Ben Plotnicki

Throwdown (DP/BJO/Clean)

6:20 & 285 – the round of 9 is the only one I feel my speed per rep slowed down on the burpee box jump over, my goal was quick transitions, and keep moving, even if I slowed down on my burpee just keep moving with good footwork. All DP unbroken, just feel I’m a little slower in my speed per rep, I did play with different ways to get to the ground as quickly as possible, the ones that felt the fastest I had the least control of the db and most of the time was ok was too much of a risk though if I lost the db. With the clean I opened at 245, hit 265, missed 285 on my first attempt, it was heavy but I let it pull me forward slightly and I didn’t trust my hang position, the position I had used in my warmup and the other reps, I rushed the hang position and didn’t trust what got me there but on the second attempt I trusted it and had to grind in the bottom for a bounce or 2 and then stood it up.

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Spend some good time decompressing back before leaving

Wall assisted glute bridge

Frog pumps

Empty PVC OHS at slow tempo

Pelvic tilts from quadruped, include some rockbacks

done

EMOM x 30

Min 1 – AB 15 cals

Min 2 – 6 bar facing burpees + 12 air squats

Min 3 – 3 KB high windmills/side

So I kind of went ham on this today. Had a friend who wanted to train with me today. There is no way in the world I could keep up with him one on one on the bike so it was a good match. In the back of my mind I was thinking how could I maximize energy and efficiency on the bike and I on round 1 it was about 45 seconds, after that all bike cals were done around 30 seconds. Tried to keep 1000+ for 8-12 seconds and then tried to keep 700 until 12 cals and throttle down in the 300’s  to finish. And then he was trying to beat me on burpee and I was not going to let that shit happen. Super fun day to just get out of my comfort zone. With going so hard I sat down on the rower and rowed 500m and it was hard as hell to keep it below 2:10 so I decided to rest a few hours and come back and finish row later. 

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Row 3k @ 2min/500m pace

Much better with the rest. 

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5 min box breathing @ 3 sec in, 6 sec out tempo

This was perfect. Did 3363 and wanted to get 20 break cycles in and probably extended some of my holds and went for 6 minutes

A. Hang Squat Clean and Jerk; 1.1.1 x 4 sets; rest 15-20 sec; rest 2min

225-230-235-245 – this was really good today, after feeling like I was getting buried under the load on saturday this was a good way to focus on getting back on the bar, you know you are going to get some rest so get those breaths in bt cluster reps and focus on speed under and good control and good hip drive for the jerk.

B1. Deadlift; 20 Sec AMRAP @ 315lbs x 3 sets; rest 20 seconds

7-6-6 – these didn’t feel terrible today, I’m just slow

B2. K HSPUs; 20 Sec AMRAP x 3 sets; rest 20 seconds

16-16-13

B3. HSW: 75′ AFAP x 3 sets; rest as needed

2:09-1:55-2:16 this combo kind of made me dizzy today and was pretty close to calling it for the day after the last set of hs walk. But powered on and just told myself all you have to do is just move for quality and figure it out as you go. 

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50′ FRWL

10 DB Power Cleans

1min AMRAP Bar Muscle Ups

50′ FRWL

10 DB Power Cleans

1min AMRAP TTB

rest 5min

x2 TOTAL SETS

8&9 and bmu and 19&22 on TTB – I was so dizzy and not feeling good at all and the db power clean in the first round kind of sent me to a feeling like poop state, so I grinded through the first set of muscle ups. On both bmu and ttb my goal was to get my 1 minute clock starting as fast as possible with a quick transition and just chip away. Felt a little better on second round as I was getting closer to normal.

10/5

AB 10 min easy effort

done

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AB 1 min @ 10 min TT target pace

(rest 1 min)

AB 2 min @ 10 min TT target pace

(rest 2 min)

AB 3 min @ 10 min TT target pace

(rest 3 min)

AB 4 min @ 10 min TT target pace

(rest 4 min)

AB 5 min @ 10 min TT target

Goal was to hold bt 325-350, I held 345-376 the majority of the time (not sure if this was on the easy bike or the average bikes). Only in the 4 min range did I dip to 330 and that made me aware I hit that in the 5 min but only for 1-2 seconds at a time. ( for my records 233.6 cals on AB BB0279) don’t think this is the easy bike but I kept a higher wattage than I anticipated so wanted some tracking and posting. 

