Unsuck Yourself.
See?
Now, let me explain those two. CrossFit uses the overhand grip for pullups, but then has two different variations: "strict" pullups, which are just the regular "pull yourself up from a hanging position using only your arms," and "kipping pullups," in which you use a swing of your upper body to gain momentum to help get your chin up over the bar. My goal was a strict pullup, partly because I consider them the "real" pullups, and partly because I suck at kipping. As for the "dubs," that's short for "double unders," where you're jumping rope and you jump once but pass the rope under your feet twice. Let's just say I have trouble successfully getting the rope under my feet once, so dubs have seemed pretty far out of reach.
Still, I knew I was getting closer with the pullups. I've never done a pullup in my life, not even when I was a kid and my strength-to-weight ratio was undoubtedly more favorable. Add to that my two shoulder injuries in the last five years--one for each shoulder--and I was pretty much starting from zero. In six months I'd gone from moving myself upward a half inch, to moving myself upward maybe 5-6 inches (I use a big rubber band to support part of my weight during pullups in actual workouts, so I can do the whole pullup and not just hang there). As incentive, I decided I'd get myself one of the "unsuck yourself" T-shirts when I did my first pullup.
I made no such promises to myself for when I achieved a dub, because I had no expectation of that ever happening. Every time we practiced dubs I ended up doing no more than repeatedly whipping myself in the butt with my rope every time I failed (and I still can't figure out how you can whip yourself in the butt when you trip over the rope and it never gets behind you). Fortunately I was (eventually) smart enough to get myself my own rope, a slightly thicker and softer version than the wire-like speedropes that the CrossFit place has, but still fairly painful nonetheless. Still, I wanted to master the "dub," for one very good reason: when a CrossFit workout contains movements that some people may not be able to do, they allow you to "scale" or modify the movements, as when I do pullups with a big rubber band. Well, the scale for not being able to do dubs is typically to do three times as many singles...and given the fact that I am often capable of executing only one or two jumps before tripping, 90 or 120 or 150 single jumps can take a very long time.
So I wanted to do a pullup, and I wanted to do a dub.
Today, I did both of them.
I've been doing a trial pullup pretty much every time I go to CrossFit and the last time I did it I was pretty close so I figured today might be the day. When I walked in and saw CoachBoy 3 (as distinct from CoachBoys 1 and 2 and CoachGirl) unloading and folding an entire shipment of new "unsuck yourself" T-shirts I figured it was fate.
So I approached the bar, jumped up and grabbed it, and started pulling myself up. And I just kept going, closer and closer to the bar until...
"Hey CoachBoy 3," I yelled, wanting someone other than myself to be the one to determine the success or failure of my pullup...but by the time he turned from his shirts I was already in the descent phase of the pullup.
"I think I did it!" I said. "I mean, my chin was above the bar...right?"
"Here, do it again and I'll tape it," he said, and stuck his phone to the rig with a neat little magnet clamp, right at bar height.
So I did another pullup, and this time the video clearly showed my chin above the bar.
Success--and time for a T-shirt!
So then we started practicing dubs for the WOD (Workout Of the Day), which would consist entirely of wall balls (throwing, in my case, a 10 pound ball nine feet up a wall, starting in a squat position) and dubs. Basically, we'd do 12 wall balls and then 13 dubs and just keep repeating that until we passed out, puked, hit the 20 minute time limit, or actually completed the prescribed 11 rounds.
Oh, and there would be no scaling if you couldn't do dubs. No, you just had to do one attempt for each dub, which meant that, if I completed the workout, I was looking at whipping myself in the ass 143 times.
Yay.
So I practiced my dubs, but without much hope. My strategy was to do one single-under to get my feet moving, and then jump higher and try to spin the rope faster to achieve the dub. Time after time I tripped over the rope, or whipped myself with it.
Until I didn't.
Suddenly I ended up with the rope in front of me, but I hadn't tripped over it or whipped myself with it, and the rope had passed under me twice ...I think. It had all happened so fast I really had no idea if I'd done a dub, so I tried another one. Same result, and same inability to figure out if I'd actually gotten the rope under me twice. So I grabbed CoachBoy 3 again and asked him to confirm whether the rope was actually passing under me two times.
"Yup," he said, "that's one dub."
Cool! Two firsts in one day! It almost made up for the fact that the oval was closed due to the cold and I would miss a skating workout today (but I can't complain too much since the cold also closed school again and I never complain about a day off).
Of course, after "mastering" the dub, I was informed by CoachBoy 3 that I would now have to complete the WOD with dubs rather than attempts--unsuccessful attempts would no longer count. And since my dubs followed the pattern of "one single, one dub, stop and reset"--unless the pattern was interrupted with a trip, which happened at least 50% of the time--I knew I was looking at the likelihood of DNF'ing the WOD.
I was still so euphoric about my newfound skills that I didn't care.
And, indeed, that's the way it went. I finished 7 rounds of 12 wall balls and 13 dubs and the wall balls and 6 of the dubs in the eighth round, before I hit the 20 minute cap. And that was just fine by me.
I'm two steps closer to being "unsucked," and I've got a new T-shirt to boot.
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