Unfortunately, I had to miss this class, too. On the bright side, Allan forwarded me the work out so I could post it here (better late than never). He also included a warm up, so you get the full work out this time around.
The work out is fairly straight forward, all you need is a pair of dumbbells and a platform on risers. Still, make sure you are good about opening up your hips at the top of your box jumps. Otherwise, you're not getting much out of that exercise. The squat cleans and the renegade rows likely won't hurt you, but make sure you're good about your form nevertheless.
Warm Up
- 25 jumping jacks
- 10 arm circles
- 10 good mornings (without bar)
- 10 squat jumps
- 10 lunge to elbow
- 10 bottom downs
- 10 up downs
WoD
- 50 jump box
- 3 rounds of:
- 30 dumbbell squat cleans
- 20 renegade rows (left/right = 1)
- 50 jump box
Exercises
- Arm Circles
From a standing position, rotate your arm without extending your arm away from you. You're essentially making a windmill of your arm. Do this in both a clockwise and counter-clockwise motion for each arm, so that you fully warm up & stretch the muscles. Most people just do 10 rotations forward with one arm, 10 rotations backward with the same arm, and then they repeat this with the other arm.
- Good Mornings without Bar
Stand with your legs about shoulder width apart, and put your hands on the back of your neck. Don't apply pressure (that's bad for your neck), just rest your hands there. Bend at the waist (as if you’re bowing), keeping your eyes forward. Keep your back flat as you do that, and finish so that your back is parallel to the ground. Unlike good mornings with a bar, you don't bend your knees, you keep your legs locked the whole time. Come back up to standing to finish the rep.
- Squat Jumps
Do a normal air squat, but as you come up to finish the squat, jump straight up in to the air. You finish the rep when you land and reset yourself. It's not uncommon for people to go right in to the next squat, though. This is okay so long as you're not bending over and losing the lumbar curve in the process. Basically, you don't get to cheat on your form because you're jumping.
- Lunges to Elbow
This starts like any other lunge: from a standing position. Bring one leg forward in a straight line, and then bend your knees so that both your knees are bent at 90 degrees. The back knee should be close to the ground, and your front knee should be directly over your front foot (otherwise you're putting undue stress on your knees). One cue that can help some folks is to treat your lunge like you're going straight up and down with your front leg. Your knees don't quite have to touch the ground (you might get burns/scrapes that way), but come as close as you can to that.
Once your lead leg is forward and your knees are bent, reach down with your arms and touch the elbow on the side that's lunging forward to the inside of your calf. If your right leg is forward, touch your right elbow to the inside of your calf. If you can actually reach your elbow to your instep (the side of your foot), do that since that'll make it harder. Try to balance without reaching down your off hand, but if you need to, put your off-hand down on the ground to stabilize yourself.
If you need extra support, you can use your hands to push up off of the ground. Repeat the motion with the other leg coming forward to complete the rep. In other words, you have to lunge with both the right and the left leg coming forward for a single rep (or, "left & right = 1" for short)
- Bottom Downs
From a standing position, reach down and touch your toes. Without letting go of your toes, squat down in to a full squat. Hold the bottom of this position for a beat, and then stand up without letting go of your toes. Your feet should be as close to locked out as possible, so that you're essentially bending down to reach your toes. Hold that position for a beat in order to finish the rep. The idea behind the hold is to ensure that you don't cheat by only coming up or squatting down part of the way.
- Up Downs
This exercise is similar to a burpee, without the push up or the jump. From a standing position, drop in to a squatting position on the floor. Kick your feet out so that you're in a push up position, then bring your feet back in to a squatting position. Lastly, just stand up; to keep yourself from cheating, stand tall when you come back up. That'll force your to get full extension on your reps. That's a single rep.
- Jump Box
Set up a platform with stackable risers. Shoot for at least 4 risers; the most anyone uses is usually 6 risers. Before you even start the WoD, stomp on it really hard. You want to make sure it'll support your weight & won't move around when you jump on it. Just in case, look down at the platform when you jump. If it does move around at all, keeping your eyes on it should help prevent injury.
When you do jump on it, you want to make sure that you stand tall once you're on the platform. If you stay hunched over the whole time, you're not getting the full effect of the exercise. One way to think about this is that you want your hips to "open up" on both the jump up and the jump down; all that really means is that your hips should be pushed forward once you're standing on top of the box.
Scale down: Step up & step down instead of jumping on the platform. If you do step, make sure you alternate which leg is stepping up. Otherwise, you're only working one leg the whole time.
- Dumbbell Squat Cleans
A single rep of a squat clean is essentially a weighted squat with some hand motions thrown in. This particular version is with a pair of dumbbells, so grab a weight that's comfortable (you'll end up doing a whole bunch of them for the WoD).
To begin with, hold one dumbbell in each hand, with your hands down near your thighs. From that position, shrug your shoulders. I know it sounds silly, but it should be an *aggressive* shrug. You really want to build some momentum in that motion. Remember, though, keep your arms locked as you're doing this, or you'll end up doing more of a curl. If you need to make sure you've got it down, practice just that part of it a few times.
The next step, starting from the shrugged shoulder position, is to quickly bring the dumbbells up to about chest level and squat down at the same time. If you were to watch the path the weights travel, it should be completely vertical. If the weights travel in an arc away from your body, you're doing it wrong. Your hands don't lift the weight as much as they adjust themselves to hold the weight differently. At the end of this motion, you should have your palms facing away from your body, as if you were "racking" the dumbbells near your chest/clavicle.
You can almost think of it as letting go of the weight in midair, and positioning your body underneath the weight so that you end up in a squat with the dumbbells at your chest. Don't actually let go of the dumbbells, that can be all sorts of bad. However, you'll find that because it's a quick squat down, you're pretty much jumping into it. At the same time, your hands will suddenly shoot up to hold the weight at your chest.
As always, keep a good lumbar curve. You don't want to bend over as you do this. If you do it wrong repeatedly or with a heavy enough weight, your lower back will pay for it. Again, practice just the squat motion a few times so it feels natural.
Lastly, just stand up while holding the weight at your chest. Once you've stood all the way up, you can drop the weights back down to thigh-level to start over. That's the end of a single rep. Now all that's left is to put it all together in a smooth motion.
- Renegade Rows
Holding a dumbbell in each hand, get down in to a push up position. The dumbbells will be on the ground, and you will essentially be holding yourself up on top of them. Keeping one dumbbell on the ground, pull the other weight up off the ground in a straight line (it's a single-arm row, if you're used to doing those). Try not to rotate your body as you do this, since that makes it easier to lift the weight without working the muscles in your arm. Your chest should be facing towards the ground the whole time. For these, you have to do a row on each side for a single rep (e.g., "left/right = 1" for short)
No comments:
Post a Comment