Workout date: 3/8/17
This year's Open has involved a fascination with heavy dumbbells. It has been an interesting twist on the types of workouts that we're used to, but it has left many people (like myself) longing for the return of the heavy barbell. On Wednesday night, the heavy barbell emerged from the shadows and took its proper place in the spotlight. Not only that, the barbell would get heavier and heavier as the workout progressed. Here's what was programmed for Wednesday night:
Wednesday's WOD:
3 rounds
3 minute AMRAP
3 power cleans
3 front squats
3 push jerks
*3 minutes rest between rounds
**RX weights in each round are 135/95, 155/105, and 185/135
If good things truly come in threes, then this workout was loaded with lots of good stuff. The combination of 3 power cleans, 3 front squats, and 3 push jerks might ring a bell as this was the format used in the "Thin Lizzy" workout we did in December. That workout was a 30 minute EMOM where we had to get through those 3 movements every 60 seconds with the RX weights matching what we'd see in the first round of this WOD. I only used 125 pounds during "Thin Lizzy" because I didn't think I could make it through 30 rounds with 135 pounds on my barbell. Since I'd be doing considerably fewer rounds in this workout, I was okay with using more weight.
March 8th is known as International Women's Day and the 7:30 class would have been an all-women's affair if it wasn't for my presence (sorry ladies!). Coach Jenna had four people in her class: myself, Julie Foucher, Marissa, and Therese. With only a solitary barbell necessary for this workout, the four of us had plenty of room. We ended up staying in close proximity to one another though. We formed two rows of two, with Therese and Julie in the front row as me and Marissa set up shop behind them.
If I had any doubts about which weights I should use in this workout, they were erased when Jenna informed us that we should lean towards going heavy. It isn't often that you hear one of our coaches say that, so this workout must have been designed to test strength more than cardio. Most of the scores from earlier in the day were within a narrow range. Athletes were completing about 4 rounds at the lightest weight, 3 rounds at the middle weight, and 2 rounds with the heaviest weight. I felt that I could complete that amount of work when considering how I might fare with 135, 155, and 185 pounds.
While we warmed up, Jenna went over the rules of the workout. Apparently someone in an earlier class had asked if you could squat clean as a transition from the power clean to the front squat. That was not allowed because you were substituting one movement (squat clean) for two movements (power clean + front squat). I think we all realized that this wasn't allowed before Jenna said anything, but this announcement led to confusion. Especially when Jenna followed it up by saying that you could squat clean into the front squat if you had finished the power cleans already. (This substitution is one for one, as the squat clean puts you into the front squat. You aren't trimming a rep in this scenario.) While everyone was wrapping their heads around that, Marissa got confused about the last movement in the sequence and as a result had prepared to use lighter weights. Marissa thought we were doing push presses and not push jerks. You can't move as much weight with a push press as you can a push jerk which is why she originally planned to go lighter. We thought we had that mix up figured out until we practiced the push jerk. Jenna kept saying "dip and press" to which I kept yelling "jerk". Jenna thought I was calling her names until I clarified why I was yelling "jerk" over and over again. This was probably one of the more chaotic warmups I've been a part of, but we eventually got it all sorted out.
There were 9 reps in the sequence we'd be repeating in this WOD and my plan was to try and hold on for the final 7 every time. If you dropped the barbell after the last power clean, during the front squats, or during the push jerks, you were going to have to do additional power cleans. Since we were going heavy today, you didn't want to waste a lot of energy on extra power cleans. Early on in the first round, I'd be taking things a step further, trying to hold on for all 9 reps if possible.
Jenna got us started on our first AMRAP and I flew through 9 reps. Cycling through power cleans at 135 is something I am used to. The front squats at 135 were fairly light, especially considering we were only doing 3 reps at a time. The push jerks were the toughest part of the sequence, but they were also manageable in sets of 3. I held on for all 9 reps my first two times through the sequence and had 2 rounds done in about a minute. I was definitely completing four rounds in this first AMRAP. The question was whether I could make it through five.
On my third time through the sequence, I changed things up. I held on for 2 power cleans, dropped the barbell, took a short break to get ready for the next 7 reps, then held on through a power clean, 3 front squats, and 3 push jerks. The front squats were still not that bad, but the push jerks were becoming more difficult to control. Jenna let us know that these had to be push jerks, as split jerks were not allowed in the workout. My mind began to think about how tough it was going to be to cycle through the jerks at 155. It would be a miracle if I cycled the jerks at 185.
When I completed my 4th trip through the sequence, there was about 45 seconds remaining in the first AMRAP. I had to hustle if I was completing 5 rounds and I couldn't make any mistakes. I did the 2 power cleans and took a break. I wanted a longer one, but the clock was ticking. I did the last clean, the 3 front squats, and then got through the last 3 push jerks with a few seconds remaining. I didn't even bother trying to sneak in another power clean before the buzzer. First AMRAP score: 45.
There were only a couple of people who had done 5 rounds RX in that first AMRAP, so I was pleased that I got so much work done. I was also kinda tired. I walked to the front and wrote my score on the whiteboard. I came back to my barbell and added 10 pound plates to each side. Then I sat in the chair Cline had left for me. Back when we did "Thin Lizzy", we were advised to sit in a chair or on a bench when waiting for the next minute of the EMOM to begin. The same logic was in play here. Might as well save your legs in between rounds. When Cline offered to leave his chair after the 6:30 class, I gladly accepted it. I only got to sit on it for about a minute, but it was better than nothing.
I didn't bother trying to get all 9 reps of the sequence when I began the second AMRAP. I went directly to singles on my power cleans, with the same plan of holding on through the front squats and the push jerks after that third power clean. I was able to stick to this plan, but the toll of the extra weight caused me to take longer breaks when I finished the last push jerk of each set. I started my second round right at about the 1 minute mark. I began the third round just before the 2 minute mark. Just as I knew early on in the first AMRAP that I'd reach 4 rounds, I knew I was getting through 3 rounds in this AMRAP. The question was could I get more than that. With less than 30 seconds remaining, I completed my third round. My breaks between rounds had been about 20 seconds long, but there wasn't enough time for that at this point. I didn't waste much time getting back to my barbell. It looked like I had just enough time left to complete the 3 power cleans. There were still a couple seconds to go when I got the third power clean, so I snuck in a front squat before time was called. Second AMRAP score: 31.
