This one involved a game of chance. You had to flip a coin at the beginning, and how the coin landed determined which exercise you had to do at the beginning of the WOD. The remainder of the WOD was the same for everyone. Either way, they were not all that fun. Doing more push ups after 100 burpees or doing hang power cleans & lunges after doing 100 thrusters is basically just taxing muscles that are already tired. If you want a goal, finish times ranged from 16:50 to 22:50, and the fastest that anyone finished the burpees/thrusters was 7:03.
In terms of safety, the two biggest items to mind are the thrusters and hang power cleans. In both cases, you'll want to protect your back with good form. In the case of the thrusters, you're lifting weight over your head, and that always carries an inherent increase in risk. It's not a huge risk, but it's there nevertheless. Be good about your form.
Warm Up
2 rounds of:
- 10 jump squats
- 5 T push ups
- 10 bottom downs
- 10 good mornings (with just the bar)
- 10 hang power cleans (with just the bar)
WoD
- 100 burpees OR 100 thrusters (depending on coin flip)
- Rest 2 minutes
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10 rounds of:
- 10 hang power cleans
- 10 hand release push ups
- 10 dumbbell lunges (left/right = 2)
Exercises
- Jump Squat
This one starts like a normal air squat, from a standing position with your feet about shoulder-width apart. Make sure that when you go down, your thighs are at least parallel to the ground. If you can, squat farther down than parallel, so that your bottom ends up closer to the ground than your knees (i.e., "break parallel"). 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. However, 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.
- T Push Up
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 Down
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.
- Good Morning
Grab a bar, but don't put any weight on it for the warm up. Standing, rest the bar on your shoulders behind your neck. You'll want to squeeze your shoulder blades together, and keep your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. Keep your feet about shoulder-width apart, and keep your legs locked. Bend at the waist (as if you’re bowing), keeping your eyes forward. Your back needs to be flat as you do that, and you should finish so that your back is parallel to the ground. Come back up to standing to finish the rep. Notice that this variation doesn't require a bend to your knees.
- Hang Power Clean
You'll need a barbell for this, so weigh it with whatever feels comfortable; most of the time, I see anywhere between 45lbs and 90lbs.
The starting position for this is with the barbell around mid-thigh in front of you, with a slight bend to your waist (this position is considered a "high hang" so that's where the name comes from). Obviously, though, you have to get the barbell there from the ground somehow. The safest way to do this is actually to deadlift the barbell. In essence, keep your chest up, bend down, and then lift the barbell from the ground using your legs (not your back).
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 weight up to about chest level and bend your knees a tiny bit at the same time. If you were to watch the path the weight travels, it should be completely vertical. If the weight travels 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 barbell near your chest/clavicle. You can almost think of it as letting go of the weight in midair, and positioning your body so that you can receive the weight with the weight at your chest. Don't actually let go, that can be all sorts of bad.
However, you'll find that because there's so much momentum and you're trying to "catch" the weight with your knees slightly bent, 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. You can practice this one step at a time until the motion starts to feel more natural.
Lastly, just stand up straight while holding the weight at your chest. Once you've stood all the way up, you can drop the weight 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.
- Burpee
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.
- Thruster
You'll need a barbell for this exercise. It's up to you how heavy to weight it, but remember that you are going to be doing 100 consecutive reps. It's pretty common for people to use anywhere between ~30lbs and ~90lbs.
To start, hold the barbell slightly below shoulder level with both your palms facing away from your body so that you can see both palms in 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 through a lot of reps. Regardless of how high you bring your elbows, the weights are "racked" against your chest.
Keeping the barbell racked against your chest, do an air squat so that your thighs end up parallel to the ground; if you can "break parallel," that's even better. As you come up, press the barbell directly over your head, until your arms are fully extended. The drive all comes from your legs, rather than your upper body. Still, push the barbell straight up & down, since any horizontal motion will put undue stress on your shoulders.
To finish the rep, you have to bring the weight back to a rack position. 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 barbell, bring the weight back down before you start your next squat, and keep a good curve on your lower back the whole time.
- Hand Release Push Up
Bring your chest to the ground for every single rep, and lift your hands off the ground at the bottom. This forces you to go all the way down (gravity will take care of the rest if you don't actually bring yourself to the ground). At the top of the rep, make sure your arms are fully extended.
Scale down: Do the push ups on your knees. You lift less weight this way, so it's easier.
- Dumbbell Lunge
Hold the weights at your side, one on each side. 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. Make sure that your front foot is firmly planted on the ground; the heel of your foot should be touching the ground. 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 back 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.
This time around, you get credit for a rep each time one of your legs comes forward (we call this "right/left = 2" for short).
Had burpees, finished those in 8:31. Used ~66lbs, finished the whole WOD in 22:50
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