Monday, January 3, 2011

11-01-03: A return after nearly 2 weeks off! Back squats, pull-ups and double-unders

CrossFit Garden City WoD for Monday, January 3rd, 2011
(see site above for full workout options and variations)
Strength:
  • A1. Back Squat (41X0 tempo) x 4-5 reps x 5 sets
    Rest 90 sec
  • A2. Chinups Pull-ups (40X1 tempo) x 4-5 reps x 5 sets
    Rest 90 sec

4-7 Strict Chinups Pull-ups: Bodyweight as RX'd (Rounds 1-3)
1-3 Strict Chinups Pull-ups: AMRAP Chinups each set + 5 sec negatives for total of 4-5 reps each set (Rds 4 & 5)

Conditioning:
AMRAP Double Unders in 10 minutes

Bar is across the lats, NOT on the neck or traps. Note the DEPTH of the squat. If you don't get below parallel, you're doing them wrong. If that's what the "trainer" told you to do, get a new trainer. (crossfit.com)


After almost two weeks off, for no particularly compelling reasons, sad to say, I finally made it back into the gym. The problem with working out at work is that when you get slammed at the end of both the calendar AND fiscal years, there's just no way to work in the workout! And when you commute, there's not even time to do it at home... unless you have far more extra time and/or energy at the very beginning or end of the day than I do. I've been thinking about trying to get some work done in the early morning hours, but so far haven't quite figured out what. Meh... Unfortunately, since the time off was caused by, or at least was accompanied by the holidays, my diet has been... um... terrible. Not as bad as in years past, not by a long shot, but not good either. Frankly, I expected a bit more from myself, and am making up for it now. Ugh...

So, after an active warm-up, I jumped right into today's strength training.  As always, I was badly hampered by our lack of squatting racks.  The upshot is that each set included the valuable extra work of snatching the bar from the floor to a behind-the-neck position.  The downside is that I then had to work on getting the bar into the proper position on my upper back (see the picture above) while trying to maintain a flexed back to give it a platform to rest on.  Also, after doing my reps, I would have to push-press the bar back around to the front to lower it to the floor. Lack of bumper plates and a fragile ash concrete floor (under rubber matting) make dropping the bar a VERY bad idea. Basically, I could have squatted a lot more weight, but the pre- and post-set handling of the weight precluded it.  I'm sure that as I get both stronger and more experienced, those concerns will be reduced significantly.

As you can see from the workout prescription above, I subbed pull-ups for the recommended chin-ups. This was not a well-thought out plan. It wasn't even a decision. I realized prior to the 4th round that I was just doing the wrong damn exercise, and figured it would be pointless to switch it up at that point anyways.  Sigh... my chin-ups (palms facing you) are actually stronger than my pull-ups, so I could have either shot for a more difficult variation, or at least not had to drop to the beginner level for the final two rounds. That said, if I had taken some time between reps, I probably could have finished those two rounds as Rxed, but given that the workout made it seem like they should be unbroken, I figured I should shelve my pride and hit the negatives as strong as possible (jump up into the top position of the pull-up, and then drop down as slowly as possible.)


Back squat: 85; 95; 105; 115; 125
Pull-ups: 5, 5, 5, 3(2), 3(2) (final two rounds were 3 strict pull-ups followed by 2 negatives)

Conditioning: Double-unders.  Rotten skill move. I'm back to not being able to chain them together very well, so I opted for the beginner's double-under variation. It's possible that just trying to single-bounce my way through the "flight simulator" as Rxed would have been even a bigger mistake.  I'm not entirely sure at this point.  Either way, As Many Reps as Possible (AMRAP) for 10 minutes is a long damn time to be doing double-unders you suck at, let me tell ya! At the 5 minute mark, I had about 60 reps, so I was shooting for 120+, hoping that in desperation I would start stringing them together.  I believe my record was 3 chained double-unders, and I was doing so poorly, I was happy to get 10 double-unders in a single attempt, even if there were 2-4 single bounces in between each one! Unfortunately for my goal, by the final two minutes, I was breathing pure acid and could barely keep my feet, much less get all technical with the jump-rope.

Double-unders, 10 min AMRAP: 103

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