30 seemed like a popular score for that second AMRAP, so I was happy that I got those extra reps in at the end to keep pace with those who had done the workout earlier in the day. I repeated the same routine of walking to the front to write my score, walking to my barbell and changing the weights, and sitting down. I was definitely moving slower because I only got thirty seconds in the chair before the 3rd AMRAP.
After moving through 5 rounds in the first AMRAP and 3.5 rounds in the second AMRAP, having a goal of 2 rounds in the third AMRAP seemed like a cinch. Even if it took a minute to get through the sequence, I could take a minute off to recover and still have enough time to complete two rounds. Piece of cake. Or not. My first power clean let me know that 185 was going to be a struggle. I've started to squat clean routinely now, but that wasn't an option today, so the power clean at 185 was tougher than I bargained for. I managed to hit all 3 power cleans and was even able to hold on for 3 front squats after that last power clean. The push jerk was a totally different animal though. I went to perform my first push jerk and it went nowhere. Yikes. Was I going to have to do these one at a time? That meant 3 extra power cleans. I just did 3 power cleans and they sucked! Whether I liked it or not, I was on the hook for at least 1 extra power clean as I got the barbell back to my front rack to try the push jerk again. This time my push jerk was successful. I brought it back down to my shoulders and tried a second one. Got it. Maybe that disaster of a first attempt was a fluke. I brought the barbell down, dipped, drove up, and...did 75% of a push jerk. I was really close to pressing that third one out completely, but my arms gave out on me.
I looked at the clock and saw that half of the time for this AMRAP had passed. So much for easily getting 2 rounds! Unless I somehow got stronger on my second trip through this sequence, I was going to fall short of my goal for this AMRAP. While that was floating through my mind, I realized that there was the not-so-trivial matter of completing round #1. I did another ugly power clean, then mustered enough strength for a third solid push jerk. With about a minute remaining when I dropped the barbell, I decided that I needed to get back to the push jerk portion of the sequence, even if I didn't complete another one. I did three singles of the power clean, then hung on through 3 painful front squats. There was no way that I could execute the push jerk after those front squats, so I dropped the barbell. With only a few seconds remaining, I'd have to be happy with less than 2 rounds in this final AMRAP. Third AMRAP score: 15.
Overall I was happy with how things had gone. Clearly I underestimated how tough it would be to hang on through 7 consecutive reps with 185 pounds on the barbell. If I did this again, I'd probably just drop the barbell after the front squats at that weight and accept that extra power cleans were necessary. It was time to head home and enjoy the rest day on Thursday, when Dave Castro would reveal to us what torture awaited us in 17.3.
Friday preview: Two consecutive barbell workouts! Castro ditches the dumbbells for barbells and I discover an affinity for a movement that I didn't consider to be one of my favorites.
Wednesday, March 15, 2017
Wednesday, March 8, 2017
Not My Fat Crying
Workout date: 3/7/17
The events of Monday night left me beaten up on Tuesday. I had bruises all over my right bicep and along the right side of my ribcage. As happy as I was to get my first ever bar muscle-up, I was good with not attempting another one until all of my wounds had healed. It might have been wise to view Tuesday's WOD in the same light. It was a toughie with a time cap of 22 minutes. My body probably needed rest more than a workout, but this WOD included a moderate amount of handstand push-ups and I couldn't resist my 2017 obsession. Here's a look at the entire workout:
Tuesday WOD:
60 wall balls (20#/14# to 10'/9')
30 KB swings (53/35)
15 handstand push-ups
10 burpee ring muscle-ups
15 handstand push-ups
30 KB swings
60 wall balls
*Time cap: 22 minutes
Getting a bar muscle-up was the second goal that I achieved from my top 10 list this year. Stringing together 5 handstand push-ups was the first. I didn't need to string that many in a row for this workout though. Thinking back to when I got those 5 in a row, I recalled that the first three were solid and the last two were a struggle. So if I stuck with sets of three, I might be alright. Having to do 5 sets didn't seem too terrible. Of course, I'd need to go through that routine twice in this workout, but I planned on hedging my bets by keeping an ab-mat nearby in case I got tired and needed some extra support during the handstand push-ups.
LC had 9 people to coach at Dudes After Dark this week. (Actual dude count: 7) We started things off with a series of relay races where members of each team would run down the gym with a medicine ball, do a certain exercise, then race back and hand off the ball to their teammate. My team only had 4 members, so whoever led things off for our team would have to do double duty and be the anchor leg as well. We won some, we lost some. What had my attention the most was how much I had already begun sweating on this semi-balmy mid-60 degree evening.
We warmed up on wall balls and KB swings next. I'm not sure if we did a lot of reps, but it felt that way to me. I wasn't feeling good about my chances in the workout if the warmup was already taking a toll on me. We moved on to practicing handstand push-ups. It wasn't until I made my first attempt that I realized it's been a while since I'd done these. How long? I checked when I got home later and saw that it had been nearly a month. That's why it felt strange when I got upside-down and dropped on to my noggin. I may have been rusty, but my form wasn't completely off. I was able to do 2 handstand push-ups during the warmup, each with a bit of press out necessary at the end. My head wasn't coming through my arms like it was supposed to, something that I knew would be a problem later on if I didn't fix my form. My gaze turned to the ab-mat that I had set to the side. I had a suspicion that I'd be using it earlier than I wanted to.
The last thing to practice was the burpee ring muscle-up. Cline took the words out of my mouth when he mentioned how relieved he was that this was a burpee ring muscle-up, since ring muscle-ups clearly weren't challenging enough on their own. There were a couple of people in class who could do this movement, but most of us were scaling. LC mentioned burpee bar muscle-ups as a scaling option and I did my best to get Bryan to choose that option. He declined. I was happy to hear that burpee jumping muscle-ups were an option and went with that.
