Extreme prejudice

There's something about the barbell I simply love. Whether it's the explosiveneness of a heavy single clean & jerk, the slow grind of a 20-rep set of squats, or the agony of thrusters, I feel like no workout is complete without a session with that seven-foot-long machined piece of steel. I know better, of course. Murph, Kelly, Helen, or Fran with dumbbells don't lack for anything as a WOD. Still, the routine of warming up, heading to the barbell to lift something heavy, and then cranking up the metabolic engine is a routine I adore. It's not cherry picking. I beat the living tar out of myself this way on regular basis, hitting things that brutalize me, like push presses, high-rep deadlifts, good mornings, thrusters, etc. What can I say? I'm biased toward my strength bias.

Still, when I go to an affiliate, I like to get a taste of whatever random stuff they're feeding to their own athletes, but when I walked into CF Central CT today and saw the 30-minute mainpage WOD of pullups, dips and situps, my enthusiasm for the hopper model faded. All I could say was "That looks grim." I'm no fan of muscular stamina sufferfests, so I had to decide whether I would be cherry picking by skipping this one today. I could stand to work a 30-minute metcon, but that was going to be more a question of endurance of things I could do without a gym than a metabolic challenge of the sort that only a CF gym could deliver, so I decided to do what I could to keep a semblance of my strength bias program going. Thankfully, Tom was happy to accomodate, since he and a few of his athletes are doing the same thing these days and hardly anybody showed up for the 7am session on this rainy morning in an affiliate that had the power out.

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Warmup
CFCC Dynamic mobility drills and warmup
(toe raise walk, trw with knee pull, trw with ankle pull and knee out, trw with foot to butt, toy soldier walk)

3 rounds:

shoulder triplet
pushups
10 mountain climbers
10 supermans
30 jumping jacks

500m row 1:36 (nice rower - close to my PR without pushing my max)

Heavy stuff
Front squat 45x5, 135x5, 185x3, 200x1, 200x5, 210x5, 220x5 (new 5RM)
Back squat 220x20 (new 20 RM)

Metcon
1/2 Mary

AMRAP 10:

5 HSPUs
10 pistols
15 pullups

4 rounds + HSPUs and 2 pistols

Core work
6 Ft2Bar + forgetaboutit

I was listing something fierce after that workout. My back was toast from the squat and pistol combination and the pistols were brutally difficult to complete. The rest of that metcon was done in unbroken sets, but I was staggering my way up on some of those pistols. That's almost a full round slower than my PR, but after all the squats, I can't complain about my performance.

The heavy lifting went well, although I wasn't sure about jumping 10 pounds for the last set of front squats after fighting for the last rep of the second set, but I spent less time standing about on the last set and got through it pretty handily. The back squats were brutal, of course, starting with the 6th rep. When the reps get into the teens, the brain starts working against you. I didn't see Ghandi walking through the halls of CFCC, but thoughts like "You're not in a cage. Are you going to be able to bail safely if you fail with this weight on your back after all the squats you've done?" found ways to pop up and try to convince me to end the pain. After that, the pistols positively sucked - a serious struggle and a nasty goat that was overdue for a feeding, and they had me for breakfast. This was by no means the easy way out.