Dude...More Bench!

I was absolutely shocked this morning that I was able to walk (OK limp was more like it), but after 90 minutes of solid stretching and some light mobility work I made my way to the Back Box, ready for my second attempt at the bench press since starting Crossfit.

WOD - "Lynne"
Five rounds for max reps of:
Body weight bench press
Pull-ups

We buddied up two to a bench and got started.  I remembered the two crucial things that Sara imparted to us last time...squeeze your shoulder blades together and drive your feet through the floor.  I ended up doing OK, given that I wasn't expecting to be physically capable of working out today...

Bench Press @ 155
12 – 10 – 7 – 6 – 6

Pullups
16 – 11 – 7 – 8 – 10

155 turned out to be a decent weight for the bench.  I'm capable of more, but not much more to get 10+ reps.  I'll likely go heavier next time.  As always I did the pullups double-banded.  I know this will eventually change, but I'm not rushing anything.  It's still very challenging.  I was happy to do 50+ Pullups no matter how I was getting over the bar.

It's hard not to consider this a bonus WOD, so I feel great about another solid week on the books. 

More to come...

Dude...Bro...What do you bench?

Today was the first time I've bench-pressed since I was 16.  I saw it come up on the WOD and I had to laugh.  I was loving the scheme of the WOD, even though it didn't quite turn out as RX'ed:

Complete as many rounds as possible in 12 minutes of:
185 pound Bench press, 3 reps
225 pound Back squat, 5 reps

Because of limited hardware Sara decided that we should scrap the AMRAP and do seven rounds, not for time.  I was fine with that because I was much more into getting myself set on the back squats instead of rushing my way through them to try and get as many rounds as possible.  I settled on starting out at 135 on the bench and 185 on the back squat.  Since my quads were burning from yesterday's sprints I decided to low-bar the back squats, which uses glutes and hamstrings far more than quads.  This is what ultimately saved me.  If we had to high-bar like last week's back squat WOD I would have been in some serious trouble.

Here's what ended up happening:

Warmup: 25 pullups - 40 kettle bell swings (light - 16kg) - 3 tuck "L" hangs

Back Squats (5 reps)
185 (2 rounds)
205 (3 rounds)
225 (2 rounds)

Bench Press (3 reps)
135 (1 round)
155 (6 rounds)

I'm excited for the next skill day that focuses on the back squat.  I really feel like by the time we work on 1-rep max loads I'll be able to push into 300+ without a problem...I guess we'll wait and see, and depending on the day I might not be in a space to come close to that, but I'll definitely try.

The bench press sets were fine...pretty uneventful.  Knowing how infrequently this exercise comes up in WODs it was more of an experiment than anything.  I could have gone higher than 155 but I felt no reason to push it.

Fun WOD...more tomorrow!