Sunday 15.12: Ring mu's, pause squats, pair wod with Sipa

Sunday. Skills, ring muscle-ups. Strength, front squats with a pause. Pair wod with Sipa, chipper: 60 hspu, 120 pull-ups, 150 box, 100 burpees. Time 17.42.

This was a cool day, got my big bro to train with me after weeks or months break since last time. It was awesome to get him live at the gym to work on our ring skills and then complete a pair wod together with him. I took some front squats between rings and metcon.

Skills. Ring muscle-ups. It's been 10 days since my first mu and since then I've been able ti do multiple reps. My bro got his months ago, maybe last summer, don't know, but anyway he's done a bunch of them. He also happens to have an issue there: they've all been singles. He understood the technique way earlier than me and has done tens and hundreds of 'em. I've tried to learn from him but we've never had the possibility to work on this technique together. This day was valuable in this sense.

The biggest news was that Sipa was able to do not 1, not 2 but 3 reps in a row!!! That's huge man. I feel like each rep I complete consumes a lot of energy. At least at my current style. The secret behind Sipa's 3 rep set was false grip. He was able to maintain that grip and thus the starting point in the bottom position was similar in all mu's. Good job man!

Strength. Front squats with 3sec pause (60, 80, 90, 100, 100, 100kg). First time ever doing squats with a pause. And it felt good! I had no idea what kind of weights I should be using for this type of squats. I thought the weights should be lighter compared to regular weights. So I started with light ones and added from there on. Didn't go to the ceiling, I stayed at 100kg for the last sets.

I think I'll might go after these squats more often, also in back squats. I assume it helps the athlete to get out of the hole easier. Lately pause squats seem to have become more regular among crossfitters. That's the reason I wanted to take a shot at them.

Pair chipper. Time 17.42.

• 60 handstand push-ups (in sets of 5)
• 120 pull-ups (in sets of 10)
• 150 box jumps, 61cm (in sets of 10)
• 100 burpees (in sets of 10)

This was a pair wod, chipper style, meaning there are no rounds, there's just a bunch of movements you chip away. Complete a number of reps of a certain movement, and once you've done them all, you move on to the next movement. Because we are pretty much equal in the movements in the wod we decided to determine the number of reps to be completed. So we went in sets of 10 except the hspu's were in sets of 5 reps per brother.

Another style to complete a chipper with a partner is to do "you go, I go", going max reps per set and then change turns. I've tried both and both work. In the latter option you're ending up to do more reps in a row. In this equal distribution it's as much work / recovery. This worked very well for these bro's as the burden was similar for both of us.

The only movement I had issues with was handstand push-ups. The number wasn't huge but because Sipa was effective with them, I had little time to recover. 30 reps felt like more work had been done. The first 20 reps were okay, the last 2 sets were more challenging. Last set was 4+1, others unbroken.

Pull-ups weren't bad. I'm feeling confident hanging from the pull-up bar and I could have continued longer. There was a difference on the 2 first movements between me and Sipa. He was clearly more effective on the hspu's and I was with the pull-ups. He made the handstand push-ups look so easy.

Box jumps we did in sets of 10 reps, Games standards as always: full extension on top of the box. There were no probs for either of us, unbroken all the way. We were able to keep a good pace in all movements actually. The number of reps per set were suitable, we didn't have to stop for breathing, just kept going all the time.

Burpees were the last element, 100 reps, 50 for both. I put the last gear on on after 20 reps. I tried to go as fast as I've ever gone, full speed, all in. The end result was that we did the 100 reps in about 4 minutes. We finished at 17.42. Hspu's were about 4:30, pull-ups 3:20, box jumps 5:40 and burpees 4:10.

It was a great day, I love these days were I have a training partner. First some ring skills, then strength and a pair wod, that's a dream come true type of training day! Pauliina was obviously with us at the gym.