11-03-09: Hang Power Snatches and "Randy"

CrossFit Garden City WoD for March 4th, 2011
Warmup:
Jump-Rope
Burgener Warmup
Strength:
Hang Power Snatch3-3-3-3-3
Bar does not touch the ground until the completion of the third rep each set.
All reps should be fast and clean. NO FAILED REPS.
Conditioning:
"Randy"
- 75 Power Snatches for time (75#)
Accessory:
GHD Hip Extensions x 50
Break up reps into as many sets as needed

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Upshot to the various "full snatch" variants is that, at least up through this point, they are all identical. How he lands and receives the bar will define whether this is a squat snatch, split snatch, or power snatch. (CrossFit South West Sydney)

Seize the iron. Indeed! (Underground Shack)

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Knowing I would need my lungs soon enough, I went into this workout looking for a quick warm-up, so when I opted for jump-rope, I just wanted to do a bit of practice on double-unders. My goal was to get at least 5 in a row. Upon seeing that I was still back at square one or two, I ended up being happy with three in a row.

I went through the Burgener warm-up twice, once with the bar empty (35#), then with 10# put on, to mimic the warm-up with an Olympic bar. After taking the time to correct some freshmen on their 'concentration curl' technique (if you're going to waste your time with an exercise, at least do it correctly, I guess...), I got chalked up and prepped to do some hang power snatches. I quickly discovered a huge flaw in my technique: though I was starting the motion with the violent hip opening to get the bar moving, I wasn't really jumping with the bar all that hard, which definitely keeps it moving up. Instead, I would pop the hip open, and guide the bar up the rest of the way, rather than working to keep it from flying away. Basically, I was missing a lot of the explosive pop that will make it easier to lift heavier weights.

Hang Power Clean (for 3 reps): 85# / 105# / 115# / 125# / 135#

While the first few sets were pretty easy, by the last two, I could see that my speed was uneven from side to side. With each snatch at 125#, I could see that rather than firing the bar up from my hips, I was actually pressing it out to full extension, but only on my left side. For the final set, I focused much more on the hip drive and the jump with the bar to propel it, and while that made the overall move that much faster, I still had the same problem with the left hand being forced to drive the bar the rest of the way up, which is a press, NOT a snatch.

After unloading the bar for "Randy," I tried to focus on resetting myself completely, and not hopping back into the workout with resting substantially enough. Easier said than done, since the gym was crawling in students, all too unmotivated to bother really working out. In his book, Starting Strength, Coach Rippetoe takes such student "athletes" to task (as well as everyone else who does this):

No one should ever arrive to train not knowing exactly what to do. Wandering around the gym, deciding what looks like fun, doing it until the fun stops, and then doing something else is NOT training.

So, with kids milling around, some actually doing stuff, and my precious floor space under attack, I grabbed the bar and started carving out my zone of death. Despite the relatively light weight, I still ended up having to break the 75 power snatches into smaller sub-sets, as follows: 20 - 10 - 15 - 10 - 10 - 10. Between each subset, i tried to rest as little as possible, but each time, I could easily watch the timer continuing to count...

The upshot was that the final 20 reps or so, I started feeling the jump become a part of the overall power snatch technique. As all the bits that had been allowing me to complete each rep with less than ideal form became fatigued, the PROPER muscles had to take over. I definitely started to feel what the movement should feel like as the bar actually seemed to become lighter, always a nice trick 45-50 reps into a benchmark! Finally finished up at about 7:45.

"Randy" - Total Time: 7:45

Finished up with the prescribed 50 GHD hip extensions, done in sets of 10, followed by a few minutes cool-down on the exercise bike.

11-03-08: Met-Con: Rowing, HSPUs, K2Es, Box Jumps, K2Es, HSPUs and Rowing

CrossFit Garden City WoD for March 3rd, 2011
Warmup:
Dynamic Stretches

Training:
For time:

• Row 1000 500 meters
• 20 Handstand Pushups
• 35 Knees to Elbows
• 50 Box Jumps (24")
• 35 Knees to Elbows
• 20 Handstand Pushups
• Row 1000 250 meters

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It would be awesome to have more than one rowing machine...especially when that ONE starts spazzing out. (crossfit.com)

Scaled handstand push-ups. I was actually facing the other way, with the tops of my shoes on the bar (ie, much MORE scaled), but the idea's the same. (crossfit.com)

