The focus for this WOD was more cardio than anything else. In other words, it's more important to keep moving than to use heavier weights this time around. In fact, Al encouraged us to lighten our bars and modify our squats for the strength portion to keep us moving at a good pace. This was the one time where we were allowed to modify exercises to make them easier. Put it this way, no one used more than 45lbs on their bar, and no one even did that for the full strength portion. The same idea applies for the WOD, too; use relatively light weight and try to bang out as many reps as possible.
Speaking of the strength portion, you have a minute to try to complete your reps. If you finish your reps before that minute is up, rest. For the next round, you will do one more rep. This continues until you hit a max of 25 reps (or 16 minutes). If you can't finish the reps for that minute, repeat that round (i.e., do the same number of reps). As a rough guide, you want to start out having about 40 seconds of rest for the first few rounds. That should keep you going at a good clip. Note that if you do the full strength portion, you will do a total of 280 thrusters.
As far as safety goes, it's all about good form on the thrusters and hang power cleans. It almost doesn't matter how much weight you use, you can still tweak your back if you're not careful. So please don't get sloppy. You're going to be doing a metric crap ton of reps, and you don't want to injure yourself by doing them all wrong.
Warm Up
2 rounds of:
- 1 lap of walking high knee pulls (about 25 feet)
- 1 lap of walking quad pulls (about 25 feet)
- 10 bottom downs
- 10 arm circles
- 10 thrusters
Strength
For 16 minutes:
- In 60 seconds or less, 10 thrusters
(If you complete them, add 1 more rep the next round. The last round should be for at most 25 reps)
WoD
As Many Rounds As Possible (in 10 minutes) of:
- 10 hang power cleans
- 10 Russian twists with dumbbell (right/left = 2)
- 10 dumbbell lunges (right/left = 2)
Exercises
- Walking High Knee Pull
From a standing position, lift one knee into the air as high as you can. Reach out with your arms and pull that knee into your chest. That will help stretch your hamstring since you're pulling on that muscle. Bring that leg down and place it in front of you, so that you will have actually taken a step forward. Now lift the other knee into the air and repeat the stretch on that side. Keep alternating legs to "walk" forward.
We walked the length of the exercise room, from front to back. That's probably about 25 feet, so you can approximate the same distance.
- Walking Quad Pull
From a standing position, bend your knee so that your foot reaches up towards your bottom. Reach behind you to grab your ankle, and pull your ankle towards your body/bottom for a couple of seconds. You should feel a stretch in the front part of your upper thigh (i.e., your quad). Let go of your leg with your hand, and bring your leg back down. However, take a step forward with that leg when it comes back to the ground. Now, bring your opposite leg up and pull on that muscle. Keep alternating legs to "walk" forward.
We walked the length of the exercise room, from front to back. That's probably about 25 feet, so you can approximate the same distance.
- 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.
- Arm Circle
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.
- Thrusters
You'll need a barbell for this exercise, but use a LIGHT weight this time around. It's up to you how heavy to weight it, but no one used more than 45lbs for the strength portion; in fact, no one used more than about ~22lbs past the 6th round.
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.
- Hang Power Clean
You'll need a barbell, weighted more for a cardio work out than for heavy lifting. I don't think I saw more than ~45lbs.
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.
- Russian Twist
Sit down on the floor with your legs out in front of you, then lift both of your legs off of the ground. If you have lower back problems, it can help to cross your legs in the air, since it'll take a little bit of the strain off of your back. Lean back a tiny bit, just enough so that you feel your abs contract. You don't want to overextend your back, so don't lean back any more than 45 degrees.
With the weight in your hands, rotate so that the weight moves to one side of you. Touch the ground if you can, but the most important part is that your shoulders stay still during this movement. The idea is for your obliques (the side part of your abs) to do the work, so your core should be doing the rotation. It's possible to keep your abs motionless and just use your arms/shoulders to move the weight from side to side, but that's bad form. One way to think about it is to think that you want your arms about shoulder width apart at all times, and you want your head to be pointing straight ahead between your arms at all times.
This time around, you get credit for a rep every time the dumbbell hits the ground (or, "right/left = 2" for short).
- 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).
Finished all reps for the strength component, completed 5 rounds for the WOD
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