Sunday 29.12: Ring mu's, Elizabeth, bench

Sunday. Skills, ring muscle-ups. Benchmark workout Elizabeth, 21-15-9, cleans (60kg) and ring dips. Time 6.08. Strength, bench press 4x5. Tempo ring dips.

Benchmark workout: Elizabeth! It was a great test. Started off with ring skills, then directly to Elizabeth after having done somewhere around 10-15 reps of both cleans and ring dips. Took the strength part afterwards because I wanted to try the benchmark wod with a rather fresh body. Finally I finished the training session with something new, tempo ring dips. Pauliina has been working on some cool moves lately: handstand, snatches and overhead squats.

Skills. Ring muscle-ups.

I took some touch on the rings, ring rows and ring muscle-ups. There's lot to do on my ring skills and ring muscle-ups. Each rep is very challenging and seems to suck the explosiveness and strength out of me. Completing multiple reps is not real life at the moment. I have to develop my skills more to being able to go unbroken for several reps. At least I have the tools for it as the rings exist at my gym.

Elizabeth. Time 6.08. Compare to 27.2.2013

• 21-15-9
• Clean, 60kg
• Ring dip

This was cool! It's been an ongoing conversation whether you should do Elizabeth with power or squat cleans. Haven't found a truth to this matter. Some people say "clean" means full clean, a.k.a squat clean. Others say you can decide which version you do if it's not defined specifically. They did Elizabeth with power cleans in the Crossfit Games one year, guess it was 2011 or 2012. I've understood you can decide it's the athlete's own choice. Pretty much like Grace - 30 clean & jerks - where you can do it either way. Naturally most do it with power cleans.

Elizabeth

I've done Elizabeth once before. It was squat cleans that time. Anyway, I improved the time with 4:20. Changing it from squat to power naturally makes it faster and energy-saving workout. Still, I performed pretty well on the cleans. Did 10 at first set, then 6+5. Same with the dips. The round of 15's was 3x5  on the cleans and 5+2+2 on the last round.

I did the Winter War qualification event some time ago which included 30 power cleans with 50kg. Must say that this 60kg barbell felt lighter this time. What does that tell? My body may not have been too fresh when I did it. Must add 20-rep benchmark for cleans as well. It would be nice to see what weight I could go for 20 unbroken reps.

Elizabeth got my breathing go heavily from the start. Cleans always gets. Enormous chest pain (from the dips) hit me couple of minutes after the workout in a similar way as the long-burn hits the forearms after Fran. It went by quickly though and it was time to move on.

Strength. Bench press 5-5-5-5 (70, 80, 80, 80kg). As you can see the weights I was able to handle after Elizabeth were very moderate. My max is a bit over 100kg and today the last reps on the sets of 5 with 80kg were tough =) It was the ring dips that caught me. I still believe it was productive to do strength training after the metcon to surprise my body. They usually do strength training after metcons in competitorswod. I find it a bit awkward and today didn't convince me to change my methods. I'll keep on going with skills first, then strength, and finally metcons.

Tempo ring dips. Something new in the end. I took a 5-10 seconds to lower myself to the bottom position, then stayed in the hole for 10 seconds. That calls for one rep. I took a couple reps. This should yield in better bottom position in the muscle-ups.