Technically speaking, this was two short WODs thrown together. You can do this on your own, but it is much more fun in a group. Inevitably, the first WOD turns into a competition to see who can do more jump squats. Everyone else also has to keep doing burpees during that time, so it gets real interesting. We had someone decide to be funny and throw out, "lean IN to the burn!" as well as, "the burn is stronger than you, you can quit now!" Trust me, it's way more fun with a group of people.
Just to be clear about that first WOD, you have to try to finish 20 jump squats in the first minute. However much time you have left over becomes rest. For the next round, add 3 more jump squats. So, for the second round, you have to do 23 jump squats in a minute. Keep increasing the number of reps by 3 every round until you can't finish that many. We had people successfully complete the round of 38. However, once you can't finish the reps, you have to do 5 burpees during that minute. You keep going as long as someone is still working on jump squats. Once that last person fails to meet their jump squat quota for that minute, the WOD is over.
For safety, the overhead lunges are the biggest concern. You want to keep good form when you have weight overhead anyway, but you're bound to be tired from the first WOD. Be extra careful if your legs feel like jelly. You really don't want to slip, have your legs give out, or otherwise have an accident while you have any kind of weight over your head. Mind your form on the sumo deadlift high pulls, as well, to protect your back. Bad form can hurt you regardless of how much weight you have in your hands.
Warm Up
2 rounds of:
- 10 jump squats (don't go down as far as normal)
- 5 lunges to elbow
- 10 bottom downs
- 10 arm circles
- 10 seconds of Samson stretch (each side)
WoD #1
Every Minute on the Minute (until the last person finishes):
- 20 jump squats
(Every subsequent round, add 3 more jump squats to the total)OR
- If you failed to complete your jump squats last round:
5 burpees
Rest 2 minutes
WOD #2- 21 overhead weight lunges
- 21 dumbbell sit ups
- 21 sumo deadlift high pulls
- 15 overhead weight lunges
- 15 dumbbell sit ups
- 15 sumo deadlift high pulls
- 9 overhead weight lunges
- 9 dumbbell sit ups
- 9 sumo deadlift high pulls
Exercises
- Jump Squat
This one starts like a normal air squat, from a standing position with your feet about shoulder-width apart. This time around, there are different rules for the warm up than the WOD. For the warm up, you don't have to go all the way down to parallel. You're going to do a lot of them later anyway, so save some strength for the WOD. For the WOD, 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").
Regardless of when you do them, 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.
- 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.
- 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 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.
- Samson Stretch
From a standing position, put your hands straight out in front of you and interlock your fingers. Step forward into a lunge with either leg, and as you do so, stretch your interlocked hands straight up into the air above your head. Your arms should be perpendicular to your front thigh. Hold this position for 10 seconds. Come back to a standing position, then repeat this but bring your other leg forward this time. As before, hold the stretch for 10 seconds.
- 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.
- Overhead Weight Lunge
Grab a barbell, and weight it with as much as you can handle overhead (most people usually use 45lbs). Standing, hold the weight directly over your head with your arms locked. You want your spine & the barbell lined up (the idea is to keep you from leaning forward on the actual rep).
From this position, step forward by doing one lunge at a time. You're going to do a bunch of these, but you have to take a step forward with both legs for a single rep (or moving left & right = 1 rep). Keep your arms locked the whole time. If you need to rest, just put down the weight rather than bending your arm.
- Dumbbell Sit Up
Grab either a medicine ball or a single dumbbell (most people usually grab around 15 lbs worth of weight). Lie on your back, plant the soles of your feet on the ground (no butterfly position), holding the weight with your arms extended parallel to the ground; if you were standing, it’d be directly over your head. Touch the ground lightly (it's a bad idea to slam dumbbells into the ground if it's not meant for that) and then do a sit-up so that your torso is perpendicular to the ground. Touch the ground in front of you with the dumbbell if you can. The two touches make sure that you're doing the full range of motion, but don't bend over or reach forward to touch the ground. That defeats the purpose.
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.
- Sumo Deadlift High Pull
You'll need a barbell for this exercise. I usually see between 45lbs and 90lbs.
With that out of the way, keep your feet about 1.5 shoulder widths apart, and do a squat. Keep your hands between your legs, and reach down to grab the weight without bending at the waist. You want your hands to be about thumb-width apart from each other. Come up from the squat, popping your hips forward and aggressively shrugging your shoulders as you do that. It might seem a little silly, but both of these things help you generate momentum and drive the weight, without having to just lift the bar with your arms. Finish by bringing the hand with the weight to about your chin. This is one of the few times that you want your elbows to flare out to the sides; it should look like your forearm is roughly parallel to the ground. Without bending over at the waist, squat back down to bring the dumbbell back to the ground to finish the rep.
Realistically, most people go right into the next squat/high pull; that's okay, so long as you don't compromise the curve in your lower back to do so. You can also keep yourself honest by making sure that you hear the sound of the weight hitting the ground for every rep. In essence, you're doing squats while lifting weight off the ground for every squat.
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