11-07-15: Shoulder-2-Overhead, Pull-ups and Push-ups

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Friday, July 15th, 2011

Nikki Hall showing the full extension needed with the bar overhead: legs straight, hips fully open, elbows locked out, shoulders shrugged up towards the ears. It should really look like you're hanging from the bar. Don't actually try that, though. (games2009.crossfit.com)

Pat Barber demonstrates just some of the muscles used for pull-ups. If you don't have them, you might want to scale. Like me. Hooray for jumping pull-ups! (games2009.crossfit.com)

The always awesome Annie Sakamoto demonstrates perfect push-up form. (crossfit.com)

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WoD-10min AMRAP

• 5 Shoulder to Overhead (Press/Push Press/Push Jerk) 135# 115#
• 10 Pull-ups - Jumping
• 15 Push-ups

I felt pretty good going into this one, though after warming up to the Rx'ed 135#, I realized I'd be lucky to make it out of the first round with my shoulders intact, much less try to met-con through MORE rounds after that. Dropping to 115# left it fairly heavy, but heavy enough to be a real chore a few rounds in. I was right.

I scaled the pull-ups to jumping pull-ups, knowing that, like the weight on the bar, even a banded pull-up would limit me to one or two rounds, tops. The struggle of getting in a few pull-ups is (ideally) secondary to the full body (and especially upper-body) infliction of pain and suffering on the metabolic pathways.  That said, the jumping pull-ups were essentially pretty easy in all 4 rounds I completed, so maybe I shouldn't have scaled it down quite *that* much.

Not surprisingly, it was the push-ups that ended up devastating me. After getting 10 unbroken in the first round, I spent the rest of the workout being really impressed with myself every time I gutted out three whole reps in a row. Needless to say, the 15 push-ups were always the part of the round to take the longest, and inevitably set me up to suffer badly on the next set of overhead work.

Total Rounds: 4 + 2 push jerks