all.  I had to fight a little bit on the fifth rep, but it must not have looked too bad as Cline yelled for me to do a 6th rep and Tia told me to put more weight on my barbell.  I guess 265 might have been a better choice for that last set, but the uncertainty that I had with my setup made me choose a more conservative weight.

It was on to the deadlift where I was not expecting to PR.  My biggest concern here was not injuring my back.  I was still suspicious about how well my body recovered after 17.1.  The condition of everyone's backs continued to be a major topic of conversation at the gym, yet I was only dealing with a minor amount of soreness.  Maybe my back injury was a thing of the past.  Perhaps my back was stronger than I realized.  All I knew was that deadlift sets would reawaken the injury if it still existed.  I wasn't concerned about doing all 5 working sets if I felt like something was off.  I'd shut things down immediately and be okay with whatever my score was.

I started off the deadlift portion of this workout with two warmup sets, one at 135 and one at 185.  Nothing amiss as I did five reps at each of those weights.  Then I moved on to my first working set at 225.  It took more effort to get through those five reps, but I still wasn't experiencing any issues.  I moved up to 275.  There was no pain during this set, but it felt heavier than I thought it would.  I was pretty certain an attempt at 355 wasn't happening and I began having doubts as to whether 335 would happen.  The set at 315 would tell me whether going after 335 would be a wise decision.

It turns out that my body gave me a clear message as to whether I should attempt a set at 335.  315 felt very heavy as I picked it up off of the floor, but I got through two tough reps.  As I leaned down to tap the floor with my barbell in preparation for rep #3, I felt a bit of pain in my lower back and suddenly I got woozy.  That wasn't normal.  Some very bad thoughts raced through my brain.  I've had the unfortunate experience of witnessing someone get a sharp pain and then go into a seizure.  Nothing that dramatic was going on with me, but the thought of having a seizure while trying to lift 315 pounds was frightening.  I dropped the barbell and decided I wouldn't be doing any additional sets.  I didn't experience any lingering pain the rest of the evening, so it's possible that I made too big a deal out of this.  But I think I'm always going to be overly cautious when it comes to protecting my back.

It was time for some grub!  Because I had misread my coupons, I forced everyone to make the arduous trek to the Gateway Shopping Center for dinner.  Turns out you can use the coupons anywhere even though the address of your nearest Chipotle is printed on it.  (The more you know!)  I gave my coupon for free chips and salsa to Cline, but the staff informed us that they were out of chips when we got there.  They also let me know there was no lettuce as I was ordering my burrito, as if that had any bearing on my order.  The staff seemed like they had checked out for the night even though it was only 8:45.  Poor showing, Gateway Chipotle!  Cline got them to guarantee the chips and salsa coupon for a later visit.  Then he remedied the "lack of a side" situation by walking down to Five Guys, ordering fries, and bringing them back to Chipotle.  

It was fun getting a group to go out after the WOD.  We used to go to Chipotle after gym workouts quite a bit, but this was the first time that we've done it in a while.  Maybe this tradition will pick up again after this outing.

Wednesday preview: My eyes light up when I see a workout that seems tailor-made for me, but things turn sour when I forget how to do one of the movements.

Whose Tires Are We Slashing?

Workout date: 2/27/17

The fallout from 17.1 was that everyone had a sore back.  Okay, not everyone.  Somehow the guy who went into the workout with back problems came out of it feeling decent.  Don't get me wrong, my back definitely felt like it had been through an intense 20 minute workout.  But there's a difference between feeling "workout sore" and "injured sore" and I was relieved to be feeling the former.  I didn't work out on Saturday or Sunday as has become my habit, but I felt well enough that I could have worked out on Sunday if I really wanted to.

Instead I waited until Monday to come back to the gym.  Part of me wanted to wait until Tuesday after seeing what the workout was going to be.  It was our last benchmark WOD of the month, a hero WOD that I had never done before.  It was filled with thrusters, pull-ups, and sprinting.  Not that I don't like sprinting.  It's just that I don't want to have to do thrusters and pull-ups after sprinting.  Those movements are hard enough when I'm fresh.  We'd be cycling through thrusters, pull-ups, and sprints many times in the WOD known as Holbrook:

"Holbrook"
10 rounds
5 thrusters (115/75)
10 pull-ups
100 meter sprint
*1 minute rest between rounds

So that was 50 thrusters, 100 pull-ups, and 10 sprints in total.  Doing 5 thrusters per round didn't sound terrible as I could usually get through at least 3 at a time using a moderate weight even when I was tired.  My sprints were likely to turn into fast jogs as the rounds passed by.  That probably wouldn't affect my time too much given how short the sprints were.  Those pull-ups though...

I had discussed in a previous blog post how there seemed to more workouts programmed with large volumes of pull-ups.  100 pull-ups definitely qualified.  The toughest aspect of this for me was that in this workout, it seemed essential that you did the pull-ups quickly.  So I'd either need to be very fast with my single reps or I would need to remember how to string pull-ups.  My plan for this workout was to approach pull-ups the same way I approach double unders: calmly.  Rather than try and generate some massive kip while maintaining a death grip on the bar, I was going to pretend that I was floating between reps, relying on the little upper body strength I have to get me back up for additional reps.  Didn't seem like it could be any worse than the method I had been using.

Coach Giulz had 10 people in her Monday 6:30 class.  It wasn't such a big class that I was concerned about having enough room for our barbells.  I was a little concerned about space for the pull-ups because the far end of the gym was being used for people who wanted to do the Open workout, but there was just enough space to squeeze me in at the end.  I chose the farthest station from the door because I expected to be one of the slower athletes in this workout and I wanted to leave the closer spots for those who were likely to crush this WOD.  So if I wasn't concerned about space for the thrusters and the pull-ups, what was I worried about?  Well, the idea of 10 of us sprinting in and out of the side door chaotically while having to cross the street twice per round gave me pause for the cause.  That concern felt warranted when traffic seemed to oddly pick up on that small street for 7pm on a Monday.  In the end, no one was struck by a car.  I came close in the last round though.  I'll get to that near-miss later on in this recap.

