40s In A WOD And Hit It With Intensitiy

I slept really well last night. I even slept about 7 hours. Around 5 o’clock I woke up thinking, Oh shit, I slept the day away. I got up and enjoyed my coffee while browsing Hacker News a bit. We had to go to the grocery store, so I was thinking about a WOD to do later on in the day.

The one programmed for today is dumb as a WOD so that was out. Pause squats and things like that don’t make sense in a timed workout. Maybe if you could see the timer, which I cannot, it might work, but oh well. I found one to do that fit what I wanted to do today.

On this day I wanted to use the 40-pound dumbbells. I wanted it to be more of a sprint WOD where I can hit it with full intensity while using the heavier weights.

The one I settled on was 2 rounds of 25 hang power cleans and 35 dumbbell squats. Hit it with intensity is exactly what I did. I went unbroken for the first 24 hang cleans. I only broke it there for a few seconds to reset so I can go straight into the squats. It wasn’t until after doing the first 15 reps of squats that I broke them up. We can just say that by that time my heart rate was through the roof, and it stayed there throughout the WOD.

As the workout went on, I found myself breaking more but still kept it short and really just used that break to get a handle on my heart rate and lungs. I completed the workout in the lower end of the goal time and only about 30 seconds slower than the last time I had used this weight in this particular WOD. That was four years ago in 2022.

By the time I was done, my quads were on fire, and I was feeling shaky as hell. I drank a quick protein shake and then a bunch of water. As awful as that feeling is, it’s a good feeling. It’s the feeling of accomplishment. I came very close to catching the Fran cough at the end. Maybe the feeling of death being nigh but still a feeling of having done a real intense workout.

It took me a while to recover after the workout. I expected that. I even managed to fall asleep for a bit on the couch. Anyone who knows me knows I don’t nap. It might happen a few times a year unless I have a bug or something. It is just something I have never been able to do. I would get in trouble as a kid when I couldn’t take a nap.

Music for the WOD was Trepalium