Lord of the Rings: The Quest for My Inner-Gymnast

Sara was out today and our trainer was Josh, a cool funny guy who was super-knowledgable about mobility.  He discussed mobility vs. flexibility (I never thought there was much of a difference, but there is). He had us do very interesting movements to warm up. Some laying on our side, moving limbs to the opposite side...some crazy gymnastics-like movements on paralettes, but nothing that we did would prepare me for the pain that followed today's workout.

WOD
"Ledesma"
Complete as many rounds as possible in 20 minutes of:
5 Parallette handstand push-ups
10 Toes through rings
20 pound Medicine ball cleans, 15 reps

(check out the video of the WOD, with an incredible performace from Austin Malleolo of Crossfit Albany, complete with horrible musical selections)

I got into a handstand and tried half a pushup before the warmup today, but no way do I feel like I'm ready to tackle the exercise as part of a WOD.  So I scaled those to pike pushups off a 24" box with my butt straight up in the air.  Josh saw me crank out the first round of them and said I can't be more than a couple of weeks away from doing handstand pushups...pretty crazy...

The biggest surprise though was my ability to jump my feet into the rings consistently throughout each round.  It takes a lot of momentum to get my body even semi-inverted, so this movement was super-challenging.  But somehow I found the strength to get my toes through those rings a lot, and when they didn't quite make it they were damn close. 

As far as the medball cleans, the less said about those the better. After watching the video I envisioned a fluid, steady motion between reps. But after Josh was done with me I was second guessing every rep, thinking about whether I was extending upward enough before dropping down under the ball.  So that hesitation translated into longer rounds, which resulted in more pain.

I got through four rounds, plus five pike pushups. I'm not going to say I took it easy, because a WOD like this (or any WOD for that matter) takes balls-to-the-wall energy to get through.  But I was still conscious of my Phlebitis, and while my leg was feeling better the bump was still there on my calf, so I didn't want to get stupid about it.  I was psyched to be back...anything on top of that was a bonus.