Maggie and Ms. January made fun of me for setting up shop at the very front of the gym as that left a lot of space between me and the rest of the class. I thought someone might need space for handstand push-ups later on, so I put my wall ball in one section and set up a mat for handstand push-ups in the two sections next to me. No one ended up needing the space, so I had a ton of room to myself. Perhaps everyone was avoiding the sweaty mess that would soon descend on this region.
LC started the clock and everyone got to work on wall balls. I was concerned about how fatigued my shoulders would get during this workout, so I tried out a new method with the wall balls. Rather than keep my arms extended upwards in preparation for catching the ball as it came down from the wall, I quickly dropped them and then raised them again right as the ball was falling to the level of my head. At first I liked this method because I wasn't holding my arms up for an extended period of time. I did 20 wall balls, then took a break. When I began my next set, I started to fall out of love with this method. Continuously dropping and raising my arms was work. I defaulted back to keeping my arms up for the entire set. I think I needed 5 more sets for the last 40 reps. I didn't take long rests in between sets, but I definitely felt the need to break up the reps more than I typically would. I felt sluggish and sweaty. Before I got to my KB, two things were certain in my mind:
The events of Monday night left me beaten up on Tuesday. I had bruises all over my right bicep and along the right side of my ribcage. As happy as I was to get my first ever bar muscle-up, I was good with not attempting another one until all of my wounds had healed. It might have been wise to view Tuesday's WOD in the same light. It was a toughie with a time cap of 22 minutes. My body probably needed rest more than a workout, but this WOD included a moderate amount of handstand push-ups and I couldn't resist my 2017 obsession. Here's a look at the entire workout:
Tuesday WOD:
60 wall balls (20#/14# to 10'/9')
30 KB swings (53/35)
15 handstand push-ups
10 burpee ring muscle-ups
15 handstand push-ups
30 KB swings
60 wall balls
*Time cap: 22 minutes
Getting a bar muscle-up was the second goal that I achieved from my top 10 list this year. Stringing together 5 handstand push-ups was the first. I didn't need to string that many in a row for this workout though. Thinking back to when I got those 5 in a row, I recalled that the first three were solid and the last two were a struggle. So if I stuck with sets of three, I might be alright. Having to do 5 sets didn't seem too terrible. Of course, I'd need to go through that routine twice in this workout, but I planned on hedging my bets by keeping an ab-mat nearby in case I got tired and needed some extra support during the handstand push-ups.
LC had 9 people to coach at Dudes After Dark this week. (Actual dude count: 7) We started things off with a series of relay races where members of each team would run down the gym with a medicine ball, do a certain exercise, then race back and hand off the ball to their teammate. My team only had 4 members, so whoever led things off for our team would have to do double duty and be the anchor leg as well. We won some, we lost some. What had my attention the most was how much I had already begun sweating on this semi-balmy mid-60 degree evening.
We warmed up on wall balls and KB swings next. I'm not sure if we did a lot of reps, but it felt that way to me. I wasn't feeling good about my chances in the workout if the warmup was already taking a toll on me. We moved on to practicing handstand push-ups. It wasn't until I made my first attempt that I realized it's been a while since I'd done these. How long? I checked when I got home later and saw that it had been nearly a month. That's why it felt strange when I got upside-down and dropped on to my noggin. I may have been rusty, but my form wasn't completely off. I was able to do 2 handstand push-ups during the warmup, each with a bit of press out necessary at the end. My head wasn't coming through my arms like it was supposed to, something that I knew would be a problem later on if I didn't fix my form. My gaze turned to the ab-mat that I had set to the side. I had a suspicion that I'd be using it earlier than I wanted to.
The last thing to practice was the burpee ring muscle-up. Cline took the words out of my mouth when he mentioned how relieved he was that this was a burpee ring muscle-up, since ring muscle-ups clearly weren't challenging enough on their own. There were a couple of people in class who could do this movement, but most of us were scaling. LC mentioned burpee bar muscle-ups as a scaling option and I did my best to get Bryan to choose that option. He declined. I was happy to hear that burpee jumping muscle-ups were an option and went with that.
Maggie and Ms. January made fun of me for setting up shop at the very front of the gym as that left a lot of space between me and the rest of the class. I thought someone might need space for handstand push-ups later on, so I put my wall ball in one section and set up a mat for handstand push-ups in the two sections next to me. No one ended up needing the space, so I had a ton of room to myself. Perhaps everyone was avoiding the sweaty mess that would soon descend on this region.
LC started the clock and everyone got to work on wall balls. I was concerned about how fatigued my shoulders would get during this workout, so I tried out a new method with the wall balls. Rather than keep my arms extended upwards in preparation for catching the ball as it came down from the wall, I quickly dropped them and then raised them again right as the ball was falling to the level of my head. At first I liked this method because I wasn't holding my arms up for an extended period of time. I did 20 wall balls, then took a break. When I began my next set, I started to fall out of love with this method. Continuously dropping and raising my arms was work. I defaulted back to keeping my arms up for the entire set. I think I needed 5 more sets for the last 40 reps. I didn't take long rests in between sets, but I definitely felt the need to break up the reps more than I typically would. I felt sluggish and sweaty. Before I got to my KB, two things were certain in my mind:
- I was getting time capped in this workout.
- I was simply there to get some work in. My time wasn't going to matter much. I just needed to try and grind through the workout.
The KB didn't feel terrible, but I still broke up the reps into three sets. I completed 12 reps in the first set, then 9 in the following two sets. At least I didn't waste a ton of time here. I turned around and returned to the wall. I got upside-down and tried my first handstand push-up. It was not even close. Real handstand push-ups were not going to happen in this workout. In fact, I was certain that trying these with 1 ab-mat would end in failure as well. There weren't any extra ab-mats available, so I walked over and got a 15 pound plate to act as my second ab-mat. Even if I was not on my A game this night, I should have been able to do a total of 30 handstand push-ups with this setup. That would have been accurate if I ignored the fact that I was sweating profusely.
