Knowing Your Own Strength

Representing the red team!This past Saturday, CrossFit Metropolis broke up into four teams and competed in a Holiday Throwdown.  This was our second full-gym throwdown - and just as fun as the last one.  Last time, we did a metcon with rowing and burpees.  This time, the WOD was all about strength.

The goal of the workout was to move as much weight as possible.  You had four minutes to do up to 20 should-to-overheads, four minutes to do up to 20 backsquats and four minutes to do up to twenty deadlifts.  There was a two minute break between each round.  Once the round started, you could not change the weight on the bar.

I'm good about keeping track of my lifting, so I thought I knew what I was doing.  I was wrong.

78 lbs is my five rep max push press, so that's what I went with for the shoulder-to-overheads.  In retrospect, this was my least logical selection.  If 78 lbs is my five rep max push press, then clearly I can jerk more than that.  It wasn't super easy, but I finished the 20 reps entirely too quickly.  

I blame myself less for chickening out on the backsquats.  It's just not my lift.  Friday night I went to bed thinking I'd do 105 lbs.  I woke up thinking 85 or 95 - max.  I wound up doing 93 lbs.  Again, it was definitely too light in the sense that I finished my twenty reps with lots of time left over.  

I thought I was being bold going with 165 for the deads.  Most women went pretty light on these.  165 wasn't a walk in the park, but I finished with time to spare and definitely had more in me.

In total, I moved 6720 lbs.  It was a good workout - and one that I'm still feeling two days later.  Still, next time we do something like this, I'm definitely stepping it up a notch!

-Gym Belle-