Bros Before Coach

Workout date: 4/11/17

I had planned to take Saturday off, but I was considering popping in for a Sunday workout before my parents arrived for a visit.  They showed up early.  No worries.  I could sneak over on Monday and get an early workout in.  As a bonus, I discovered on Sunday evening that it was a workout that I thought I might really like.  (Monday's WOD: 40 fairly heavy squat clean and jerks for time.)  Yeah, that didn't happen.  My parents were basically on their own schedule and I wasn't able to escape to get a WOD in.

That meant I didn't get back into the gym until the next session of Dudes After Dark.  The workout wasn't as appealing to me as the one that had been scheduled for Monday, but it wasn't one that scared me off either.  It was also an easy one for me in terms of goal-setting.  Here's what it looked like:

Tuesday's WOD:

AMRAP in 20 minutes

25 calorie row

25 chest-to-bar pull-ups

25 sumo deadlift high pulls (115/75)

25 shoulder-to-overhead (115/75)

The toughest aspect of this workout for me was going to be all of those chest-to-bar pull-ups.  This wasn't as ominous as being faced with 105 pull-ups (well, I guess it could have been if I somehow made it to round five of this WOD), but the chest-to-bar variety requires more energy, so I was likely to tire out more quickly on these.  That being said, I've gotten a little bit more comfortable with chest-to-bar pull-ups.  I used to believe that I needed to kip as hard as possible to get my chest to hit the bar.  Now I know that a medium kip will get me high enough to graze my chest against the bar.  Anything beyond that is simply wasted energy.  Figuring out the right way to do chest-to-bar pull-ups had as much to do with my strong score during Open workout 17.3 (the one out of five that I actually did well on) as practicing squat snatches did.  My approach to this workout would be similar.  I was going to try and do reasonable sets of chest-to-bar pull-ups and not go crazy on the kips.  If I was slamming my chest into the bar, I was doing the movement incorrectly.

The other aspect of this workout that I couldn't take lightly was the sumo deadlift high pulls.  When we do these as part of Fight Gone Bad, we use 75 pounds as the weight.  115 pounds was a considerable jump higher for a movement that can be awkward to do, especially as you get tired.  You tend to start getting unbalanced and clank the floor with one side of your barbell before the other side makes contact.  Once that begins, it can be difficult to get the barbell level again unless you come to a stop.  This wouldn't be my maiden voyage doing sumo deadlift high pulls with 115 pounds though.  The intermediate division at last year's Festivus Games had to do 115-pound sumo deadlift high pulls, so I had some idea of how hard these would be.

There was one last obstacle that I would have to overcome in this class: the heat.  It wasn't quite the sauna-like conditions that we have to deal with in the summer, but this was the warmest class of the year up to this point.  How warm was it?  I had sweated through my shirt before we even began the workout.  (Cline would later suggest that we start taking "before" and "after" photos of how sweaty I was now that the weather was getting nicer.)

LC would be coaching a somewhat rare all-dudes edition of Dudes After Dark.  There were 5 of us in attendance.  Joining me in class were Cline, Ryan A, Rob C, and Neil.  There are often times where I will look around in class and choose someone that I want to keep up with.  That was a really tough call for this workout.  It seemed like each person in class was likely to beat me in a couple of these movements, but I might be able to catch up to them on the other movements.  It felt like a workout where we might all be neck and neck the entire way.  So in terms of competing against my classmates, my goal was to not get beat by all of them.  Beating two of them would be nice.  I also had a goal of completing two full rounds (200 reps).  The best scores from earlier in the day indicated that people had finished three rounds of the row.  If I even got to turn on my monitor a third time, I'd be very happy.

The five of us got on our rowers and LC sent us on our 20-minute journey.  The row was going to be a spot where I'd probably lose a bit of time to the rest of the group.  Cline, Ryan, and Neil were definitely faster rowers than me.  I was about even with Rob.  None of us were slow on the rower though.  I was at 21 calories after a minute and shortly thereafter, I was headed to my pull-up bar.  I didn't think the chest-to-bar pull-ups would be where I shined, but after being one of the last ones to the pull-up bar, I was able to pull ahead of the group here.  I wasn't sure how many reps I would do in each set, so I based it off of how my first set felt.  I got through 4 reps before feeling like I needed a short break.  (Note: When I say I did a set of 4 reps, I mean 4 quick singles.  I am not even close to having the ability to string 4 consecutive chest-to-bar pull-ups.)  Six sets of 4 would get me to 24, so I needed to add an extra rep in along the way.  The most important part of doing well at the pull-up rig was that I was choosing a number of reps that I could recover from quickly.  In the heat of battle, I often don't realize how long my breaks between sets are.  In this workout, my breaks at the pull-up bar were legitimately short.  I did 5 reps during my fourth set to get me on track for 25.  When I finished my 6th set, it was on to the barbell.

If you had asked me prior to the workout where I thought I had an advantage on my classmates, it was with the barbell movements.  That might seem odd given that Ryan and Neil are bigger than me, that Rob is stronger than me on Olympic lifts, and that Cline has recently begun creeping ever closer to me with the weights he uses in workouts.  However, sumo deadlift high pulls are weird and I'm good at weird.  I thought I could get through those quicker than anyone else.  And even though I might not be as strong as most of my classmates, I am pretty solid at cycling a barbell, meaning the shoulder-to-overheads wouldn't be too big of an issue for me.

