10-12-17: Front squats and double unders

CrossFit Garden City WoD for Friday, December 17th, 2010

Notes:
Warmup:

• All - Shoulder Mobility Prep for Front Squat.
• Beg - Practice doubles/singles.

Strength:

• Front Squat @ 30X0 and FULL depth.
• Beg - 5 sets of 3. Increasing weight each set.

Conditioning:

• Front Squat - Use 60% of heaviest singl
• Double Unders - Scale accordingly to keep workout under 15 minutes.

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The front squat. Elbows high, weight on deltoids. (crossfit.com)

Double-unders. Each jump, the rope *should* go under the feet twice. Much skill and cardio involved! (cfjax.com)

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Did a bit of jump rope for warm-up, more fun with switching up the single-bounce and running steps, still working on mixing it up.  I apparently have trouble going from the single bounce to the run step with the right foot still down. Apparently every time I've done it so far, I've raised the right foot, so the first bounce off a single foot was ALWAYS off my left foot. That was an odd thing to discover, and something I'm now working on. Its an odd issue to find, but one worth obliterating all the same. Then on to basic hip and back flexibility work, as well as wrist/forearm work in preparation for the coming front squats. This would be my first time working on front squats since my Level 1 Certification, where we worked on front squats with pvc, but not with weights.  Also, do to our lack of a squat  or power rack, every round would have to be started with a clean to the rack position.


Strength - Front Squats
85# - 105# - 110# - 115# - 120#

The first set was very easy, which was a nice surprise. I was easily able to get my elbows up and rest the bar on my delts, which was new.  Unfortunately, to get the bar fully on my delts, I had to loosen my grip until the bar was just being held by my fingertips in position. On at least two of these sets, my fingers further slipped, requiring me to grab the bar in a California front squat position:

Not good. Generally accepted, but still not good.

Ending up here without a rack to walk the bar back into just sucks.  I can't figure out how to put the bar down safely when I haven't had to cross my hands...AFTER getting stuck there, I would end up lowering the bar by lowering my arms, still crossed, until the bar was at hip height, palms facing forward, and then lowering from the legs, since my torso was still all knotted up.  Not fun.  The lack of bumper plates, lifting platforms, and/or a floor that could definitely take 120# being dropped onto all combine into a definitely pain in the tuchus.

For the conditioning phase, my 60% 1RM came out to 72#. The closest I could get to that was 70#, which was an ok weight for the prescribed 10-8-6-4-2 progression.  I opted to dramatically reduce the number of double unders, however.  Given my inability to string them together with any regularity, I chose the progression of 5-10-15-20-25 reps. Since the notes said to scale to keep the workout to under 15 minutes, this seemed like a good bet.

First set of 10 was pretty easy, though my legs and lungs were screaming by the end. As expected, 5 double unders took me about as long as the squats had... sigh.  The squats kept getting harder, even at the reduced weight, and lowering numbers of reps, as my wind and recovery started to fade.  The second to last set of squats, with only 4 reps, was arguably the hardest. I was just gassed at that point from struggling to get 15 double-unders (which involved several resets and lots of single bounces interspersed). The final round of squats, 2 reps, was easy enough, and the final 25 double-unders actually had a few here or there strung together. I need to work on the rhythm of the rope, and I think cut the rope down again.  I get the feeling that a shorter rope might make it easier, since less work would have to be done to get less rope around twice per jump.  Who knows?

Conditioning time: 9 minutes