It's hard for me to articulate how much the amount I sweat affects me in Crossfit workouts. Usually when I complain about sweating, someone will point out to me that they were sweating during the workout as well. That's when I glare at them because they have a couple of droplets on their brow and a barely moist t-shirt on. When you look at my shirt at the end of a workout (or even at the end of a warmup), the word saturation comes to mind. Sure, there are some hard to reach regions on my shirt where sweat seems incapable of migrating to. But for the most part, I look like I was just involved in a water ballon fight when I reach the conclusion of a WOD. To me, there is no movement where sweat is more detrimental to my performance than handstand push-ups. It is tough enough getting upside-down and doing a push-up. Having your hands slide sideways while trying to do this makes the movement damn near impossible.
That was my predicament when I got to the handstand push-ups. I set up my ab-mat/plate combination, got upside-down, and started successfully kipping push-ups. Except I could only manage three at a time before my hands would start sliding away. (My plan was to do sets of three reps prior to the workout, so I guess I got what I asked for.) When that happens, it is not as simple as coming down from the wall, taking a break, and then kicking back up again for the next set. Those damp areas where my hands were needed to be dried. Every. Single. Time. Knowing this, I went over to the paper towel area after that first set and grabbed myself an entire roll. I'd be wiping down my mat a lot during the remainder of this workout.
I eventually got through my 5 sets, but I probably spent more time cleaning my mat than doing handstand push-ups. When I got over to the rings, I heard a voice cheering me on. It was Andrew. He was already done with the workout. Yup, I was that far behind. I was also too tired to remember how to do jumping muscle-ups correctly. All I could remember was that I needed to jump into the transition piece and dip out of it. I'm sure I got very little out of these reps in terms of learning how to do a real muscle-up. I completed 10 reps at the rings and walked back down to my mat.
The routine for the next 15 handstand push-ups was simple enough: do 3 reps, wipe down the mat, dry off my hands, move on to the next set. If only it were that easy. I managed 2 sets of 3 reps, then I hit the wall. Not the actual wall. The psychological one. Because I was kipping all of these reps, I was transferring most of the work from my shoulder to my core. With 9 handstand push-ups to go, my core felt fried. I would get upside-down, draw my knees to my chest, then weakly flail my feet upwards. I must have done this 3 or 4 times. The only conclusion I could come to was that I was done. I guess I could have grabbed some DBs and did 9 reps of the seated press as a scale, but really, I just didn't want to continue on if I couldn't finish these.
After a bunch of failed attempts, I took a longer break before kicking back up on to the wall. The time cap was closing in and I wasn't certain that I'd get back to my KB before 22 minutes was up. I thought about Danielle and her struggles with toes-to-bar during 17.2. I remembered how defeated she looked once her toes-to-bar started to go away. I also remembered how her confidence came back once she got that next successful rep. If I could get one handstand push-up, I could hang on for a set of 3. I got upside-down, brought my knees down, and shot my feet up as hard as I could. Boom! Got a rep. Sure enough, I got two more before coming back down. I was going to get through these. All I needed to do was be patient and keep the faith.
I was extremely relieved when I finished off that 15th handstand push-up. I was also royally pissed off that it took me so long to do them. LC gave us the one minute warning as I raced over to my KB. I couldn't do a set of 12 again. I had to swing that KB until my body quit or until the clock hit 22 minutes, whichever came first. I've had a lot of success with angry barbell movements. Why not try using my rage to swing the KB? I decided to go full Gordon Pibb:
It's just not believable, Cotton!
My first swing was so out of control that I almost lost the KB behind me. After that, I kept the KB under control. As I did one swing after another, I kept thinking about how much time I had wasted on the handstand push-ups. This rage had to last me for a full 60 seconds. I blazed past 12 reps without putting the KB down. Ms. January and Faby started yelling at me not to put the KB down. I wasn't 100% sure whether I'd be able to complete all 30 reps before the time cap, but I was going to try my best to find out. When I reached 22 reps, I could feel the rage begin to fade away. All I wanted to do was put the KB down. But I was 8 reps away and there was less than 20 seconds left on the clock. I couldn't put it down now. That would be so wimpy! I'm sure I had my pain face going and there was likely lots of grunting, but I held on for those last 8 reps. As I put the KB down, the final 5 second countdown began. I ran over to the wall, picked up my ball, did a quick squat, and fired it high. It hit above the 10 foot mark just as LC called time. Final score: 22:59 (time cap of 22 minutes plus one second for each of the 59 wall balls I did not complete).
I went to the bathroom and changed into my second shirt. When I came out, I showed Ms. January how soaked the one I wore in the workout was. She told me that it wasn't sweat, it was simply my fat crying. I assured her that if my shirt was that wet, it was more likely because I was actually crying, not because my fat was crying.
There were a lot more negatives than positives in this workout, but as I drove home, I decided to focus on that last minute with the KB. I haven't done many sets of 30 reps with the 53 pound KB, yet I was able to hold on for a set that large at the very end of a long workout. That was something that I could build off of. It shouldn't require being angry, but if that's the mindset I need to get through difficult moments in a workout, then maybe I should be thinking that way more often.
Wednesday preview: It's a barbell workout! I almost forgot what those were like. Triples of power cleans, front squats, and push jerks with ascending weights are programmed within mini-AMRAPs.
Tuesday, March 7, 2017
Half The Man Bryan Is
Workout date: 3/6/17
By Saturday night, I thought I had made up my mind concerning a re-do of 17.2. I tend to be against doing Open workouts a second time and that was how I was leaning again. Experience has shown me that you don't tend to score much higher (if you even score higher at all) on the second try. And what was the point if I couldn't do a bar muscle-up anyway? To get a better tiebreaker time? The Open doesn't mean that much to me and moving from 95,000th place to 93,000 place wasn't worth the effort. I'd be happy with my score of 78 and my tiebreaker time of 6:01.
