Some Days Just Don’t Work Right

Today’s post is a bit of an apology for the 8:30 class by way of an explanation.

It’s just another Thursday. Like most Thursdays, I planned on going in at 8:30 with my wife (and kids if they woke up in time). And we all made it there for Coach Drea.

We had a full class – the four of us, plus Jonathan & Sarah, Caleb, Alan, Brianne, Danielle, and Connie. 11 people in total.

Warm up was:

• 250m row
• 10 ghd hip ext or good mornings with empty barbell
• 250m row
• 10 empty barbell deadlifts
• 250m row
• 10 empty barbell strict press
• I think we were supposed to go to 2000m total, but most of us stopped after the third or 4th 250m

After that we did some empty barbell work. Deadlift and strict shoulder press progressions.

And then we divvied up space and equipment for the workout:

• Total Time
• Rx
  • 15-12-9 reps for time of:
  • Double body-weight deadlifts
  • 3/4 body-weight shoulder presses
• Level II
  • 15-12-9 reps for time of:
  • Deadlifts #345/225
  • Shoulder presses #135/95
• Level I
  • 15-12-9 reps for time of:
  • Deadlifts #155/105
  • Shoulder presses #75/45

My one-rep maxes for these movements are:

• Deadlift – 345#
• Strict press – 155#

Nowhere close to Rx weights of 456# and 175#. But even the Level II weights were out of reach, really. So I knew I was going to have to scale.

Due to a shortage of bars and space, Caleb asked if we wanted to work together. I said sure and we warmed up together with the little EMOM that Drea had us do alternating between deadlifts and strict press:

• Strict press – 75# x3, Deadlifts – 185# x5
• Strict press – 85# x3, Deadlifts – 225# x5
• Strict press – 95# x3, Deadlifts – 275# x5 (I started running into some issues here)
• Strict press – 115# x3, Deadlifts – 275# x5 (didn’t add weight)

Caleb, due to participating in the Man Up Challenge in Denver this weekend, didn’t want to push too hard to fry his body ahead of the competition. So he agreed to stay at those weights for the workout.

Our goal was to get this done in 10-15 minutes.

• I did 15 strict press at 115# (got through 10 and then struggled through the next 5 one at a time)
• Caleb did 15 deadlifts at 275# (made them look easy)
• Caleb did 15 strict press at 115# (made them look easy)
• I started on deadlifts

Doing the deadlifts as “grab and drop” style vs. touch-and-go, I made it through 5 and took a break. Then a couple more. And one more.

And I realized on that last one that I was in a fair amount of pain from my left hip to my tailbone. It ached a bit during the EMOM warm-up but I thought I could work through it.

Yeah, apparently not.

After my 8 reps, I left the bar on the floor, told Caleb to finish without me, and walked out the garage doors.

I walked two laps of the 800m path we have around the box, came in, grabbed my stuff, and walked to the car to wait for my family to finish up.

Now, I know that DNF > DNS. But this was a shitty way to end my workout. It disrupted Caleb’s workout. It put undue worry on Coach Drea. And it made my family and friends worry about me as well.

First, I’m fine. I’ll stretch and mobilize throughout my day today and survive. I don’t think it was the physical demands of this workout.

Second, there were two parts to my crash and burn today.

a) I should have either waited until more equipment became available (i.e. another barbell) or asked Caleb to drop weight.

That said, I didn’t feel like waiting was really an option due to a different style of class going on at 9:30 (new folks doing a different variation on the workout). And I didn’t feel like I could ask Caleb to drop weight again. We had already discussed 315# during the warm-up and then I had to drop to 275#. Asking him to drop again would not have been “cool” although he probably would have been fine with it.

b) The bigger issue was that my head really wasn’t in the game today. I’m honestly struggling with a number of things in life right now. Work is not going well. Some of my writing is going gangbusters but not paying, so it’s a costly time sink at the moment. My wife’s charity work had a trip fall apart at the last minute, so we’re now reorganizing our summer. And we just found out our dog has a lung tumor, so that’s weighing heavily on everybody.

I tried dressing the part, wearing my Star Wars-themed “May the Gains be with you…” shirt.  I tried getting into the right headspace during the warm-up, joking around with Bri and Jonathan and Sarah. And for a bit, I thought it might work.

But it obviously was only a temporary fix. Wasn’t my finest hour.

So I apologize to everyone who was concerned when I walked out. It’s been a long while since that has happened.

I need to pay attention to my headspace and not push so hard during workouts, and maybe this won’t happen again. But I’m only human, so I doubt it.

Thanks.