When I read the workout description, I thought setting a goal of 29 minutes was reasonable.  Then I saw all the times from the morning and afternoon classes.  Almost all of them were under 29 minutes and plenty of them were well under 29 minutes.  I came up with 29 minutes because I thought averaging 2 minutes per round would be a strong pace for me (10 rounds x 2 minutes + 9 rest periods x 1 minute = 29 minutes).  There was no way I could shave time off the sprint.  I could do less than 10 pull-ups per round, but that seemed counterproductive to my goal of getting accustomed to workouts with tons of pull-ups involved.  So I made the decision to scale the weight on my thrusters from 115 pounds to 95 pounds.  That would ensure that I got through that segment of each round quickly.  It also would keep me from wearing out my arms prior to getting to the pull-up bar.  Giulz told all of us during the warmup that she expected us to string our thrusters in every round, a declaration that made me feel much better about my choice to use 95 pounds.  It would still be tight averaging 2 minutes per round though.  I figured the thrusters would take about 10 seconds and the pull-ups could take a minute.  The run from the back of the gym, out the door, to the annex and back would take at least 30 seconds.  That was an estimate of 1:40 if everything went as planned (and it rarely does).

Giulz had us get to our barbells so we could kick this thing off.  Cline would be starting alongside of me, but I didn't think we'd be spending much of this workout next to one another.  He was better at pull-ups and he was likely going to be faster than me on the sprints.  My only advantage would be on the thrusters, where I probably wasn't going to gain more than 2-3 seconds on him, if that.  Giulz started the clock and I ripped through 5 thrusters.  I walked over to my pull-up bar as calm as I could and tried to string a big set.  Worked out pretty well as I got through 5 before coming down.  I went 2-2-1 the rest of the way and then weaved through all of the barbells to the side door.  As I ran to the annex, Cline went by me.  I ended up finishing the first round about a second behind him.  That was a nice start.  Even better than that was seeing how quickly I finished my first round: 1:14.

I wasn't under the delusion that I could keep that pace for 10 rounds, but that speedy first round meant I could have some rounds of 2:05-2:10 later on and still have a shot at 29 minutes.  Rounds two and three were very similar for me.  I did 5 fast thrusters, 5 sets of 2 on the pull-up bar, and then found myself running out the door after Cline, completing the round about 5 seconds behind him.  Round four was when I moved to quick singles on the pull-up bar.  The 5 thrusters weren't a problem (I'd end up stringing all of these in all 10 rounds), but I was getting tired enough that I knew I couldn't do 5 sets of 2.  I led off with a set of 2 and then went to 8 singles.  The gap between me and Cline started to grow as my time per round drew closer to two minutes during rounds four and five.

As I rested between rounds five and six, I decided that I needed to change the grip I was using on the pull-ups.  I had been using a full grip (thumb wraps around the bar) because it helps me when I'm trying to string reps.  Now that I wasn't stringing reps, there was no reason for me not to change to the monkey grip (thumb wraps over the bar).  This grip shortened the range of motion necessary, which would allow me to move faster.  It was up to me to keep pushing through singles and not take breaks when I wanted to.  During rounds six and seven, I made up a little bit of ground on Cline.  Maybe I could reel him in by the end of the workout!

My push to catch Cline began when I changed my grip at the start of round six, but it was in rounds eight and nine that I had to dig deep in order to get close enough to have a shot at catching him.  It's a cool feeling when you can finish strong, but I think there have been too many times where I've been able to finish strong because I slowed down so much in earlier rounds.  I've been afraid that I'll run out of energy before the end of the workout.  Recently I've challenged myself to push earlier and worry about the finish when I get there.  That's what I did in this workout.  I increased my pace in round six and held on to it through rounds seven, eight, and nine.  Round ten was another story.

Before I get to round ten, I should mention the obstacle that affected me, Cline, and Steph C in round nine.  We were all on the lookout for traffic as we went running out the door to conclude each round and early on we had to hold out our hands and signal to drivers that we needed them to stop for a second as we crossed the street.  As the WOD progressed, I noticed less traffic, but that didn't mean I wasn't keeping an eye out for cars that might make a quick turn off of DeKalb Street and possibly hit us.  So being able to see traffic was kinda key.  When Cline, Steph, and I ran out the door for our ninth run, we couldn't see traffic because someone had parked their car directly in front of the side door to the gym.  That meant we not only had to run around the car, we had to slow down as we came around it to make sure we weren't about to become roadkill.  It was an annoyance that we didn't need late in a tough workout.

I had one last minute to recover from that ninth round.  I needed to make up about 10 seconds on Cline if I wanted to catch him.  Even if I didn't catch him, I needed to go fast to hold off Steph, who had been on my tail the last few rounds.  The thrusters were just a formality, but I hit the wall during pull-ups 91 through 100.  I tried to keep jumping up to the high bar, getting quick singles like I had in rounds 6 through 9.  But my gas tank had hit E.  I took two longer breaks during that final set of 10 pull-ups.  Cline was gone before I hit the halfway point.  Steph had trailed me going out the door in rounds 8 and 9, but I'd be chasing her in round 10.  After completing the last pull-up, I ran out the door, around the car, and barely paid attention to the fact that a car was coming from the left.  Pretty sure I wouldn't have broken 29 minutes for the workout if I had been hit by that car.  The guy driving was nice enough to let a tired guy cross the road before continuing on.  I fast-jogged the rest of the way and got in the door just before the clock hit 27 minutes.  Final time: 26:59.

I didn't catch Cline.  (Cline actually used 105 pounds for his thrusters, so he beat me by much more than it seemed.)  I didn't hold off Steph.  But I was pretty happy about that time!  Was 29 minutes an easy goal for me?  I don't think so.  I think most people would tell you that I tend to set my goals on the difficult side, so even if 29 minutes wasn't some stellar time for the average KOP athlete, it was daunting to me.  To come in 2 minutes under that was a big deal for me.  Now I just gotta get better at stringing pull-ups for when this shows up in May.

