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Saturday, February 18, 2012

"Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it ." ~ Maya Angelou

Spartan Shape-Up, Day 213:

It was CrossFit day, today, BlogLand! I had the best of intentions to go to the early (not-crowded) class... but then I was like WTF. It's Saturday, I'm sleeping in, because I CAN. 10:30 class it is.

The problem with 10:30 class in Mid-February, is people are still really enthusiastic about their New Year's get-in-shape resolutions. There was the usual influx of new people at the start of the year, and they seem to be really packing up the weekend classes. 10:30 class was packed to capacity (there's only so many bars/clips/kettlebells), that they had to turn people away (always sign up in advance!!).

I looked at the whiteboard that lists the day's WOD. My soul died, and my T-Rex arms twinged in anticipation of the torture to follow. Yes. I do this for fun, because I enjoy it. I don't know why people don't get that? LOL

Today was a CF named WOD: "Desforges"... which we decided to make into a partner WOD, for ease of equipment:
5 ROUNDS (for time):
12 Deadlifts
20 Pull ups
12 Clean and Jerks
20 Toes to Bar

... try not to die. LOL Also, to make this a partner WOD, One person would start deadlifts, while the other started pull ups. If you finished before your partner... BURPEES. Then Switch. Then do the same for the next two movements. Again, try not to die.

So, as you may have guessed, I needed to modify this a little. (The key to success is modifying to where you are challenged, but can still complete!) Here's how it went.

I was rolling with a 100# deadlift, because that's where my partner needed to be. I also wasn't sure about the 5 rounds of it, and I knew that the other exercises were going to kill me. SO... I was okay with a little lighter than capacity. However, in retrospect, this needed to be heavier, as I was still pulling this just fine at round 5.

As I moved onto pull-ups, I took a deep breath and had to STFU. I HATE these. I am so insanely bad at them that I get insanely frustrated that some days I can not just will myself into doing them. Lately, at Crossfit, I've been trying to do them with the support bands, because I feel that it challenges me more, than jumping pull ups (also, I noted I have the tendency to 'cheat' a jumping pull up, when I get tired). So, I got my giant band and pushed over my box to jump off of. I did not want to do this part. I started. So there is no misrepresentation here, I do these in sets of like... 3. That is how hard they are for me, even with the band. I also determined, in this first set, that 20 was going to be too many for me to handle competently. Adjust on the fly. I ended up doing both the non-lifting maneuvers at 15 reps each. Modify!!
I sweated. I gritted my teeth. I finished 15.

On to clean and jerks. Again, my partner could only handle lesser weights, so I ended up with a 45# set up. Decidedly not enough. Even though this is one of my weaker (overhead! argh!) movements, 45# is still way to light. Even after 5 rounds. Same situation as the deadlift - I was still easily getting through 12 at a time at the end of the last round.

Lastly, it was on to Toes to Bar. Yeah. Not there YET. The next downgrade from that is Knees to Elbows.... Still not quite there. SOoo... I do some sort of ungraceful modified version of that. Where I hang there, panting, arms screaming, trying not to die, and pull my knees up as far as I can (hopefully beyond the 90 degree angle, but not always). It's real not pretty. This is one of those exercises that I just suck it up and do my best.

So, 5 rounds of this was a bit of a bear. Only because the upper body movements (pull ups, toes to bar) are so exceedingly difficult. You know your WOD is bad when Deadlifts and Clean and Jerks are the "rest" phases. LOL. But, I got through this, motivated by the fact that my partner was pushing as well. She had the opposite struggle - the weights were hard for her, where she could do pull ups more easily than I.

I'm not gonna lie here, BlogLand... in the last round of pull ups, I wanted to quit, well before 15. I got about 5 in (a set of 2 and a set of 3), and was tired, my muscles were pretty spent, and I hated it. But then I had to remind myself that growth and progress only come when you're out of your comfort zone (which I was. Quite squarely.).  I pushed through the rest. The last five were in sets of 1... but I completed it, which was the most important thing to me. I didn't want to cheat and short my set. That doesn't help anyone.

I am happy to report that I finished in 30 minutes and change. YEAH. Rawr.

I can also report that today (I'm actually finishing this post the next day), I am sore as hell. LOL. I am actually not feeling the deadlifts, I don't think, but my Lats, from doing pull ups. Your Lats run a large portion of your back, and I am quite certain that mine are rebelling at the moment. I must figure out a way to stretch these bad boys. Hmm. Or Foam Roll. Oh god. That could be painful.

Anyway, today's Lesson: Even when it sucks, or you're bad at it, or you hate it.... (in the legendary words of the Spartan ladies).... EMBRACE THE SUCK. You only have limits if you institute them.


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