From L to R: Knees-2-Elbows, Toes-2-Bar (on rings!), and hanging knee raises. All of these inherently suck, by which I mean they are AWESOME for working your entire abdominal, back, arm and everything else possible. (crossfit.com)

Box jumps. (I can't think of anything informative OR snarky. Caption Fail.) (CrossFit Tribe)

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So, apparently Concept2 rowers can eventually start to bite the dust. Code 50 - failure to compute the drag factor. Happily, it just makes the erg reset itself... handy in the middle of the workout. Heavens forbid it should just muddle through and give you an (*) next to your workout totals, letting you know that the total numbers might be a bit wonky.  I was seriously so pissed off when it failed out at the 500m+ mark on the first row, I didn't even want to sub in something else. When it failed out in the final row around the 250m mark, I was just f'ing done.  Here's hoping a room with no budget for repairs or replacements can handle this...

Ok, so shortened rowing distances totally killed this workout (I can't really claim it was scaled, and spending a minute or two when it first died trying to figure it out didn't help), but the only other scaling I used was doing the handstand push-ups with my feet on the bar of the Smith Machine (I find more uses for that stinking doorstop), rather than up against the wall. I just wanted to experiment with it, and I can say that I'm not a huge fan, but there are more things to try (bar at a higher setting, which should scale towards full bodyweight handstand push-ups, etc.)

Other than the blinding rage, felt ok getting off the rower. Pushed through the first set of push-ups unbroken, mostly because I wasn't sure how to dismount from the bar, and didn't really feel like getting back up in a fatigued state! Knees to elbows were the usual torture, done hanging from the back of the Smith Machine. It's not a pull-up bar grip, but a metal bar about the size of a 2" x 4", so it tends to be a bit grip intensive. For the first time, I tried really hard to not touch down on the ground, or kick off the floor to assist the movement, which made it WAAAY harder. As usual, the first things to start failing were actually my wrists. Guess I need to do more behind-the-back wrist curls (snicker, snicker).

To my own great surprise, I slowly but surely plowed through the box-jumps in one huge unbroken set. Bear in mind each rep involved a jump, then a kind of slow, controlled step down (alternating landing legs), followed by a quick reset before the next jump. Basically, each one took me probably 3-4 times as long as someone just ripping through them. However, I went into them a bit gassed from the previous movements, and had as my mental yardstick that I was going to get at least 25 reps in a row... then just kept going. It was pretty awesome.

Then back to the knees-to-elbows. These were broken up into ever smaller chunks, eventually just two at a time as my wrists and forearms were screaming obscenities at me in languages I haven't heard from them yet. It was a bit scary.  Back into the assisted handstand push-ups, until my feet fell off the bar after 7 reps. I considered moving over to regular push-ups, or perhaps pike push-ups off the box, but in the end decided either of those options would obviously entail doing even MORE reps, and I didn't like that option. I got myself back onto the Smith machine and banged out 13 more reps, as fast as I could just to avoid falling off again!

After that, I got back on the rower, hoping the glitch from earlier would prove to have been a one time event. A little over 250m later, it happened again. I briefly toyed with doing double-unders (or at least working on them) to make up the time, but realized I had NO idea how many or how long to go, so I opted to consider the workout force-ably scaled by the equipment. Not the best of outcomes, but it could have been worse, I suppose. I wish I had known going into it though, I would have figured out a way to translate the distance onto the treadmill or something.

Total Time: @ 24:00

11-03-07: Front squats, thrusters and burpees

CrossFit Garden City WoD for March 2, 2011
Warmup:

• Jump rope
• Shoulder Mobility Circuit
• Burgener Warmup

Strength:
Front Squat
 - Build to a heavy triple in 20 minutes (30X1 tempo)
Conditioning:
6 sets:

• AMRAP in 30 sec of Thrusters 
• Rest 30 sec
• AMRAP in 30 sec of Burpees
• Rest 30 sec

AMRAP = As Many Reps as Possible.
Weight for Thrusters is 135/95 or 40-50% of heaviest set of Front Squats (55#).

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An awesome front squat. (crossfit.com)

A well-performed thruster, a movement which I believe is only trumped by the snatch (both power and squat/split varieties) in terms of sheer range of motion with a barbell. (crossfitatp.com)

Stand, squat, planche position, push-up, kick back to the squat, jump up and clap. Repeat. If you're not quickly gargling with stomach acid, you're not doing it right. These are full body murder, especially interlaced with thrusters!

