12:18, #CrossFit Elements, 2nd Session - nowhere close to dying, no matter what that voice in my head was saying. Honest.
At butt end of learning session, including Olympic clean variations and kipping pullups. Three measly little rounds, and a wee bit over 12 minutes, but still. Kicked my booty. Overall session was about an hour and a quarter, mostly learning lifts and moves new to me.
Woulda been a challenging 3 rounds regardless, even were I fresh.
Kipping pullups were especially an eye opener: purposefully getting your whole body involved in pullups, on purpose. Pretty much the opposite of the way strict pullups are taught, minimizing any cheating via "extra body English." As such, it's a new, weird skill for me, and my numbers weren't okay, but the kipping technique was godawful. But am apparently getting better at cheating between the 1st Elements session and this one.
Olympic bar cleans and variations were another weirdie. I thought they'd be relatively easy with my kettlebell lifting background, but they're a different animal: a whole lot more shrug and high pull from the elbow ("Like starting a lawn mower," Mike said), and hip thrust immediately dropping under the bar into a butt-back semi squat. Hips popping forward then back, instead of just forward like with KBs. Rub head and pat tummy, whilst dealing with a long heavy weighted bar thing.
And the shoulders? The upper arms seem to have something against going straight overhead, much less slightly behind the head. Odd contortions ensue, to hold weight properly overhead during lifts like 1-arm overhead squats with 8 lbs. The proper range will come with time, I'm assured.
As Gerard Butler said, You not only regret the day you were born, you regret the day your trainer was born. But I say that with a smiley face.
This isn't about death march, it's about changing the paradigm from long slow distance at relative ease, to a variety of challenging, real world movements. The elements I'm being shown, and the proposed workouts assembled from them, are tailored to where I'm coming from, and are eye-opening enough and challenging enough -- not too much.
There's what you think you can do, what you can really do, what you can do if you stretch yourself, and what in the old Star Trek day was "Warp Factor 9+" (very short bursts, you shake the ship to pieces, the mission had better be worth the permanent damage).
Thanks to Mike Bargetto from Orange Coast CrossFit, for reintroducing me to what's truly possible, and what stretching a bit looks like.