Then I made the mistake of looking at Facebook on Sunday. The Black Ninjas team has their own private page and several of my teammates had posted about 17.2. Mark Spak was going to do it for the first time on Monday night. Mooney was going to try it again on Monday night. Neil wanted another crack at completing all of the toes-to-bar in the workout. The Ninjas seemed like they were going all out to make a late surge at winning week 2 honors in the team competition. Shouldn't I be willing to step up to the plate and help out as well?
By Monday, I still hadn't made up my mind. Then I decided to leave it in the hands of the universe. I would get to the gym about 45 minutes before the 6:30 class began. I would spend that time before class attempting to get my first bar muscle-up. If I got a bar muscle-up before 6:30, then I'd skip class and do 17.2 all over again in the hopes of surpassing my previous score of 78. If I couldn't get a bar muscle-up by 6:30, then there was no point in doing 17.2 a second time as I was almost certainly going to get another 78. I would join the 6:30 class and do the Monday WOD instead.
Did I say I was going to give myself 45 minutes to get a bar muscle-up? Better make that 30 minutes. I did arrive at 5:45, but I spent about 15 minutes in the lobby talking with Maggie, Jill A, and LC. I didn't have a whole lot of faith that I was getting a bar muscle-up, so losing 15 minutes of time for attempts didn't seem like it would be that big of a deal. When I was done chatting, I went into the gym and put on my grips. The WOD focused on finding a 1RM snatch, so no one from class was on the pull-up rig. There were a couple of folks doing 17.2 who were on the rig though. Mark and Paul D were doing toes-to-bar while Becky was proving that she had bar muscle-ups in her arsenal. I waited for them to be done before claiming a pull-up bar. Time update: about 6:10.
As the last minute of 17.2 ticked by, I got talking to Justin R about the workout and how I needed to get a bar muscle-up before 6:30 if I was going to take on 17.2 for a second time. He told me something that I had never heard of before (or even thought of). He told me that the pull-up bars closer to the front of the gym had more grip on them. Who knew? I always assumed that all of the bars were about the same and that any slip that developed on them was the product of my gross, sweaty hands. Dana had been completing her workout in that area, so once she was done, I went over and set up shop there.
I had about 20 minutes to find a bar muscle-up. Piece of cake. On my first attempt, my hips got high, but my legs were flailing. My foot ricocheted off the column along the wall which separates segments of the pull-up rig. I was not allowed to parkour my way up over the bar, so even if this initial attempt was successful, it wouldn't have counted. I guess it was good that I wasn't very close or else I could have driven myself nuts right off the bat.
I decided to move back one bar after that attempt. I checked with Justin to make sure that I had hit the column and not the wall. He assured me that was the case. Moving back a bar meant there was no chance I'd kick that column again. A couple more people began watching me as I made my second attempt, including Samson. He saw my second failed attempt and had a look on his face that I knew well. It was the "ummm...you're plenty high enough, just rotate over the bar already" look. He had his camera in hand and suddenly I was reliving Friday night. Noel was convinced that I was getting my first bar muscle-up and had started snapping pictures. Samson was about to do the same exact thing.
Samson took pictures of my next attempt, but it was very similar to my second try. Seemed like I got high enough, but couldn't throw my body over the bar. Aimee was teaching the 5:30 class, but she took a moment to come over and give me some help. She told me I needed to shoot my feet down on the kip. I have a bad habit of not being aggressive, especially when it comes to gymnastics movements. Aimee was letting me know that if I shot my feet down aggressively, I'd get that little extra boost upwards which would allow me to rotate over the bar.
I got ready for my next attempt with a lot of stuff floating through my mind. Push the bar to your hips. Shoot your feet down. Dislocate your shoulder! It was not only a lot to remember, but all of those tips had to be performed at the proper time to make the bar muscle-up work. I jumped up swung on the bar and tried to do everything correctly. I threw the right side of my body forward as hard as I could and for the first time ever, I was over the bar. There was some momentary shock and then I heard a lot of people shouting at me. Was this the moment I got my first bar muscle-up?
You got it! You got it! Start kipping your feet and press out. Wait, your right elbow is flaring out. You need to keep that straight or you won't be able to get the left side up. Why aren't you moving? Everyone in the gym is yelling at you, you have to get this bar muscle-up! Hurry! Hurry!
<plop>
I don't know how long I was fighting for that bar muscle-up. It seemed like a long time. I know there was a ton of pressure on my right elbow and I couldn't keep it locked out. With my right arm unsteady, I couldn't use it to help pull the left side of my body up and over. I felt like I was 90% over the bar, but I couldn't hang on. When I came off the bar, I fell to the floor and sat there feeling like a complete ass. You had it and then you let it go! I was so disappointed. Making things worse was the fact that I now had some pain in my right elbow. Was it worth trying again or should I just wait for another day?
I decided to shake out my elbow and rest for 5 minutes before taking another stab at it. Jill came over and gave me yet another important tip. (At this point, my quest for a bar muscle-up had become like a Wheel of Fortune puzzle where there were only three letters yet to be uncovered. And here I was still needing to buy a vowel.) She told me that if I got in the same position that I was in during that last attempt, that I should lean my head towards the ground rather than trying to press up. As a man weighing close to 210 pounds, gravity would be my friend. I would slide forward, allowing my whole body to come to rest on the bar. Then I could press out to complete the rep. Smart!
I walked back over to the bar. Come on, stupid. You just had it. Do the same thing and use Jill's advice when you get up there again. The 5:30 class was still working on their snatches, but I could tell a lot of them were looking over at me as I got ready for my next attempt. I jumped up, made a big swing, pressed the bar towards my hip, and shot my feet towards the floor. Then I hurled the right side of my body towards the bar. Or at least I thought I did. The right side of my body did go over the bar like it did in my previous attempt. But this time, the left side of my body went over too. I took a moment to adjust my body before pressing up. The press out was the easy part. I locked out my arms and completed my first bar muscle-up.