While we were all rolling out afterwards, Steph asked me whose tires we were slashing outside.  Amen!  I think we were all pissed that someone had not only blocked the path that we were running on, but that they had also made things dangerous at the end of the workout.  They must have gotten the memo eventually because when we looked outside after rolling out, the car in question had taken off.  Next time there will definitely be some flat tires!

Tuesday preview: A pure strength day.  Some back squats.  Some deadlifts.  Some Chipotle.

The Open Cheerleader

Workout date: 2/24/17

On Thursday night, I headed over to the gym with my iPad in hand.  Usually there is a group of people in the lobby all huddled around the computer to hear the first Open announcement of the season and I thought I'd bring my iPad so we had two screens to watch it on.  This would definitely help out the folks in the gym taking part in the 7:30 class as the announcement was scheduled for 8pm and I'm sure they were going to be interested in what was on tap for the weekend.  I arrived at about 7:50, walked in the front door, and found a completely empty lobby.  Okey dokey.  I walked into the gym and saw Giulz coaching four athletes in a rather barren gym.  There were a few others there for Open Strength, but I was the only person at the gym solely for the announcement of 17.1.  Way to be awkward, Dave.

Giulz pulled up the announcement on the gym iPad (I forgot we had one of those) and broadcast the announcement so everyone could hear it.  (I don't think Crossfit radio is ever going to catch on.)  The first live workout was going to take place in Canada and France, with two Canadian male athletes getting the top billing, while two European female athletes could be found on ESPN8, the Ocho.  The ladies weren't even given a real gym setting to work out in.  As far as I could tell, they were doing the workout in the basement of some Parisian gym.  But at least they had Dave Castro with them!  <groan>  Castro took about 5 minutes to describe the workout.  It wasn't entirely his fault as everyone in the crowd seemed to be acting like this during the announcement:

So what was the workout?  17.1.....is.....

Open Workout 17.1

10 DB snatches (50/35)

15 burpee box jump overs (24"/20")

20 DB snatches

15 burpee box jump overs

30 DB snatches

15 burpee box jump overs

40 DB snatches

15 burpee box jump overs

50 DB snatches

15 burpee box jump overs

*You must alternate arms during the DB snatches

**Your free arm cannot touch your body during the DB snatches

***Time cap: 20 minutes

That rule about not letting your free arm touch your body was important.  I mean, it wasn't important enough that the judges at the live announcement enforced it when the professional athletes broke the rule, but for the rest of us it was important.  Your natural instinct was to put your free hand or your forearm on your hip before doing the DB snatch.  It provided leverage and made the movement easier.  That was considered a no-no for this workout (enforcement may vary).  Other than that, this was a pretty straightforward workout.  No real skill movements in week one.  Pick heavy object up.  Put heavy object down.  Drop to the floor.  Get up.  Jump on box.  Come down from box.  Repeat a ton of times.  Given that I was unlikely to do well in workouts requiring more skilled movements (hello, gymnastics!), I felt like it was important for me to get a good score/time on this workout.  Take a wild guess how that turned out.

I dropped by at noon on Friday to drop off the 50 lb and 35 lb dumbbells that I have at home.  Even a decent-sized gym like KOP didn't have dozens and dozens of dumbbells for every increment of weight you might see in a workout.  KOP had about 6-8 dumbbells for every 5 pound increment.  With 114 people signed up to do this workout, we weren't sure how many people would end up in each heat during Friday Night Lights.  Therefore it was a good idea to have some extra dumbbells on hand, just in case.  When I got to the gym, there were about 10 people getting ready to take on 17.1.  Aimee was scarfing down her lunch as quickly as she could before going in to run the express.  She asked if I could stick around to judge and I agreed to help out.

With only 8 lanes set up for the workout, Aimee let the class know that we'd run two heats.  Those folks who weren't in a hurry would participate in heat two as either an athlete or a judge.  I acted as a judge for Ben M, who I was meeting for the first time.  Ben didn't strike me as particularly nervous about this workout and that continued to hold true when the clock was ticking.  The only time that I saw Ben off his game was at the very start of the workout.  I had reminded him a few times that he couldn't put his hand on his hip even though he was going to want to.  Aimee gave the first heat the "3, 2, 1, go" and Ben immediately put his free hand on his hip, forcing me to no rep his first DB snatch.  He shook his head and remarked that I had told him that a bunch of times, yet he did it anyway.  He didn't repeat that mistake the rest of the way.  Ben moved at a nice steady pace for three rounds straight.  It was clear that he'd get to the final round.  It was only a matter of how far he would get.  He stopped for a break during his 40 DB snatches.  I encouraged him to keep going, but his response made me rethink how hard I should push him.  He told me he was dizzy.  Flinging a 50 pound DB overhead while dizzy sounded like a recipe for disaster, so I backed off.  Ben's pace slowed down for the rest of round four on both the snatches and the burpee box jump overs.  He had a nice final sprint at the end to get 13 DB snatches in round five.  His final score would be 173.

The second heat had two people in it: Pete and Meredith.  King would be judging for Pete, while Erika L was judging for Meredith.  I was doing what I do best: cheerleading.  It was appropriate that Erika was still there for the second heat because she had mentioned earlier that she had read my blog post about the Open and had felt the same way as I did about having a preference for cheerleading over participating.  We'd spend the next 20 minutes cheering on the most impressive performance of week 1 of the Open.

Meredith had asked about doing the scaled version of the workout as soon as Aimee started class.  My natural reaction to hearing that request was to think that Meredith didn't believe she could handle the 35 pound DB in this workout.  That wasn't the issue at all.  Meredith was scared of the 20" box jumps.  She was so terrified of them that she was driven to tears.  For the second time this hour, I went from "rah-rah, you can do it" guy to "oh crap, maybe it's not a good idea to push this person" guy.  Because any RX score beat a scaled score, Aimee convinced Meredith to try the RX version.  The DB snatches were first and she was definitely going to get a score of 10 even if attempting a box jump was too much for her.  Meredith ripped through those DB snatches quickly.  She went to the floor, came up from her burpee, then stopped cold in her tracks.  She was convinced that she would never jump high enough to land on the box.  It wasn't until Aimee held her hand while she jumped that she found the courage to make the leap.  Several times she was able to land on the box.  None of these reps counted though because you can't hold someone's hand while doing the box jump.  She would eventually have to make the leap on her own.

