Today is the first day that I felt like I didn't get as good of a workout as I could have at Crossfit. Saturday is Team WOD day, which can come in a few different forms, but generally means you and a partner alternate the reps in the workout. The idea is to do as many reps as you can, as fast as you can until the point at which you just begin to fatigue, then your partner takes over, back and forth, back and forth until the time is up. You score a point for each rep and at the end, the teams post their scores on the board to see how everyone compared.
Our WOD today was an AMRAP (AsManyRoundsAsPossible) in 12 minutes of:
50 Air squats
30 Push-ups
15 Pull-ups
Unfortunately my partner didn't get the concept of doing reps just until you start to fatigue (ie. as soon as you start to slow down, switch) so I'd stand around while she slowly eeked out a few more squats or push-ups.
The upside was that when we were done I decided to practice my kipping pull-ups. An "official" pull-up in Crossfit is a kipping pull-up where - as in everything in Crossfit as much as possible - you use your entire body to move yourself into the pull-up position rather than just hanging from the bar and using specific arm muscles:
There are a few scaled versions. The one I started with is standing (standing is a misnomer as your legs are quite bent) on a box and using a bit of a jumping motion to assist me in getting my chin above the bar, while still practicing the kipping motion. You can also do a straight jumping pull-up or you can use gymnastic rings.
The next step up is to use a resistance band to give yourself some assistance, but otherwise do the exact same movement as a kipping pull-up. You can see that and the jumping pull-up here:
This is what I decided to practice today and I surprised myself by getting the motion pretty well. I'm going to try to practice these more frequently in the hopes of being able to switch from the box version, which is really very awkward, to these soon!
I also threw in 30 sit-ups, just for fun :P and then I came home, ate a couple of lettuce wraps with this Asian Almond Chicken Salad from Nom Nom and took a nice long nap. Hey, Crossfit takes it out of you.
I can see where doing the pull-ups with the box would be annoying. The resistance band helps you learn the correct movements without having to support your own weight - I like that!
ReplyDeleteI'm paying attention to this because I think I need to get over my hand freakishness. One of my "goals" for my personal training sessions is going to be to be able to do at least a few pull ups!