I woke up half an hour before the alarm, and then again a few minutes before. And then the alarm went off, I felt rather awake and energized. I was ready to hop out of bed and get dressed. I thought that I must finally be getting used to this whole early waking thing.
But about ten minutes later, I felt tired and hollow again. I didn’t want to go workout.
And I almost didn’t check the WOD before I left, but I found that I couldn’t help myself. I had to know what was in store.
3-6-9-12-9-6-3
– Power Clean
– Burpee Box-Jumps
And, of course, it would be more box jumps – burpee box jumps to boot!
Still. I went.
The skill portion of the workout involved the snatch, with which I was totally unfamiliar. We did overhead squats, snatch balances and hang squat snatches. None of that made any sense to me when I read it (it all sounded vaguely dirty), but the trainer gave good instructions and before I knew it I was holding the bar over my head with what seemed to me an absurdly wide grip while squatting.
It was weird, but not too difficult since we kept to light weights to build skill with the form (I did a set with just the 15 pound bar, 1 with 35 pounds and the other 3 sets with 25 pounds). And it was easier once I got the trick of turning my armpits forward to prevent myself from overbalancing. It made me think of the armpit offensive – the trick of defeating one’s enemies by raising one’s arms in surrender when one has particularly bad armpit odor – your enemy will just beg for you not to surrender! But I was wearing deodorant, so I wasn’t worried about offending anyone with that maneuver.
After that was done, I set my barbell up with 55 pounds for the clean. I figured that would still be hard, but not impossible, based on the last time that we did cleans. Maybe next time I’ll bump it up.
Then I carried out my box.
Before I got to the gym, I lectured myself about doing step ups. There’s nothing wrong with doing step ups, I told myself. You are letting your body recover before you threaten it again. It’s just like doing a lighter weight.
I think I even believed it.
I didn’t ask the trainer or second guess myself about the decision to do step ups, though I did try a few jumps to the side of the box. I feel like I’m not getting enough height. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m not healed from my injury or because I’ve got a bit of a cold or for some other reason. But it’s enough to stop me from trying to jump onto the box. For now.
So we started the workout and I immediately felt like I couldn’t breathe, or, at least, that I wasn’t getting enough air, as I powered through the first set of 3 cleans and 3 burpee box step ups. I found myself struggling to remember to breathe as the sets got longer. I do like the pyramid structure of the sets, because there’s a nice definition to them. I know that after I do the set of 12, it’s going to get easier from there, and so I can go faster. Try to go faster. I did do the last set of 3 cleans and burpee box step ups really fast. And then I collapsed, like I do.
It seemed like I was sweating more today than I usually do. Dripping more, anyway. I had a puddle by the end of the 10:20 that it took me to finish. It’s a good thing that whatever the floor is made of is porous enough to prevent me from slipping on those puddles. And they disappear pretty quickly. The floor always smells like bleach, so I guess I can pretend that other people haven’t also sweated on them as I put my face to the floor for burpees…
I felt good about today’s workout. Like I went hard enough, fast enough, lifted heavy enough. When I finished, I was emptied. And I was tired as I walked home.
But it was good.