This one got buried in my email by accident, my apologies. We got a little bit of choice for this one: you can choose how to get the bar overhead from your shoulders. I've put a couple of options, but ultimately, it doesn't matter which option you choose so long as you get the weight overhead safely. Once you finish the initial set of 10 rounds, you have to wait 3 minutes before starting the last set of ab exercises. You can think of the ab exercises as a cash out if you like, but your finish time is when you finish your last V-up. Speaking of finish times, they ranged from about sixteen minutes to a little under twenty minutes.
Speaking of safety, be extra good about your form on the overhead lifts and the box jumps. The first one can hurt your back, and there's the added concern of having weight above your head. The second one can be potentially harmful if you slip or bash your shin. Either way, be mindful of your form for both of those exercises.
Warm Up
2 rounds of:
- 25 jumping jacks
- 10 bottom downs
- 10 upward to downward
- 10 arm circles
- 10 Push Presses (unweighted bar for the warm up)
WoD
10 rounds of:
- 4 shoulders to overhead (strict press, push press, or jerk)
- 8 box jumps
- 12 sit ups
Rest 3 minutes
3 rounds of:- 30 elbows-to-knees
- 30 V-Ups
Exercises
- 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.
- Upward to Downward
This is a lot like a "judo pushup" in reverse, if you've ever heard of that. If you're familiar with yoga at all, the starting position should look like the "upward dog." Regardless, lay face down on the ground and then lift your entire body off the ground by extending your arms, as if you were doing a push up. However, bring your upper body all the way up, so that your chest up faces forward while your lower body is still parallel to the ground. This is the starting position. From there, lower your head and bring it down and in, as if you were trying to bring it to meet your waist. This will naturally force your hips to come up, and you'll end up holding yourself off the ground with a noticeable bend at the waist (your butt will be a bit higher in the air than your chest or lower body). To go back to the starting position, lower your head towards the ground, then lower your chest and bring it forward in the same motion. It's not a straight up and down motion like a regular push up, it's more of an arc. You should also keep your lower body off the ground at all times. Continue the arc by straightening your arms and elevating your torso. When you finish the arc, your torso/chest should be facing forward with your lower body parallel to the ground. All of that is a single rep.
- 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.
- Shoulder to Overhead
Grab a barbell and make sure it's weighted with a decent amount of weight. You're going to do a bunch of these, but you also want to challenge yourself. Most people usually end up using somewhere between 30lbs and 60lbs.
To begin with, hold the barbell up near your shoulders, with the weight resting on your chest/clavicle. Your palms should be facing out, so that you could see them if you look into a mirror. If you've got enough strength and flexibility in your wrists, bring your elbows straight up so that they point away from your body. This will force more of the weight against your upper torso and put more of a strain on your wrists, so only do this if you can sustain this position.
From here, though, you have a few options for how to get the weight over your head. What you choose to do is completely up to you, but I've purposely listed the remaining options in order of how much you use your legs (press requires the least, jerk requires the most). It'd be pretty reasonable to start relying more on your legs as you start getting tired.
- Strict Press
Once you've got the weight racked, lift the bar straight over head without using your legs. You are not going to dip or do a quarter squat. This is pure upper body strength, with no legs to drive the momentum. Be sure to lift the weight straight up and down, and lock out your arms at the top of the press. Since the weight is below your chin when you start and it needs to go straight up, you'll have to pull your head back as you're lifting the barbell (otherwise you'd smack yourself in the chin).
- Push Press
Do a quarter squat, and come up as explosively as you can. In reality, you'll end up end up hopping up a tiny bit because you're generating so much momentum/power from your legs. That's okay, but be absolutely sure that you're in control as you do this. You really don't want to trip or fall while holding a barbell. As you come up, press the barbell directly over your head. Remember, your legs should be driving the power in this motion, not your shoulders or arms. At the top of your motion, you want your arms to be fully extended and your legs completely straightened out. Also, bring your head forward a bit so that your arms, spine, and head are all aligned along the same vertical plane.
One last cue is to make sure you move the weights directly up & down; if you start moving the horizontally, you'll put extra stress on your shoulders. If your elbows flare out horizontally, that's also going to make it difficult to press straight up & down. Finish your rep by bringing the weight back to beginning/racked position.
- Jerk
Do a quarter squat. Do a small hop, shoot the weight straight up, and land in a quarter squat position. The idea is to land so that you have the weight raised above your head with your arms locked, and your body in a quarter squat position. In a way, you're almost trying to get your body under the weights rather than trying to get the weights above your head. From there, stand up with the weight still above your head. Finally, bring the weights back down to the racked position to finish the rep.
- Strict Press
- Box Jumps
You'll need to set up a platform with risers; most people use at least 2, but I've seen up to 5 on occasion. 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 to the box, and then step down instead of jumping on the platform. If you do step, make sure you alternate which leg comes down off of the platform first.
- 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.
- Elbows to Knees
Lie on your back, and touch your right elbow to your left knee. You want to move both your elbow and your knee during this motion, rather than keeping one static and touching the other one to it. Also, while you're doing this, your right leg will be straight out in the air about six inches off the ground. Then alternate, touching your left elbow to your right knee.
This time around, you only get credit for a rep once you've touched both elbows to both knees. We tend to call that "left/right = 1" for short.
- V-Ups
Lie on your back, putting our hands parallel to the ground "above" your head (if you were standing, they’d be directly over your head). Lift your legs off the ground and bring your torso up at the same time to touch your toes. In essence, your body makes a "V" shape. Go back to lying on your back to finish the rep. Be careful about slamming your legs into the ground when you finish the rep, that can hurt your lower back. Some people call these "jack knives," if that helps at all.
Scale down: Bend your knees as your bring your lower body up. You only have to touch your knees this way
Used ~66lbs, finished in 19:42
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