Squadoosh

Workout date: 11/11/15

Most people are familiar with one, and only one, poker tournament: the Main Event of the World Series of Poker.  (Horse racing is no different: most people might be able to tell you who won this year's Kentucky Derby, but not much more than that.  Embrace the world of gambling, people!)  This year's final table wrapped up on Tuesday night with a Philly local taking down nearly $8 million and the title of World Champion.  Coverage of the Main Event features two announcers: Lon McEachern and Norman Chad.  McEachern provides the play-by-play during each hand, while Chad provides the comic relief.  Chad has all sorts of made-up words that he uses to describe the action going on and one of them seemed particularly appropriate tonight.  That word?  Squadoosh!

Squadoosh is a way of saying that a player has absolutely no hand and is usually brought up in the context of someone bluffing at a pot.  So for example, Chad might say "he's betting half a million with squadoosh!"  Well I showed up to my 4x4 back squat session Wednesday night and ended up with squadoosh.  I'm not even sure if what I did in the annex even qualifies as squadoosh.  It was that bad.  But perhaps it will provide an opportunity to think through my current training and see if there's a way to get better.

When I got to the annex, all of the squat racks had already been taken.  I planned on waiting until one became free, but then Christine pointed out that there were two additional portable racks in the back.  Tom C was using one of them, but the other one was unclaimed at the moment, so I set it up to do my back squats.  I started with my typical warmup sets of 5 reps at 135 and 4 reps at 185.  From there I did 2 reps at 225 and 2 reps at 265 before loading my barbell with 300 pounds.  I chose a warmup set at 265 pounds not only because it was a convenient midway point to 300 pounds from 225, but also so I could get a barometer of how I was feeling.  My 6x2 sessions have been at 265, so I could compare this set of 2 to those and gauge where I was at.  Since you already know how this ends, you might guess that I struggled with my set at 265, but the opposite was true.  I did those 2 reps fairly quickly and felt pretty good about things when I placed the barbell back on the rack.  Four sets of four reps at 300 pounds still seemed daunting to me, but the final warmup set put me in a good frame of mind prior to taking it on.

When I grabbed the barbell for my first set at 300, I noticed how heavy it was, but I kept the thought in my head that if I maintained proper form and didn't rush, I could be successful.  The first rep went well, but then I crashed to the bottom on my second rep.  The silver lining in crashing is that you do get some bounce out of the bottom and that helped me save the rep.  I reset my breathing before rep #3, another tough rep, but one that was more like the first rep, where I had proper speed on the way down.  Then came the final rep of the set.  Perhaps the first three reps took more out of me than I realized, but as I tried to come out of the bottom, I became stuck.  And then I did something that I had never successfully done before.  As I tried to stand the weight back up, I had a moment of hesitation. That caused me to drop instead of rise.  It wasn't a big drop, but it was enough of one that I could bounce again in an attempt to gather momentum upwards.  I have done this in the past, but it has only gotten me to the point where I was originally stuck and no further.  Somehow I got enough momentum this time to drive past the sticking point, as I slowly stood up and finished the fourth rep.  It was a lot of effort, but set #1 was in the books.

I knew I was in trouble needing that much energy to finish the first set, but I decided that I would take a nice-sized break before doing set #2.  There were still three more sets to go, but I would focus on nothing but finishing the next set.  If that set was a success, I could then think about the following set.  I was not going to sit there with a mindset of "oh no, how can I possibly do three more sets of this?"  This was going to be a difficult test, but I could pass it.  Or so I thought.

Old habits die hard.  When I went to do set #2, my body did exactly what it had done in set #1, only this time it had less energy.  The first rep was tough, but solid.  And then I crashed again on rep #2.  Not sure why I did that.  Not sure how I built this pattern of doing it on the second rep.  But it happened.  And this time I could not save it.  After a little bit of fight from a low spot in my squat, I needed to bail the bar.  My internal pep talk was going to need be ridiculously good if I was going to get through the final three sets now.

Apparently that speech was not exactly "win one for the gipper" quality.  Or maybe my body got confused and thought I was starting over at rep #2.  There wasn't a crash this time, but I got stuck very low once again and had to bail.  That was it.  I clearly was not going to finish any more sets of four.  Can't even say that I was going to finish any more reps at that weight.  It was time to chalk one up in the loss column and call it a night in the annex.

