On Friday Fredrik and I met at the Box after lunch to test 15.3 WOD.

15.3 Rx:
Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 14 minutes of:
7 muscle-ups
50 wall-ball shots
100 double-unders
(Men use 20-lb. ball to 10 feet, Women use 14-lb. ball to 9 feet)

Since I can not do a single muscle-Up (MU) I had no choice this week but to do the scaled workout. A muscle-up requires that you hang straight from to rings, and then pull yourself up and perform a dip on the rings. Easy for some, harder for most.

15.3 Scaled:
Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 14 minutes of:
50 wall-ball shots (WBs)
200 single-unders (SU)
(Men use 20-lb. ball to 9 feet, Women use 10-lb. ball to 9 feet)

Fredrik was going to go first, but a mistake in the clock, that we didn’t see until he had already done 25 WBs, we decided I would go first giving him time to recover. For those that do not know a wall-ball shot is holding a medicine ball in front of you, squatting down with hips below your knees and then standing up and throwing the ball up against the wall to a predetermined height. Sounds easy enough, and up to 15 is really not that tough. But anything over 15 they start to get tough.

My goal was to get through three rounds of 50 WBs and then as many SUs as I could in the remaining time. During my first round I do 15 + 15 + 10 + 10 WBs and then 50+50+50+50 SUs. Felt good and it was less than four minutes. During the second round I could only manage 10+10+10+10+10 but kept with the 50+50+50+50 SUs. During the third and final round of WBs I could not keep up the pace. I only managed between 5-8 WBs at a time. By the time I got the 50th up, there was only 5 seconds left and I never even got my hands on the rope. Quit a few guys including Fredrik managed to get through round three WBs and a lot of SUs.

I am torn between spending 14min to attempt one MU, or if I should punish my body again by trying to get a little farther through 15.3 scaled.

Saturday I spent just over seven hours at an Olympic lifting class with Ulf Stillman to learn how to do Overhead Squats, Snatch and Clean & Jerk. It was hard, it pushed my comfort zone borders, but it was fun. I learned a lot.
The best part of the class was that we were 12 people from various back grounds and sizes. I was probably the 2nd or 3rd largest in the class, but far from the strongest. We spent just under one hour on body position and Overhead squats, then nearly 4 hours on snatch technique and the final 1.5-2 hours on clean & jerk. With my back issues I was expecting to be stuck in bed all day Sunday, but since I was really trying to lift properly, I did not use my lower back as much as I had been prior to the class. In fact it was really only my ass and hamstrings that were sore on Sunday.

So basically what I got out of the class was I need to stop looking at the weights everyone else puts on the bar, and workout with the weights that I can maintain proper body position and technique. So for me that means Snatches at or around 30kg, Clean & jerk at or around 50kg. The reason for 30 kg with Snatch is I don’t feel comfortable going under the bar with more weight. But in a clean the bar is on my chest and I feel better about holding the bar in front and can manage the 50kg. What can I do to get better and raise my max. Well to start with I am going to practice overhead squats more and more. Build up my leg and core strength and at the same time get to a point where I feel ok with heavy weights over my head. This will directly effect my Snatch weight and indirectly allow me to increase my clean weight. I am not so worried about the Jerk portion of a clean & jerk. I am fairly confident that I can jerk any weight I manage to clean.