2010.05.18

Today's WoD was pretty simple: two exercises, ten rounds. I'll let you guess whether they were "easy" exercises or not. Let's just say that times ranged from about ~15 minutes to ~25 minutes.

The warm up was pretty straight forward, too. We actually did them as a group, so everyone did them at the same pace. However, we did intentionally go faster each subsequent round. So you don't have to fly through your reps in the warm up, but your last set should be noticeably faster than the first round.

For the WoD, you pretty much have to focus on good form for all of your reps. There are only two exercises, so you darn well better be doing them right. There are scale downs on the burpees, but they're less forgiving than the usual scale downs. You're not allowed to cut out the push up, for example.

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Warm Up
3 rounds of:

• 5 push ups
• 10 sit ups
• 15 air squats

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WoD
10 rounds of:

• 10 thrusters
• 10 burpees

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Exercises

• Push ups
  Bring your chest to the ground for every single rep, and when you come up, make sure your arms are fully extended.
• Sit ups
  Keep your feet in butterfly position (heels touching each other); it's not optional in this case. Also, don’t go past 90 degrees as you sit up. In fact, try to stay at about 45 degrees – it forces your abs to stay contracted, so it works them harder.
• Air Squats
  Make sure that when you go down, your thighs are at least parallel to the ground (you can squat farther down than parallel, but it's not required). You want to keep your weight on your heels the whole time, that will help ensure you keep a good lumbar curve & will help with any potential balance issues. For some people, it helps to look up at about 45 degrees to ensure you're not leaning forward & straining your lower back. To ensure this happens, you can throw your hands up to 45 degrees and focus your eyes on your hands on each rep.
• Thrusters
  Grab two dumbbells - most guys used 15-20lbs, and most women used 8-12 lbs. Hold the weights up near your shoulders so your knuckles face away from you (this position is often called "racking" the weights). Do a full air squat. As you come up, press the two dumbbells over your head, until your arms are fully extended. Push the weights straight up & down, since any horizontal motion will put undue stress on your shoulders. Bring the dumbbell back to the “racked” position to finish the rep. For this, you can actually make it a smooth motion, and go straight into the next squat instead of stopping at starting position. This is fine so long as you fully extend the dumbbells, bring the weights back down before you start your next squat, and keep a good curve on your lower back the whole time.
• Burpees
  It’s a 4-step motion: 1) squat down & touch the ground, 2) kick your legs out into a push-up position & do the push-up, 3) jump back to the squatting position, 4) come up & jump a couple of inches off the ground (touch your hands above your head).
  Since we only had to do 30 of these total, you're not allowed to scale down that much.
  
  Scale down: Instead of jumping into a push up position in the second step, step back with one leg & then the other. The end result is the same, but it’s not as tough.
  Scale down more:Do the push up on your knees. This means that instead of squatting down, you drop to all fours. From this position, do your push up.

As always, have fun with it.