For all those who managed to wade/swim their way to the gym Thursday night, we had a new take on an old favorite lined up: the DB Complex. First, however, some warm-up and skill work.
Class was divided into 3 groups for 5-7 minutes of DU work as follows:
Group B = athletes who can do DUs, but not consistently (anywhere from 5 to 20 DUs at a time, with or without single skips in between), worked on a DU Ladder (DU Ladder = 2 DU, 4 DU, 6 DU, etc., where each break or incomplete set means you start over at the beginning);
Group C = athletes with no DUs or very few worked on wrist speed, starting with attempting to just one DU (no single skips before or after – just spin the rope as fast as possible), followed by some one-handed wrist work and then a return to single DUs.
In short, the Bear Fight is a DB complex ladder combo’d with a Bear Crawl interval. Let me explain:
All athletes begin at one end of the court. For Round 1, each athlete does 1x Deadlift, 1x Power Clean, 1x Push Press, 1x Thruster, 1x Walking Lunge (Lunge Right, Lunge Left), then puts the DBs down where the lunges end and performs a bear crawl to end of court and back to their DBs for the second round.
For Round 2, each athlete does 2x Deadlifts, 2x Power Cleans, 2x Push Press, 2x Thrusters, and 2x Walking Lunges (Lunge Right, Lunge Left, Lunge Right, Lunge Left), puts the DBs down and then bear crawls to end of court and back to their DBs for the third round.
Round 3, as you might imagine at this point, equals 3x Deadlifts, 3x Power Cleans, etc., with 3x Walking Lunges (or 6 single lunges), followed by the bear crawl. Each athlete continues in this manner until they reach the far end of the court with the lunges (i.e., both feet cross the end line), at which point they turn around and farmer’s carry the weight back to the start line.
Prescribed weight for guys was a total DB weight that equated to roughly 1/2 body weight. For gals, total DB weight was prescribed at roughly 1/3 body weight.
At those weights, the Bear Fight (so dubbed because the complex resembles The Bear barbell complex mixed with the bear crawl) became a study in contrasting difficulty;
as the bear crawls got shorter, the reps increased on the DB complex by five each time, and a 1/3 to 1/2 BW, that’s no small increase.
Once all was said and done, we finished things off with some much needed stretching and foam rolling. The slick floor (rain, humidity, sweat) made for some tricky conditions, but everyone did a great job of persevering. Please be sure to scroll down and read yesterday’s post regarding Fight Gone Bad 6!
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Really enjoyed class last night. Did as many double unders as possible, the top 3 rounds were 109, 81 and 80.
Ah the good ol’ db complex. It’s amazing how quickly things start to get rough with those. Used 20lb dbs. Was trying to complete everything without having to break the db complexes, but had to break on the 5th round during the push presses, elbows just didn’t want to stay in the rack position anymore. It was a great workout, looked much easier than it actually was.
Love the pictures of t-shirts representing CFDC!
Good tough class. On double unders I did as many unbroken as possible. It seems maybe I should have been working the ladder instead. Got a really slow star on the double unders and my best 3 sets were 20, 20, 16.
I used 30lb DBs for the complex which is about 40% of my body weight. I was trying to keep up with Alden again but with the lunge advantage he had due to longer legs it didn’t work.
Another sweaty, grinding workout in muggy (and slick) conditions that I survived. 🙂
Double-unders: Props to Salty (Chris) for demonstrating a couple of new ways to successfully perform the double-under. I will be sure to incorporate these into my after-class practices. I should get to “there” soon…I hope. 🙂
Bear Fight: I used 50# dumbbells. What a “fight” this was: I was fighting for traction on a slippery floor (which is why my walking lunges weren’t as deep as they could/should have been); doing multiple reps with said dumbbells was no joke (I was happy to get to the end of the court after my fourth round); and, the bear crawls really sapped my energy levels. Nevertheless, I finished. Thanks to my “brother,” Tom “the Hammer” A., for the encouragement at the end.
Great to see new faces in the 6:00 class. Everyone did a great job,
Afterwards, I raced to Bethesda to do yoga with Winnie.
FGB 6: I’m glad to see that some got the message and ran with it. Now we’re $25 closer to our goal. 🙂
“Not too bad for an old man.” – CFDC’s own ODB.
I did my first double under! Now I need to work on continuing jumping afterwards and obviously work up to doing more. But I’m going to get myself a jump rope and practice this when I’m down in Guadalajara for the month of Oct. Hopefully I’ll come back and be a DU machine!
I agree with Steph, the met-con sounded so much easier than it was. I thought oh this is going to be easy but by the 3rd round I was struggling. It was a great workout though!
So sorry I missed this. I’m not particularly good at bear crawling but I need every endurance test I can get between now and FGB. Alas, I had a date with the wet vac and my flooded basement last night. Fun times!
See you all on Sunday.
Steph, I love the picture of you and Andraea in shirts representing CFDC!
Good job by everyone working on the DUs. remember, the key is body position-stay upright and bounce on the ball of the feet. Try not to look down, or tuck jump, bringing the knees to the chest.
reggie, thanks for the FGB6 tip, I just couldn’t pull it off on the cell phone.
Really tough workout. Bear crawls did not make it any easier.