Popping the cherry
Since completing the induction course at HPU a few weeks back I’ve been attending the two evening gymnastics classes.
Gymnastics is where you get to learn how to do all the fun “trick stuff” like handstand pushups, walking on your hands, lunging pistols and muscle ups
Fyi – I’m still miles away from completing a muscle up.
HPU run another specialty class that concentrates on Olympic lifting and that’s on my “one day that would be cool” list because I don’t think I’m technically proficient enough to jump into that class so Mr P.T is helping me with that crossfit component.
And finally there are the open classes. I’ve got to be honest and say that I didn’t think I would ever do an open class BUT I’ve have been checking what the WODs are each day and mostly thinking “nah wouldn’t want to do that one” (that would be any wod with running) or “shit that’s too technical for me” (usually when the wod contains one of the more technical lifts).
Today however the stars aligned just right. In other words I was running late for the 5:45 boxing class, HPU starts at 6:00 and when I checked the wod there was no running and apart from not knowing what a pendulum row was nothing in the list seemed too out of my league.
I took that as a sign ..
From what I can tell an open class pretty much follows the same structure as the gymnastics class eg you have a warm up, then skills/strength followed by a metcon (the wod).
Oh that reminds me! One thing I’ve noticed about crossfit that I think is cool is that your warm up concentrates on warming and stretching the body parts you are going to use – so you just don’t run for five or so minutes to get your heart rate up. This morning in preparation for the deadlifts we warmed up with hinge holds, reverse burpees (fun!) and the obligatory skipping, crossfitters like to skip (and most of them are dam good unlike me) 🙂
Anyway back to my cherry popping ..
We started off with strength and had 20 minutes to find our 1rm deadlift using a 3,3,1,1,1 protocol. I took a stab in the dark which was light, then just added plates till I couldn’t lift it anymore.
My 1rm was super light compared to everyone else but like Mr P.T says with me it’s more about confidence than ability or strength and he was pretty stoked with me when I told him what I lifted especially after the disaster deadlift session I had on Monday – but I’m trying to forget that day.
Then we moved onto the wod which I did at an intermediate level (only because Gareth scoffed when he asked if I was doing RX and I said I was going to do beginner – we settled in the middle) it was a 21-15-9 30kg Pendulum Row (which is basically a bent over barbell row but the bar has to hit the floor each time), Burpee Bar Hops and Tricep Pushups on the parallettes.
Oh and we had a 10 minute cut off which is one of the reasons I didn’t attempt RX as they had to do Ring Dips instead of the Tricep Pushups – no way I could bust out all those ring dips before cut off.
I finished in 9 mins flat.
And before you ask .. no I didn’t write my time on the board or what weight I lifted. I still don’t quite get that part of the crossfit mentality, but Gareth said as long as I remembered what my 1rm was that was all that mattered because they program a lot of the wods as percentages of your 1rm.
Since I’d taken a photo of the bar I figured that was as good as writing it down and I obviously I just wrote my wod time in this blog entry, so I can always refer back – it’s kind of like an online training journal. 🙂
So that’s that! First open class done .. in summary
I lifted really heavy shit and put it down. I lifted heavy shit that wasn’t quite as heavy as before and put it down. I burpeed and then lifted heavy stuff again (eg me).
I also watched tiny girls lift huge weights. Apparently I have the perfect crossfit build, someone didn’t tell that to the tinier than me but doubly as strong girls.
Till next time