There were a group of us encouraging Meredith on.  We had seen her make the jumps with Aimee, so we knew she could do it.  Finally it happened.  She jumped and landed on top of the box.  She stepped off the other side and a rep was added to her score.  She added a few more reps from there before taking a bad fall on an attempt.  At that point, I thought she might be done.  The successful reps had erased the fear from her mind, but this fall had brought it back.  She was once again swaying ever so slightly in front of the box, but she just couldn't jump.  Aimee held her hand to help her regain her confidence, but then it was Meredith's turn to go solo again.  She got it.  And another.  And another.  The fear had mostly dissipated and Meredith went on to finish that first round.  That was about 6 minutes into the workout.  With everyone cheering her on, Meredith would complete 30 more burpee box jump overs during the remaining 14 minutes, capping off round three with a jump on and over the box right at the buzzer for a score of 105.

Pete's performance was also impressive.  During the morning classes, only two people had finished the workout, Cate and Theresa.  They are both very good athletes, yet they completed 17.1 with less than 15 seconds left before the time cap.  Pete left no doubt that he was going to finish under the time cap.  He had three rounds done in 7 minutes.  His fourth round was really strong too.  He looked invincible up until the final round.  During the last round, he was doing a lot of single DB snatches that he'd drop to the floor from overhead.  It took a while, but he got through them.  He pushed through the last round of burpee box jumps and put up the best time of the day by about two and a half minutes.

I came back later on in the afternoon to try my own luck with this workout.  Before it was my turn to go, I volunteered to judge for Matt B.  Matt ended up with a similar score to Ben, but his run through this workout was very different.  Being a very strong dude, he crushed the DB snatches.  However, he looked like he wanted to stab me as I tried to encourage him through the burpee box jump overs.  He finished the fourth round of burpee box jump overs with less than a minute to go and was able to sneak in 11 DB snatches before time was called to end up with a score of 171.

I was supposed to go soon after that, but I ended up being pushed back a heat.  Then it happened again.  There was a lot of confusion about the heats and who was up next, but Dave H and I seemed to take the worst of it, having our start times delayed by an hour.  Matt B was supposed to judge for me and John McHugh wanted to root me on, but both finally said "sorry buddy, I gotta run" when I got pushed back a second time.

(Quick rant: If you miss the start time you signed up for, you shouldn't get first preference in the following heat.  Why should the people in the next heat who were ready to go be penalized because you weren't ready for your heat?  I also think that if too many people are signed up for a heat, first preference should be given to athletes who are members of the gym.  There were several drop-ins who didn't have to wait at all because they jumped in and claimed a lane when all of this was being sorted out.  Maybe I'm not being community-minded enough in feeling that way, but I would never go to someone else's gym and bump their members at an event like this.)

When it finally was my turn to go, I wound up in a lane next to Dave H and Andrew, two guys who I knew were going to go much faster than me and almost certainly finish this workout.  I was also hoping to finish this workout, but I knew it would take a frantic finish to get in under the time cap.  Hearing that Cate and Theresa had barely made it earlier in the day gave me less hope of finishing though.  I dialed back my goal a bit and told myself to be happy if I got into the final round of burpee box jump overs.  That would mean a score of 210 or higher.

I thought I could conserve some energy on the DB snatches by jumping them up and doing a partial squat when I caught them at the top.  That didn't seem to do anything but make me move slower than the rest of the people in my heat.  After 10 DB snatches, I moved on to the burpee box jump overs where all I wanted to do was keep moving.  I didn't need to go as fast as Dave and Andrew who were flying back and forth over their boxes.  Just keep plugging away and there would still be a chance of finishing.  Those dreams went out the window on the second round of DB snatches.  Most people had told me that they began to get tired on the third round of DB snatches, but I had to break up my second round.  That didn't bode well for me.  I did 12 snatches and then took a break.  When I went to begin again, I put my free hand on my hip and did the rep.  Matt E was judging me and didn't give me a no rep, but I knew this was against the rules, so I no-repped myself and did a snatch with the same arm again.  (I'd have two more instances in this workout where I no-repped myself.)  I got through the last 8 snatches in a row, then moved consistently through 15 more burpee box jump overs.

I thought there might be a point along the way where I'd get some bursts of energy like I did at the end of the Filthy Fifty on Wednesday night, but they never came to pass.  Barbell rage didn't translate to dumbbell rage, so I never had some huge set of snatches that I grunted my way through.  I had trouble picking up the pace on the burpees because I needed to jump on a box after each one and there were a couple of times where I nicked the top of the box as I jumped.  I didn't fall at all, but it made me cautious and cautious equals slow.  When I was wrapping up my fourth round, I knew that I had no chance of finishing.  I estimated that I would need to complete round four in 13-14 minutes to have a chance of getting to the end, but my time with one round to go was 16:30.  I tried to hold on for longer sets in that last round, but I was spent.  There wasn't anything enormously difficult in this workout, but it knocked the wind out of you early on.  Those who could keep working at a fast pace anaerobically did well.  People like me (who needed oxygen more than the planet Druidia) would struggle.  I fell 9 DB snatches short of that last round of burpee box jumps.  Final score: 201.

(Real time update: That score placed me behind approximately 96,000 other men after week 1 of the Open.  That may be my worst finish ever in a workout.  Using Crossfit logic, this proves that my fitness level is much worse than it has ever been during my Crossfit career.  Because if I was only behind 36,000 people, they would tell me how much my fitness has improved.  Personally, I think the logic behind both of those statements is flawed.  But if I'm going to hear about improved fitness when I score well, I'm going to talk about diminished fitness when I score poorly.)