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Easy decompression work for hips/hamstrings after the TD (assuming will still be a bit sore here)

Actually I’m not too sore. Only just a little, but nothing that I couldn’t get warmed up quickly 

10/6

Ring MU – 6 sets of 3, rest 2 min, speed/quality focus

Didn’t plan on videoing any sets but after my first set felt so good, I thought I needed to be able to have video and see what was good and what needed fixing as opposed to just stating that they felt good today. I need to work on consistency from one rep to the next, but what was pretty awesome and you can see on some of the sets, is if the first one felt off, I was able to make the tweaks going into the 2nd and 3rd reps. Did a 7th (but only 6 on video) set because they felt good and wanted to work on faster turnover out of the dip

Ring muscle up video

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AMRAP 12 min

2,2,4,4,6,6….

Wallballs

Row cals

(goal of clearing the 20’s and getting well into 22’s)

22 wall ball + 2 row cals – reset the monitor to row from zero everytime, one I didn’t want to do complicated math and figured that would be how it was done in a competitive set up plus makes work on tightening up transitions. With resetting I made a mistake in the round of 14 where I hopped on the rower without hitting the reset so I wasted 5-6 seconds there on waiting to hit that and then waiting for the reset. I broke the wall ball in the set of 20 @ 14 in order to reset the rower then, don’t know if this saved anytime or not but thought it might be worth the risk especially since that was the round I needed to really hammer down on the rower. Was trying to hold upper 11’s…..I should’ve tried to hold a bit higher just to push the pace mostly because of so many transitions and knowing that resetting my own rower would take a few extra seconds.

Throwdown (DL/HSPU/HSW/Cleans)

50ft handstand walk

Took way too much time on the deadlift @ 315, I did 3 right away, 5 and 2, I had 2 reps left and I didn’t pick up the fucking bar right away, it was heavy but not to the point that I couldn’t do it, I just bitched out. Hspu felt pretty decent today. Changed weights during hspu breaks so wasn’t put in a position to come down and kick right back up. 12-8, 12-10-8. I did this much earlier in my day than I normally would (football game to watch) – which this had some positives and negatives, being a little more crunched for time I had to take care of my business in my warm up. The negative is I didn’t get enough reps at 225 squat clean and got zero reps @ 315, in hindsight, wouldn’t have made a huge difference at all, but mentally being a little more prepared might have helped my mindset. Being a little more prepared for 315 I might not have turned into a little bitch, a few of the cleans on 225, I just bottomed out and almost missed the lifts because I couldn’t put the breaks on, and on two of them my right hand came off the bar, luckily I have good squat mechanics so even though losing my right hand it was still in a good position in my rack. Low back was definitely not liking the squat cleans at that portion of the workout. I did do my hs walk in the unbroken increments of 25ft, and I didn’t waste a whole lot of time like I normally do getting back into it, but I knew the clock was running out. I have been accumulating some good handstand walking practice unfatigued in warm ups of late but just need to get where we can move faster. I do think I move so slow on them that it burns me out even more. The first 25ft my back didn’t feel bad, but the last 5ft of the walk my back was not happy and had I had time for another clean it would have been rough. 

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Spend some good time decompressing back before leaving

Wall assisted glute bridge

Frog pumps

Empty PVC OHS at slow tempo

Pelvic tilts from quadruped, include some rockbacks

done

Open workout 19.4

For total time:

3 rounds of:

10 snatches @ 95lbs

12 bar-facing burpees

Then, rest 3 minutes before continuing with:

3 rounds of:

10 bar muscle-ups

12 bar-facing burpees

*12 min time cap

4 bar muscle up into the 3rd round – I could come up with at least 7 or 8 excuses but that would only be looking for self assurance for myself. At the end of the day burpee speed was not where it needed to be. First 3 rounds took 4:02 and burpee speed was too slow, all snatch ub, even contemplated breaking snatch if it gave me a chance to move faster on burpee. In the 2nd round of bmu I felt some ab fatigue so maybe i was over kipping/too tight of a midline on my bar muscle up in round 1, and in my second round of burpee I felt some tricep fatigue. This workout is quickly becoming a nemesis of mine, I want to finish it, when i finished the first 3 rounds, I was never going to quit, I just wasn’t in a positive place of feeling I was going to finish with the time  I had remaining. Well time to close the door on the day, shake it off, get some rest and be ready to get after it the next time.

A1. L Sit Hold; 1min for time x 2 sets; rest 1min

Didn’t really have a sense of urgency with this today for time as I was trying to make sure I kept my toes pointed and above my hips.

