I've given up believing what I see on the website for OT and their "beginners" class. The main class seems to hit their mark all the time, but the beginners class isn't as consistent with whats online... and maybe it's how I read and interpret the WODs? Who knows. Tonight seemed extra chilly outside, I actually wore a pair of sweats over my shorts....
Get to the box plenty early. Warmup says 8 minutes of medium rowing. I started well before most people were there... and I seem to have lost my love for the rower. I only went 6 or 700m and decided that was good enough. Did some of my usual pvc pass-throughs, good mornings, some russian baby makers (for some reason), and a few other things waiting for people, to come in tonight. I'm going PR hunting...or at least I planned on it.
We went back to the small gym, kept the bootcamp people out front. Still a lot of fresh faced CrossFitters around... and thats cool, good to see new people sticking with it. I hate line drills for warmups (so we're not rowing 8 minutes mmmm?). Correction, I hate line drills in my lifters. They're already looking beat up and I need them to last a while longer. So we get all warmed up, then it's time to work on power cleans. We did a hang clean progression, and a clean pull progression before we finally started doing power cleans. Adding weight as we went, I think I only ended up with 115 while we were doing sets of 3. Not quite the PR I was hoping to hit...
Moving on to the METCON. We took the same weight already on the bar and started warming up our dead lifts, did a small sets, then I added the rest of the weight to make it RX. 165. 12 minutes, 15-12-9-6-3 of deadlifts, hand release pushups, and air squats, if you finish, walking lunges or more air squats. I don't want to do air squats...my quads are still irritated with me mind you, my brother didn't make it out yesterday, so I got no massage relief. He says he'll be here tomorrow... we'll see.
The first set of everything went unbroken. In my head I was breaking it up into sets of 5, but I never stopped... Second set is where I had some issues. My back... like the outside parts of the lower back, and even some of the obliques (side abs) were protesting this gross negligence of their soft tissue state, broke this down into 3 sets of 4. Did that for the each movement actually, taking micro breaks hoping to make it through this workout in time... Next set was 3's. Every third dead lift I'm so happy to drop the bar. The pushups seemed too easy (I must have done something wrong) and the squats were bearable... Either the micro breaks helped, or I'm getting better. I'm hoping, leaning towards the sentiment I'm getting better. I blazed through the last round, apparently I'm last again, I hear Diana (Brandons wife... see, got her name, finally), and this other dude (need his name) pushing me. Nice to have that again.
I look up at the clock. 9 something. That was easy... then it dawns on me (I can be a bit slow at times) that I get to do walking lunges and/or air squats. I'll admit it. I'm hurting now in the quad department, there was a sale on motivation, and now we're all out. I would do sets of 2 or 3 for which ever movement I was going for. That last 2 minutes and change took forever. Finally, it's time. I didn't keep track of the air squats... we'll just call them bonus.
So I'm panting... and I'm staring at the bar. 165 on it. Thats a power clean PR waiting to happen. In truth, I wanted to hit another squat clean PR as well as up my power clean... but with what feels like an impending quadpocolypse, I put the squat clean from my mind. I stared at that bar for probably 3 minutes while other people were cleaning up. Finally, said eff it, went over, grabbed it, pulled the shoulders back and heaved for all I was worth. Got it. Ugly, but I did it... and my back is bowed... so I dropped the bar. Ok... I got one once, lets make this look better. Second pull, no bowed back, but it wasn't much prettier. Oh well, got my 15lbs PR.
So, another PR, getting stronger... but I'm learning too. Brandon happened to catch the second attempt, and when we were talking later, he said I had that bar HIGH, and he said it looked easy. The pride part of me is happy it looked easy, I can't lie. The "edify stupid" part of me wants to fix it. Thats an oxymoron from my high school days that... well, never mind that. The point is, I'm pulling the bar too high... and I know my elbows aren't near fast enough... and I could be catching the bar a little lower in the power clean approved squat zone area thingy (whats the name?). In short, I can probably go 20-30 lbs heavier if I catch the bar a little lower, and use some elbow speed. Always something to work on.
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