I'm sure I had a big grin on my face. There was lots of cheering. I dropped down from the bar and got lots of high fives and hugs. Being one of the all-time worst at celebrating, I staggered around, not knowing what to do. I told everyone I was quitting Crossfit as there was little chance I'd ever do anything that would surpass that moment. Might as well go out on a high note. (I wasn't actually quitting, but it is hard to imagine I'll do something that tops this moment. Unless I somehow get a ring muscle-up. Not holding my breath on that one.)
I don't have a photo of my bar muscle-up because "I was being a dick" and did it when Samson wasn't ready with his camera. This isn't the first time I've been a dick when accomplishing something at the gym. There is no photo of me lifting the 215 pound Atlas stone to my shoulder, but I did provide a photo of Ryan A doing it to give you an idea of what it looked like. Don't worry, someone else came through with their first bar muscle-up later in the evening and you'll get to see that photo. (Fine, it was his second bar muscle-up, but he got his first one like 5 minutes earlier and he still had that "new member of the bar muscle-up club" glow about him.)
Having gotten the muscle-up before 6:30, I had to honor my word and attempt 17.2 again. There were 5 of us doing the workout, so we split up into two heats. LC, Danielle, and Actuary Mike would go in heat 1, with Neil and I going in heat 2. Danielle claims that I am her good luck charm, but I didn't bring her very much luck on Friday night when she did this workout and I ended up providing her even less luck this time around. She started off hot though. It took her nearly 9 minutes to complete her first round on Friday. Just 2:15 into this attempt, she was only 5 toes-to-bar and 8 power cleans away from moving on to round two. Then she hit the wall. Once she started failing on her toes-to-bar attempts, her confidence went away. The attempts got worse and worse. She ended up rallying a few minutes later. After a few close misses, she got 2 reps in a row. But that would be it in terms of successful attempts. With about 3 and a half minutes left, Danielle noticed that she had a rip on her one hand. There was no point in continuing on with a bloody finger. She would use her score from Friday night, as would LC. Mike came away with a score of 78.
A lot of people were expecting me to get a score of 79 (or higher) on the re-do because I had gotten that bar muscle-up. Being the pessimist that I am, I told everyone that I'd probably end up doing worse than I did on Friday. It didn't go quite that bad. My first round of lunges were fast. My toes-to-bar were better, as I used a solid kip to do a set of 8 and a set of 4. I thought I could get one more set of four, but I failed on my third rep in that set. Not wanting to waste time, I moved to the low bar and did two quick reps. I did 7 power cleans, caught a breather, then did the 8th power clean to simultaneously end round one and get started on round two.
I changed my grip as LC told me I should save it by holding the DBs differently. I found a valley near my neck where the DBs could rest and wrapped my hands around the handles (the rules said you had to have a full grip on the DBs). This method was easier on my grip, but felt awkward in general. I used this for the entirety of round two and for the first half of my lunges in round three. I probably should have attempted to kip again on the high bar when I started my second round of toes-to-bar, but I went directly to the low bar and did fast singles instead. I did a fairly solid job of not taking any long breaks as I moved through those 16 reps. I took a peek at the clock as I got towards the end of that round and discovered that I was going to improve on my tiebreaker time. I got over to the DBs after the toes-to-bar were done and did 8 power cleans as fast as I could. New tiebreaker time: 5:17 (improved 44 seconds from Friday).
The improved tiebreaker time was nice, but I wasn't doing this workout a second time just to post another 78. I still had another set of lunges before I got to the bar muscle-ups, but the muscle-ups were my focus. After completing the lunges and taking some time to recover, I had about 5 minutes to get a bar muscle-up. Things didn't begin well. I had recovered slightly from the rest of the work I had done, but I was nowhere near as fresh as I was when I got the muscle-up earlier. I wasn't generating enough power on my swing. More importantly, fatigue had stolen my aggressiveness from me. I wasn't throwing my body towards the bar like I needed to if I was going to complete the muscle-up. I took my time between attempts, but I wasn't getting any closer.
Giulz came over and told me to move down to where Dana had completed her workout. It was the same bar I had used to get the muscle-up earlier. I had about two and a half minutes remaining. Going back to the bar I had success on improved my confidence. I was still tired though. My attempts improved, but I still wouldn't call them close. It wasn't until there was about 90 seconds left that I finally got close on an attempt. I think I made 3 more close attempts before time ran out on me. I may have gotten my first bar muscle-up, but that didn't mean I had figured that puzzle out completely. Lots of practice awaits.
When the 6:30 class ended, I saw that Bryan was toying around with bar muscle-ups. I had watched pull-ups come easy to him. I had watched chest-to-bar pull-ups come easy to him. There was no doubt in my mind that it wouldn't be long before he could do a bar muscle-up. Watching him swing on the bar reminded me of Mooney. Bryan looked like he was floating up towards the bar effortlessly. Heavier guys like me looked like they were pulling as hard as they could to get to that height. I went over to watch him and told him that the first time he got a bar muscle-up, he was gonna end up with 8 of them, not one like me.
A few minutes later, Bryan had his first bar muscle-up. Samson was nowhere to be found to take a photo. Bryan's wife, LC, was not watching when it happened. She was working with Esra on her handstand push-ups. This big moment didn't get nearly as much attention as it should have. Luckily, Bryan had plenty left in the tank to go after a second one. He failed on a few attempts, but then he did this while Samson had his camera trained on him:
By Saturday night, I thought I had made up my mind concerning a re-do of 17.2. I tend to be against doing Open workouts a second time and that was how I was leaning again. Experience has shown me that you don't tend to score much higher (if you even score higher at all) on the second try. And what was the point if I couldn't do a bar muscle-up anyway? To get a better tiebreaker time? The Open doesn't mean that much to me and moving from 95,000th place to 93,000 place wasn't worth the effort. I'd be happy with my score of 78 and my tiebreaker time of 6:01.
Then I made the mistake of looking at Facebook on Sunday. The Black Ninjas team has their own private page and several of my teammates had posted about 17.2. Mark Spak was going to do it for the first time on Monday night. Mooney was going to try it again on Monday night. Neil wanted another crack at completing all of the toes-to-bar in the workout. The Ninjas seemed like they were going all out to make a late surge at winning week 2 honors in the team competition. Shouldn't I be willing to step up to the plate and help out as well?
