12-07-26: Running, box jumps and pull-ups

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Thursday, July 26th, 2012

Camille LeBlanc-Bazinet makes running look easy. (CrossFir Games)

The box jump. Make that box twice as tall and you're onto something...

Heather Bergeron shows exactly why non-strong people struggle with pull-ups: They really do require almost every muscle in your body to be working. (crossfit.com)

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WoD: 8 Rounds For Time

• 200 Meter Run
• 3 Box Jumps 30"
• 3 Dead Hang Pullups

Another workout that looked sort of easy on paper, but quickly degraded into a battle to the finish. We had the option of rowing 100m rather than running, and started out the session with a nice tutorial and quick coaching from Coach Larry, a varsity crew rower during his days at Syracuse U. (Can I say "our days" if I was somewhere on campus at the same time, even though I didn't know him then?) As always, for someone like me who taught himself for a few years before finally joining a gym and getting real coaching, there were plenty of cues and pointers to pick up, and the brief coaching/trouble-shooting he provided definitely highlighted and fixed a few problems I hadn't yet sorted out... or realized were problems. Tight shoulders? Who'd have thought?

After that, we set-up our boxes and pull-up stations, and then got to work. For the first few rounds, I felt pretty good, but it was definitely warm and muggy out, and I started having trouble controlling my breathing on the runs, meaning I was gasping by the time I got back for the box jumps, and 30" is a pretty tall jump to try to hit completely fatigued out. I tried to keep all the jumps more or less chained together (the standard was to stand up tall on top of the box, then step/hop down.), which I was fairly successful at. Then came the pull-ups. Each round, I alternated between pull-ups (palms facing away) and chin-ups (palms facing me), for the dual benefits of giving different muscles a break, and helping me keep track of what round I was on (pull-ups on the odd rounds, chins on the even ones).

As the rounds wore on, my prep time before the pull-ups/chins started to get longer, and after only a few rounds, I was down to grinding out singles anyways. The average time per round, which had started at a little over a minute, started to creep up, and by the final few rounds, the pull-ups alone were taking me that long. Still, drenched in sweat, I finally finished somewhere around the 13 minute mark, having done the entire workout RX'ed, even to the point of not using any bands for the pull-ups (though perhaps I should have.)  I had figured that it was just three at a time with enough time in between sets to rest... forgetting that between the running and pull-ups, there would be no rest. Silly dumbass.