This one was a variation on a Chipper-type WOD. They're usually called that because you chip away at the remaining reps. In this case, the number of reps keeps increasing, so you'll likely take breaks toward the end. Then again, if you're so inclined, feel free to do 100 unbroken hollow rocks at the end.
Be very mindful of your form for the one-and-a-quarter back squats and the power cleans. You can tweak your back if you're not careful, and no one wants that to happen.
WoD
- 25 burpees
- 50 one-and-a-quarter back squats
- 75 power cleans
- 100 hollow rocks
Exercises
- 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.
- One and a Quarter Back Squat
Grab a barbell, and weight it as heavily as you can handle. Keep in mind that this exercise is meant to teach explosiveness, not overall strength, so you might use slightly less weight than for a plain old back squat
That said, start with the bar resting on your shoulders, with your hands a little wider than shoulder-width apart. Make sure that the bar is resting on the muscles in your upper back, and NOT on your neck. Squeeze your shoulder blades together, since that'll force you into better posture and help protect your lower back.
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.
- Power Clean
You'll need a barbell for this, and you'll want to weight it fairly heavily.
To begin with, put the weight on the ground in front of you (this is different than the "high hang" where you start with the weight near your thighs). Squat down to grab the weights, but remember to face forward and keep your chest facing forward. Stand up, but as you do so, shrug your shoulders aggressively. I know it sounds silly, but it should be an *aggressive* shrug. You really want to build some momentum in that motion. However, 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 do a quick hop at the same time. If you were to watch the path the weight travels, it should be as close to your body as possible, and as close to completely vertical as possible. 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 weight near your chest/clavicle.
You can almost think of it as letting go of the weight in midair, and positioning your body underneath the weight so that you end up with your knees slightly bent and the weight at your chest. Don't actually let go of the weight, that can be all sorts of bad. However, you'll find that because it's a quick hop, 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. Again, practice just the squat motion a few times so that it feels natural.
Lastly, just stand up completely while holding the weight at your chest. You basically just need to straighten your legs out, but you don't want to do this step until you've got full control of the weight. Normally, you would then put the bar back down on the ground to finish the rep, but in this case, you are considered done when you stand tall with the weight racked at your chest/clavicle. All that's really left is to put it all together in a smooth motion.
- Hollow Rock
Start by laying down on your back. Extend your arm and legs straight out (so that your body is completely flat), and then tighten your abs so that both your arms and legs are a few inches off the ground. One cue that can help is to exhale as you do this. Without releasing the contraction of your abs, rock forward and back on your butt. Do not let your hands or feet touch the ground. Forward and back is 1.
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