Monday morning, time for on-ramp workout day 7.  Before I get into that, though, a precursor about the weekend should probably be in order.  If you’ve read my post about Day 6, I was feeling reasonably OK when I left the gym.  And that evening.  But that night my little girl was sick so there wasn’t a lot of sleep going on in the house.  When the girls went down for their afternoon nap on Saturday, I thought I’d try and join them for about half an hour.  I laid down with them, nodded off reading my book for a bit, and when I woke up, I could not straighten my arms.  It was agony to try to unfurl them.  I couldn’t even lay down in an inverted starfish position without serious pain.  I did a bit of google searching and learned about Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), which makes it sound pretty mild, but I gotta tell you, I was hurting until Monday morning.  By Monday morning it was starting to subside, but was by no means gone.  So, a couple of rough nights with little sleep and I certainly wasn’t feeling refreshed walking into Day 7.  But walk in I did.

I stretched out while watching the regular cross fit class do their work-out.  Oh my, they were mighty impressive, and I almost felt guilty stretching as they worked, but I had my turn pretty quickly.  Warmup was three sets of:

  • 10 split jerks (with PVC focusing on form)
  • 10 air squats
  • Samson Stretch
  • 10 situps
  • 20 mountain climbers

All pretty reasonable… heart rate was up, wasn’t too tired, ready to go.

We began with today’s focus — rings.  Chris started by demonstrating a muscle-up, then, we moved to a progression with ring pulls.  I did three sets of five ring pulls from a fairly horizontal position, which made them significantly tougher.  Then he had me do a couple dips on the rings (I think I managed about 2.5), and he seemed surprised I was able to do even one of those.  Hmmm.  Then we started a muscle-up progression, just practicing going from an extended fake grip to a pre-dip position.  This was rather uncomfortable, but we did about five of those before putting the rings away.  Next, on to the WOD (Workout of the Day).

Today’s workout was a progression of jump rope and back squats.  Jump rope typically would be double-unders, but as I haven’t mastered those yet, Chris made them singles.  On the bright side, thanks to junior high wrestling coach I can pretty much rest while I jump rope singles… the bad news is that was pretty apparent, so the workout was probably easier than initially intended (which we made up for).  Chris gave me a choice of lighter or heavier weights for the back squats, and I chose heavier to see how things worked.  The progression was as follows:

  • 50 jump rope singles
  • 3 back squats
  • 40 jump rope singles
  • 6 back squats
  • 30 jump rope singles
  • 9 back squats
  • 20 jump rope singles
  • 12 back squats
  • 10 jump rope singles
  • 15 back squats

Before we began, Chris gave me a primer on back squats, and I did five or six to make sure I had the form down (or as close to down as a rookie can get).  Then it was time to begin.  We put roughly 55 pounds on the bar (I think) and it was off to the races.

The jump rope was rather easy, and the back squats were a focus more on form than strength, though by the time I got to the 12 and 15-rep sets, that weight was feeling mighty heavy.  Overall, though, this was the easiest WOD I’d completed yet, which didn’t go unnoticed.  I completed the entire thing in just under 6 minutes, so Chris added a “cash-out” program.  What did that mean?  20 Jump-the-box burpees.  Basically 20 burpees, but after each one, I was to broad jump onto a 24-inch high box, stand up, then step off to do my next burpee.  Given that my legs were already pretty tired from the back squats, this was a challenge, but I managed to get all 20 completed without ever stepping up onto the box (though I swear that box got higher and higher the more burpees I did).  Another good workout, and I only needed about five minutes before I was stable enough (quit shaking) to drive home.  On to Wednesday and Day 8!