Deth

I slept great and long last night. This morning I woke up feeling really refreshed after sleeping straight through the night for a change. My Garmin had my body battery get up near a hundred percent for a change.

After I drank my coffee and my normal morning stuff, my first order of business was getting my bench press in. In a way, I was dreading it because my elbow is buggering me, but it actually felt good while warming up. I took my time between sets, or at least I thought I was, but it turned out I was working quickly up through the weights. The final AMRAP set was at a hundred ad seventy pounds. I wound up getting three good reps. In hindsight, I should have been more aggressive, but I don’t make it a secret I normally cop out too early. They felt good enough, though. That’s a good reason that I will never win anything.

I put the weights away and recovered a few minutes while debating on what WOD I wanted to do. I ended up doing today, which was front rack lunges with the sandbag. Since I haven’t done those in a little while, I figured it would be great to do them. I did knees to elbows on the bar because it’s too low to do toes to bar, but I think I could do them now if I had the space. The hardest part was the thirty calories on the bike at a time. That was cruel right after those lunges.

The major mistake I made was in the first round, I went unbroken on that set of twenty front rack lunges. I didn’t realize how terrible that would make the bike feel. I’m definitely still learning the dos and don’ts with the bike and how different things influence it. It’s getting easier to keep a good pace on the air bike. Sure, I was still short of the goal time for the WOD, but I know that I need to just keep pushing out of my comfort zone and that machine from Satan himself and I will get there.

It was a good WOD that jacked up my heart rate and no dumb movements, so I was able to sustain that intensity throughout. I felt good when I was done.

Music for bench and WOD today was Alice In Chains

This evening, I was itching to do something else out in the garage. I wanted to do something fairly short and different. Street Parking recently added some kettlebell WODs and one of them is the hundred snatches for time test. I have always wanted to do it, but kept forgetting about it. When I saw it I knew that was my sign to give it a try then I got sick, so I held off.

Feeling good today, I figured that it was as good a time as any. My legs felt dead from the past week and heavy squats yesterday, but I felt good enough to try it out. I rarely do the snatches with the kettlebell, so I knew I’d be slower. When I do substitute them in a WOD, it’s usually with the lighter kettlebell. Not today though, I knew I had to use the twenty-four kilogram one.

The first twenty or so felt a little rusty and sloppy, but it was just my timing and coordination being a bit off. Muscle memory was running on dumbbell weight distribution, which is different. After I settled in and they felt great. There weren’t that many reps where the bell crashed into my arm, really. It was only a few, and even those weren’t that hand. I worked at an uncomfortable pace but not a sprint since I wanted to pay attention to form. I really wanted to make through the workout with the twenty for KG kettlebell and did.

Towards the end, my hands were starting to feel a little raw, but no tears. The friction is inevitable with these because it has to move in your hand when you punch it overhead. I finished it in just short of ten minutes. That’s much slower than the goal, but given the other stuff I did today and the lack of much practice, I took them slower on purpose. The last quarter or so of the WOD I did have to “rest” my palms a bit too, so that slowed me down.

My big takeaway is I can get through it. It’s always been one of those things that was too intimidating for me to try. Hopefully, next time I can go much faster, knowing now that I can do it. Do things you’re not comfortable with. Challenge yourself with movements, weights or speed.

Music for kettlebell snatches WOD was Fleshgod Apocalypse