Walling some balls. Er, balling some walls? Wallballing?
One ritual for every CrossFitter is checking their box’s website or Facebook page each evening to see what the WOD will be the next day. This becomes especially important if you’re training for other sports, as you don’t want to do, say, Karen (150 wall-balls, for time) the day before a race.
It’s not very often that there isn’t a WOD, but it does happen. Usually that means a skill day, or a strength day, or a day to PR a chosen lift. Or a natural disaster.
Today’s “no WOD” was a skill day, athlete’s choice. I was excited for it, since my skills on a few of the core CrossFit exercises are pretty crummy. I want to learn double-unders most of all, so I was pretty jazzed to go in there and have a session just to work on them.
My buddy Kelly led the “warm-up.” Except that it wasn’t a warm up, so much as a mini-WOD. It consisted of stations for shuttle runs, box jumps, kettlebell swings and burpees, and we did two rounds. I initially lined up with Melissa, one of the coaches and co-owners, and my competitive streak had me blasting through the shuttle runs like my life depended on it. She caught up with me, then left me behind as we progressed to the rest of the exercises, as I blew up and she just chugged away, seemingly unphased.
I went hard enough on the warm up that I was a little tired when it came time for the skill work. Oops. I practiced double unders and did some pull-up supplement work, but found that I was wearing myself out just doing that. Then came the auxiliary work.
No WOD, right? HA!
We did wall-balls, 10 shots, every minute, on the minute (EMOM). Bearing in mind how I keep blowing myself up by forgetting the effects of volume, I selected a 14 pound wall ball. But after a few rounds, Kelly decided he’d had enough of that sandbagging, and switched me to a 20 pounder. It was rough, but it was fun, and I finished my reps between Katie and Melissa, grinning through dripping sweat.
So much for no WOD, eh?