11-11-16: Muscle-Up progression and Handstand Push-Ups

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

Band-assist handstand push-ups. I think form-wise, I might be better served by doing them against a wall instead of in the band, but with the band helping scale the weight... that might NOT work so well! (CrossFit Geneseo)

Camille Leblanc-Bazinet mid muscle-up. Strong kip and insane upper body strength = better at them than me. For NOW. (crossfit.com)

I *so* want to make fun of this dude for his 5-10# weights... but they're probably the weight I should have been using, and if he's demonstrating the movement for physical rehab of an injury, that would make me even more of a jerk. Keeping the elbow still, extend the arms, opening the elbow joint, until arms are perfectly straight. Repeat until the triceps catch on fire...

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WoD: 2 x 7min - Up by 1

• Muscle-up (scaled as band-assist muscle-ups)
• Handstand Push-Ups (HSPU) band-assist

Sellout: 4x 2x

• 15 DB Skull Crushers 30#
• Max Rep Weighted Dips

After the suck-fest that was Tuesday's workout, it felt pretty good to get in and do some skill work. Sure, it meant working on things I'm not great at, but without the pressure of a timer or even the competition with the other gym-members (and there was a great turnout this morning, too!)  My scaling for the muscle-ups was band-assist. I've looked for some videos of this on-line, and have found many variations, but nothing quite like how we do it at ECC.  Basically, the band is locked onto itself on one ring, then held with sheer grip strength in the other ring. Your butt goes in the resulting cradle. Ta-da, instant weight modification for the muscle-up! It took me a few tries to get the right band tension. The first band I tried (green) was so taut I couldn't get far enough below the rings! The second (thin red) made it nearly impossible to transition up into the dip. Finally I found one of the thinner blue bands, and that one was just right. Apparently, I'm Goldilocks. Oh well.

While the workout as prescribed was to do 1 of each movement the first minute, 2 of each the second, etc., I chose the recommended tactic of really trying to focus on clean technique on the movements. Oh, and spending 30 seconds almost every round just trying to kick up into the HSPU. Dammit. Ultimately, I ended up doing 3 sets per round, maxing out at 3 reps in those final sets. While I ended up feeling ok on the muscle-ups, the feedback on my HSPU's is that my core control is at best completely lacking. Rather than having a firm, stacked, slightly arched spine, I apparently was doing my best imitation of a bow, completely broken in the abs and mid-section. So, that's something to work on next time...

After that, we moved onto the sell-out, also known as triceps devastation. Knowing more or less what I used to be able to do with a single dumbbell held by the blob (70#), I opted for two 30# dumbbells. This seems to have been a bit much, especially after the WoD. I made it through the first 10 reps more or less unbroken, but my left arm started wavering like crazy, so I started resting a bit to keep the skull-crushers from being too aptly named. By the time I finished the set, it was with ugly looking singles. Then, just out of curiosity, I tried a weighted dip. Failing that, I ditched the weight and was still only able to bust out three reps on the rings.

The second set of skull-crushers took... somewhat longer. By which I mean a LOT longer. Enough that it wasn't that big a deal that I failed even a single rep in 3 attempts on the dips afterwards, because the next class was already in and at the white board being briefed on the day's workout, and I had to get to work!