12-04-04: Presses and HOORAY burpees!

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Wednesday, April 4th

The press, performed with a minimum of  backwards movement.

Burpees. Let the suckage begin.

WoD: 7 Rounds For Time 

• 5 press @ ½ BW (95#, reduced to 85# in round 6) 
• 10 burpees 

Coming off a period of several missed or infrequent workouts, a full-body destrominator like this one was sure to hurt. Yup. Not having weighed myself since starting at ECC back in June, I again opted to go for “ideal” bodyweight, about 185-190 pounds for my height, meaning ½ BW would be about 95#. Coach Vin had excellent advice: whatever weight we were going to use, make it out of 10s and 5s, rather than using full 25#, 35# or 45# plates. That way, if and when the weight became too heavy, it would be easy to strip off a single small plate, rather than having to take one big one off and put another big one on. Brilliant!

The first round of presses went well enough, and the first set of 10 burpees (oddly enough, in the middle of it, I pictured my early attempts at them, where stringing together 4 was an achievement!). The second round went… tolerably well. The third round of presses was hard, and may have been broken into two sets… who can remember when the suck sets in? The burpees became my mortal enemies, with me barely able to complete one, much less string them together.

Midway through the sixth round’s presses, I finally had a failed rep, and I quickly stripped off two of the 5# plates, with help from Big John, who had finished his workout several minutes earlier… the big jerk. When I cleaned the weight back up to my shoulders, it didn’t feel any lighter, but the next three presses were definitely a little easier. Not much, but enough to make it through. Sadly, that didn’t do a thing to make the burpees easier.

There was a moment, at the end of the sixth round, when everyone thought I was done with the workout… everyone else was, why not me. I had the option to instantly scale the workout and just be done with it. It sounded good… but not great. Coach Vin asked was I was done when I got up from the last burpee, to figure out my time. Staggering back to the bar, I waved him off, croaked out “one more round” and got back to work. Clean, 3 reps, drop, clean, 2 more reps… then f’ing burpees again. 10 awful burpees later (in form and feeling), I was finally done.

Total time: 13:06