Bergeron's Mother-Beeping Test

Workout date: 10/3/15

I must have really been feeling good about life to agree to another appearance at Competitor's Class on Saturday morning.  How good?  How about I showed up a few minutes early?  In fact, it was starting to look like a bro sesh early on as Keith, Shane, Gordy, and I were the original quartet at the gym for the class.  The ladies would eventually outnumber the guys though, as Aimee, Jill A, Pam, Dana, and Rachel rounded out the class.

There was no dicking around with this group as we got right into it with a warmup that included the Airdyne, med ball cleans, double unders, and lunges.  From there it was time to do some Hang Snatches.  Whenever the word "power" is missing from a lift (as in Hang Power Clean or Hang Power Snatch), it is assumed that you will be doing the squat version of the lift.  Did I ask for clarification like I always do?  Of course!  No one wants to be doing a bunch of extra squatting for no good reason.  Alas, these were indeed snatches of the squat variety.  In addition, we were doing 2 rep sets and the goal was to do 8 sets in total.

Eight sets?  This was going to take some meticulous planning.  After counting on my fingers while audibly progressing through increasing weights, I settled on the following plan for my 8 sets:

75-95-105-115-125-135-145-155

I didn't have much confidence that I could go beyond 155, especially since I'd be getting there after doing a bunch of sets.  I also didn't want to start at a weight below 75 pounds.  That would seem a little too light.  So I went with what you see above.

The first few sets weren't bad.  Getting underneath the bar during snatches has never been a big issue for me.  The rest of the lift?  All sorts of problems.  But my default has always been "if you can't lift the bar very high, you better drop and get under it quickly".  Oddly enough, I can't seem to do this with my clean and jerk.  Leave it to me to be maddeningly inconsistent in the ways in which I fail.

When I got to 115, I started to notice that it was difficult to hold on to the bar for both reps.  I thought back to the workout we did with the hang power snatches and the GHDs where I held on for the first round of 21 reps.  This was a heavier weight and they were squat snatches, but I should have been able to hold on for two reps.  The most awkward part was coming down from the top of the first rep into the hang position for the second rep.  That definitely taxed my grip.  The bright side of getting to the hang position is that it gives you an opportunity to adjust your grip, which I pretty much did every time from the 115 pound set onward.  The other thing worth noting was that I was beginning to feel strain in my left bicep.  Again, I think this had to do with bringing the bar down from the top of the first rep and holding on as I came down with it.  Not the most pleasant feeling in the world, but not something that was going to cause me to drop the bar in between reps.

The set at 125 was similar to the set at 115.  Then I encountered trouble at 135.  In my first attempt, I messed up the initial rep as I came down into my squat.  I took a short break to compose myself before going after 135 again.  In my second attempt, I did the first rep correctly.  Then I did one of the uglier squat snatches you will ever see for my second rep, but I hung on to it and stood up to finish the set.  At this point, I was not feeling good about 145.  As I typically do after a struggle, I took some additional time between sets.  I had better form during my set at 145, but the weight was noticeably heavier.  I was able to successfully do both reps, but I knew I couldn't go much higher.  As the group started wrapping up to get ready for the next part of the workout, I decided to throw in the towel at 145.

Next up was muscle-up practice, or as I like to call it, a 15 minute break.  Jill A was knocking out some KAMUs (Keith Assisted Muscle-Ups).  Aimee did a strict muscle-up.  In the meantime, I was hanging out with Dana and Pam as we all tried to solve the mystery that is the muscle-up.  And let me tell you, Pam has some definite leads on the case.  She almost did a strict muscle-up by mistake.  Someone with that type of strength is going to be knocking out sets of muscle-ups pretty soon.  I think Pam hasn't bought into aggressively kipping herself into the transition quite yet, but once she does, she'll be fine.  As for myself, well, I can't seem to maintain a false grip.  It is something that Aimee told me I will need to work on if I am ever going to conquer this beast.  Strangely enough, I don't feel like I am extremely far away from getting a muscle-up.  It is essentially a pull-up, a transition, and a dip.  I know I can do the dip.  I've practiced transitions and I don't think I am especially bad at them.  And my pull-up form is slowly improving.  Figuring out the false grip would make the pull-up and transition aspects a little easier, so if I could get that down, who knows?  Perhaps I could accidentally do one someday.

To finish off this two-hour marathon of a morning, we were going to do something called the Bergeron Beep Test.  How does this work?