At least I could now go back to doing what I do best: cheerleading.  I ended up judging Tori in a later heat.  There was something about everyone I judged going at just the right pace to finish up round four with less than a minute left, giving them one last opportunity to sprint through some DB snatches.  Tori had broken hers up into sets of five late in the workout and, with 30 seconds to go, I told her she could complete two more sets.  She looked at me like I was an alien.  She did the first set and dropped the dumbbell, but I told her to only take 3 seconds of rest before picking it back up.  She did just that and ended up punching out the 5th rep of her second set right before the buzzer.  Tori's score: 170.

That left one heat to go and it had four athletes in it: Neil, Bryan, the Prodigy, and Alex L.  Alex had situated himself away from the other three athletes, so I spent most of this heat running around and cheering on the rest of the group.  Neil was not going to have any problems with the dumbbell, but both Bryan and the Prodigy had their doubts about moving the 50 and 35 pound DB respectively.  Then the workout began and they put those doubts to rest.  Bryan made it more than halfway through round four of the DB snatches.  The Prodigy finished round four of the DB snatches and got through some of the burpee box jump overs before time was called.  Must have been all of that great cheerleading she heard.

That guy seems like a total jerk!

When it was all said and done, Gordy finished the day with the best time in the gym, completing 17.1 with a time of 14:19.  Aimee would do the workout a second time on Monday and take over the top spot with a time of 14:02.  That would help Aimee's Tequila Sunrise team get the win in the in-house gym competition over a very game Purple Crush squad.

Monday preview: A workout with 100 pull-ups in it that also includes sprinting.  This one was definitely not drawn up for someone like me.

Pick It Up First

Workout date: 2/22/17

The Filthy Fifty caught my eye when I saw it listed amongst the 2017 benchmark workouts at KOP.  This was one of those crazy workouts that I seem to have an affinity for even though I've shown zero aptitude for performing it well.  I guess I'm just a sucker for variety.  This workout had 10 different stations in it.  It was sort of like having a mini obstacle course inside the gym.  Complete this station, get confronted by a new challenge at the next station, and so on.  Here's a look at the ten stations that comprise the Filthy Fifty:

"Filthy Fifty"
50 box jumps (24"/20")
50 jumping pull-ups
50 KB swings (53/35)
50 walking lunges
50 knees-to-elbows
50 push press (45/35)
50 back extensions
50 wall balls (20#/14# to 10'/9')
50 burpees
50 double unders

How long does it take to get through all of that?  It mostly depends on how fast you can do a set of 50 knees-to-elbows.  In my last two attempts at this workout, it has taken me 42:53 and 42:22.  (By comparison, Pam finished this workout at the nooner in 21:33.  Sick.)  I was determined to get my time under 40 minutes on this attempt, with a goal for the year of completing it in under 35 minutes.  This WOD was a mental test.  I mentioned in a previous post that I wished I had the ability to suffer like Cline does in some of his workouts.  If I was going to chop minutes off of my previous best in this workout, I needed to embrace the inevitable pain and keep working when I wanted to rest.

Even though it was a Wednesday 7:30 class, there was no Coach Jenna this evening.  Giulz was filling in for her.  She had four people ready to take on the Filthy Fifty.  Besides yours truly, the class consisted of Marissa, Neil, and Matt E.  The warmup would be a whirlwind.  We needed to get into the workout as soon as possible, but Giulz needed to make sure we knew how to do each of the 10 movements in the workout.  We also had to get a lot of equipment in place.  I was extremely grateful that there were only 4 of us in class because this workout is very difficult to get through when its a packed house in the gym.  Everyone got their box, their KB, their barbell, their wall ball, and their jump rope set up.  We did a mini tour through the 10 stations and then got ready to take this monster on.  Giulz suggested that we should do 30 reps at each station rather than 50 if we couldn't finish the full workout in 30 minutes or less.  Ugh, this was Helen all over again.  Except instead of a 100 second PR, I needed a PR of 12 minutes and 23 seconds!  I looked around and saw that none of my classmates had given in and agreed to scale down to 30 reps, so I wasn't going to either.  I figured if I was at least close to being done when 30 minutes elapsed that Giulz would let me finish up the workout.

I thought there was a real chance that I could trim some of the fat off of my 42 minute performances at the very first station.  Box jumps were something I'd gotten more comfortable doing quickly because I've gained confidence in my ability to rebound off and on to the box.  I did have a scare on the box jumps during the warmup though.  This was my second workout with my new sneakers and I wasn't sure how well the rebounding would go with my new footwear.  Sure enough, on my first box jump, the box tipped away from me when I landed on it, forcing me to steady myself before continuing on.  Were these new sneakers too heavy for box jumps?  It's possible that I'd be better off doing them with my old sneaks, but things didn't turn out too badly with the new pair after that initial incident happened.  Once the workout began for real, I made it through more than 20 box jumps in a row before needing a break.  I pecked away with sets of 5 or 6 from then on and ended up being the first of the four of us to move to station #2.

For the jumping pull-ups, you need to bring your box with you over to the pull-up bar so that you can jump off of it.  I dragged my box over and got ready for my next obstacle.  Jumping pull-ups aren't that difficult in and of themselves, but they do a nice job of wearing you out.  In this workout, you need to be smart about whether you let the jumping pull-ups wear out your upper body or lower body.  I was not smart about this.  Having just done 50 box jumps, my legs wanted to rest a bit here.  So I did small jumps and used my arms to pull myself up the small amount that I needed to get my chin over the bar.  Bad move.  My arms were going to get tested plenty later on in the workout, so it was silly wasting upper body strength at this station.  I should have sucked it up and used my leg strength for 50 reps.  I completed the work at the pull-up bar, moved my box out of my lane, and proceeded to my KB.  The clock had a little more than 4 minutes on it, so I was off to a fast start.  Things were about to slow down at station #3 though.

My problems with the KB swings were likely half physical, half mental.  I already had sweat dripping off of me when I got to my KB and my breathing had become more rapid.  I wasn't gasping for air or anything, but I definitely was feeling the effects from moving quickly through the first two stations.  I did a relatively big set of swings (17 or 18) when I got to my KB, but I was in desperate need of a breather when I put it down.  I completed the last 30 or so reps over the course of 3 sets, but those breaks in between sets began to draw on longer.  I would walk away from the KB and try to get my breath back, which I should know better than to do.  Walking away from equipment is just a time waster in Crossfit workouts.  It's not like I would have gained a ton of time by staying right next to my KB, but perhaps I wouldn't have been beyond 8 minutes when I finally got to the walking lunges.