I may have bitten off a little more than I could chew when I began the sumo deadlift high pulls.  I had chosen the proper number of chest-to-bar pull-ups to keep my breaks short in between sets.  I did bigger sets on the sumo deadlift high pulls and ended up needing longer breaks.  I went 6-6-5-4-4 through my five sets and I was very happy to move on to the much easier shoulder-to-overheads.  Again, I probably got greedy with a barbell movement.  My breaks were longer here than when I was at the pull-up rig, but I only took two of them, going 10-9-6 to wrap up round one.  To my surprise, I was the first one back to my rower.

In order to complete two full rounds, I thought I would need to complete the first round in 8 minutes or less.  I expected to go considerably slower in the second round and having 12 minutes to play with would likely be enough for me to get through another circuit.  As I turned on my monitor on the rower, I looked up and saw that the clock was at about 8:20.  Not awful.  It was probably going to come down to how well I held up on the chest-to-bar pull-ups and the sumo deadlift high pulls.  I was about 5 calories into my row when several of my classmates came over and joined me.  I didn't expect to be in the lead at this point, but now that I had it, I didn't want to lose it.  I finished up 25 calories and was the first one back to the pull-up rig.

I was hoping that my second visit to the pull-up rig would go as smoothly as the first time had, but deep down I knew that would not be the case.  I did two sets of 4 reps to begin my crawl to 25 reps, but a longer break was definitely required after set #2.  Then I was only able to do 3 in a row before taking a break.  I did two sets like that, bringing me up to 14.  Even though I only had 11 reps left, it felt like there was a really long way to go.  On my next set, I did a decent chest-to-bar pull-up before feeling fatigued as I did my second one.  I kipped as hard as I could to ensure that I didn't miss hitting the bar with my chest.  It was overkill.  I rammed my chest really hard into the bar.  The longest break of the workout would follow.  Just 9 more chest-to-bar pull-ups to go, but I was winded, my arms were feeling weak, and I had no gauge of how hard I should kip to get my chest to graze the bar like I had done back in round one.

The longer break helped because I was able to get back to sets of three reps.  I didn't slam my chest into the bar at any point.  I wasn't sure if anyone had passed me at this stage (only Neil was working in front of me), but there wasn't much I could do if they had.  The only way these chest-to-bar pull-ups were getting done was if I recovered properly between sets.  Three sets of three later, I was done with pull-ups for the night.

Having not learned my lesson from round one of the sumo deadlift high pulls, I decided to try for another large set when I got to my barbell.  Those don't work out so well when your arms are tired.  I did three consecutive reps before only getting the right side of the barbell up to the proper height on the 4th try.  No rep!  That was a deflating moment in the workout.  I now had some serious doubt as to whether I could get through 22 more of these.  Time was also starting to become an issue.  If I couldn't find some renewed energy, I was going to fall short of completing two full rounds.  I was also likely going to be passed by the guys working behind me.  I decided that my best course of action was to try and do quick singles the rest of the way.  I began to slowly chip away at my remaining total.  As I got to the mid-point of the round, I had another no-rep as the left side of the barbell decided to hug the floor once again.  Frustrated, I glared at the left side of the barbell.  That's when I noticed that the plate was no longer tight with the barbell, despite having a clip to hold it on.  I took some time to get the plate back where it was supposed to be before retightening the clip.  From then on, I didn't have any issues with the left side of the barbell hanging lower than the right side.

Resorting to singles cost me my shot at completing two full rounds.  When I got done with the sumo deadlift high pulls, there was only about 30 seconds remaining.  I cleaned the barbell and did 6 quick reps before dropping it.  I needed oxygen, but I also knew I'd be getting rest soon enough.  I cleaned the barbell a second time and got 5 more reps in before time was called.  Final score: 186 reps.

It was a little disappointing not finishing off that second round, but this workout turned out to be quite a bit harder than I anticipated.  There's nothing I can point to and say "oh, I could have done that better".  Smaller sets with the barbell in round 1 might have saved me a smidge more energy, but I don't think it would have been enough to get me through the end of round 2.  My main takeaway from this WOD: you can fall short of your goal and still have a very good workout.  LC would tell me afterwards that I did a really good job of pacing this one and that is a comment I almost never hear.  I was able to finish ahead of everyone except Cline (who scaled, but he also had to run around and change plates, so he was much further ahead of me than it seemed).

There was a mini cash-out to finish off the evening.  The newest KOP toys are the two ski ergs that have been planted in the back of the gym near the bathrooms.  Think of them as assault bikes for your arms.  We were taking turns getting as many calories as we could in one minute.  I watched Rob take a turn and he managed 22 calories.  He looked awfully tired at the end of that minute.  That didn't bode well for me.  I went next, not having much of a clue as to what proper form on this machine would entail.  Pull down...circle your arms back up high again...repeat?  Oh yeah, also try to use your legs if possible.  LC set the monitor for me and I began my minute.  Apparently my form was very good at the beginning because I heard lots of excited yelling about how many calories I was generating.  Then I looked up.  I thought I might be about 35-40 seconds in, but the monitor gave me the sobering news that I had only been "skiing" for 23 seconds.  My form fell apart quickly over the last 37 seconds.  My arms were smoked.  I was able to at least match Rob with 22 calories, although 18 of them might have come in the first 23 seconds.

LC took down our scores at the whiteboard and then made sure we were checked in for class.  She called out Ryan for not signing up for the 7:30 class, but the rest of us had his back.  I explained to LC that at Dudes After Dark, the rule is "Bros Before Coach".  (That's not really the rule.  It's probably more like "Sass N' Jackass".)  She respected our solidarity and let Ryan off with a warning.  I'm sure Ryan will be signed in for future Dudes After Dark.  (Note: There's no penalty for not signing into class.  It just drives the coaches nuts.)

Wednesday preview: Have I fallen out of love with Nancy?  My favorite workout makes her second appearance of the year, but our relationship has become "complicated".