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Back to working out with the students getting in the way. Tried to correct some massive form issues for the guys slowly trading bench press sets on the Smith machine. These guys just can't figure out that having the bar landing directly over your neck is a bad thing. Upshot is that they were all doing 1/4 to 1/2 presses at best, no matter how many times I pointed out their awful ROM, but that's a discussion that will need to take place in a classroom, or at least an official "listen to me, I'm smarter than you" discussion. These guys want to do seated "concentration" curls with their wrist landing on their thigh. Who am I to point out the many levels of irony and ineptitude? Just a moderator, not a teacher. I've got the track guys starting to listen to me, and a few of the baseball players, but that's about it so far.

Started out with some hasty warm-up, leading off with jump-rope. I'm still struggling to replicate last weeks' feat of linking double-unders. Best I had today was 4-5. I have NO idea what I was doing last week, and no idea how to fix what I was doing today, either. That's a bit frustrating. Moved on to shoulder mobility via the beginning of my active stretching routine, also focusing on a triplet of slower stretches I've started incorporating lately. First, a good morning to try to target the hamstrings, followed by a back bend, trying to mobilize the lower back with the recently loosened hamstrings, then a deep squat pushing the knees apart with my elbows, to wake up the rest of the posterior chain. I generally hold each position for about 3 seconds at the longest, not trying to shoot for static stretching, but just moving the body through those positions that will grease the grooves for the exertions to come. Along those lines, a trip through the Burgener warm-up just to keep those skills fresh also serves as another shoulder mobility enhancement.

Finally, it was time for the front squats. I hate these, but only because my arm flexibility really limits me on them...and the lack of a rack makes doing them a pain in the ass. Check out Dave Lipson front squatting heavy triples, like what I was shooting for today. That arm/hand position is really only usable when you can walk the bar right back into the rack. It's utterly useless if you're going to have to finish off the move by trying to get the bar to levitate back up into your grip so you can put the bar down safely on the ground. Especially several sets in. the goal of that position is to have the bar carried on the front of the deltoids, pinned there by the fingers. Still, for all that, I started out light, aiming to do lots of sets, lots of small jumps, and really focus on both my hand and arm position, as well as foot width and back position. I'm not strong enough in my technique to worry too much about going super-heavy, since my form would begin betraying me long before those increased weights could start causing huge amount of growth.

So, with that in mind, in 20 minutes I did 10 sets. Starting with the empty bar (35#), and pretty much unable to get it in the proper position (which more weight does actually enable) I moved up 10# at a time, successfully nailing triplets at the following weights:

35# / 45# / 55# / 65# / 75# / 85# / 95# / 105# / 115# / 125# (PR)

With proper form, and for a triplet, 125# is a new PR for me, though its very low. However, putting in the work on proper from, proper arm and hand position (which came together in about the 3rd round, and fell apart in the last 3), and keeping everything else tight, will do more good for increasing those weights in the long run than just throwing myself at 125# and hoping against hope that there would be more in the tank ever could.

After resting up for a few minutes, I dropped the weight on the bar to 55# pounds, took a moment to scoff jealously at the original Rx for the workout (135#), then said a silent thanks to the knowledge that killing myself at that weight was NOT the point of the workout, and that 55# would be way more likely to allow me to annihilate my lungs. No matter how easy the first few reps or sets felt, the weight would be MORE than adequate to stimulate a training response!

Rounds	1	2	3	4	5	6	Totals
Thrusters	10	7	8	7	8	6	46
Burpees	14	9	7	6	6	6	48

Despite the fact that I ended up barely able to get up off the floor by the time this one was over, I felt really good throughout this workout. A few days off had done my body wonders as far as recovery from the last workout, and the cold symptoms that made that last workout so terrible were mostly past, meaning I had been sleeping way better for the past few days, too. I had handled food better during the day, as well. In every way possible, I was just better prepared for this workout, and that's just a fantastic feeling.

11-03-04: "Helen"

CrossFit Garden City WoD for March 1, 2011

Warmup:
Dynamic Warmup (including Jumps)
Burgener Warm-Up x2

Benchmark!: "Helen"
3 rounds for time of:

• Run 400 meters
• 21 KB Swings - 55# Dumbbell
• 12 Pullups (band assist)

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Hell-In. Note the bars just waiting for those gentlemen to come by and see them AFTER they've run 2800m, done 126 kettle-bell swings, and 72 pull-ups. Much as I fantasize about competing in the games one day, the mere thought of this workout is enough to bring a visit from Pukie the Clown. (games.crossfit.com)

Kristin Clever and Annie Thorisdottir go head to head on the kettlebells. (games.crossfit.com)

Graham Holmberg (2010 Games Male Champion) cranks out pull-ups. I don't *think* this is actually from Hell-In, since he seems to be back in the main stadium, but it still works. He's way better at pull-ups than I am. For Real. (games.crossfit.com)

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Don't do benchmarks when you're tired, in the middle of a head-cold, and poorly fueled.  This wasn't a workout, and I don't expect to see any physical changes as a result of plowing through it. If anything, it was a mental victory, just for pushing through it, but overall, I should have taken today as a rest day. I felt like crap and paid for it.