I was definitely treating the walking lunges as a recovery station for multiple reasons.  The KB swings had kicked my butt and this movement would be friendlier on my body.  Most importantly though, the toughest movement of the workout (knees-to-elbows) was coming up next.  I wanted to be as fresh as possible when I got there.  Marissa had already passed me on the KB swings and she extended her lead on the walking lunges.  Matt and Neil started to catch up to me as well.  I didn't take any breaks during the lunges, but my pace was very deliberate.  After the 50th lunge, I got ready for the worst part of the Filthy Fifty.

Knees-to-elbows is the most controversial movement in this WOD.  Giulz said before class that people often write RX next to their name at the end of this workout even though many of them are hitting their knees to their triceps as they try to rip through reps quickly.  I can see how that might happen when you're doing these fast.  However, when you're doing them slowly, I don't think it is that difficult to have your knees hit your elbows.  And there might not be anyone who does these slower than me.  I was able to string reps early on, getting a couple sets of three followed by a few sets of two.  That wasn't so great because I thought I could start with some sets of five and slash a decent chunk of time off of the amount that I typically spend at this station.  Once I realized I was having trouble stringing reps, I made the smart decision to drop from the high bar to the low bar.  I could do sets of three quick singles before needing a break.  In the end, I spent about 10 minutes doing knees-to-elbows.  That sounds awful (it is), but it was actually an improvement on how long I've been stuck at this station in previous attempts of the Filthy Fifty.  Neil and Matt ended up doing knee raises (they may have started with knees-to-elbows then switched over), so my lead on them went bye-bye.  Neil was the first one to move on the push press, while Matt was just walking to his empty barbell when I completed my last rep of knees-to-elbows.

Technically, the workout was halfway over.  5 stations down, 5 stations to go.  I was about halfway to my previous time of 42 minutes as well.  But even though there were still some challenging movements to work through, there wasn't going to be another station that took as long as the knees-to-elbows did.  I knew I was going to have a new best time for this workout as long as I kept pushing.  Since Matt was about even with me, I was going to use him to keep me honest.  I also wanted to keep the same competitive mindset that I had at the end of Helen.  When I returned from the final run in that workout, I was slightly behind Cline, but I told myself that I needed to be the first one to pick up the KB.  When I saw that Matt was catching his breath before the push press, I decided that this was my opportunity to challenge myself.  Pick up that barbell first.  I walked right over to it and began my push presses.  This might be the easiest station in the rotation, so much so that I considered stringing all 50 reps.  Upon further reflection, I decided that a set of 30 and a set of 20 would be just fine.

With the 50 push presses done, I hit the floor and began flopping around like a fish.  Okay, it only looked like I was doing that.  Back extensions (or Supermans) are an odd movement where you start lying flat on the floor and then quickly pick your chest and thighs off the floor at the same time.  It looks goofy when you do them fresh.  It looks pathetic when you do them tired.  And I was plenty tired at this point.  I'm sure I wasn't moving all that fast through these, but I treated them like they were burpees.  Translation: I didn't have to do them fast, but I couldn't stop and take breaks along the way.  When I was done with these, I got up and walked towards my wall ball.  Matt was walking towards his at the same time.

Pick up the wall ball first.  It didn't matter how big that first set was.  I just wanted to begin the first set before Matt did.  Maybe that was the wrong strategy (I'm pretty sure Matt would end up doing larger sets than me), but I was trying to find ways to push myself.  I distinctly remember getting to the wall balls in previous attempts at this workout and needing massive amounts of rest to get through my 50 reps.  This was another station where I could make up time.  If that was going to happen though, I needed to work.  Matt and I got into a rhythm where it almost seemed like we were doing a partner WOD together.  He was working while I was resting and vice versa.  I did more sets than he did, but his sets must have been longer because he completed his 50 just as I was working through my last set.

Neil had gotten a head start on us when it came to the burpees (Marissa was already done).  Matt had a burpee or two done when I got started.  I was crawling through my burpees right off the bat.  I hate burpees and having to do 50 of them at this late stage of the workout seemed like the cruelest punishment I could have been given.  I didn't think I could make up ground on either of the guys here.  The only problem was that I knew Matt was better at double unders than me, so if I didn't catch him here, I wasn't catching him at all.  I would need to find some energy and pick up the pace here.

30 minutes had come and gone, but with all three guys at the second-to-last station, Giulz let us complete the workout.  I'm not sure when Neil finished his burpees, but he had a large enough lead on me and Matt that I gave up on trying to catch him.  I knew Neil wasn't doing double unders, so I figured he'd speed through a bunch of single unders or double under attempts and be done before I had a chance to do my double unders.  If I didn't want to be last, I had to catch Matt.  When I got to 30 burpees, I decided that I had to burst through my burpees like they were the last few reps of the workout.  Crawling was replaced with 6 legit burpees before I had to slow down again.  I did 4 more slow burpees before I did another burst of 3 good burpees.  Another 3 slow burpees brought me to 46 reps.  I convinced myself that I could find 4 more fast burpees and sure enough I was able to do them.  Only 50 double unders remained.  And those bursts had put me back in front of Matt.

I wobbled over to my jump rope knowing that I didn't have time to rest.  If Matt was a burpee or two behind me, he was going to catch me on the double unders.  Neil was still jumping rope, but I assumed he was right on the verge of being done.  I began twirling my rope and strung 15 double unders.  I took a peek to my right and saw Matt was still on his burpees.  I had to keep moving in case he was almost done.  When I began my next set, I wasn't sure how long it would last.  I was happy when I reached rep #30 without tripping.  Soon I was closing in on rep #40.  Maybe I could hold on to the finish!  I was exhausted, but my double under form wasn't suffering as a result.  I made it through the last 35 reps in a row and dropped my rope.  Final time: 35:54.

