I had to miss this WOD because of meetings, but Al sent it to me anyway. The strength portion is going to be all legs, so be sure to warm up the big muscles in your legs. You're going to need them. Also, do all of the pause squats before you do any of the 1 1/4 squats. That means you'll do 15 total pause squats before doing any 1 1/4 squats. Either way, do sets of those two, in order, for 15 minutes.
For the WOD, you have to do unbroken sets of jump rope. That means you have to do 30 consecutive double-unders without stopping or 90 consecutive single unders without stopping. If you stop or miss one, you go back to 1. Also, the rule about double-unders remains the same: if you can do doubles, you have to challenge yourself (no fair switching to singles to try to do less work). Either way, you have at most 12 minutes to try to finish all 5 rounds.
As far as safety goes, be super strict about your form on the squats. Like I always say, you can hurt yourself if you get sloppy with your form. So don't get sloppy with your form. I know it sounds simple, but force yourself to pay attention to form, especially when you're feeling tired.
Strength
15 minutes of:
- 5 sets of 3 front pause squats
- 5 sets of 3 1 1/4 front squats
WoD
In 12 minutes or less, do 5 rounds of:
- 30 unbroken double-unders OR 90 unbroken single-unders
- 10 dumbbell thrusters (hammer fist grip)
Exercises
- Front Pause Squat
You'll want to weigh a barbell with as much weight as you can handle. The most I usually see anyone use is 4 sets of plates on each side, which works out to about 90lbs total. You need to get the bar to a racked position against your clavicle/shoulders in front of you (a "front rack").
Once you've got the bar racked, do an air squat. Make sure you keep a good lumbar curve the whole time (you can tweak your lower back otherwise), and you bend at least far enough so that your thighs are parallel to the ground. You need to pause for 3 seconds at the bottom of the squat. To make sure you're counting a proper 3 seconds, add in "thousand" after each number.
Once the 3 seconds are up, come back up to the standing "racked" position to finish the rep. You want to drive the weight up, not just stand up, so think about squeezing your glutes together to generate some momentum. It might sound a little silly, but that motion helps to really push the weight upward. Each time you come back up, that's one rep.
- One and a Quarter Front 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 front squat.
That said, start with the bar racked against your clavicle/shoulders in front of you (a "front rack"). Keep your chest up, and keep a good lumbar curve through out the whole movement.
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.
- Double Under
Jumping rope, you want the rope to make two full revolutions each time you jump. The important part is actually the flick of your wrists, not so much how high you jump. If you worry too much about jumping higher, you’ll throw your rhythm off.
- Single Under
This basically means jumping rope. The “single” refers to how many times the rope revolves around you each time you jump. Try to keep a steady rhythm, so that you can do all of your reps without stopping.
- Dumbbell Thruster
Grab a pair of dumbbells; this time around, I saw the guys grab 10lb dumbbells and the women grab 7.5lb dumbbells. The idea was to simulate a wall ball without actually throwing something at the wall, so the weights make up the weight of the medicine ball you're supposed to throw.
Start with the dumbbells at your shoulders with your palms facing each other (towards your armpits) and your knuckles facing out away from your body. You're going to be doing this in the hammer fist grip this time around (your forearm and the dumbbell make a hammer that you could swing). This is the start, or "racked" position for this exercise.
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 weights over your head, until your arms are fully extended. Push the dumbbells straight up & down, since any horizontal motion will put undue stress on your shoulders.
Bring the dumbbells back to the “racked” position to finish the rep. 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 dumbbells, bring the weight back down before you start your next squat, and keep a good curve on your lower back the whole time.
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