By Monday, I still hadn't made up my mind. Then I decided to leave it in the hands of the universe. I would get to the gym about 45 minutes before the 6:30 class began. I would spend that time before class attempting to get my first bar muscle-up. If I got a bar muscle-up before 6:30, then I'd skip class and do 17.2 all over again in the hopes of surpassing my previous score of 78. If I couldn't get a bar muscle-up by 6:30, then there was no point in doing 17.2 a second time as I was almost certainly going to get another 78. I would join the 6:30 class and do the Monday WOD instead.
Did I say I was going to give myself 45 minutes to get a bar muscle-up? Better make that 30 minutes. I did arrive at 5:45, but I spent about 15 minutes in the lobby talking with Maggie, Jill A, and LC. I didn't have a whole lot of faith that I was getting a bar muscle-up, so losing 15 minutes of time for attempts didn't seem like it would be that big of a deal. When I was done chatting, I went into the gym and put on my grips. The WOD focused on finding a 1RM snatch, so no one from class was on the pull-up rig. There were a couple of folks doing 17.2 who were on the rig though. Mark and Paul D were doing toes-to-bar while Becky was proving that she had bar muscle-ups in her arsenal. I waited for them to be done before claiming a pull-up bar. Time update: about 6:10.
As the last minute of 17.2 ticked by, I got talking to Justin R about the workout and how I needed to get a bar muscle-up before 6:30 if I was going to take on 17.2 for a second time. He told me something that I had never heard of before (or even thought of). He told me that the pull-up bars closer to the front of the gym had more grip on them. Who knew? I always assumed that all of the bars were about the same and that any slip that developed on them was the product of my gross, sweaty hands. Dana had been completing her workout in that area, so once she was done, I went over and set up shop there.
I had about 20 minutes to find a bar muscle-up. Piece of cake. On my first attempt, my hips got high, but my legs were flailing. My foot ricocheted off the column along the wall which separates segments of the pull-up rig. I was not allowed to parkour my way up over the bar, so even if this initial attempt was successful, it wouldn't have counted. I guess it was good that I wasn't very close or else I could have driven myself nuts right off the bat.
I decided to move back one bar after that attempt. I checked with Justin to make sure that I had hit the column and not the wall. He assured me that was the case. Moving back a bar meant there was no chance I'd kick that column again. A couple more people began watching me as I made my second attempt, including Samson. He saw my second failed attempt and had a look on his face that I knew well. It was the "ummm...you're plenty high enough, just rotate over the bar already" look. He had his camera in hand and suddenly I was reliving Friday night. Noel was convinced that I was getting my first bar muscle-up and had started snapping pictures. Samson was about to do the same exact thing.
Samson took pictures of my next attempt, but it was very similar to my second try. Seemed like I got high enough, but couldn't throw my body over the bar. Aimee was teaching the 5:30 class, but she took a moment to come over and give me some help. She told me I needed to shoot my feet down on the kip. I have a bad habit of not being aggressive, especially when it comes to gymnastics movements. Aimee was letting me know that if I shot my feet down aggressively, I'd get that little extra boost upwards which would allow me to rotate over the bar.
I got ready for my next attempt with a lot of stuff floating through my mind. Push the bar to your hips. Shoot your feet down. Dislocate your shoulder! It was not only a lot to remember, but all of those tips had to be performed at the proper time to make the bar muscle-up work. I jumped up swung on the bar and tried to do everything correctly. I threw the right side of my body forward as hard as I could and for the first time ever, I was over the bar. There was some momentary shock and then I heard a lot of people shouting at me. Was this the moment I got my first bar muscle-up?
You got it! You got it! Start kipping your feet and press out. Wait, your right elbow is flaring out. You need to keep that straight or you won't be able to get the left side up. Why aren't you moving? Everyone in the gym is yelling at you, you have to get this bar muscle-up! Hurry! Hurry!
<plop>
I don't know how long I was fighting for that bar muscle-up. It seemed like a long time. I know there was a ton of pressure on my right elbow and I couldn't keep it locked out. With my right arm unsteady, I couldn't use it to help pull the left side of my body up and over. I felt like I was 90% over the bar, but I couldn't hang on. When I came off the bar, I fell to the floor and sat there feeling like a complete ass. You had it and then you let it go! I was so disappointed. Making things worse was the fact that I now had some pain in my right elbow. Was it worth trying again or should I just wait for another day?
I decided to shake out my elbow and rest for 5 minutes before taking another stab at it. Jill came over and gave me yet another important tip. (At this point, my quest for a bar muscle-up had become like a Wheel of Fortune puzzle where there were only three letters yet to be uncovered. And here I was still needing to buy a vowel.) She told me that if I got in the same position that I was in during that last attempt, that I should lean my head towards the ground rather than trying to press up. As a man weighing close to 210 pounds, gravity would be my friend. I would slide forward, allowing my whole body to come to rest on the bar. Then I could press out to complete the rep. Smart!
I walked back over to the bar. Come on, stupid. You just had it. Do the same thing and use Jill's advice when you get up there again. The 5:30 class was still working on their snatches, but I could tell a lot of them were looking over at me as I got ready for my next attempt. I jumped up, made a big swing, pressed the bar towards my hip, and shot my feet towards the floor. Then I hurled the right side of my body towards the bar. Or at least I thought I did. The right side of my body did go over the bar like it did in my previous attempt. But this time, the left side of my body went over too. I took a moment to adjust my body before pressing up. The press out was the easy part. I locked out my arms and completed my first bar muscle-up.
I'm sure I had a big grin on my face. There was lots of cheering. I dropped down from the bar and got lots of high fives and hugs. Being one of the all-time worst at celebrating, I staggered around, not knowing what to do. I told everyone I was quitting Crossfit as there was little chance I'd ever do anything that would surpass that moment. Might as well go out on a high note. (I wasn't actually quitting, but it is hard to imagine I'll do something that tops this moment. Unless I somehow get a ring muscle-up. Not holding my breath on that one.)