I looked over to the left and was shocked to see that Neil still had his jump rope in hand.  I had caught both him and Matt.  It was only 15 seconds later when Neil finished up.  Matt completed his burpees at about the same time.  He grabbed his rope, did an initial set of nearly 40 in a row, then did a small set to wrap up his workout.  I told you he was really good at double unders!

I didn't stay under 30 minutes like Giulz asked, but I'll take a PR of 6 minutes and 28 seconds any day of the week.  I joked around with Giulz that the key was that I didn't spend 17 minutes on the knees-to-elbows, to which she shook her head and replied "almost".  She suggested that I try and keep the workout within its proper time domain in the future.  So when this shows up again in May, I'll be doing the 30 rep version ("Thirty Thlowly"?) to see how fast I can do that one.  If I can finish that in under 18 minutes (60% of the 30 minute time domain for 60% of the reps in the Filthy Fifty), then maybe I'll return to the full workout in August.

Friday preview:  The Open has arrived.  Oh joy!  The first workout of this year's Open involves burpees because Dave Castro can't get enough of burpees.  There are plenty of noteworthy performances.  Mine is not one of them.

Return Of The JMU

Workout date: 2/21/17

As much as I want to believe that I'll be able to sneak away for a workout when family and friends are in town, it never happens.  There's always an overindulgence in food and drink.  I somehow get less sleep than I typically do (which is hard to pull off).  Going to the gym falls to the bottom of the priority list.  I had family in town from Saturday to Monday, so I didn't get back to the gym until Tuesday.  And what better way to get back into it then with a little Dudes After Dark?

The Tuesday WOD would be a combination of three mini-WODs.  Each of them consisted of a gymnastics movement and a barbell movement.  Here's the layout for Tuesday night's programming:

Tuesday WOD:

8 minute AMRAP:
3 ring muscle-ups
10 power snatches (115/75)
2 minutes rest

6 minute AMRAP:
5 chest-to-bar pull-ups
10 clean and jerks (115/75)
2 minutes rest

4 minute AMRAP:
7 pull-ups
10 thrusters (115/75)

That was a lot to digest, although it really only left me with two decisions for the workout:

• What would my scale be for the ring muscle-ups?
• What weight would I use for the barbell movements?

I might suck at pull-ups (both the chest-to-bar and regular variety), but there was no reason to scale those.  More and more KOP workouts were being programmed with large volumes of pull-ups.  It was time to step up to the plate and get used to doing workouts like that or I was going to get left behind in the gym.  It wasn't good enough to just do workouts like Wolverine that popped up once a year.  I wanted to train my body to handle dozens of pull-ups in a WOD weekly.  This was the type of workout I needed to do more of, especially since it looked like I'd be doing pull-ups as part of my scale in the first AMRAP to go along with what was spelled out in the last two AMRAPs.

Having the ability to perform a high volume of pull-ups isn't the only thing I've been working on.  I've also been trying to get better at arriving to the gym earlier.  I got there with plenty of time to spare on Tuesday night, which allowed me to see the end of the 6:30 class.  Once they were done, I got to chat with Matt B about it.  I wanted his feedback to help guide me on the two decisions I would have to make.  In terms of the barbell weight, he said that the power snatches weren't bad at 115, but the thrusters were awful in that last AMRAP.  That told me I should use 105 or 115.  His answer to my question about scaling the muscle-ups was really what caught me off-guard though.  He told me that he started out with jumping muscle-ups, but then tired out and changed to transitions and dips.  Jumping muscle-ups?  Whaaaaaa?????

Despite the fact that I've never been all that close to a bar muscle-up or a ring muscle-up, that didn't mean I hated seeing them programmed for WODs.  It just depended on what scale I could use.  Swinging on the bar and jumping off of a box to complete bar muscle-ups is actually kinda fun.  There was no box involved when doing jumping muscle-ups on the rings, but I enjoyed those as well.  Unfortunately, it turns out that the fun scaling options aren't always the most effective in helping you progress down the road towards real muscle-ups.  As such, they've been weeded out as scaling options in most of our muscle-up workouts.  Not today though!  I thought I was going to have to do 6 dips and 6 pull-ups as a scale for my 3 ring muscle-ups in that first AMRAP.  That didn't sound fun at all.  But 3 jumping muscle-ups as a scale?  I was completely on board with that.

LC had 8 of us at Dudes After Dark.  The class was 50% dude, 50% non-dude.  There was a lot to cover in the warmup, so LC brought us over to the rig with the rings to talk about ring muscle-ups and possible scales.  Most of us were unable to do muscle-ups, but Andrew could knock them out without much of a problem.  That did cause some logistical issues at the rings though.  The rig is set up with 8 sets of rings at a level that is typically used for dips.  In the middle of the rig, there are a couple additional sets of rings that are positioned much higher off the ground.  These are generally used for ring muscle-up practice, but Andrew needed a set for this workout.  Based on where he would be swinging around, it was going to be tight for the folks using the lower rings in front of him and behind him.  Those two people would be Esra and myself.  Esra came up with a smart way of dealing with this situation.  She was doing the dips and pull-ups scale and simply did the pull-ups first and the dips second.  That wasn't an option for me unless I was giving up on jumping muscle-ups.  So I told Andrew that I would wait on him to do his 3 muscle-ups to begin the workout and then I would go.  This workout was another one where I wasn't expecting a high score, so losing 10 seconds or so at the beginning wasn't going to cost me very much.

After we got the ring situation sorted out, we came over to the pull-up rig and worked on progressions.  LC instructed us on the different amount of intensity required to do a chest-to-bar pull-up as opposed to one where you only need to get your chin above the bar.  Neil was working at the bar next to me and he seemed to easily string a couple of chest-to-bar pull-ups together.  When he dropped back down, he let Esra and I know that he didn't think he could do that until he just tried it.  I wish I could accidentally string together chest-to-bar pull-ups!  (I tried to string them on purpose to no avail.)

