Saturday, November 7, 2009

NOV 07 2009 - Bear Crawl? Are You Kidding Me?

I had no idea what effect the bear crawl in today's workout would have. I'm still new to the CrossFit Football programming, so I had not encountered it before. Since I live on a poison-ivy covered hill with no sidewalks, I elected to take my barbell and kettlebell down to the park and crawl around on level grass. I'm sure the passers-by thought I was nuts.

5 Rounds for Time:
9 Rack Thrusters (45kg barbell)
20m Bear Crawl
7 Ball Slams (24kg kettlebell)
20m Sprint

Here's some explanations of the above terms:
1 Rack thruster = 1 Back Squat + 1 Push-Press at the top. A Push-Press is like a shoulder press with a little knee bend and hip drive to add momentum to the bar. The key to the Rack Thruster seems to be driving hard at the end of the squat to launch the bar up as much as possible before your arms take over. I found that these were much less painful on my wrist than front thrusters (which require a front squat, and mean I have less grip on the bar). Rack thrusters are most easily done by stepping under a bar in a power rack to get the bar in position on the back. I have no rack, so I clean & jerked the weight overhead and lowered to my back before starting each set.
Bear Crawl = Crawl on all fours with only hands and feet touching the ground. Don't crawl on your knees. This turns out to require a lot of accessory muscle work in the shoulders to keep on course and keep one's face out of the dirt. Hand turnover speed was my limiter during the bear crawl. The rack thrusters took it out of me; it was all I could do to keep from face-planting.
Ball Slam = Pick up something heavy, hold it fully extended overhead, then slam it into the ground. Very primal. Very satisfying. Releases all manner of inner turmoil/ angst/ demons. It'll cure what ails you. Not having a heavy enough medicine ball, I settled for aerating the park's mulch by slamming my 24kg kettlebell into the ground. It left craters!

Overall - great workout for me! It hit one of my weaknesses (overhead lifting) from two angles by requiring strength and power for the rack thrusters, then agility and stabilization for the bear crawl and ball slams. I took 16:04 to finish; I had to break the last two rounds of thrusters into two sets. Next time this workout comes around my goal is to keep going through the whole round.

No comments:

Post a Comment