What went wrong?  I suspect that I have been pushing myself a little too hard recently.  I did take a rest day on Tuesday, but that was due to another WOD I wasn't fond of.  (1RM jerk again?  And tabata wall balls?  Pass.)  I've mentioned on this blog that the 6x2 back squat days haven't been particularly easy and that may have been my body's way of saying "hey dum dum, you need more rest".  Six weeks ago, I set a 35 pound PR on my back squat and went directly into another iteration of the same program.  That likely wasn't the wisest decision.  Over the last month, I've done WODs like Badger and Wolverine, along with some other exhausting workouts like the recent rope climb extravaganza.  Outside of the gym, I've been traveling out of town a lot with several trips to the Albany area and to NYC, with a drive down to Washington DC thrown in there as well.  On Sunday, I took part in a football game which included a play where I was laid out on a blindside block (things can get chippy in a close game, even when it's supposed to be flag football).  Add all of that together and I'm probably guilty of not taking proper care of my body.  So I'm going to lay off the back squat program for a week.  I'll try the 4x4 at 300 pounds again next week and see how it goes.  If it goes just as poorly, I'll have to figure out a different way to proceed through the end of the program.

Having felt like I didn't do much work in the annex, I headed over to the main gym to do the WOD.  Since it was Veterans Day, we were honoring a fallen vet with a Hero WOD named Michael.  The workout was named in honor of Navy Lt. Michael McGreevy, who died in combat in Afghanistan.  Here are the details on Michael:

Michael
3 rounds
800 meter run
50 back extensions
50 sit-ups

Not an overly complicated WOD, but a tough one nonetheless.  The back extensions are particularly tough on your hamstrings, so I was already envisioning the awesome gimpy run I would be doing during rounds 2 and 3.  There were 7 of us at the 6:30 class and with only 5 GHD machines in the gym, I ended up sharing a machine with Matt E, who is around my size (fine, fine...he's a bit bigger than me).  We worked out a deal to do 25 back extensions on the GHD and 25 supermans on the floor, with the first person in the door from the run getting dibs on the GHD.  Little did I know that the two of us would be putting on a "flinging sweat for distance" competition on the GHD, but these things happen.  Sadly I did not take a picture of this after the workout.

If I have one regret from this workout, it would be that I didn't push hard enough on the first run.  I didn't dog it, but I definitely paced that first 800 meters, when I should have realized that the second and third runs would not be fast and this would be my only opportunity to make up time on the run.  Guess I had squadoosh between the ears Wednesday night.  I came back in alongside of Matt, but told him I'd start with the supermans.  Those things suck.  First off, I feel like a dying fish flopping around on the mat.  Secondly, it is hard to keep moving through an exercise that starts with you lying on your belly.  That is exactly where I want to be!  Why would I move from this position?  At least on the GHD, you're in a position that hurts, so you want to keep moving.  The 25 supermans took longer than the 25 back extensions and that would be the case in all 3 rounds.

As for the sit-ups...well, let's just say that I feel bad for the folks in the Holiday Head Start class who had to witness me doing these.  I was trying to maintain a solid pace throughout the 50 sit-ups, but there was a point along the way where these became painful.  In order for me to keep going, I had to resort to some high-caliber, female tennis player grunting like I used to do back in the day with my KB swings.  Some of the Head Start coaches told me afterwards that the new athletes noticed "the grunting guy".  (In their defense, how could they not?)  I was just trying to get the workout done.  Leave it to me to find new ways to embarrass myself.

Not a whole lot changed over the three rounds.  Nate was the fastest male runner (the females decided to run 200 meters four times rather than 400 meters twice due to another shady character hanging out over by Frosty Falls) and stayed the same distance in front nearly every round.  Behind him was TJ.  I was third in the conga line, with Matt following behind me.  For rounds 2 and 3, I started on the GHD while Matt started with the supermans.  And in round 3, I did 25 back extensions in a row, rather than splitting them up 15 and 10 as I did in the first two rounds.  Final time: 27:33.

Friday preview: After a rest day on Thursday (I'm trying my best to be good!), we take on lucky sevens in a barbell-focused WOD.