This WOD is one of the named ones: Grace. The trick is that you have to do a bunch of strength work before that, and that's going to tax your legs. Incidentally, make sure that you warm up your legs.
From a safety perspective, focus on the power cleans, front squats, thrusters, and the clean & jerks. All of those require good form to prevent injury, so make sure to adhere to good form. It doesn't matter how tired you are, stick to good form. Slow down if you have to, but don't compromise your form. No one wants you to get hurt.
Warm Up
- 25 jumping jacks
- 10 bottom downs
- 5 lunges to elbow
- 10 air squats
- 10 power cleans (no weight on bar)
- 10 front squats (no weight on bar)
Strength
For 12 minutes:
- 1 power clean
- 1 front squat
- 1 thruster
WoD
Grace:
Cash Out
Exercises
- 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.
- 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.
- Air Squat
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.
- Power Clean
You'll need a barbell for this, and you'll want to weight it fairly heavily for the WOD. I usually see between ~45lbs and ~90lbs. For the warm up, just leave the weight off. The point is to go through the motions to get the muscles ready for the actual WOD.
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.
- Front Squat
Hold the barbell at about shoulder level, with your palms facing away from your body so that you could see both palms in a mirror. In a sense, the weights are "racked" against your chest. 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 lots and lots of reps. Regardless of how high you bring your elbows, the weights are "racked" against your chest.
Keeping the barbell in this position, do a squat. The same rules apply as always: keep a good lumbar curve while you do this, keep your weight on your heels, keep your head up & look forward, and keep your chest facing forward (don't bend over). With weight in your hands, these cues become more important. If you do enough reps poorly, you can tweak your back. Incidentally, this is also why we try to learn good from with air squats; so that it's habit by the time you put weight in your hands.
- Thruster
Grab a barbell and weight it as heavily as you can handle; most people use between ~45lbs and ~90lbs.
To start, hold the bar 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 bar is "racked" against your chest.
Keeping the weight 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. Push the weight straight up & down, since any horizontal motion will put undue stress on your shoulders.
To finish the rep, you have to bring the bar 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 weight at the top, bring the weight back down before you start your next squat, and keep a good curve on your lower back the whole time.
- Clean and Jerk
Make sure you have a barbell with weight on it for this exercise; I usually see anywhere from about ~45lbs up to ~90lbs.
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. That's the "clean" part of this.
The last part, the "jerk" in the name, involves violently shoving the barbell directly over your head. Make sure that you're in a quarter squat position, then very aggressively press the weights directly over your shoulders. In fact, your momentum will cause you to do a slight hop while your hands go upwards. At the top of the rep, your arms should be completely locked out, and you should stand tall. Because this lets you use your legs to drive the momentum and the power, this should feel easier than a strict shoulder press.
To finish the rep, you have to lower the weight to the ground safely (we're not allowed to just drop weights). From the locked out position at the very top, bring the weight straight back down to the racked position (resting on your shoulders/clavicle, palms facing away from you, elbows as high up as you can). From there, lower the weight to your thighs using your arms. Lastly, squat down to put the weight on the ground. You'll need to keep your chest facing forward the whole time; don't bend forward at any point. All of that is one rep. If you need to, practice the motion until it starts to feel natural; form is really important here.
- Stability Ball Situp
In some ways, this is like a poor man's version of a GHD sit up. Grab a stability ball, and roll it over near a wall. You'll want to sit on top of it so that your toes are touching the wall. In essence, you want to "anchor" yourself with the wall by not giving your feet any place to move forward. You can also do this by placing a pair of dumbbells up against the wall, and putting your feet underneath the dumbbells.
Once you're in the starting position, lean back and touch the ground behind you/over your head. You will need the muscles in your abs/core to stabilize yourself as you do this. This part can be challenging if you don't have good mobility in your core, so only go so far as you can safely control.
From there, sit up (using your abs, not your hips) and touch the wall with your hands. That's a single rep.
Scale down: If you can't reach behind you to touch the floor, you only have to lean back enough so that your body is parallel to the ground. That eases some of the strain on your abs, and doesn't require as much mobility.
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