Tag: Workout Report

The day I met Cindy

I was really looking forward to today: my first meeting with Cindy, one of the CrossFit ladies:

  • 5 pullups
  • 10 pushups
  • 15 air squats

20 minute[abbr title=”As Many Rounds As Possible”]AMRAP[/abbr].

I’m pretty sure I lost sleep over this one – my first all-bodyweight WOD!  I’m at the point where I’m familiar enough with most of the exercises and know my strengths and weaknesses, so I’ve started to strategize a little.  The next phase will be once I’ve gotten a few more of the “standard WODs” under my belt so I can have actual experience of how things feel at different points in the workout, but for now all I can do is visualize.

Of course, the visualization would have worked a lot better if I hadn’t somehow gotten 3 pullups in my head instead of the prescribed 5.  I used a band for assistance, but those extra two take me over the fatigue line a lot faster.

So I had a bit of a notion of adding a small rest phase between sets to pace myself out, but that got taken care of during the pullups, since if I can’t lift myself over the bar, it’s a null rep, so I needed to wait in between 3-5 after the third round or so.

There’s not a lot I would (or could) do differently on this one.  It’s a great benchmark workout for overall fitness, but other than improving overall conditioning and my strength/weight ratio, which just takes focused effort, I’d go out pretty much the same next time.

The only minor tweak would be my rest position if/when the pushups fail out.  In the first few cases, I was just laying prone, with my hands still in position, which kept my arms and chest semi-engaged and made me start from a dead stop.  Later in the workout I switched to more of a cat stretch, on my knees but with my hands still in position, and I found I was able to go from banging out singles to doing 3-4 at a time.

I’ve found that hand-release pushups have been a big help with my overall pushup, so basically I’m going to keep doing those, continue my training, and next time I want to aim for 15 rounds (today was 11 plus 4 pullups.)

Double Unders are the New Suck

Today, after finally getting a set of squat cleans in that felt like some kind of fluid motion instead of a mechanical series of moves, we moved onto the WOD that I’m sure was designed just to make me angry:

15 minute [abbr title=”As Many Rounds As Possible”]AMRAP[/abbr].

This is the kind of workout that I’m sure I’m going to look at in a month or two and laugh at, because let’s face it, the first 3 pieces are pretty simple.  I actually treated the first two as rest phases today.

But that’s because I’m still learning double unders:

Yes I am a big whiner. But salty sweat + wound = ouch!

This is only the second WOD we’ve ever put them in (usually we just triple the number and do singles) and I’m steadily improving but at this point I’m at the “single, single, double, single, single, double” rhythm stage, and I can get 5 in a row on a good run.  The trouble is that that goes away as soon as I get tired, and the more tired I get, the more I miss.  Which makes me more tired.

In the second round my coach called an audible and dropped me to 12 double unders, and made it a 15 minute cap with a four round target, so somehow I managed to finish in 14 minutes.  The cleans and leg raises stayed easy, the wall ball got a little tougher, but we might as well have just made today be 60 double unders and be done with it.

Here’s the thing about jumping rope: it’s all about the wrist motion.  Everything else stays as still as possible.  Here’s the other thing about jumping rope: the second I try to think about any of that, it all falls apart.  Oh, and the bonus thing is that it gets my heart pumping like nothing else.  Plus the “rope = whip” thing.

And the top comment for that video says it all:

Best way to learn DUs: Buy that rope and fuck up a lot. It hurts like shit until you get it right.