GGC Fit 2: WOD Day 2

WOD day 2 involves a series of crawls and walks that appear easy at first, but after 1 round you should fee quite tired.

Here's a way of scaling it so that you can complete the WOD, without dying.

Bear crawls and crab crawls are easy peezy. But many people have problems with their wrists, elbows, and shoulders while executing them. If you do as well, then scale it; that is make it easier. You can do this by breaking up the 100 meters into 5 sets of 20 meters, 10 sets of 10 meters, etc. Stopping is not weakness, it's smart if it helps you complete the WOD. The goal is to complete the WOD as fast as you can without dying, right?

Waiter lunges are a little more tricky. They entail a lockout of the arm at the shoulder. There are a few ways of doing this safely and the most important is locking the elbow. If you allow the elbow to stay bent you are putting a lot of pressure on that joint that it typically does not get and it will be sore the next day. So lock it out. And at the should you can rotate your shoulder up, like when you flex your lats (back muscles). This will give you the needed strength to hold the extension. When you are tired: Stop. Do not injure yourself. In between rounds stop and breathe. You should be trying to get your heart rate, metcon up, but you don't want your heart to explode. Just sayin'

Now go have fun!

WOD: Workout of the Day, WithOut Dying

WOD = WorkOut of the Day.

But, I heard this the other day: WOD stands for WithOut Dying! Hilarious! But important. The goal of the functional fitness program I follow - CrossFit - is to produce measurable results without dying. That is avoiding conditions such as dropping weights on oneself, blowing your back out, Rhabdo, heart attack, shortness of breath, shitting your pants, etc. I.e. WithOut Dying - physically or psychologically. So I thought I'd start a little side blog here that attempted to deconstruct the CF daily workout as well as some WOD's I create into manageable and doable routines. That is try to expound upon the effects of a WOD to help someone think about making a Workout of the Day that can b done WithOut Dying.

So, I will start with today's CF Daily WOD:

- 10 minutes of as many handstand pushups (HSPUs) as you can do
- 5 minutes of as many (air) squats as you can do
- 2 minutes of as many pull-ups as you can do
- 1 minute os as many push-ups as you can do

Score = total number of reps across all exercises

For those of you unfamiliar with CrossFit style workouts this might sound easy. It's not if you push yourself. However, pushing yourself is where we can run into problems with the WOD and it not killing you. If this is your first WOD, probably best to do it slow. That is try to focus on form as opposed to a high score. I like to take CF like other technically challenging tasks: start slow so that you master the form, which will then beget speed, power, etc. A question that might arise: can we rest. Yes. If you feel like you cannot go on, you can even stop. Although we don't like to recommend and/or encourage stopping. The best thing to do would be to scale the WOD so that you can complete it. Back to resting, sure. If you can do 2 HSPUs and then need to come down off the wall. Only to kick back up again in 5 minutes than that is what you have done. The next time you will do more. Trust me! As for scaling, this WOD is a tough one to scale because we are talking about body weight exercises, but there are possibilities. For example, you can scale the HSPUs by putting your knees or legs on a bench, the bar of the smith machine, or a box (making them parallel to the floor), which will alleviate some of the weight from your should press. It will, however, also detract from the midline stabilization aspect of the exercise, but that will come with time. You could even try having one leg on the bench and alternating legs. This will help train aspects of the core that you will not train by having two legs on the bench.

Air squats are harder to scale. The best thing to do is pay attention to form. It's useful to have at least one or two mirrors around so that you can see yourself from the front and side. The key is to maintain a close lock on the spine and pelvic area: keep them like a straight rigid line that intersects the middle of your body. Start standing straight up, full extension at knee and hip. Then Lower, and really lower to past parallel. None of this 90 degrees shit, go ahead, get low!  Scaling can occur by doing two things slowing your overall pace and setting. If you slow your overall pace you might lose some of the metabolic conditioning (metcon) associated with the WOD, but you may have to do this, or you may want to do this to increase your score. Setting entails doing quick bursts of sets of n number of repetitions. So you could do 10 squats as fast as you can. Rest. Do it again. And so forth. This should maintain a metcon effect, but give you some down time to recoup if you cannot go straight through.

Pull-ups can be scaled in a number of ways. The most basic way to scale a proper strict pull-up is to Kip it. Google Kipling pull-up, kip-up, or kips and you should get a number of videos showing how this works. Don't worry it's not cheating. Kips allow for you to do more work in faster time, thus producing a greater power output. They also effectively train the same movements and muscle groups necessary for the strict pull-up so you will actually get better at pull-ups by doing kips. Don't believe me, try it. Proper scaling can come in the form of a machine that allows you to set a weight differential to counter your bodyweight; i.e. the machine makes your body weight less to your arms and back so you can execute a pull-up. This is a great training tool for beginners who cannot do a pull-up because it trains all the right muscles, but it lacks the metcon aspect of the training. The other way that one could scale the pull-up is by attaching a stretchy band to the bar and then stepping on the band. This again makes your body feel lights, but it adds a component of core stability to be aware of. Each of these are great ways to scale the pull-ups.

Push-ups can be scaled simply by putting your knees on the ground. In gym class in school we used to call these girl pushups, but they are not girly. If you cannot do a proper pushup then this is a good way to exercise and strengthen the muscle groups necessary to develop the skill to do a push-up proper.

OK, well, I hope this helps people think about the exercises in question and how to WOD without dying. Until next time....