Friday's Workout

From the looks of our box at 5 a.m., you'd be surprised at how many folks are inside, ready to kill a workout.

Strength Skill:

• Muscle-Up Progressions

The last time we worked on muscle-ups was in July of last year -- just a couple of weeks after I started CrossFit. But it opened my eyes to what good coaching and a little practice can achieve. After a few brief sessions of playing around with progressions, Tim was able to coach me into pulling off a strict, dead-hang muscle-up in class. I'm still amazed I was able to do it. So amazed, in fact, that I haven't attempted to do another one since, for fear that I'll discover that my one muscle-up was just a fluke.

Today, I started at the beginning again, and worked my way through the various progressions. The jumping muscle-ups felt good, so with a little more practice, I'm fairly certain that I'll be able to crank out more dead-hang muscle-ups before the month is over.

Ironically, the Terminator tore a biceps muscle just last week while practicing muscle-ups. (He was WARMING UP with muscle-ups before starting a WOD at a CrossFit box in Virginia when he got hurt.) So today, he was forced to take it easy...or so we thought. (That's what we like to call foreshadowing, folks.)

Metcon:

We tore through the second CrossFit Games Open WOD today.

AMRAP in 15 minutes:

• 9 deadlifts (155/100)
• 12 Games standard push-ups
• 15 box jumps (24"/20")

Having done my mobility work for this WOD, I was more than pumped up about this workout. As soon as the clock started, I burst out of the gate at breakneck speed. The deadlifts came smooth and fast, and I made it through the first few rounds of box jumps without the slightest pause. Three minutes in, I'd completed over 2 rounds. If I could keep the pace going, I'd finish with over 10 rounds!

But of course, I couldn't keep up the pace. At all.

The deadlifts weren't heavy (just twenty pounds heavier than me!), but by the fourth and fifth rounds, they began to slow. My push-ups started looking like they were being done underwater; I had trouble getting my chest flush against the floor as required -- though I seemed to have no problem smashing my forehead on the ground with each rep. And for good measure, I took a fun little tumble off the plyo box in the eighth round. But as humbling as it was, I thoroughly enjoyed this workout.

Meanwhile on the other side of the gym, the Terminator was busy dominating. With an injured right arm, he had to scale the workout -- but he decided to scale it UP. The Terminator did 95-pound single-arm deadlifts and one-armed push-ups, and managed to complete five rounds. The guy's relentless, I tell you.

As for me, I completed 8 rounds + 1 deadlift (as RXed), for a total score of 289. Unlike my one-armed robot friend, I'm not exactly setting the world on fire, but DAMN: this stuff is FUN.