This one was a partner WOD, which made things more interesting. You see, your partner had to hold a static position while you did your reps. The longer you took to finish, the longer your partner had to hold that position. There's a lot more motivation to finish quickly when someone else has to pay for it if you dawdle. Secondly, you both have to be doing your exercise for it to count; for example, if someone has to drop from a plank, the push ups don't count. Lastly, you're going to alternate for every exercise, so both people get a chance to do reps while the other person holds a static position. To give you some idea of what to shoot for, finish times ranged from about 16:15 to 20 minutes.
For simplicity's sake, I put what both partners do on the same line, separated by a slash. So, if it says, "50 push ups / plank," then one person does push ups while the other person holds a plank. Remember, you only get credit for reps if your partner is holding their position. Then, once the person doing the push ups is done, switch places. The person who was holding a plank now has to do push ups. Essentially, every person is going to do 10 different exercises. Given that, if one person is stronger, have that person start with the hold. It's slightly harder to hold first.
Most of the exercises are "just" body weight, so in terms of safety, the push press and hang power cleans are the two of the most concern. They're perfectly safe exercises if you mind your form, so mind your form. You don't want to do them wrong and tweak your back (heck, I don't want you to do that, either).
Warm Up
2 rounds of:
- 30 seconds of jogging in place
- 10 bottom downs
- 5 lunges to elbow
- 10 upward to downward
- 10 arm circles
WoD
- 50 push ups / plank
- 50 sit ups / 45 degree sit up hold
- 50 push presses / overhead press hold
- 50 air squats / bottom squat hold
- 50 hang power cleans / dumbbell hold
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.
- Lunge 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 farther forward than your 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. Hold that for a couple of seconds.
Once you've gotten a good stretch out of the lunge, keep both feet where they are, and lean back. Your front leg will be fully extended and straight out, but your back knee will be bent, and you'll be sitting on your back foot. If your right foot is forward, you'd be sitting on your left foot. Since your front foot is still out in front, this pulls on/stretches your hamstring. Hold that for a couple of seconds.
Now you have to do the same thing on the other side to finish the rep. You have to do it once with each leg forward for a single rep (or "left/right = 1"). You can either walk forward, or rotate your body so that you are now facing the direction that used to be behind you. Either way, make sure you do the lunges on both sides.
- 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.
- Push Ups
You want your entire body straight/rigid, without a bend at the waist, and you want to maintain this position the whole time. If you start dropping your waist, you're not doing it right. Bring your chest to the ground for every single rep, and when you come up, make sure your arms are fully extended.
- Plank
From a push up position, lower yourself so that you are about two inches off of the ground. Keep yourself there without moving up or down for a total of five minutes. If you have to stop at some point, you can, but then your partner's push ups don't count.
- Sit Ups
Keep your feet in butterfly position (heels touching each other), since that isolates your abs. Also, be sure to keep your feet planted on the ground (lifting them off the ground generates momentum that doesn't really come from 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.
Don't bounce your hips or your legs against the ground to generate momentum. That actually generates power from your legs, rather than your core. In essence, that's cheating since you're not working your core as much that way.
This time around, you have to touch your toes to get credit for the rep.
- Sit Up Hold
Lay down on the ground, and keep your feet in a butterfly position. Raise your torso off the ground to about a 45 degree angle, then hold yourself in that position until your partner finishes their sit ups. If you want to make this even harder, then bring your lower body up off the ground at a 45 degree angle, as well. That makes it more like a V-Up, which is harder on your core.
- Push Press
You'll need to weight a barbell as heavily as you can. I usually see between 45lbs 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. You want the weights "racked" against your chest, with your elbows farther forward than the bar. You don't need to bring them all the way up like you do with a front squat, but you do want your forearms vertical and supporting the bar from underneath.
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 weight 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.
- Overhead Press Hold
You simply need to get the bar overhead as if you were doing the push press, and then hold the bar there while your partner does their push presses. The easiest way to get the bar there is to do a push press, funnily enough. Make sure you start from a racked position: hold the barbell slightly below shoulder level with both palms facing away from your body and your elbows pointed up as high as you can.
Do a quarter squat, and come up explosively to get the bar moving upward. Once your arms are locked out at the top of the press, hold your arms there so that the bar is locked into place. Hold this position. If you have to rest or your partner has finished their push press reps, then lower the bar to the racked position.
- Air Squats
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.
- Squat Hold
It's fairly simple: do a squat but don't stand up. Essentially, you're holding the bottom of a squat (hence the name) for as long as possible. Make sure you keep good form on that squat; in particular, keep a good lumbar curve. You can set your feet as far apart as you like, so long as you squat deep enough for your thighs to be slightly lower than parallel to the ground. That means that your knees should be higher off the ground than your butt. Lastly, don't rest your hands on your knees. It's easier that way, and you want to hold a legit squat for as long as possible.
- Hang Power Clean
You'll need a barbell, weighted as heavily as you can handle. I usually see 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.
- Dumbbell Hold
Grab a single dumbbell and grip it with both hands. Keeping your back straight, hold the dumbbell straight out in front of you, at a 90 degree angle to the ground. Hold the dumbbell there while your partner finishes their hang power cleans.
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