The last part of the warmup involved going over the barbell movements.  I ended up being the very sweaty demo guy.  (To be fair, it was unseasonably warm for late February.)  After we had gone over the three barbell movements without plates, we were allowed to load up our barbells with the weight we expected to use in the workout.  I grabbed the 35 pound plates to test out how 115 pounds would feel.  As Matt had said, the power snatches weren't so bad.  (Note: This was my first night wearing my new Crossfit sneakers.  They're a bit heavier than my old sneaks, but they're supposed to provide more support for lifts.  The new footwear might have helped me feel more comfortable with the 115 pounds I used in this workout.)  I decided I'd roll the dice with 115, knowing that the thrusters at the end were probably going to be painful.

LC asked everybody to get ready to begin the first AMRAP and everyone did.  Except me.  I stood off to the side, hoping that Andrew had no issues with these first three muscle-ups.  If he struggled, then I'd have to figure out a plan B.  The WOD got started and Andrew made it clear that a plan B would not be necessary.  He floated through 3 quick muscle-ups and headed to his barbell.  I grabbed my rings and moved fairly quickly through 3 jumping muscle-ups.  I ran over to my barbell and put together a set of 5 power snatches.  I completed my first round with a set of 3 and a set of 2.  I had moved so fast that Andrew was still in the midst of his muscle-ups when I got back to my rings.  I only had to wait a second or two before I began work on my second round.

The jumping muscle-ups were still more fun than work in round two.  I came back to my barbell and did 2 more power snatches before deciding to go with quick singles the rest of the way.  I still hadn't reached the point where I needed to walk away from the barbell and get a breather.  I completed my second round and looked at the rings.  Andrew was working on his third set of muscle-ups, so I had kept pace with him through two rounds.  Not sure if I'll ever get to say that again in a workout.  By the time I got to my rings, Andrew was done, so there was no delay this time.  And there wouldn't be any delays after this because round three would be where I slowed down.

I remember that less than 4 minutes had elapsed when I finished my second round because I still believed I could complete 4 full rounds in this first AMRAP.  I got to my rings, jumped into the muscle-up, and had my left arm shoot out wildly to the left.  It was not a good feeling.  When I've been cheering on Pam in her muscle-up attempts, she mentioned to me that she had some apprehension about the transition because she had an unpleasant experience where one of her arms shot out to the side as she tried to pull her body over into the dip position.  Having it happen here made it really hit home for me.  I shook out my arm, then took a few seconds to think about whether it was wise to continue using this scale.  I decided I'd give it one more attempt.  If I felt anything out of place, then I'd need to do something else.  Thankfully, the next attempt went like the ones I had done in the first two rounds.  I did two more JMUs and got back to my barbell.  I did 10 singles there with a break or two along the way.  The clock has passed 6 minutes when I completed this round, so finishing up another full round before my first rest period probably wasn't going to happen.

I didn't rush through the 3 jumping muscle-ups because I didn't want another incident like I had in round three.  That didn't give me a ton of time when I got back to my barbell.  I managed to complete 7 reps before my initial 8 minutes were up.  I might have been able to sneak in another rep or two if I hadn't started the round 10 seconds late, but getting 50-51 reps as opposed to 49 reps wasn't that big of a deal to me.  Round 1 score: 49 reps.

The two minute rest period was just what the doctor ordered.  About 90 seconds of it flew by.  I headed towards the pull-up bar feeling somewhat recovered with 30 seconds left.  I would be using the low bar for the chest-to-bar pull-ups because I couldn't string them on the high bar.  I also knew that I could reliably get them on the low bar.  When the second AMRAP began, I moved through 5 fast singles, with my chest hitting the underside of the bar for each rep.

I thought I'd fly through the clean and jerks, but I went slower on these than I did on the snatches and the thrusters.  I did sets of two at a time.  The plan was to do much larger sets, but for some reason I was struggling to string reps.  Maybe my grip was weakening.  Or maybe that first AMRAP took more out of me than I realized.  I completed the first round and returned to the bar for more chest-to-bar pull-ups.  I broke them up into a set of 3 singles and a set of 2 singles this time.  It was 5 more sets of two back at the barbell.  I had about 90 seconds left in this AMRAP, so I wasn't completing three rounds here.  I went 2-2-1 on the chest-to-bar pull-ups, then raced through clean and jerks as fast as I could.  I got 6 of them done before the second rest period began.  Round 2 score: 41 reps.

Two minutes was the right amount of rest between the first two AMRAPS, but I could have used more than two minutes between the second and third AMRAP.  That aspect of the workout was non-negotiable though.  If I wanted more rest, I'd be losing part of the 4 minutes I had for the final AMRAP.  My pace per round had been just over two minutes in each of the earlier AMRAPs, so I was going to have to work to finish two rounds in the last AMRAP.  Giving up time at the beginning was not going to help that cause, so I trudged to my bar for the start of the final 4 minutes.

I used the high bar for my pull-ups, but I was too tired to string reps.  I did 7 singles and tried to avoid taking any long pauses between reps.  I headed over to my barbell when I was done and managed 3 thrusters.  After a break, I did 3 more.  I'm sure I took a longer break before the last set because I had to talk myself into doing 4 reps in that one.  The clock told me that I used 2:15 on that round.  Two rounds wasn't happening in this AMRAP.  But I did want to get at least 30 reps, which meant completing 6 thrusters in round two.  Gotta keep pushing on.

The next 7 pull-ups felt like the worst ones I had ever done, but I got through them even if they were slow.  It was time to sprint with the barbell again.  I managed another set of 3 before dropping the barbell.  There wasn't a whole lot of time remaining though, so I told myself that I needed to hold on for at least three more reps in my final set.  When I got through the third rep, I felt like I had enough energy for one more, so I snuck a last one in before time was called.  Round 3 score: 31 reps.  Total score: 121 reps.

I was happy with that effort.  All of my gymnastic movements still need work, but I hung on pretty well in this workout.  Matt B and Matt E had finished with scores of 109 and 114, respectively, and my strengths are similar to theirs.  Same story with Neil, who got a score of 112 working next to me. How could I not be pleased with a score of 121?  Now if I could only remember how to string pull-ups...

Wednesday preview: A long benchmark WOD that I've had my struggles with over the years.  The Filthy Fifty makes its first of four appearances in 2017.