Bergeron Beep Test:
EMOM for as long as you can go (the beep signifies that a new minute has started)
7 thrusters (75/55)
7 pull-ups
7 burpees

What level of fitness are you at?  This handy guide should help you figure it out:
20+ minutes: Super Elite/Specialists
18-19 minutes: Games Level Athletes
13-17 minutes: Regional Level Athletes
9-12 minutes: Open Level Athletes
0-1 minutes: Dave Level Athletes (consider drinking heavily)

(Footnote that I found online that will make Rachel very happy: The Bergeron Beep Test is an excellent test of CrossFit-Specific conditioning and mental fortitude.  Smaller and shorter athletes, particularly those with shorter arms, have an advantage in this test.  Regardless, it is one of our best tests of CF Sport Specific Conditioning and should be used as one of several tools to benchmark your improvements throughout the year.)

When I saw that 9 minutes was the threshold for any sort of fitness in the eyes of the Crossfit lords, I began laughing openly.  There was no chance of me even coming close to 9 minutes.  I wasn't sure I could even do 1 minute.  Let's break this down: 7 light thrusters would take me about 15 seconds and 7 burpees would take me 20-30 seconds, depending on how tired I was from the previous work.  That left me 15-25 seconds to do 7 pull-ups.  And that meant I needed to boogie if I was finishing that quickly.  If by some miracle I did pull that off, I would get almost no rest and then I would need to repeat that process at the same pace.  I would need to repeat it EIGHT MORE TIMES at that same pace to be considered fit.  Good luck with that!

Rather than beat myself up about the standards, I decided to accept that I was a sub-par athlete and go with a goal of 1 round completed in under a minute.  That would require some pull-up proficiency I had been lacking, but it wasn't some crazy out of reach goal.  Aimee let us know that we could consider the workout a 10 minute AMRAP once we had failed, but Rachel and I agreed to do 12 minutes.  Except only one of us (me) followed through on that agreement.  Perhaps Rachel wasn't thinking clearly after doing a warm-up round of this.  (Why in the world...?)

I had Gordy facing me and Shane behind me as we did the thrusters.  We would all be side by side when we turned to do the pull-ups and the burpees.  We got started and I did the thrusters at about the same pace as Gordy.  I ran over to my pull-up bar and saw Shane was just getting there too.  I told myself to remain calm and to keep a hollow rock position during my kip.  I jumped up and managed to get 5 reps before dropping down from the high bar.  Knowing I couldn't afford to waste time, I jumped back up and did another rep, followed by a hang, then the 7th rep.  Go go go!

I tackled the 7 burpees like they were the last thing I had to do in the workout.  I was only about two burpees behind Shane.  I was praying that I didn't hear the beep as I got closer and closer to finishing the round.  I dropped down to do the seventh rep, popped up, clapped my hands and I was done.  Since I was only a few seconds behind Shane, I figured that my time must have been really good.  I'm going to get a little rest before round two!  Or not.  As I turned to look at the clock, I saw it read 0:59.  BEEP!

Round two was underway and I hadn't even gotten back over to my bar.  There was no chance of me completing two rounds in time.  We had entered the AMRAP phase of things.  I kept pushing as fast as I could go but everything slowed down, even my thrusters.  I continued to focus on the pull-ups as I was getting in much needed practice.  Whenever my grips bunched up, I took time to adjust them.  I wasn't concerned about my score anymore.  All I wanted was good form on my pull-ups.  When I finished my 4th round, the clock was just beyond 9 minutes.  I was tiring, but I wanted to get a 5th round in before 12 minutes elapsed.  I took care of the thrusters and got to the pull-up bar.  While I was there, the beep signified 10 minutes was up.  Everyone stopped working unless they were still alive on the beep test.  As I began doing my burpees, the beep went off again.  11 minutes in.  No one else was working.  It was crawling burpees time, but I wanted to get them done.  I thought about what I would do if I finished before 12 minutes.  Would people think I was nuts if I started doing more thrusters?  (Answer: yes)  Would they think I couldn't tell time, even on a digital clock?  (Answer: possibly)  With that in mind, I decided I would just finish the 5th round.  When I popped up from the 7th burpee, the clock read 11:42.  Good enough for me.

This was a crazy, but good test to attempt, especially as a baseline.  I would love to be able to do two minutes of this at some point.  Nine minutes?  I don't think that's happening in this lifetime, but god bless the people that can manage it.

Monday preview:  After waking up on Sunday and having my body tell me "you are not going to the gym", I come in for a workout involving lots of toes-to-bar, shoot-throughs, and double unders.  Also, more back squats?  Sure why not.