Start of day 6 (Friday morning) and I’m beginning in pretty bad shape. My back just ached the entire day before, it hurt so much I had trouble sleeping at night, and this morning it’s worse, if that’s even possible. So I started stretching about an hour before my workout, hoping to gain any little edge I could.
Arrived at the gym just in time to see the previous class doing their WOD — a 50-40-30-20-10 progressions of air squats, bear crawl (just one length), sit-ups, bear crawl, repeat until done (or deceased). Oh my.
While they finished up, I began my warm-up… Four sets of 10 burpees and a 200m run. Probably a pretty reasonable warm-up on most days, but already being sore and tired, this pushed me a bit. Made it through, though, and other than my back being so sore it hurt to stand, it didn’t go badly.
We sent right into 5-8 minutes of jump rope, working on doubles. I found the singles actually relaxing after the warm-up as I got my breath back in this exercise, and am getting closer on doubles, but still not quite there. Chris stopped me after a few minutes, and we spent a few moments doing some back stretches before moving into a progression on cleans with the bar bell.
We began with PVC, starting with dead lifts, then a progression of cleans. Definitely some skill involved here to keep most of the lifting the job of the legs, and not the arms. My form isn’t great by any stretch, but on the bright side, I can start to tell myself what I’m doing wrong and when it’s getting better. So that was our skill portion, as we spent quite a bit of time here working through the progressions.
Time for the day’s workout… a 21-15-9 progression of thrusters followed by pull-ups. So what’s a thruster, you may ask? Basically, you start with the barbell doing a clean, then from a standing clean position, do a front squat and push the bar (and yourself) up to a fully-extended hold. Chris offered to start me with lighter weights, but we decided to up them a bit to challenge me (I think the final weight we decided on was 75 lbs?).
So, first set of thrusters. Started out kinda fun (something new), and I made it to around 12 before really starting to struggle. Pushed out a few more then had to take a break at 16. Was hoping to pound the last nine out, but ended up doing three more, then two to finish it off. On to the pull-ups. I wanted to start with regular strict pull-ups to see how many I could do. After the thrusters, apparently the correct number was three. So I slid over to the box and finished out with jumping pull-ups (the downside was each jumping pull-up only counted as half credit, so I had to do 36 of them to finish off my 18). It seemed like something that should be pretty easy, but I really focused hard on not jumping any more than I had to, so my shoulders were just about falling off by the time I finished (which required another break or two).
On to round two. This time, I made it through about 8 thrusters before dropping the bar. Thankfully, I was able to get my head out of the way. Finished up then with a set of 4, tried for 3, but actually had to take a breather before pushing out the last one. Then back to the pull-up bar. Tried a strict one — nothing doing, so straight on to the box. To finish the set I needed 30 jumping pull-ups. And let me tell you, they took everything I had and a bit more. Again, I didn’t make it through unbroken, but I did them.
One more round of nine reps. By now thrusters weren’t nearly as fun as they were at the start, but I managed to complete them with a set of 5, 2, and 2, then back to the pull-up bar. Started strong with the end in sight and got through 10 before my shoulders went on strike. I negotiated with them for a moment and they came back to work, did five more, then two more, then thought I’d try to be a bad ass and end on a high note. I moved over to the regular bar and tried to muscle out one last real pull-up. Crap. Arms back on strike. Back to the box to finish the jumping pull-ups. Day six complete, and a two day rest to hopefully get healed up before our next adventure on Monday!