You may find this hard to believe, but I don’t have a great vertical leap and I’m not a fan of burpees. Today we put both those movements to the test. π
I’ll admit to being a little concerned after running last night. But I woke up feeling sore, but not decrepit, and headed in with Ev to the 8:30 class. Coach Lara had a fun group — us, Star & Dave, Chris, Caleb, KB, and Alicia. I think the smarting off started not long after we walked in the door.
We did a warm-up :

- 2 minutes on the bike, rower, or ski-erg, or run
- then 2 rounds of
- 10 inchworms with a push-up
- 10 spider-man lunges
- 30 second pancake split (legs wide, bow at hip, try to get hands to floor or to ankles)
- 30 second hollow body hold
- 30 second superman hold
- 30 seconds of three or four banded shoulder abstractions
After that we chatted about burpees and did a few really focusing on full extension at the top as well as being more efficient at the bottom. Try to do a V-up of sorts, bringing feet to hands fluidly, more than independent movements as down to plank, push-up, back to plank, air squat, stand up, jump to full extension…
We also did a quick review of sit-up standards .

The workout? Pretty straightforward…
- 7 rounds for time
- 10 burpees (competitor), 8 burpees (performance), 5 burpees (fitness) to a target 3-6 inches above your max reach
- 20 sit-ups (competitor), 15 sit-ups (performance), 10 sit-ups (fitness)
Surprisingly, my burpees were the better part of this one. I kind of had to “prime the pump” by stepping down into that first burpee each time, but after that I was moving better than expected from the floor to full extension overhead, hitting the tall bar about 7″ above the end of my fingertips. I may have missed the bar a couple of times, but that was more about my “no look” approach than actually not getting enough height.
It was the sit-ups that killed me. I ended up doing butterfly sit-ups in sets of 5 and 10 and dying in the middle of them.
My workout became “performance plus” —

- 7 rounds for time
- 8 burpees to rig bar 7″ above my fingertips at full extension
- 20 sit-ups
Final time: 13:15. We were supposed to hit between 10 and 16 minutes, and I was right smack dab in the middle of that. I’ll take it.
I may or may not work out tomorrow morning depending on how I feel, but Ev has the day off so I might go for fun if I can still move. π
Great work everybody and thanks for the encouragement Lara!