WORKOUT OF THE WEEK # 010

Gymnastic Skill + Hero WOD

Saturday 4th December 2021

Kipping HSPU Skill

• Intent: This section of the session is intended as a skill piece in which it will be thoroughly coach led through specific warm up/positional drills that are key for Kipping HSPU strength + technique.

• Approach: Use this as not only a warm up for your HSPUs in the workout but to look at your position and what ability you are currently at and what you need to improve on to progress. This may come in the form of position or strength.

  • Beginners, follow the coaches instructions and carefully watch the movement demos provided, at this stage strength may be the key issue, if you don’t have multiple pike press-ups and a solid foundation of pressing strength in general then really focus on position in movements such as the Frog Hold/ Headstand. Understand that this is where you can make gains easily alongside your strength work and when you put it together you will be much better off as you have already built that solid base in the HSPU.

  • Intermediate and advanced athletes, use this time to really dial in the technical aspects of the Kipping HSPU. If you are confident in kipping then use this time to practice cycling through reps. Have a go at different techniques, if you go into a big kip (close to a frog hold) you will be able to use more legs and momentum, however it takes longer. Vice versa, if you have a short kip it will be much faster but will take more out of your arms. This may give you an idea of which technique to use later in the workout depending on your shoulder endurance and efficiency in the Kip.

• Scaling: Due to this skill section of the session being coach run this should be relatively easy to do, the coach will demo each movement and you will repeat, this will continue until you get to a stage in which you can’t complete the certain progression. When you get to this stage, identify where the issue comes from i.e strength vs technique. Take a small step back and try to work on and nail that specific drill (the coach may see this and have a custom approach to try and help you improve).

Demo Video: Frog Kick Out (Progressions)

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HERO WOD

“BLAKE”

4 Rounds For Time:

40 Overhead Step Back Lunges (20/15kg plate)

30 Box Jumps (24/20”)

20 Wall Balls (9/6kg)

10 HSPU

(28 Min CAP)

Intent: This part of the session is where we get into a big conditioning piece that has some HSPU skill work mixed in with some more ‘Grunt’ work.

• Approach: This workout is rather mixed, at first look it seems to be pretty leg heavy. However, with the plate holding overhead, wall ball and HSPU combination I think there is a fair amount of shoulder volume in there as-well. Pick an option for this workout that you can move through nice and smooth, try and hold a consistent pace and then push on the last round.

  • Beginners, for some this workout may feel like quite a lot of volume, so pick options that are manageable and take strategic rests to limit fatigue. Ensure you do this so that you continue to move well and don’t break down in your movement standards, ie. not hitting depth in the wall ball etc. For the HSPUs in this workout we have already looked at some skill work previously, if there is an option that you have been given or feel works well then you could use this in the workout. However you could opt for a different option listed in the scaling section below. Look to replicate the speed of a Kipping HSPU so that you don’t spend too much time doing something else and that takes away from the stimulus of the workout. For the ‘Grunt’ work, break the lunge, box Jump and wall balls as desired. Try and keep a nice pace that you can hold throughout.

  • Intermediate and advanced athletes, for those of you that are at an RX standard or close to, this workout is definitely achievable within the time cap. The grunt work will be taxing but nothing is super heavy/advanced to get through, so try and hold the RX standard throughout. The only movement which may throw a spanner in the works is the HSPU, even still it is only 10r each round which is not a lot of volume at all. For Intermediate athletes that maybe have a few HSPUs this could be easily split into a set of 4r, followed by 2 sets of 3r. Rx athletes should look to keep unbroken throughout all 4 rounds. For the other components of this workout, again Rx standard athletes should look for big sets on the lunges and most likely unbroken on the wall balls each round. For the box jumps keep a consistent pace, I would personally suggest stepping down rather than rebounding each rep as its not only safer but you won’t loose much time and it will keep your Heart Rate down.

• Scaling: In terms of scaling for this workout, we can look at our usual options such as decreasing weight, height for box jumps and then simply just the number of reps we complete. The coach will be on hand to give any custom scale options such as step ups, target wall balls etc. For the HSPU scale, as stated we want to keep the stimulus, so for this we may switch to a Hand release Press-up or a Double DB Push Press which is going to be a similar time frame to someone doing HSPU.

Demo Video: Kipping HSPU