30-
- Burpees
Box jumps, 24 inch boxDouble-Unders- Toes to bar
Man, did this ever suck. Despite it being rainy and nearly cold in NYC, our unventilated basement weight room was still a nice toasty 90-100 degrees, and just as humid as you could wish. So of course I forgot the fan. Argh!!
Decided early to sub the double-unders for the box-jumps, as part of my on-going attempts to NOT re-destroy my knees. they've been feeling pretty good, so I'm gonna stick with the 'no box jumps' rule, as well as 8-10 fish oil capsules a day. At some point, maybe when I'm another 5-10 pounds lighter, I'll experiment with adding them back in. As it was, my decision to add in what still amounts to an advanced skill nearly killed me today...
I was already thinking about how to scale the workout. Just cut each round in half? I decided that rather than doing only half the work in shorter rounds, I would cut out the 2nd and 4th rounds entirely, so that I was still doing 60% of the prescribed work, as well as hitting that initial 30 reps of each exercise. I knew the burpees were going to be the worst. The largest range of motion for any bodyweight exercise. What's easy for a Chris Spealler or Kristan Clever sucks for those of us over 200#, especially for those of us who are NOT John Welbourne. Needless to say, there was probably an argument for scaling the number of burpees in each round, but I opted not to.
I managed the first set of burpees as a set of 15, followed by three 5 rep sets. Drenched in sweat and breathing hard, I grabbed my jump-rope. I knocked out 1, then 3, double-unders. And then struggled to get a 5th. Finally, I strung together a bunch of them...I was so surprised I didn't really count. I guessed that I did 15 strung together, though honestly I think it may have been more than that. Still, that got me to 19. I then struggled with the final 11, and by the time I was done, my lungs were SCREAMING and I was fairly wobbly on my feet. On to the toes-to-bar!
As always, due to our craptastic choice of gear, the only place to even attempt exercises like this is on the frame of the Smith machine, which is NOT an easy grip to maintain. As with the burpees, these were very broken up more for the stinging in my hands from trying to grasp onto that stupid frame than for ab/hip flexor fatigue. Still, eventually I made it through. Most of me wanted to quit right then.
My time after that first round: 12:xx. Looking at the numbers, I would have had about 3 minutes to complete all 5 rounds to compete against Kristan Clever. Unreal. I opted to continue on with the workout. Stupid me.
Time after the second round: 25:xx Split time = @13:xx. Getting slower! This was really disheartening to realize that I had taken even longer to do less work (20 reps each for this round compared to the previous round's 30 reps.) Still, I carried on...shakily.
Total time: 32:45 Seriously, the only saving grace was that between the 2nd and 3rd round, I managed to not slow down too much. I was really dragging by the end of this, and can't say that it was any fun at all. Which of course means that it was freaking BRILLIANT and will need to be added to the permanent roster. Anything that kicks your ass in THIS many directions is seriously hitting all your weak points, and should therefore be the first item in your arsenal of tools to improve with. If this only had some running or swimming...
Today's musical selections included Tuatara, Blind Man's Sun, and God Street Wine.
Decided early to sub the double-unders for the box-jumps, as part of my on-going attempts to NOT re-destroy my knees. they've been feeling pretty good, so I'm gonna stick with the 'no box jumps' rule, as well as 8-10 fish oil capsules a day. At some point, maybe when I'm another 5-10 pounds lighter, I'll experiment with adding them back in. As it was, my decision to add in what still amounts to an advanced skill nearly killed me today...
I was already thinking about how to scale the workout. Just cut each round in half? I decided that rather than doing only half the work in shorter rounds, I would cut out the 2nd and 4th rounds entirely, so that I was still doing 60% of the prescribed work, as well as hitting that initial 30 reps of each exercise. I knew the burpees were going to be the worst. The largest range of motion for any bodyweight exercise. What's easy for a Chris Spealler or Kristan Clever sucks for those of us over 200#, especially for those of us who are NOT John Welbourne. Needless to say, there was probably an argument for scaling the number of burpees in each round, but I opted not to.
I managed the first set of burpees as a set of 15, followed by three 5 rep sets. Drenched in sweat and breathing hard, I grabbed my jump-rope. I knocked out 1, then 3, double-unders. And then struggled to get a 5th. Finally, I strung together a bunch of them...I was so surprised I didn't really count. I guessed that I did 15 strung together, though honestly I think it may have been more than that. Still, that got me to 19. I then struggled with the final 11, and by the time I was done, my lungs were SCREAMING and I was fairly wobbly on my feet. On to the toes-to-bar!
As always, due to our craptastic choice of gear, the only place to even attempt exercises like this is on the frame of the Smith machine, which is NOT an easy grip to maintain. As with the burpees, these were very broken up more for the stinging in my hands from trying to grasp onto that stupid frame than for ab/hip flexor fatigue. Still, eventually I made it through. Most of me wanted to quit right then.
My time after that first round: 12:xx. Looking at the numbers, I would have had about 3 minutes to complete all 5 rounds to compete against Kristan Clever. Unreal. I opted to continue on with the workout. Stupid me.
Time after the second round: 25:xx Split time = @13:xx. Getting slower! This was really disheartening to realize that I had taken even longer to do less work (20 reps each for this round compared to the previous round's 30 reps.) Still, I carried on...shakily.
Total time: 32:45 Seriously, the only saving grace was that between the 2nd and 3rd round, I managed to not slow down too much. I was really dragging by the end of this, and can't say that it was any fun at all. Which of course means that it was freaking BRILLIANT and will need to be added to the permanent roster. Anything that kicks your ass in THIS many directions is seriously hitting all your weak points, and should therefore be the first item in your arsenal of tools to improve with. If this only had some running or swimming...
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| Still one of the greatest CrossFit images anywhere. |
Today's musical selections included Tuatara, Blind Man's Sun, and God Street Wine.
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