A Case Of The Sundays

Workout date: 10/11/15

Please Lawrence, don't kick my ass!  I already had it kicked at the gym today.

Today was a weird day.  There have been plenty of times this year when I went to the gym for a workout and fell short of my personal expectations.  Some of those times I've fallen very short.  Usually after having one of those workouts, I would take a day or two off.  More often than not, my struggle could be attributed to working out too many days in a row.  I couldn't make that claim today. After taking both Friday and Saturday off, I should have been all rested up for a solid workout.  That did not happen.

Perhaps I was still seething from watching that scumbag piece of shit Chase Utley break Ruben Tejada's leg the night before.  That was a tough one to get beyond.  But when I woke up in the morning, I thought that I could use my rage in a productive way.  I wasn't doing the WOD because it was a 5RM back squat and I had already planned on doing my 6x2 back squat session today.  So I was going to go in for Open Strength.  And I'd lead things off by taking on the one remaining strength milestone I had from the beginning of the year: a 400 pound deadlift.

The last time I did a deadlift-related WOD, I managed to do 2 reps of a sumo-deadlift at 385 pounds. That was my 1RM as well, but the fact that I got two reps with a sumo stance (I prefer a normal stance) gave me hope that I could pull off 405 the next time I tried to deadlift.  Throw in some extra adrenaline and I'd be crossing off the last item on my 2015 strength bucket list before lunch.  That was wishful thinking.  

I began my warmup with reps at 225.  Not that this ever feels light, but it shouldn't have been as tough as it felt.  I was having my doubts already.  I did a rep at 275 and 315.  When I got to 345, I had a brief tussle with gravity before elevating the bar to my waist.  If I was having issues at 345, how was I going to get 60 pounds more?  I went up to 375 and tried to lift the barbell with some truly hideous form.  I started with my butt way up in the air and then used my back primarily.  Not the way to go.  At that point, I knew 405 was a longshot, but I wanted to give 375 another try with better form.  It turned out my form was not the issue.  I barely got the second try off the ground and didn't come close to completing the lift.  Time to move on.

At least I knew I could handle the back squats.  I mean, there was no chance I was going to blow it on my "light day", right?  Let's just say it was dicey.  Went through the usual progression of 5 reps at 135, 4 reps at 185, and 3 reps at 225.  My first set of two at 265 did not go all that well.  I didn't get stuck, but I was very slow coming out of the bottom of the second rep.  The second set was worse.  I almost bailed the second rep as I started to stumble forward.  For whatever reason, there was no explosiveness in my legs.  From that point on, I made the decision that I would need to treat this like it was a super-heavy day.  I was going to concentrate on each rep like 265 pounds was a new 1 rep max.  During the last four sets, my speed was still slow, but I had no more tense moments.

Michal and Rachel were also there to work on their squats and asked if I'd like to do a cash-out with them.  I figured I might as well.  Maybe I'd stumble upon something I could do today.  Here was the cash-out they came up with:

AMRAP in 10 Minutes:

15 GHDs

10 Russian KB Swings (70/53)

5 Pull-Ups

Faby and I tried to tell the girls that we'd be doing a whole heck of a lot of GHDs with this setup, but they weren't buying in.  Three minutes into the workout and they bought it.  At that point, they decided we were only doing 7 minutes instead.  As for the cash-out itself, I hung with the girls through 1 full round before struggling on my second set of GHDs.  (Note: GHD stands for Glute Hamstring Developer.  So if your glutes and hamstrings are having a bad day, this isn't the exercise for you.)  The KB swings weren't all that bad since we did Russian swings (to eye-level) rather than American swings (overhead).  As for the pull-ups, I managed to go 3-2 in the first round before going 2-1-1-1 in my slow round two.

As I continued to struggle on my GHD machine during round three, Michal appeared alongside of me to begin her fourth round.  I had to find more at that point.  There was no excuse for getting lapped during a 7 minute workout.  I held on through one medium-sized set to finish off my GHDs and ran over to my KB.  Knocked out all 10 of those and got to the pull-up bar.  Michal was swinging her KB now.  With my pull-up coach on my heels, I knew I needed to do better on the pull-up bar than I had during my second round to avoid being lapped.  I jumped up and got 3.  My hope was to do the last two together, but I didn't push off very well at the top of my fourth rep.  However, there was no break as I immediately jumped back up to finish the pull-ups.  I ran to my GHD machine and saw the clock was around 6:45.  No time for stopping on these final GHDs.  I was able to get 6 quick reps in before our 7 minutes elapsed.  Final score: 3+6.  And I avoided getting lapped (but not by much).

I'm not sure why my body wasn't cooperating today.  I chalked it up to a case of the Sundays.  Maybe I was supposed to be home watching football instead of working out.  Who knows?  The gym visit wasn't a complete bust though as I got compliments when I arrived from Jill A and Michal about looking more muscular.  (Note to the guys: There is no limit to the amount of times you can dry a shirt.  Apparently it works out in the end when they shrink.)  Always got to try and find that silver lining.

Monday preview: A partner WOD involving handstand walks.  Goal = don't paralyze myself.