11-10-05: Bench press and triplet

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Wednesday, October 5th

Coach Rip works bench press form with Eva Twardokens. If Rip tells you something, chances are he's right. Period. (crossfit.com)

Wallballs. Hip crease goes below top of the kneecap in the bottom position, and all the joints explode open at the top to drive the ball up to the 10' target. This is NOT an upper body exercise! (CrossFit 2L2Q)

Push-ups. Good enough for the military, good enough for you and me. Body is kept rigid the entire time, chest to ground all the way up to fully extended arms. (TideTheory.blogspot.com)

Eva T. again, this time demonstrating chin-ups. Of course, olympic show-off that she is, she's doing them with a 70# weight between her ankles. Some people... are just awesome! (crossfit.com)

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Strength: 3 x 8

• Bench @ 65%

Sellout: On the minute: 5x 10x

• 4 Wallball 20#
• 3 Push-ups (strict)
• 2 Deadhang Chin-ups (supine grip only)

According to my PRs, my bench is at 175#, so 65% of that is 115#. After warming up with the empty bar and 95#, I was ready to rock. 8 reps at 115# was EASY. Understanding that the workout was not designed to be uber-tough, I only went up 10#, but I wanted to do a little more work. I feel I could have safely gone up to 135# and been ok, but I didn't want to push it so that I was really outside the design of the workout. All sets were completed, fairly easily.

Since the class got done benching with time to spare, Coach Vin was able to make good on his threat to increase the number of minutes for the sellout. Instead of the 5 originally on the board, we upped it to 10 minutes of work, on the minute. I felt pretty good for this triplet. The wallballs were no problem, I can do three push-ups at a time no sweat, and I can do two unbanded chins at a time pretty easily, too. It felt good to do a pull-up/chin-up workout as Rx'ed, rather than having to scale with a band or something. If nothing else, it sped up how fast I could transition onto the bar, maximizing rest time for the rest of the minute.

I was lucky to be working alongside Greg, with whom I had just shared the bench. Greg is about my size, but MUCH stronger. Basically, I was benching 125#, and he was putting two 45# plates on the end of MY weights for his reps. My only goal for the triplet was to keep up with him. He's (obviously) got some upper body strength on me, so while we stayed pretty close for every round of wallballs, EVERY round of push-ups he smoked me and was onto the bar as I was still finishing the 2nd or 3rd push-up. Usually, I would be jumping onto the bar as he was finishing up. Still, for 10 minutes, I maintained about that same split, and I felt pretty good about that. 8-9 minutes in, a little kip started showing up in my chin-ups, but other than that, I know I held the form tight for the entire time, and the difference between my best round (@19 seconds) and my worst (@22 seconds, when I missed my grip the first time I got on the bar), is a testament to the fact that I wasn't having as much of a problem recovering as I used to. By Jove, I do believe this CrossFit stuff might actually be working!