Every Open there’s always a chipper mixed in somehow. The reason they call it a ‘chipper’ is two-fold. One: your body feels like it went through a chipper. Two: you have to chip away at the WOD.

After going through 16.1, 2, and 3, now we get a WOD that will simultaneously test your endurance and ability to go intense. A 13 minute workout is just long enough that you can’t really "redline it" the whole time, but short enough that you can push it a little bit.

If you haven’t seen the workout yet, it’s pretty straight forward:

13 minute AMRAP:

55 Deadlifts (225/155)

55 Calorie Row

55 Wall balls (20lb, 10ft/14lb, 9ft)

55 Handstand Pushups

 Being someone that hates deadlifts, my hate for Dave Castro was re-kindled on Thursday night. With that many deadlifts up front, this one is going to get tough right off the bat.

The good news is that even if you can’t lift much more than the Rx weight, then you won’t have to do the scaled WOD this week. The bad news is that you will be aiming to lift Rx weight for 55 reps just to get to the easier things in 13 minutes.

My hope for everyone in this WOD is to get the Michael Vasko mindset and embrace the pain, because it’s coming. The way this workout is setup, you will have to grind out at the heavy weight to get to the rest of the “easier” reps. If bar muscle ups didn’t scare you off, I don’t think anything will. That’s good because this workout is not for the faint of heart. 

Goals and Tips

 In the head to head, we saw two SomethingDottirs go head to head. The one with the blonde hair finished first with 1 full round plus 54 deadlifts of her second round.

Then the other one with the blonde hair finished somewhat behind that with a full round plus a handful of deadlifts on round 2. If you’re setting a goal in this workout, wipe your memory of those two and break it down by movements.

I think it’s reasonable for everyone to aim to be done with the deadlifts between 3 and 4 minutes. Your first set of 5-10 will feel fine, but when you get to 30/40, it is going to start getting real hard.

After this you can aim to finish the wall balls within the next 4 minutes, putting you around the 7:30 mark. If you can knock out the row in 4 minutes, then you will have about 1:30 to finish as many handstand pushups as possible.

My advice to you on this workout is to treat it as what it is: a chipper. You’re probably thinking “what kind of crap advice is that? You just told us what kind of workout it is” but hear me out.

If you try to take huge chunks of these movements out all at once, you’ll regret it very quickly. But, if you chip away slowly, you will make it further into it than you might think.

If a set of 10 deadlifts sounds doable to you but maybe it would be a bit of a stretch, break it down to 6-8 reps from the start. Aim for smaller sets with quicker breaks rather than large sets and then standing there bent over like Chris Farley giving a motivational speech.

The same goes for the wall balls. If a set of 20 is not terrible when you’re fresh, try sets of 8-10 with a few seconds in between sets. This will go a long way toward getting further along in this workout. WHEN (not if) you get to the row, just get the fan moving first and foremost.

It doesn’t matter if you can only get a really small pull going, just get it moving. As long as you keep it moving, you’ll keep getting calories. While you catch your breath and recover from the wall balls, start to pull harder and find a consistent pace to knock out those calories.

Once you are through the row, you will have 3 choices

 - Thank the good Lord this is over I’m thankful I got ___ calories through this thing.

 - Crap there’s only 20 seconds left I better get on that wall and get as many HSPU as I can!

 - Ok, I’ve got a couple minutes left, I will now CALMLY go and hit as many small to moderate sets of HSPU as I can. Again here you shouldn’t be aiming for a massive first set. Do something that will give you a good base, and then come down, shake out your arms to recover, and then get back up there to do it again.

Regardless of where you end up in this workout, remember where you have come from versus where you are now. Be glad you even got to the gym in the first place and also that you are more fit for having done even 1 deadlift than you were before coming in. Remember your strategy and stick to it once you get there.

For any form or standards questions, ask our coaches and we’ll be glad to help! See you guys tonight.

Russ

PS—Becca, we are watching the light switch closely this time. Just going to make sure nobody magically finishes a set of deadlifts after 1 minute while the lights are off…