Deth

This year, I really have been trying to focus on getting more comfortable with the dumbbells in WODs. Many of those movements just didn’t click for me early on. I would guess that my brain has the connects for the barbell, but the dumbbells are similar but at the same time move independently. Snatches I’ve always been fine weight, yet I do struggle with those using the barbells.

I’d say since late summer or so when my shoulder finally felt back to one hundred percent is when I really started getting comfortable with a lot of the dumbbell stuff. Power cleans really started to click, and so did shoulder to overhead. Around that time, I started to consistently use the normal prescribed weight of forty pounds. I sporadically would throw in heavier weights and have been continuing to do that a little more often as time goes on.

When I was looking for a WOD to do, I decided against doing today. Not really a fan of making up stuff for holidays. Besides that, I can get a lot more out of other exercises than I can of high rep dumbbell drags or whatever they were.

I settled on one that I’ve done a few times recently and finished much faster than the goal. That’s when it clicked that I wanted to make the last WOD I am likely to perform of the year be one in which I push the extra challenge weight.

It was a descending ladder of hang power cleans and then push jerks divided by plenty of air squats. I ended up chugging along pretty good at the WOD. I managed to pace it right and break at the right times that I was able to keep moving. These types of WODs can be so tricky to get right often times.

Today I finished the WOD on the lower end of the goal time even with using the heavier fifty pound dumbbells. I won’t lie and say it was easy because it didn’t like that at all. The truth is the WOD was very uncomfortable but in a good way. It’s so easy for me to fall into the trap of sticking with what’s comfortable in WODs, but I do know that I have to get out of my comfort zone. A good sign is that I completed the WOD faster than I expected. Sometimes thees heavier workouts are tougher mentally for me than physically.

It certainly went better than I was expecting it to go after totally fucking up that sled WOD yesterday and destroying my legs. They’ve been feeling like they aren’t wanting to work all day today. To make things worse, as I was walking out to do the WOD, I stepped onto the vacuum hose and rolled my ankle. That hurt like a motherfucker, but as usual after a minute or two it felt fine. I thought that a WOD like this would be a great way to wrap up the year’s WODs.