11-09-09: Deadlifts and Banded Muscle-Ups

Elm City CrossFit WoD for September 9th, 2011

Deadlift. Stand over a heavy weight, set your body into a solid position, and pick that heavy weight up. Ta-dah! (diablocrossfit.com)

Band-assist muscle-ups, one variation. Rather than having the band attached to the pull-up bar overhead, we wrapped the band around and through one of the rings, then through the other. The only thing keeping it locked into the second ring is your own grip, meaning you can't just camp out at the bottom in the swing. (crossfitsocal.com)

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Strength: 5 rounds

• Deadlift @ 80% (245#)
• Max Rep Muscle-ups (band assist)

Going into this, I had forgotten to check out my 1RM for deadlifts, and ended up choosing a conservative number (315#) and opted to back down a bit from there, so I did 80% of 305#, which is 245#. Turns out, at some point in the past, I actually nailed a 335# deadlift, so I should have added at least 20# to the bar, to get me to @265#. Given that I felt pretty good through all of the deadlifts, and didn't have to resort to an alternate grip, its possible that I could have pushed a bit harder and heavier. Bah.

While I both slowly lifted and returned the weight to the floor in the first round, I opted to just drop the weight from the top for the rest of the reps. I found I was ending up in a worse position when I carefully lowered the bar to the floor, whereas if I dropped it, I could then reapproach the bar anew and get reset in a better position. It also deloads the body for a second, allowing for a good cleansing breath between reps. Not the stuff of cranking reps out for time, but since it was an untimed WoD, that didn't really matter.

I don't yet have a muscle-up, but rather than resorting to pull-ups and dips, I opted to try a new (to me) progression for the muscle-up. Using a band attached to one ring and keeping it locked in with just my grip in the other, and sitting in the resulting swing, I was able to hang below the rings, bounce a little in the swing, and pop up into the dip position above the rings. The best part is that once up there, the band gave little to no assistance for the dip itself. The band reduces the effort needed for the pull-up portion, and allows for training the transition from pull-up to dip without the full weight of the body, or the full motion of a kipping muscle-up, to distract. Definitely a cool approach. In the later rounds, it was definitely my grip on the band that weakened first. Its possible that with the version in the picture above (band around the bar overhead, grip removed from the equation), I could have gotten more reps per round. I don't have a problem with it.

Band-Assist Muscle Ups: 6 / 5 / 4 / 3 / 3