Honestly? I can't remember how long it took me to finish last Friday's workout. Guess I should blog more frequently, huh?
I do recall, however, repeatedly attempting bar muscle-ups prior to our metcon, and failing over and over again.
I've done ring muscle-ups, but bar muscle-ups are terra incognita for me. I almost managed to crank out one -- on my last try, I got my upper body over the bar, and my left arm was in position to push up, but my wonky right shoulder gave out and I flopped back down. Argh.
I'm so close to getting a bar muscle-up that I can almost smell 'em. Sadly, my right wrist has been sore and swollen since the weekend, which means I've gotta take it easy for a little while. But I've got my eye on you, bar muscle-up.
Still, I got a chance to practice some more at the gym this morning -- and also add to my lifetime total (which remains in the single digits -- for now).
Metcon:
For time:
21 jerks (135#/95#)
400-meter run
42 box jumps (24"/20")
400-meter run
21 sumo deadlift high pulls (135#/95#)
400-meter run
This one made me smile when Tim wrote it up on the board. Forty-two box jumps with a 24-inch box? Fun, fun, fun.
Four Fridays ago, we suffered through a similar workout involving -- among other things -- 21 jerks and 21 SDHPs. I was wrecked from using a 95-pound barbell that day, so even though I was tempted to try the RXed weight of 135 for this morning's WOD, I ultimately stuck with 95. It can be difficult to keep oneself from making stupid, ego-driven decisions, though; I kept having to remind myself that this is supposed to be a training session -- not a balls-out competition to see who can get injured the fastest.
Verdict? It was challenging, but so much more pleasant than a swift kick in the nuts. I actually enjoyed the jerks. And while my running form could use some work and my SDHPs were all over the place, I noticed that during the last 400-meter sprint, I had a big grin plastered on my face.
And whaddaya know? I managed to crank out my first couple of dead-hang muscle-ups since last July! Of course, I had to record 'em for posterity's sake:
Yes, they're fugly as all get-out. But if you've ever seen me engage in any sort of physical activity, you already know that flailing legs, flapping arms and throaty grunts are my signature style.
Yeesh. These aren't getting any easier. I almost regret having done that one solitary dead-hang muscle-up once upon a time -- and then never attempting them again. Now, all these months later, I'm starting to fear that it may have been a fluke.
But you know what'll banish that thought? ANOTHER MUSCLE-UP. That's my goal for next Friday.
Looks straightforward enough, right? But wait a second: What are medicine ball V-ups?
I shouldn't have asked.
You start by squeezing a 20-pound medicine ball between your feet. Lie down with your arms up over your head. Pike up with your legs and arms straight, passing the ball from your feet to your hands at the top of the movement. With your arms and legs outstretched, lie back down and touch the ball to the ground above your head. Then, do a sit-up while holding the ball up with straight arms until you're upright enough to place the ball between your feet again. That's ONE rep.
The push-presses weren't all that fun, either.
Result: 151 points (as RXed). It was fun, but my lack of physical coordination was a major hindrance today. Fumbling around with a medicine ball cost me a lot of time and reps.
On the plus side, at the end of the WOD, we got a visit from our buddy Mint. Aside from XFitMama and me, Mint's the longest-tenured member of the 5 a.m. class at CrossFit Palo Alto -- and an all-around amazing and inspiring guy. But he's been absent from class for over a month now; like the Terminator, he's recovering from surgery.
Mint probably wants me to shut up about him already, so I'll just say this: We have sorely missed his deadpan jokes, his penchant for singing along to Social Distortion during WODs, and his ugly green shoes. It's not been the same without him, so he better get his butt back in the gym soon.
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.)
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.
This is the first time I attempted back levers. I'm sure I looked ridiculous, but they're incredibly fun.
I hadn't practiced muscle-ups in earnest since I first managed to do one back in July, but learned that I still have it in me to crank 'em out. Progress!
Result: 15:58. An unscaled Eva -- which requires five rounds of 800 meter runs, 30 kettlebell swings and 30 pull-ups -- would have crushed us. Even with all the modifications, it felt like this workout took forever.
I took it easy today, and just did a bunch of stuff in the garage while M worked out to her TurboFire DVDs.
Here's what I did:
Ring Dips
Muscle-Up Progressions
Barbell Push Jerks
Handstands
No metcon, no cardio. I was done in a half-hour, and focused mostly on learning and practicing movements rather than taxing myself to exhaustion.
There's definitely something to be said about scaling back your workouts on alternating days. I feel a lot less wrecked today, and I'm confident I'll have a lot more energy tomorrow morning when I'm really going to need it.
I don't know if it's justified, but I'm damn proud. It took three sessions of doing muscle-up progressions (and some practice at home) to pull this off, but it was worth it. I'll be coasting on this high all weekend.
Metcon:
15 minutes nonstop:
5 minutes: Kettlebell Swings (I did 100, using a 44-pound kettlebell)
4 minutes: Pull-Ups (I still suck at the kipping variety, and managed only 25 reps)
3 minutes: Push-Ups (I did 47)
2 minutes: Sit-Ups (48 reps)
1 minute: Barbell thrusters (45 pounds -- I eked out 12)
Total: 232 reps (if my math is right, and unfortunately, it usually isn't.)
I wanted to put my CrossFit toys to good use (without killing myself in advance of tomorrow's workout), so I did a little bit of everything I could think of, and put together this mini-Chipper:
I'm hooked on muscle-ups -- because while I can't get do a real one yet, I'm getting damn close, and I'm confident (probably foolishly so) that I'll soon accomplish my goal of cranking one out. In a way, this is kind of a pathetic goal, given that a muscle-up is such a basic skill for gymnasts (and many small children on jungle gyms everywhere). But for an office-dwelling dweeb like me, mastering the muscle-up is a challenge.
Here's the muscle-up progression I've been taught at my CrossFit affiliate:
Start by learning how to hold the pair of Olympic rings using a false grip.
Then, lean back, keeping your back and legs in a straight line and your heels on the floor directly under the rings. Pull your body up to vertical like you're doing a ring row, with your elbows tucked tight against your ribs. As you go vertical, keep your weight on your heels so that your body hollows out and your back sort of rounds out, causing your shoulders to roll or lean forward over the rings, so that you're in the "ready" position for a ring dip. Your elbows always stay tight against your body. Practice this movement a few times.
Now, do the same thing as before, but start from your knees instead of your feet, and finish with a ring dip. In other words, pull yourself up off your knees -- your feet can stay on the floor -- and then transition to the dip position and explode up, lifting yourself entirely off the floor. At the top of the movement, keep your body hollowed out, so that your feet, shoulders and head are slightly in front of the rings. Practice, practice, practice.
Now, reposition the rings, raising them until they're just above arms' reach. Practice doing pull-ups using a false grip.
Then, grabbing the rings with a false grip, jump up and -- using the same transition movement learned in the previous progressions -- quickly pull and push your way up to a full muscle-up.
That's as far as I've gotten, but I can't be too far away from doing the real thing, right?
After working on muscle-ups today, we did the "Jackie" workout:
It took me 10:03 to finish -- mostly because I had to take a crapload of breaks during the thrusters and pull-ups. I need to work on my pull-ups if I want to get better at this.