That said, I did actually PR on it, but considering I last did it a year ago, when I was not nearly as fit, and in the middle of my full on knee agony, its not really *that* much of an accomplishment. I knocked a minute off, but if I was feeling better, I'm sure I could have carved off 5-6 minutes. Not that impressive on a crappy time, but still an improvement. As it is, I've left a time for me to destroy the NEXT time Helen comes up.

Total Time: 17m (PR by 1:00)

By way of comparison, check out the videos from the CrossFit 2010 Games, wherein "Helen" was converted into "Hell-in."  The first round involved running triple the distance (1200m), triple the swings (63) and triple the pull-ups (36). The second round was double everything (800m, 42 swings, 24 pull-ups) and the third round was back to the original distance/rep scheme (400m, 21 swings, 12 pull-ups). Basically, a double-"Helen." After that, the competitors had 90 seconds (I believe) to put as heavy a weight as possible overhead. Always fun in a state of utter exhaustion!

Mens Heat 3 of Hell-In [mov] [wmv]
Women's Final Heat of Hell-In [mov] [wmv]

11-03-02: Ring Dips, Hang Power Cleans and Double-Unders

CrossFit Garden City WoD for Monday, February 28th, 2011
Warmup:

Active Stretching

Burgener Warm-Up x2

Strength:

Ring Dips (41X0 tempo) x 4-5 reps  x 5 sets (2 min rest b/w sets)
Conditioning:
3 rounds for time:

• 10 Hang Power Cleans (135# 125#)
• 100 33 Double Unders

Scaling:
 - Choose weight on HPC and Double Under reps that allows for completion of workout in less than 10 minutes.

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Look closely. Name a SINGLE muscle in the upper body that the ring dip doesn't hit. (CrossFit Central Oregon)

Every muscle in the body fires BEFORE the arms start moving at ALL. Hips open violently, shoulders shrug hard and fast, and AFTER the bar is moving, the arms finish the lift and get under it to let it rack on the shoulders. Notice this lifter is at FULL extension and the arms have barely bent at all. ( CrossFit Colorado Springs)

Double-unders at the 2010 CrossFit Games. Note the legs. The at-first weird looking angle is actually a sign of a fairly mature double-under. She's not wasting precious energy (or time) with a big jump, but is keeping it tight and close. (911 CrossFit / CrossFit Games)

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I really hate working out with a head cold, but really, there was no good physical reason to not do it...other than the sore throat that made breathing hard agony... but not nearly as bad as Fran-lung feels, so whatever.  Took some extra time with the warm-up since my shoulders and pecs were still *crushed* from Tuesday's Tabata push-ups. After awhile, they definitely started feeling a bit better, but not a whole lot. Twice through the Burgener warm-up, adding in a hang power clean component also seemed to help. A little. Ah well, nothing like deep ring dips to wake up some sleepy, stiff shoulder carriage muscles! :)

Hopped on the rings and tried to keep to the prescribed pace (41x0 = 4 seconds down to the bottom, pause one second, extend up as fast as possible, then repeat without resting at the top).  I came down after only 4 reps, but had a feeling I could have held on for a fifth, a feeling I proved over the next 3 rounds. I'm sure I was counting too fast on the descents, but I tried to keep them as slow as possible. By the end of the 4th round, I was definitely getting tired, and the fifth rep out of the bottom was a bit slow and shaky. The 5th round started a bit better than that (2 minutes rest seemed like so LONG between the first two rounds, and just flew before the fifth, as always...), but quickly devolved. I barely locked out the 4th rep before coming off the rings. Still, not a bad little strength workout.  While my arms quivered, I started setting up equipment for the couplet.

