10-11-04: Barbara

CrossFit WoD for Tuesday, November 2nd 2010

"Barbara"
Five rounds, each for time of:

• 20 10 Pull-ups
• 30 20 Push-ups
• 40 30 Sit-ups
• 50 40 Squats

(Scaling courtesy the fine folks over at CrossFit Brand X.)
Rest precisely three minutes between each round.
Austin Malleolo 25:51.
Jason Khalipa: 2:53, 3:05, 3:23, 3:46, 3:54 = 29:01.
Kevin Montoya 31:29.

So yeah. Apparently Austin, Jason, and Kevin are all complete and total monsters. Sigh.  ;)

Pull-ups!!! (crossfit.com)

Push-Ups!!! (crossfit.com)

Sit-ups! (I promise, I try to look like less of a douche.) (crossfit.com)

Perfect squat form. Notice the depth of the squat. (crossfit.com)

I went into this with a fair amount of residual tightness in my lower back from yesterday's clean and jerk workout. No amount of warming-up or stretching seemed to touch it. However, I figured that, despite the core-centric nature of this workout, it probably wouldn't be too much of a problem. I was right. I was just wrong about why. It turns out this workout was just going to devastate me so completely, a sore back was seriously the least of my worries.


I opted for the BrandX scaling because 100 pull-ups in one workout is still WAY outside of my comfort zone, but 50 seemed doable...if optimistic. That left 100 pus-hups... ooookay, 150 sit-ups (uh oh), and 200 squats.  Well, that last didn't sound toooo bad.  I went with doing decline sit-ups on a bench, as we have no ab mat (go go gadget amazon list!), and that number of GHD sit-ups would have been sheer insanity. Maybe. In hindsight, a lesser amount of muscle isolation might have gotten me through the sit-ups more easily. Maybe not. I definitely tried to tense/flex my full leg musculature to assist on each rep, but I have no idea if having the knees locked at a 90 degree angle hinders that or not.


Either way, my first round took 5:40.  Having looked at the times posted above, this irritated the ever living crap out of me, and for the second round, I knocked it down to 5:10.  However, I had pretty much already blown up on pull-ups and push-ups, so times started increasing drastically from there on out.


The third and fourth rounds were both in the 6:30+ range, but things didn't go all pear shaped until most of the way through the 5th round. I was only working my way through the 5th round because I have an actual CrossFit Level 1 class and certification coming up in December, so I wanted to have a completed (if scaled0 Barbara under my belt. I felt run over at the end of the 4th round, and only the thought of the seminar got me back on the pull-up bar for the final round. I made it through the 10 pull-ups, broke the push-ups into two mini-sets, and then moved onto the final set of sit-ups. This was bad. I nailed maybe 10, but everything after that was in sets of 2 or 3, tops, and for the final several reps...I had my hands under my legs, helping to pull me back up. I was so far done, I was cheating in mostly ineffective ways!


I stood up from the sit-ups, and suddenly realized I felt TERRIBLE. My previous over-heating sweat was suddenly replaced by cold sweat, and I was suddenly battling with Pukie for the remains of my breakfast, or whatever was still left. I ended up making sweat angels for anywhere between 6-10 minutes. I wasn't sure how I was even going to get back upstairs to go back to work, much less finish the workout.  By the time "te spell" has passed, I had definitely recovered, so I banged out the final squats in sets of 10.  Those were the one exercise I kept pure the whole way through.  There were no quarter squats, or relaxation of the back flex.  I had to adjust foot positioning once in awhile, but my squats seemed to be pretty solid.  Final round time: 14:45.


Total time: 49ish minutes. I don't have my notes in front of me, that's pretty much ball-park. Man I wanted to die.


Musical accompaniment: Blind Man's Sun, the best band you never heard in your life.