I don't have a photo of my bar muscle-up because "I was being a dick" and did it when Samson wasn't ready with his camera. This isn't the first time I've been a dick when accomplishing something at the gym. There is no photo of me lifting the 215 pound Atlas stone to my shoulder, but I did provide a photo of Ryan A doing it to give you an idea of what it looked like. Don't worry, someone else came through with their first bar muscle-up later in the evening and you'll get to see that photo. (Fine, it was his second bar muscle-up, but he got his first one like 5 minutes earlier and he still had that "new member of the bar muscle-up club" glow about him.)
Having gotten the muscle-up before 6:30, I had to honor my word and attempt 17.2 again. There were 5 of us doing the workout, so we split up into two heats. LC, Danielle, and Actuary Mike would go in heat 1, with Neil and I going in heat 2. Danielle claims that I am her good luck charm, but I didn't bring her very much luck on Friday night when she did this workout and I ended up providing her even less luck this time around. She started off hot though. It took her nearly 9 minutes to complete her first round on Friday. Just 2:15 into this attempt, she was only 5 toes-to-bar and 8 power cleans away from moving on to round two. Then she hit the wall. Once she started failing on her toes-to-bar attempts, her confidence went away. The attempts got worse and worse. She ended up rallying a few minutes later. After a few close misses, she got 2 reps in a row. But that would be it in terms of successful attempts. With about 3 and a half minutes left, Danielle noticed that she had a rip on her one hand. There was no point in continuing on with a bloody finger. She would use her score from Friday night, as would LC. Mike came away with a score of 78.
A lot of people were expecting me to get a score of 79 (or higher) on the re-do because I had gotten that bar muscle-up. Being the pessimist that I am, I told everyone that I'd probably end up doing worse than I did on Friday. It didn't go quite that bad. My first round of lunges were fast. My toes-to-bar were better, as I used a solid kip to do a set of 8 and a set of 4. I thought I could get one more set of four, but I failed on my third rep in that set. Not wanting to waste time, I moved to the low bar and did two quick reps. I did 7 power cleans, caught a breather, then did the 8th power clean to simultaneously end round one and get started on round two.
I changed my grip as LC told me I should save it by holding the DBs differently. I found a valley near my neck where the DBs could rest and wrapped my hands around the handles (the rules said you had to have a full grip on the DBs). This method was easier on my grip, but felt awkward in general. I used this for the entirety of round two and for the first half of my lunges in round three. I probably should have attempted to kip again on the high bar when I started my second round of toes-to-bar, but I went directly to the low bar and did fast singles instead. I did a fairly solid job of not taking any long breaks as I moved through those 16 reps. I took a peek at the clock as I got towards the end of that round and discovered that I was going to improve on my tiebreaker time. I got over to the DBs after the toes-to-bar were done and did 8 power cleans as fast as I could. New tiebreaker time: 5:17 (improved 44 seconds from Friday).
The improved tiebreaker time was nice, but I wasn't doing this workout a second time just to post another 78. I still had another set of lunges before I got to the bar muscle-ups, but the muscle-ups were my focus. After completing the lunges and taking some time to recover, I had about 5 minutes to get a bar muscle-up. Things didn't begin well. I had recovered slightly from the rest of the work I had done, but I was nowhere near as fresh as I was when I got the muscle-up earlier. I wasn't generating enough power on my swing. More importantly, fatigue had stolen my aggressiveness from me. I wasn't throwing my body towards the bar like I needed to if I was going to complete the muscle-up. I took my time between attempts, but I wasn't getting any closer.
Giulz came over and told me to move down to where Dana had completed her workout. It was the same bar I had used to get the muscle-up earlier. I had about two and a half minutes remaining. Going back to the bar I had success on improved my confidence. I was still tired though. My attempts improved, but I still wouldn't call them close. It wasn't until there was about 90 seconds left that I finally got close on an attempt. I think I made 3 more close attempts before time ran out on me. I may have gotten my first bar muscle-up, but that didn't mean I had figured that puzzle out completely. Lots of practice awaits.
When the 6:30 class ended, I saw that Bryan was toying around with bar muscle-ups. I had watched pull-ups come easy to him. I had watched chest-to-bar pull-ups come easy to him. There was no doubt in my mind that it wouldn't be long before he could do a bar muscle-up. Watching him swing on the bar reminded me of Mooney. Bryan looked like he was floating up towards the bar effortlessly. Heavier guys like me looked like they were pulling as hard as they could to get to that height. I went over to watch him and told him that the first time he got a bar muscle-up, he was gonna end up with 8 of them, not one like me.
A few minutes later, Bryan had his first bar muscle-up. Samson was nowhere to be found to take a photo. Bryan's wife, LC, was not watching when it happened. She was working with Esra on her handstand push-ups. This big moment didn't get nearly as much attention as it should have. Luckily, Bryan had plenty left in the tank to go after a second one. He failed on a few attempts, but then he did this while Samson had his camera trained on him:
Shave that guy's head, add 70 pounds or so to his body, and you have a
perfectly good snapshot of my first bar muscle-up.
I'm glad Samson took that pic because LC wasn't paying attention when Bryan did his second bar muscle-up either. Bryan called it a night after this one, but I still contend that he could have done six more if he wanted to.
As for me, I went home feeling happy that I crossed off another goal from my 2017 list, but also feeling very sore. I felt like I had been playing football all day long. I'm not sure I've ever completed a Crossfit workout and felt like I had been competing in a contact sport, but my chest hurt badly when I left the gym. Made me wonder whether I cracked a few ribs. It wasn't quite dislocating my shoulder, but Jason was right: it was worth it.
Tuesday preview: I get the chance to do real handstand push-ups in a WOD for the very first time. I got five in a row once. Could I handle 30 total in a workout?
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:
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?
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?
Monday, March 6, 2017
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.
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:
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.
Sunday, March 5, 2017
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 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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)