Cindy and climbing

The daily WODs are beginning to take their toll this week - I was feeling pretty beat up when I awoke this morning, and contemplated skipping Cindy to just climb. By the time I'd had my coffee, though, I was feeling better, and since I arrived at Ironworks well before Tor, there was plenty of time to do the workout and get some rest before jumping into climbing.

Complete as many rounds in 20 minutes as you can of:
5 Pull-ups
10 Push-ups
15 Squats

13 rounds w/butterfly kips (on rings)
(splits - 0:49 | 0:55 | 1:05 | 1:25 | 1:29 | 1:44 | 1:43 | 1:52 | 1:43 | 1:51 | 1:57 | 2:10 | 1:31)

Dammit. I wanted 15 rounds, and wound up with the same score I got in September. I'm pretty sure my form was better this time - every push-up touched the floor. It's really the push-ups that are the limiting factor - I can't do 10 consecutive after the third round or so, and I just need rests in order to complete the full ROM. It's like this with any high-volume push-up workout - I just have puny pecs, I guess.

Otherwise, the workout went great. I really love the butterfly kip - it feels so FAST (although in reality my first round was just 5 seconds faster). The butterfly form held pretty well for the first 10 rounds, then started to degrade - I was doing them one-at-a-time in the last couple rounds.

EDIT: Tonight I got some video of my butterfly kipping - first on the rings and then my failed attempts at the bar. Clearly I've got some work to do. Any advice would be much appreciated.

Climbing: 10a(o), 10c(f), 10c(f++), 10c(o)

It was pretty clear from the first 10a that I did not have a great deal of gas in the tank. By the time I got to the third 10c, with two roofs and a small traverse of nothing but pinchers, it was really clear I was out of my depth. The last 10c was slab on the wall, which was more my speed.

I am a beautiful butterfly

...or at least I will be.

I'll get to today's workout in a bit. First, I want to relay something that I find very exciting: I think I'm starting to understand the butterfly kip.

Aaron apparently went to CF Oakland, where they gave him a lesson in the butterfly, which he passed on to the rest of us after class. It took a few tries (it's difficult not to relapse into a regular kip), but eventually I started to get a feel for it. I can't yet get high enough on the bar - I get freaked out by the metal bar speed directly towards my face - but I was able to string a few together on the rings.

This is exciting to me for a couple reasons. 1) If you can do it, it's MUCH faster, but more importantly, 2) your legs stay bent the whole time. This means that the Ironworks bar, where I do the majority of my pullups and which is a bit too low for me, could stop being the frustrating kip-killer it currently is. My plan is to practice these until I can get my chin over my bar, then switch to doing them for the WODs. It will mean losing a few as-RX workouts, but it's my hope that with time and practice, I'll be able to do these C2B as well. I know it's possible, and those that can do it swear it's easier. I suspect this is because, done properly, the butterfly kip enables the vast majority of the power to come from the hip, and lets the arms do less work.

Anyway, on to today's workout. Max took pity on us for two difficult workouts (I've been pretty wrecked today), and gave us something quite low-key:

Floor press 5-5-5-5-5

135-145x4-145-150-155x4

An entire workout spent lying on the floor. Perfect. It's a weird lift - the ROM feels all wrong, but having the floor stop your arms prevents any bounce from the reflex action of the muscles, so you have to start the lift in midair. I didn't hate it, but it didn't feel super-useful to me.