Wednesday, January 5, 2011

11-01-05: Rowing, dumbbell thrusters, hip extensions and ring-work

CrossFit Garden City for Wednesday, January 5th, 2010
Conditioning:
5 sets:
  • Row 250 meters
  • 15 Dumbbell Thrusters 25#
  • Rest 3 minutes
Goal is each round as fast as possible and maintaining consistent times across all 5 sets. Weight on thrusters should be scaled to allow for unbroken, but VERY challenging, sets of 15.
Accessory:
  • GH Hip extensions x 30 reps in as few sets as possible
Skill:
  • Work with gymnastic rings.

Pat Sherwood showing awesome extension at the end of the pull. Straight legs, VERY opened hips, full arm flex. I bet he can get 3-4 more yards per pull than me. Jerk. (love you, Pat!)(crossfit.com)
Dumbbell thrusters just suck. (crossfit.com)
"Glute Ham Developer Hip Extension: Set up so that the pelvis is clear of the pads, and without any movement in the torso, extend and flex at the hip only." <-- pulled straight from crossfit.com (more so than usual). (crossfit.com)

Active warm-up and stretching, especially focusing on calves and hamstrings, both of which were tight and crampy after the last two days' workouts. I tried out a few dumbbell weights for the thrusters, and settled on 25#. 45# is still beyond my ability to control the separate weights well enough, 35# seemed too heavy to plan on doing 75 reps. 25# it is!

Spent a few minutes setting up the C2 to track 250m rows, which meant I could easily re-row the same distance.  Yay technology.  Rowed the first round, felt pretty good. Did the first 15 thrusters... man they suck. I need to find some sort of video or pictures about where you rack the dumbbells during the squat bit of the thruster. My technique was to spin the dumbbells so that my palms were facing me, putting one head of the dumbbell on my shoulder, and "squeezing" the other heads together, stabilizing the whole thing. Which probably means it was some sort of cheat... but doing this with even lighter weights would make doing the thrusters more or less unweighted. So, 25#, dumbbells pressed together on the squats. 15 was difficult, but doable. 30# would have been too much in a round or two... 27.5# would have been perfect. Ah well...

Second round felt much the same as the first. Both came out to the exact same duration (2:15).  During the three minute rest before the third round, I figured out how to make the rower let me race against my previous times... which meant I immediately carved 10 seconds off my previous time. Which implies that I should have been rowing at that faster pace the whole time. Dammit.  Thrusters were a bit harder after the faster pace, but my time on the round was 10 seconds faster. Which, as with the rowing, is a good and bad thing. I failed to keep my time the same round to round. Doh.

Fourth and fifth rounds, I managed to beat the pace, then tie it in the final round. Thrusters continued sucking, but I managed to keep them more or less unbroken.  Well, not in the fifth round. That one ended up being 10 reps, weights dropped to thighs (but not to the floor!), then a final 5 reps. That rest botched my time on the round, which kind of sucks.


Round times: 2:15 / 2:15 / 2:05 / 2:10 / 2:20

After a few minutes to let the need to puke subside, on to the GHD hip extensions. Shockingly (at least to me), I managed to get it done in two sets of 15.  The original Rx was for 50 reps. Long after the fact, I probably should have shot for the full 50. Dammit! (again...)  However, for all the various failings in this workout, what follows makes me VERY happy...

Ring work: strapped the rings to the Smith machine frame (it feels good making that hunk of crap into something useful) and got to work trying to get the control position. Though still a bit shaky, I could already feel muscles firing in new and interesting ways. The most obvious feeling was the pinch in the center of the chest of my pecs working overtime to keep me up. Who would have guessed?

Progression work for the muscle-up. Reduced weight, grip work, body control. Groundwork. (crossfit.com)

After a few minute working on the progression for the muscle-up, I hopped back up into the rings in the control position. Quite a bit more stable...so I tried for a ring dip, full-depth. Surprisingly enough, I nailed it. Was it pretty? Not particularly. But was it a full-depth ring-dip? It sure was. Was I able to do another? No. But still, on the path to a ring muscle-up, which I am VERY keen on getting, this was a pretty awesome accomplishment. :D

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