Monday, August 23, 2010

Failure and Success

So today's session at Crossfit Fenway went a little something like this:

Starting off with a dynamic warm up, consisting of the usual stretches and movements, I got a small sweat going and then immediately moved on into today's skill work. The focus being muscle-ups.

A muscle up is a gymnastic movement that combines pull-ups and ring dips. Starting from a dead hang, you pull yourself up a pair of rings and then do a dip at the top. Sounds simple. It just happens to be incredibly difficult. Having never done a muscle-up before, I did a modified version where the rings were set lower so that I could start on my knees and support myself from the ground.

Then we moved onto some strength training, the low bar back squat. Here's the rep scheme: 5-5-3-3-1-1-1. I started light and gradually increased the weight, knocking out the first five sets no problem. The last two sets however, proved to be much more difficult.

Repetitions: 5-5-3-3-1-1-1
Load (kg): 50-60-65-70-80-90(failed)-85(failed)

After failing my second last set I went lighter and dropped the load to 85 kg. Unfortunately, after going down into the squat position, I couldn't get back up and had to drop the weight. I've still got a long road of strength training ahead of me (my goal is one and a half times body weight).

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Me about to attempt an 85 kg back squat

I came out of the weight room pretty disappointed. I really thought 85 kg wouldn't have been a problem (most of the people were going over 100!). Now in the main room, I saw the rings that were set up for the muscle-ups practice. I figured I might as well give it a shot. Surprisingly, I succeeded, which felt AWESOME. I even managed to do two!

To Crossfitters, the first muscle-up is a grand occasion. And I couldn't help but feel somewhat proud of myself as the coach wrote "first muscle-up" next to my name on the wall. I just wish I had gotten a picture.

We finished off with a WOD, which was 16 rounds of Tabata intervals on the rower (a Tabata interval consists of 20 seconds of all out effort followed by ten seconds of rest). Our score is calculated by the total amount of meters rowed, which in my case would be 1458.

I hate Tabata intervals, and I hate rowing even more. It sucked.

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