Elizabeth plus some "Funishment"...

Unlike many days in the Blue Room of Pain, I knew what to expect once I hit that door today. I knew going in that Elizabeth was on the docket (sp?) for this morning. Over the last few days I've had a couple of conversations with people about ring dips. I've been using the floss band to do them assisted lately, but getting off the band has been challenging. I have always been able to lift and move heavy weights, but I struggle when it comes to movements where I need to be able to move my own body weight. It's truly been a challenge for me. So, needless to say, when Jerry and Andrea found out that I could do one ring dip, they suggested getting off the band and moving into working on volume. Andrea even went so far as to nudge me to do Elizabeth today without any band. (Andrea btw is the same girl in the two video posts from Monday. The girl is a freakin' beast.)

So, I went in this morning, a little tired after trying to watch Michael Phelps swim last night, but had some thoughts on doing the workout. My thought was, I would do the set of 21 without the band, and then try to do the rest with the band. I wasn't intimidated by the 85 lb squat cleans at all since we've done them before, and since last week we did that ungodly day of 100lb squat cleans. So, I decided to go for it. The round of 21 squat cleans was faily easy and I wanted to do all 21 without putting the bar down, but I had to drop at 15. Then I did 3 and 3 because I was having trouble holding onto the bar. The movement felt good, but I just couldn't grip the bar for some reason. From there I jumped into the 21 dips. Let me just tell you that, as suspected, they took FOREVER! By the time I got back to the squat cleans I think that 10 minutes had gone by. The set of 15 cleans were all 5's, and then the ring dips.... I should have stuck to my original plan. I should have. I should have gotten the band after the 21. But my stubborn self said, no, let's do this as Rx'd. I fatigued on rep 15 5 different times. Talk about frustrating. I need to learn to kip off the bottom if I'm going to get good at these.

So the 9's... squat cleans flew in sets of 3 and before I knew it I was back on the rings. I was so fatigued that doing just 9 was unbelievably difficult. I missed rep 7 about 4 times, and then reps 8 and 9 were just gritty. On rep nine I called time, let go of the rings, and literally fell on the floor. There was no graceful dismount. I was at fatigue. It took me 28:30 to do this workout. It was flat out hard, but it's a benchmark, so as I get further away from the band, hopefully that time will improve.

As I was laying on the floor trying to recover, Gar reminded me that since neither of us hit our goals, we needed to pull a "Funishment" workout. Actually since Gar missed this week, and I missed last week, we had to pull 2. So we pulled these two workouts.

Funishment #1
Run 400M
50 air squats

Funishment #2
400M Farmers walk with 35 lbs
400M Sprint

When I could pull myself off the floor big brother Gar and I headed outside to do Funishment #1. I figured after that many ring dips I couldn't possibly do anything that involved my arms. I'll post the picture later, but when I had to write on the white board what my time was, it seriously looked like spooky Halloween writing. It was actually THAT shaky.

So Gar and I did Funishment workout #1. During the workout though, I had to crack up because of Gar. We were in front of one of the exit doors from the gym below us, and on round 2, some guy walked out. As he walked away, Gar goes, "He totally just checked you out. I had to give him a look." LOL. I love my older brother. He does such a good job. :)

Ahhhh yes... now it's time for work... I hope my legs can handle stairs this evening... ugh. Maybe I'll get a run in tomorrow... we'll see... if not I'm sure I'll find something to ramble about... ;)