Picking up the 45# plates for the bar, they felt SO heavy (rotten dead arms), but rather than drop straight to the 35# plates, I decided to put the 45# on the bar, just to see how they felt. One pretty good feeling test hang power snatch later, I decided to just go with those two plates. On the bar (35# by itself), the total was 125#, not too badly scaled from the 135# as Rx'ed. I figured it felt heavy, but liftable...hopefully for unbroken sets of ten. At least for the first round, I did manage to keep the set unbroken. My wrists were pretty fried by the end of it (from the extreme flexion necessitated by the catch position, which I am still not completely comfortable in.), but I managed to get through them. I picked up the jump-rope (not entirely sure of my scaling), and a miracle happened.

I strung together 33 picture-perfect double-unders, with NO single-bounces in between. Just pure, clean double-unders. With a bit of prescience, I knew that wouldn't happen again, decided to count my blessings, and scale the double-unders from 100 per round to 33, which would give me a total of 100, the most I've ever attempted in a workout. The second round of hang power cleans was also unbroken, mostly off the high from my accomplishment with the jump-rope.  Heading back to the rope for the second time, I tried to not jinx myself. I got 12 chained together, another 3, then finished the set unbroken. Still a very good performance for me, especially with the increasing oxygen debt and muscle fatigue!

My only thought for the final round of hang power cleans was "unbroken." Just do them all at once. Don't put the bar down. Don't let go. It was a very near thing. I wanted to drop it so bad after the 8th rep, and just pushed through for two more reps, with my wrists and forearms on FIRE. Everything else was sore, too, but those were just screaming at me. As I grabbed the jump-rope, I saw that my time was at about 6:30. I figured if I finished at the 8-9 minute mark (already assuming I wouldn't replicate 33 unbroken double-unders), I would be really happy with my performance.

And that began 5 minutes of the worst, most pathetic jump-rope you've seen in your entire life. I could barely single bounce, much less get a double-under, much less string together multiples. I couldn't even get back to the single bounce! I was just *shot*. I struggled through, and in desperation, managed to string together about 5 at the end, when I really only needed 2. So, for the final round of jump-rope, in 5 minutes I completed 36 double-unders. I think. Its entirely possible that in the pain and fatigue, I might have miscounted. I tried not to, but I personally can't really vouch for the number 36, which was the other reason for overshooting 33. I can almost guarantee I didn't miss more than 3 reps, so either way I should be all good. Ugh. I seriously thought I was going to die after that.

Total time: 11:00.

11-03-01: Ring work, tabata rowing, push-ups and squats

CrossFit GardenCity WoD for February 24, 2011
Warmup: 
3 sets of 10 Overhead Squats, 2 minutes of DU practice
Skill:
Ring work - ring dips, pull-ups, etc.
Conditioning:

• Tabata Row
• Rest 1 min
• Tabata Pushup
• Rest 1 min
• Tabata Squat

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Overhead squats. Those will wake up your shoulders in the morning.

Double-unders. Note the higher than normal jump and the invisible rope. Tell-tale signs. (CrossFit Jax)

Ring dips. Full depth ring dips. Man these suck. (CrossFit Rockwall)

Hey, that's Chuck Liddell and John Hackleman! Even the Iceman appears to suffer on the rower! (CrossFit Rockford)

Tabata push-ups. I really REALLY hate them. (CrossFit Works)

Air squats. At last, something I'm good at! (CrossFit Santa Cruz)

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I love and hate the overhead squat/double under warm-up. If only it weren't so damn effective. The even further upshot was that I was finally linking a crap-ton of double-unders together. It was freaking awesome. Following an exciting warm-up (never thought I'd type that), I focused on some ring work. Plenty of dips, knee lifts, L-sits, pull-up progressions, and toes-to-bar, which were freaking HARD hanging from rings!

After recovering for a bit, I cranked up the tabata mix (20 seconds of metal, 10 seconds of calm), and prepped for some bad-assed interval training. The row was more or less uneventful, though I was really hoping the 7th round was the last, so the 8th was just awful when the metal kicked back in.

Tabata push-ups are my kryptonite. I had a fairly successful first round, but I tapped out pretty quickly after that. I wish the floor in the gym was a bit cleaner, because I ended up face down on it repeatedly in the last 3-4 rounds. However, tabata squats, while not being a favorite, are certainly one of the things I'm better at.

