Al's birthday is on the 10th, so we did a WoD to celebrate. You want to know what's crazy, though? He initially put 70 rounds up on the board to mess with us, and none of us called BS. We all just went, "oh crap, this is going to suck." To me, that's CrossFit in a nutshell. Incidentally, finish times ranged from about 17 minutes to 30 minutes (that one person who finished in 17 minutes absolutely smoked the rest of us, there was like a 5 minute gap until the next person finished).
Most of this was with plain old body weight, and we intentionally went REALLY light with the squats. Still, you don't want to build bad habits, and it is still possible to tweak your back if you're really unlucky. So, please, mind your form when doing the squats.
Warm Up
2 rounds of:
- 25 jumping jacks
- 5 T push ups
- 10 bottom downs
- 10 jump squats
- 10 arm circles
WoD
7 rounds of:
- 10 burpees
- 44 sit ups
- 10 one and a quarter squats
Exercises
- T Push Ups
Drop down in to a push up position, and lower your body until your chest hits the ground. Push your body up off the ground, but as your arms start to get fully extended, lift one of them off of the ground. Rotate your torso towards the side where you lifted the arm, so that you are now facing sideways rather than towards the ground. At the same time, extend the arm you lifted straight up in the air. This is actually where the name comes from: at full extension, your body will make something of a T-shape. Lower your arm and rotate your torso back in to a regular push up position. Repeat this motion by lifting your other arm in to the air to complete a single rep.
- 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 three seconds, 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 three seconds 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.
- Jump Squats
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.
- 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.
- Burpees
It's a 5 step motion: 1) squat down & touch the ground, 2) kick your legs out into a push-up position, 3) do a push up, 4) jump back to the squatting position, 5) come up from squatting and jump 2 inches off the ground. Once it starts to feel normal to do this motion, you can start to make it a smoother motion by essentially dropping down into a push up position, rather than squatting and then kicking out your feet. It requires a little bit less energy, but it also requires more coordination and muscle memory.
Scale down: Step back into the push up instead of jumping. Same goes for when you go back to the squatting position (step 4); step forward instead of jumping.
- Sit Ups
Keep your feet in butterfly position (heels touching each other), since that isolates your abs. Come all the way up, but don't pull on your neck or lean forward. Doing either of those things reduces the work that your abs have to do. You have to touch your toes to get credit for the rep.
- One and a Quarter Squats
Grab two very light dumbbells; most people grabbed 5lb dumbbells. Start from a standing position, with your feet about shoulder-width apart. Hold the dumbbells up near your shoulders in front of you, with the palms facing each other (i.e., a "hammer fist" hold). Drop down as if you were doing a squat, to the point where your bottom ends up lower to the ground than your knees (i.e., "break parallel"). Instead of coming all the way back up, though, come up so that your bottom is only slightly higher than your knees.
From that position, drop back down to the lowest point of your squat, so that you are below parallel. Now, come back all the way up to a standing position. As you can imagine, the name of the exercise comes from the fact that moving from slightly above parallel to slightly below parallel adds about one fourth of an air squat to the motion. It taxes your legs a bit more and takes good balance on your air squat to do this, though, so don't be surprised if it takes a few reps to get used to the motion.
Finished in 26:40 (5lb weights)
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