A2. Front Lever Tuck Hold; 20 seconds for time x 2 sets; rest 2min

I may not look like Dave Durante here but I feel that I’m somewhat strong and pretty damn close to the position you are supposed to be in

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3 Rounds for Time:

21/16 Cal Skierg

50′ HSW

7:20 – had one overriding goal. On any breaks get back into the walks quickly, on the turnarounds, get back into the walks quickly. With that being the goal I didn’t want to push too too hard on the ski, ski first round at 1100 + and the other rounds were a slower start and a finish of around 1100 which only had my ski splits not too far off each other. 

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3 Rounds:

1min Row

1min Ski

1min Bike

*Ramp each round from 65% to 85% effort

done

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Every 2min until failure

40 Double Unders

Row Cals in remaining time

Men Start at 10, woman at 6 – add 2 cals every set until failure

Completed the full round of 30cals, and I’m kind of kicking myself after. The round of 30 I barely finished, (footnote of the round of 30 I did not set my rope down to help me start the next round quickly), so with only seconds to spare for finishing the round of 30 it took me a second or so to gather my rope, then getting into the rower I didn’t think I was going to make it so I didn’t worry about coming out too hot just wanted to gather my legs so I could make a strong finish. I finished with 28 row cals, and kicking myself because the 1-2 seconds I lost from grabbing the rope the 10-15 seconds that I didn’t get up to full speed as quickly as possible.

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Easy 20min Recovery Jog/Walk/Hike 

It was raining like crazy so this was not going to happen today

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AB 10 min building intensity, faster every 2-2:30, ending around threshold effort

done

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AB @ 500 watts, pushing the ‘grind’ a little more each set compared to last week (if last week was stopping at a 7-8/10, lets push this to 8-9/10 for each. little more grind, little more burn)

rest walk 90 sec and pick back up until you accumulate 200 cals at that speed (goal will be to take >2 min off the total time from last week)

20:41 – (24:54 last Monday)  – ummmmm I felt I pushed way way harder and grinded so much more this week (was afraid I did not improve from last week on my initial finish, but then I looked back and didn’t feel as bummedt) My legs feel so much more blown up from 200 cals than 192 wall ball. And I also made sure I didn’t get the easy bike that I was on on Friday. 

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Thoracic spine mobility from wall squat with foam roller – 5-6 pulses through extension (https://www.instagram.com/p/CFApCYwATnM/?igshid=122qah2w375z9)

Might be one of my new favorite mobility pieces

Banded spanish squat iso hold at 45 degree angle with 4-5 reps of arms extended upper back extensions x 2-3 sets

Done and legs still were not happy

9/25
Strict ring MU skill exposure, spend 6-8 min of ‘play’ here
This is the first time I have done some strict rmu in a long time and was glad to know I still have it. What was hard today was controlling the negative and tying more than one together. The eccentric strength wasn’t there today.
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Every 5 min x 4 sets
21 cal AB
15 deadlifts @ 245lbs
9 BBJO @ 24in
Times were 2:49. 2;42. 2:46, 2:50 – I do also think I found a pretty fast bike (whoohooo)……deadlifts broke each round first round did 2 sets and that slowed down my bbjo and after breaking deads in sets of 3 felt I just moved fast on the burpee work
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Every 4 min x 4 sets
21 cal ski erg
BB OH WL x 50ft @ 95lbs
Clock was counting down so didn’t get accurate times but found a pace on ski that was hitting 1000-1100 cal/hr and that felt really good to hit that.

9/26
tttTD
(WB/DU/BMU)
17:57 – I would say for the most part, transitions were on average 4-5 seconds, there is always some outlier rounds of course. But that once again was my big goal, got to be a sweaty mess around round 8-9, only missed one round of dubz, 2nd round and mentally said cannot let that happen again, so did my first 12-15 reps at a pace I wouldn’t miss and then tried to speed up to finish the reps. BMU felt really really good today. So as the transitions were pretty good without having video to analyze, the breaks were in wall balls, after last bmu I tried to get my first rep in within 4seconds or less, but broke every round at rep 11 (some rounds did 10 and liked 11 the best), and without a doubt rested too long, I realized I only had 2 ½ rounds left and missed the window to put my foot on the pedal and suffer, but went for that in the last round, I should’ve fought for unbroken on wall ball last round but did a drop breath and pick back up. Overall, pleased with transitions, this would’ve been a good one to do with someone else, I do think I would have suffered a little more in the middle of it to push for shorter rest periods, or someone judging me.
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Front squat x 3, rest 1 min
Back squat x 5 (same bar), rest 2 min x 4 sets
185 x 2, 205 x 2 – this was evil after the wall balls……first set was the toughest but after that wasn’t terrible just didn’t feel powerful and explosive