Higher Math

Dave is out of town, so we had a different coach last night, Thomas, who likes to design more complicated routines. He’s the one who designed the Suffer on Saturday event with the wheel-spinning. Last night we had six exercises: Row for calories Jump rope Slam-ball Basketball chest passes bounced off wall Jump to touch jinglebell hanging over your head 4-count sit-ups Slam-ball is done with a ball like this. You hold it over your head and slam it down on the floor as hard as you can, sink into a squat at the same time and scoop the ball up. It doesn’t bounce more than a couple of inches. The object is to slam it for maximum (though small) bounce and get under it fast enough to scoop it up, then lift it overhead again and repeat. The workout was done in teams of two, and our coach kept track of time, telling us when to start and stop. The format was: 1. Both teammates do five 30-second sets of one exercise (say, row 30 seconds for calories, five times) with a 15-second rest in between each set. 2. Write down both teammates’ scores (calories or reps, depending on the drill) during each 15-second rest. 3. After five sets, during the one-minute rest, move to the next exercise station. 4. In the end, add up teammates’ scores from each round of each exercise and note the team’s lowest score for each of the six drills. 5. Add the six low scores (one for each exercise) to get the team’s total score for the workout. Erika and I won by one point. (Girl Power! etc.) Following the theme of our state’s contested gubernatorial election, Tom immediately demanded a recount, which did not happen. I did well at jumping rope because of my three years at the boxing gym. I did badly at the four-count sit-ups because I’m a big spaz. I tried to go fast, lost my timing (and my balance, as I tried to lift my upper and lower body while keeping my rear end on the floor), and pretty soon my arms and legs were flailing pointlessly. I had to calm myself and begin again. I tried to remember some of my scores on the exercises. Rowing for 30 seconds, my highest and lowest numbers of calories burned were 11 and 8. Jumping rope, my highs and lows were around 80 and 74. Slam-ball high and low reps were 15 and 10 I think. Basketball chest passes (bounced off the wall), high and low reps were 30 and 25. The basketball felt hilariously light and bubble-like after handling the slam-ball, but passing it as fast as I could for 30 seconds really made my arms burn. Bell-jump high and low reps were ridiculous, 9 and 7 I think. We all had to be extremely careful because to jump and touch the bell, we had to stand on a high platform of stacked floor mats. And the four-count sit-ups, I think my high rep score was 7 and my low was 5. Tom and I were both glad to have a chance to use our long-honed jump-rope skills at CrossFit, and we were secretly wishing more of the regulars had been there to see us doing doubles. There aren’t many things we can do better than the regular longtime CrossFitters! As I was Googling the slam-ball, I ran across Atomic Athletic—take a look at its insane strength-training equipment. This is way beyond Hooverball! And how about this basketball game called SlamBall? Looks like fun.