Deth

First of all, I’ll start off with the slightly disappointing part. It’s not the end of the world or anything but I wouldn’t have minded for it to be successful. I make it no secret that Bench press is a weak lift for me and one I am so uncomfortable with it that it makes it difficult to advance it but doing it in the rack with the safeties set is helping with that uneasiness slowly. My All time max at least that I can be sure of is only 215 and today I was to do 3x5 at 195. The first two sets went well, they were surprisingly easy and fast. The last set felt good until the last rep where the bar drifted a bit out of position. Rather than fight it and risk injury I lowered it to the safety. I definitely felt like I have a bit more in the tank but I don’t want to push my luck right now. I’ll get back up in weight in a month or two.

The squats felt good and I am glad about that. I’ve had an annoying knot in my hamstring for a few days that finally released yesterday. There’s a bit of residual tightness but it felt fine. At least that happened while the weight is light again.

I was also supposed to do pull ups today which I almost skipped over since there were so many in yesterday’s WOD. I decided to do lower reps of chest to bar and I am thrilled that I did. The first set were more or less strict sternum to bar. The first one caught me off guard when I felt my head touch the insulation on the ceiling and felt my weight shift so it was more of a press. Dammit Why can’t we have higher ceilings like a normal garage does so I could work towards muscle ups? Don’t get me wrong I am thankful we have what we have and I am able to do almost anything I want to do in there. It’s just the pull ups and some overhead stuff that are iffy. My pull ups today were explosive and strong in a way that they have never been before though. They felt different, very different but in a good way.

A few hours later I decided to do today’s WOD. I chose the sandbag version for space purposes and it was a ton of sandbag squats and jump overs. I chose to jump over a PVC pipe hanging off a twenty inch box. I figure it’s pretty safe to fail that and my foot only caught the pipe once when I mistimed a jump.

I could have done the 24 inch jump overs but wasn’t sure how close to the ceiling that would get me. If I do 20 inch step ups my hair touches the insulation and there is a chain hanging down from the light. I really don’t need the distraction of worrying about that and losing focus, possibly tripping over the pipe or face planting on something. My visual impairment is more than enough of a distraction as it is. I try to minimize the detrimental effects of my love vision but there’s only so much I can ignore it without increasing risk too much.

Another factor that doesn’t help me with these jumping and stepping up type WODS is the one light flickers in the garage. We replaced one of them with an LED but not the second one yet and it’s clearly on its way out. The flickering light can really fuck with me with these type of WODS because I have to look at what I’m doing and more less look straight into it. For most WOD movements I don’t even rely on vision. I’ve been told my eyes are usually closed. About the third round in I just turned off the light. With the big window and sliding glass door I had enough light to get buy. I wasn’t perfect but at least I wasn’t having the flicking light fuck with my brain.

I am happy that I got through the eleven rounds well short of their goal time despite the mental exhaustion of worrying about my visual abilities with the jump overs. I didn’t have to rest at all and was able to maintain my pace even when my heart rate got into the mid 170s. I am slowly pushing myself more with the intensity now. It was a fun and both mentally and physically rewarding WOD for me to do.

My Music choice for this WOD was Deeds Of Flesh’s Portals Of Canaan. It was perfect for me today being fast and brutal but not so much so that it’s a big distraction.