Getting Nervous… OC Throwdown in almost here

Saturday 1/05/2013

Mobility:

Row 500m/ run 400m
Posterior chain flossing
10 Wall Extentions
T-Spine Smash
10 Lat Activations

Classic Gymnastics Strength:

5 sets of 5 “Negative” Pullups, rest 90 seconds between sets

     Notes:  Perform this by jumping to the top and lowering yourself slowly to a full extension.  Each lower should take exactly 5 seconds, then immediately jump back to the top for your next rep.  Use a band to maintain control and perfect hollow body position!

Advanced Gymnastics Strength:

20 minutes to find 1RM Weighted Strict Pullup

Notes:  Try to make this as strict as possible with full ROM. At higher loads if close to the top a kip is kind of natural:)

Conditioning:

Choose one:

Row 3 x 1000 meters, Rest 1:1, 30 burpee penalty for +/- 5 second deviation from fastest set

Run 4 x 800 meters, Rest 1:1, 25 burpee penalty for +/- 5 seconds deviation from fastest set

     Notes:  1 to 1 rest is good for these intervals.  Go for 80% to 90% Rate of Perceived Exertion on all sets!

Cool Down:

Pigeon on a box
Quad on the wall
Calf Stretch

 Does Your Squat face look like your row face?

Now it really is just around the corner, and to say the least, I’m nervous about it. On January 12th and 13^th I will be competing at the OC Fairgrounds. Athletes all across the states (although mostly in Southern California) performed 3 workouts with a judge and entered their scores in order to qualify to compete. The top 60 scores get invited. And now I’ll be going and you are obviously all welcome to come and watch and support. You will see some of the games athletes and check out all the awesome swag.

Last year Diso, G and I all qualified. We missed the registration deadline, but after Diso made a fuss, they let as compete anyway. The first day went as well as it could. The workouts were only announced shortly before we had to do them. Diso was terribly ill, yet he PR’d on his clean and jerk. He needed to, in order to perform the first rep of the first WOD. It’s amazing what the competition setting can do. I hit my PR for that first rep too, with my questionable hang split clean and then front squat. My form was poor and I knew I couldn’t trust actually squat cleaning 135#. The floater WOD was perfect for me, burpees and kettlebell swings, I loved it. And we finished the day with a Corssfit total. I hit all my PR numbers and only had 2 minutes to perform each lift. I was so excited about that day. I impressed myself and was excited about what was to come.

And then the next day happened. I can honestly say I was so glad that Zeb was the only one there to observe me. I had barely learned how to do a kipping HSPU to an abmat 3 weeks prior, and 20min before I was up, they announced a 6 min AMRAP that started with 3 deficit HSPU. There was nowhere to practice, no abmats in sight. But I convinced myself that with adrenalin etc, that I would suddenly be able to do it, by sheer necessity. That’s how I got HSPU in the first place. But what I did not account for was the limited space we had. The HSPU stations were between walls. I am terrible at kicking up into handstands, so I use that long gymnastic lunge to get up. I didn’t have that kind of space. So I literally spent the 6min AMRAP attempting to kick up on the plates. I kicked the back wall a few times, even lost my shoe, and collapsed again and again. I never even made it into a handstand on the plates. It was hopeless. Zeb had it all on video. The full 6 minutes of my failed attempts. I watched about a minute of it, and then without another thought, I deleted the Video. It was hard to acknowledge what just happened.   

The day before went so well, and all of a sudden; it’s like the day was over. I was ready to do another three wods, and yet I couldn’t even really do 6 minutes.  There were eliminations before the next workout, so I hung around and waited for hours to see if I made the cut. The next workout entailed handstand walking. And I was terrified. Some of the girls tried coaching me through it outside, but I was still so scared. The organizers messed up the scoring, so instead of taking the top 35 athletes, they decided that only the top 16 should advance. I didn’t make the cut. And I was so relieved.

But then again I went out there and honestly felt like I didn’t get to do anything. Ultimately, despite doing well on the first day, I was ill prepared. This year, who knows? I still hate handstand walking, I am still really slow at handstand pushups… but I know I have improved immensely since last year. Last year, this was the hardest competition I’d been to, so I’m excited and scared to see what will happen this time.