15.1, Take 2--Just a Swingin'

Yesterday morning, after a nice (painful) therapeutic massage on my recalcitrant hammy, I headed to CrossFit SISU to make a second attempt at Open WOD 15.1.  Normally I wouldn't try to re-do a WOD--if I couldn't do it the first time I figure it's highly unlikely that I'll magically be able to do it a second time.  This time, though, there was that glorious pre-WOD warmup, in which I had hit almost every T2B I attempted.  If I could just recapture that...

So when the Saturday morning Butt Camp crew had completed their workout, I started warming up for 15.1, Take 2. After some shoulder mobility stuff and a few light cleans and snatches, I tried some T2B's, and after about five attempts  I managed to achieve one.  Not a stunning success rate, but better than nothing.  And then Coach JJ came over and started helping me work on my T2B's.

First, he tried to get me to kip.  Nope, couldn't figure that out.  So then he tried to get me to monkey swing.  Nope, not happening either.  He then tried about five different ways of conveying to me exactly what I needed to do to achieve a T2B, but still all my attempts ended in inefficient flailing.  Finally, I saw him assume an expression I remembered well from when Coach TieGuy was trying in vain, for the twentieth time, to convey some simple aspect of speedskating to me.  The expression that says "OK, I'm officially out of ideas...and by the way, how can you be that clumsy and not fall down more?"  Clearly, it was time to stop practicing.

So Coach JJ gave me one more task.  "Here's your test-out," he said.  "If you can hit three T2B's in a row you can re-do the WOD."

So I jumped up and, miracle of miracles, hit the first one.  And the second.  The third was a bit sketchy--I think my right foot missed by a half inch or so--but he counted it and so I prepared to start 15.1 for the second time.

As it turned out, I might as well have saved my energy--and my hands.  After 9 minutes I had one less T2B than my first attempt, as well as (despite taping my hands and wearing my palm guards) a surprisingly large and gross amount of blood on my hands, on the bar, and on a chunk of chalk that I unthinkingly grabbed and dragged across my bloody palm mid-WOD.

After cleaning up my biohazard bar and washing the gore off my hands, I wandered into the lobby where the last of the ButtCampers were preparing to leave.

"Well, how did it go?" asked one.

"Not as well as last night.  I only got three."

"Three rounds?" he asked sympathetically; three rounds, or 90 reps, would have been on the lower end of scores achieved by the SISU athletes the night before.

"Uh, no...three reps," I clarified.

He looked at me, opened his mouth to say something, closed it again, and busied himself tying an already-tied shoe.

So yes, 15.1, Take 2, was quite unimpressive.  Not to mention quite frustrating; how can I be so bad at some of these moves?  So, in my usual "use the brain to try to compensate for the less-than-stellar body" fashion, I started thinking.  Swinging.  Kipping is a swing; monkey swinging is a swing; Coach JJ had mentioned something about swinging on a swingset.  If I could just figure out what I'm doing wrong in the swing...

Which is how I found myself today, at 2:00 on a frigid March Sunday afternoon, on the swingset in the park across the road from our house, diligently swinging back and forth as I tried to figure out the physics involved in getting my body to move in the right direction.

I may not ever master the T2B, but you can't say I haven't tried!