What we didn't really realize would happen was that all of us ended up having wrist soreness building up during this workout. So be careful on your wrists!
Descriptions of workout copied and pasted from the old post.
Warm Up
2 rounds of:
- 25 jumping jacks
- 10 bottom downs
- 10 jump squats
- 10 good mornings (no weight, bar only)
- 10 deadlifts (no weight, bar only)
WoD
As Many Reps As Possible (in 12 minutes) of:
- 5 power cleans
- 10 push presses
- 15 front squats
Cash Out
- 4 rounds of:
- 30 seconds of toe touches, 10 seconds of hold
- 4 rounds of:
- 30 seconds of elbows to knees, 10 seconds of hold
- 4 rounds of:
- 30 seconds of leg lifts, 10 seconds of hold
- 60 seconds of T push up plank (weak hand)
- 60 seconds of T push up plank (strong hand)
- 60 seconds of low plank
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 a beat, 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 a beat 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. - Jump Squats
Do a normal air squat, but 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. - Good Mornings
Grab a bar but don't add any weight to it (you're only trying to warm up with this, so it's more for the motion than anything else). Standing, rest the bar on your shoulders behind your neck. You'll want to squeeze your shoulder blades together, and keep your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. Keep your feet about shoulder-width apart, and keep your legs locked. Bend at the waist (as if you’re bowing), keeping your eyes forward. Your back needs to be flat as you do that, and you should finish so that your back is parallel to the ground. Come back up to standing to finish the rep. Notice that this variation doesn't require a bend to your knees. - Dead Lift
Use the same barbell that you were using for the good mornings. Place the barbell on the floor pretty much right in front of your feet (with a full Olympic bar, you'd put your feet right underneath the bar). Stand with your feet about shoulder-width apart, and bend your knees slightly (about 20 degrees) to reach down to grab the barbell. You want your hands on the outside of your legs/knees, and you want to start with the barbell to be high enough off the ground to be about halfway up your shin (this is about the same height as an Olympic bar resting on the ground with 45lb plates on it). Keeping your head up and your chest facing forward, lift your torso a few inches until the barbell almost hit your knees. Your arms shouldn't bend at the elbows, you're just lifting your upper body with the weight conveniently attached to the upper body. Also, the weight should move in a straight vertical line, with no horizontal motion. It can help to think about it as if you're trying to skin your shins with the weight.
Once the barbell is at about your knees, pop your hips forward to generate some more momentum. At the same time, contract your shoulder blades towards each other. This will naturally pull the weight up even more (again, in a straight line). You should be standing straight up with your chest out at the top of the movement. Even though it looks like you're pulling the weight up using your biceps, you should try to avoid pulling up with your arms. That actually decreases the amount of weight you can lift in the long run, and it's bad form. - Power Clean
Make sure you have a barbell with weight on it for this exercise; the most I usually see anyone use is 60lbs.
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. Once you stand all the way up, you can drop the weight back down to the ground to start over (if you want to slow this down, drop your hands/barbell to your waist, then squat down to put the weight down). That's the end of a single rep. Now all that's left is to put it all together in a smooth motion. - Push Press
Keep using the same barbell that you had for the power cleans. 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. 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 weights are "racked" against your chest.
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 weights 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. Your rep is finished when you bring the weight back to beginning/racked position. - Front Squat
Use the same barbell as you had for the push press. 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 50 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. - Toe Touch
Lie down on your back, and lift your feet straight off the ground. You want your legs to be perpendicular to the ground. Leaving your feet up in the air, reach up with your hands and touch your toes (if you can't quite reach your toes, touch your shins). Again, leave your feet up in the air, but drop your upper body to the ground. Try to keep your shoulders and head off the ground, since that forces your abs to contract the whole time. Repeat that motion as many times as possible for the 30 second stretches.
When it comes time to do the hold, you have to reach up to touch your toes/shins and hold that position. This forces you to contract your muscles and hold that contraction, so it adds a little bit of extra strain. If you have to rest anywhere, make sure it's not during this "hold" portion of the exercise. - Elbows to Knees
Lie on your back, and touch your right elbow to your left knee. You want to move both your elbow and your knee during this motion, rather than keeping one static and touching the other one to it. Also, while you're doing this, your right leg will be straight out in the air about six inches off the ground. Then alternate, touching your left elbow to your right knee.
For the hold portion, touch one elbow to your knee and hold the opposing leg straight out in the air for 10 seconds. It's almost as if someone had frozen your body in place in the middle of a rep. As before, try not to rest during the hold period. You can rest during the 30 second periods if you absolutely need to, but not during the hold. Lastly, make sure you alternate which elbow/knee combination you hold; you want to work both sides (e.g., obliques) evenly. - Leg Lifts
Lie down on your back. Put your hands behind your butt for added support. Lift your legs up, and then bring them back down to a position about six inches off the ground for a rep. Be sure not to simply let your legs fall to the ground on the tail end of the rep. You want to control the motion both on the way up and on the way down. Over time, you can hurt your back if you just let your legs slam to the ground.
For the hold, hold both of your legs off the ground about six inches. This is even more fun with a bunch of people, since Al decided that he wasn't going to start the clock for 10 seconds until everyone was in position. Note, that meant that having your legs too high off the ground also meant that the clock didn't start (this doesn't work your abs as hard). Again, rest anywhere else you like, but not during the hold. - T Push Up Plank
If you're used to a T-push up, the motion should feel very similar like the top of the T push up. Turn on your side, and put one hand down on the ground directly below your arm pit/shoulder. Lift yourself off the ground so that all of your weight is being held off the ground by that one arm, and lift your other arm straight up in the air (perpendicular to the ground). If you can, "stack" your feet so that one is on the top of the other one. That makes things a bit harder because you have a narrower base, so you end up having to do more work to stabilize yourself.
Scale Down: Spread your feet so that both feet are on the ground. This gives you a more stable base, and minimizes the amount of work your obliques have to do to keep yourself off the ground. - Low Plank
Get down in a push up position, and lower yourself down so that you're a few inches off the ground. Don't let your waist fall as you do this, since that will release the contraction of your abs.
Scale Down:Lower your body onto your forearms instead of a push up position. You want them both to be parallel to your body, facing forward, shoulder-width apart.
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