Rounds	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Totals
Rowing	60 calories								60
Push-Ups	12	8	5	5	5	4	4	2	45
Air Squats	14	13	12	13	13	12	13	14	104

11-02-28: Turkish Get-Ups, Met-Con Triplet

CrossFit Garden City WoD for Thursday, February 11, 2011
Warmup:
Jump Rope

Dynamic Stretches
Burgener Warm-up x2 35#

Strength:
Turkish Get Up
 - In 15 minutes build up to your heaviest triple

Conditioning:
3 rounds for time:

• 50 lateral barbell hops
• 21 Ball Slams
• 6 Band Chest to Bar Pull-ups or 12 Jumping CTB Pullups

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Sig Klein does a picture perfect Turkish Get-Up, provided we ignore the weird picture in the middle. I seriously can't make that one work at all in this series. (oldtimestrongman.com)

Med-ball slams. Full extension overhead, down to a squat on the release. It's the proper range of motion that makes these a total beast. (CrossFit Sacramento)

Band assist Chest-to-Bar Pull-ups. This is what I did for the first round. (CrossFit Threshold)

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As always on days with a ton of students in the gym, I found myself cutting corners trying to just the get workout in, much less done perfectly. Warm-ups were greatly curtailed in the interest of holding onto the gear I had "reserved" (read: piled around me), rather than repeatedly having to tell students to wait. I don't want to keep them from working out, even if they are doing useless activities that barely count as "exercise."  Making sure that at least my shoulders were pretty well stretched and good to go, I quickly moved through jump-rope (trying not to whip anyone with it), active stretching, and twice through the Burgener warm-up. After that, I cleared a little bit of room, and hoped I wouldn't be tripped over while prepping for the TGUs.

Started at 35#, knowing that I should be able to do that fairly easily, and was happy to be proven correct. I handled 40# and 45# pretty well, too, though I had some issues starting the sit-up portion of the movement at 45#. Moving to 50#, this became even worse. I need to head back into the CrossFit archives of movement how-tos and see if there's any tips on initializing the movement under weight.(Yup, I've been doing it wrong. Thanks for the corrections, Jeff!) Though they were slow and painful, I did manage to squeeze out a triple of TGUs at 50#, which is a new PR for me, single AND triple, I think. So that was pretty awesome.

After putting away the dumbbells and trying to catch my breath for a bit, I set myself up with a barbell, loaded with 45# for the lateral jumps. I would have loved to do the double-unders as Rx'ed, but the reality of that would just have ended up with me in an ice cast again, or at the very least, taking 2 hours to complete what's clearly supposed to be a fast met-con. I also opted to scale the reps for the lateral jumps. 100 would have been grueling, and not being 100% sure of my knees, even now, I didn't want to find out mid-way through that I had made a massive miscalculation. So, I figured, do the 50, but hit them HARD. Which I did. As much as my lungs of fire would let me. :D

First round, I managed to keep the first 42 lateral jumps unbroken, and just *thought* about breaking up the set, and suddenly realized I HAD. Rotten brain. Quickly banged out the remaining 8 jumps, grabbed the med-ball, and banged out the first 21 slams. I had set up our gravitron-like pull-up machine with a very light-weight rubber strap, hoping to do 6 slightly assisted C2B pull-ups, with the strap only really helping at the bottom of the hole. So, 6 super strict but NOT C2B pull-ups later, I decided to switch (if I could) to jumping C2Bs on the Smith Machine frame.

Second and third rounds, the lateral jumps were broken up, but with minimal rest times included. Usually it was more to reset a bit to make sure I didn't just trip over the bar on the next jump! Med-ball slams were unbroken for all sets, which I felt rather good about. However, watching concrete dust come out of the seams in the rubber matting was a bit disturbing, since I was doing them somewhat near the already existing sink-holes in the concrete (apparently, "ash concrete" should NOT be used in a gym, and repeatedly dropped weights (NOT all me, as the hole was there when I got to the school) have punched holes in the concrete around the room. Safe!

Second round of pull-ups, I was able to move over to jumping pull-ups, but in my fatigue, didn't realize I was facing the wrong way on the Smith machine, and on the final rep, cracked my skull on the frame. That sucked a bit, but it was at least a glancing blow, so it could have been MUCH worse. Final round, facing the right way, was MUCH safer! Both of those rounds were broken up, usually into sets of 3 or 4 as needed. Usually it was to reset the legs and make sure I wasn't just bombing into the bottom of the negative and screwing up my shoulders, which were already feeling a bit "tweaky" after the TGUs.


Total time: 8:45


Post-workout, did some playing around on the rings, slung off the back of the Smith machine. Several dips, static holds, knee lifts and L-sits later, my shoulders and pecs were fully smoked, making today a total success! ;)