• ttb:
  • stretch out your hamstrings very well. One of the reasons I can do them so easily is that i’m so flexible. If you are inflexible, you will need to use a lot more strength to try to get your legs up, because you will be fighting against your own muscles.
  • use the kip. Practice hanging from the bar and swinging your hips back and forth like in a kip, then give it a big swing and bring your toes up. Try to do it without the box.
    
  • When i string ttb, i try to think of it as pulling the bar in front of me and down to my feet, rather than my feet up to the bar, they meet in the middle. Kinda like a hurdler stretch where you touch your toes.
  • this person is doing a lot more work than he needs to, he is bringing his feet all the way to the bar, and not using the rest of his body. As you can see, he is a bit inflexible. If he were more flexible, his feet would already be touching the bar. The more inflexible you are, the farther you have to rotate your body to get your feet to the bar.
    
  • This person is pulling the bar down towards their feet, notice how their shoulders are behind the bar and their arms are at an angle. This is a bit easier.
    
• ring dips:

13.5 was deceivingly short and simple looking. “It’s only 4 minutes” was a very common phrase around the gym this week, 4 minutes of hell. Most people agreed that these were some of the worst 4 minutes they had ever done in the gym. I saw a lot of people really push themselves this week. Many people didn’t think they could get chest to bar, and ended up getting multiple reps!

My strategy was simple, go unbroken the first round, then do an 8-7 rep scheme. During the 8-7 rep sets on the thrusters my plan was to rest in the overhead position if possible, and if not then the rack position. Unfortunately I was still getting over my cold/flu, and my lungs were still wheazy and filled with crap. I got gassed very quickly, and was unable to keep any sort of decent pace through the second round. I dropped the bar on the thrusters twice, and took too much rest. I ended up with 50 reps. I considered doing the wod a second time, but I decided that I was too sore and probably would not do much better the second time around. I’m happy with my score.

I don’t get sick too often anymore, but when I do, I get REAL sick. I spent tuesday through friday of this week so sick that I couldn’t do much of anything. I stayed home from work twice. I didn’t crossfit. I couldn’t drive. At some points I couldn’t even watch TV. I was just hoping that I could get well enough to make an attempt at 13.4 saturday afternoon.

I was ill prepared for my workout saturday afternoon. My workout gear was in another city, with my car, so I borrowed a pair of shoes, and hopped on the train to Rowfit. When I arrived at Rowfit I was still woozy from the Nyquil. I began my usual warmup routine and stretching. I decided to take a lot of care warming up for the clean and jerks. I wanted them to feel light and smooth. I did sets of 3 cleans, 3 jerks, 3 clean and jerks at 45#, 95#, 115#, and 135#.

Fast forward to WOD time. Janet showed up just in time to be my judge. I knew it was going to be a rough WOD because I was still very sick, but I was hoping to make it through the round of 12. I decided not to touch and go the clean and jerks, because it did not feel right on my shoulders on the way down. I kept a decent but slow pace on the clean and jerks, and did not rest at all on the toes to bar. I strung each set of toes to bar together without breaking. The cleans did not phase me but the jerks were a bit messy. I ended up with 51 reps, which is not too bad for being ill. I feel that when I do this WOD again in a healthy state, I should be able to get into the 70s. Thanks for being a great judge Janet!

Attempt #1:
Going into this workout I knew my wall balls were solid, my dus were clean, and I had never done a muscle up before. Thanks to a few muscle up progression videos on youtube, and a muscleup demonstration video by Chris Spealler, I was able to get my first ever muscle up in practice before the WOD!

I expected the bulk of the strategy to be with the wall balls. The double unders would take me about the same amount of time fresh or tired so I had to get the wall balls right. I decided that I wanted to break my wall balls up into 30, 15,15,15…. I knew that I could save some energy by resting like Kristan Clever holding the ball against the wall. My strategy went very smoothly until about 90 reps in. I had to cut back to sets of 10. I finally finished the wall balls at about 8’30”. I walked over to the jump rope and started my double unders. My quads were on FIRE! It was difficult just to get off the ground. I managed to finish all 90 double unders in about 3 minutes, leaving me around half a minute to attempt a muscle up. I would have loved to have gotten 241 reps. I made two solid attempts at a muscle up but just didn’t have the strength to hold it together.

Looking back on 13.3 I am very happy with a score of 240, and I know that by next year I will definitely be able to push to 241 and beyond.

Attempt #2: …wait are you kidding? Ain’t nobody got time for that.