More than 30 athletes turns out on Labour Day Monday for a huge Crossfit group workout: Golf. And it was awesome!
The workout was deceptively simple. And it was thoroughly exhausting.
Rocky Lake Crossfit Labour Day Golf
Teams of 5, 7 minute time limit on each hole, 3 minute rest between each:
Hole #1 | Par 3 | 800m run
3:00-3:30 (-1) 3:30-4:00 (0) 4:00-4:30 (+1) 4:30+ (+2)
Hole #2 | Par 3 | 2 x (Hang Clean + Front Squat)
100% Body Weight (-1) 50%-99% Body Weight (0) 1%-50% Body Weight (+1)
Hole #3 | Par 4 | 30 Pull-ups for Sets
3 set (-1) 4 sets (0) 5 sets (+1) 6 sets (+2) bands (+3)
Hole #4 | Par 3 | Max Reps Kettle Bell Swings (53lb guys / 35lb gals)
50+ (-1) 30-49 (0) 1-29 (+1)
Hole #5 | Par 5 | Max Burpees in 7 minutes (entire team together)
600 (-1) 550 (0) 500 (+1) 450 (+2) 400 (+3) 350 (+4) 300 (+5) 250 (+6)
For holes 1-4, at least two people from each team of five had to complete the hole. If all five wanted to do it, so be it. The best score from the team is what is recorded for the hole. For hole 5, all athletes participate and their burpee reps are combined for the team score.
Once again because of my knee, I opted out of the run, but I participated in all the other movements. Our team included Mike, a regular coach of the 6am class, Jason, Carrie, Tony (who took off before we could wrangle him for the team photo) and me.
We got par on the run, with Mike and Jason both completing the run in just slightly longer than 3:30.
The second movement was a bit tricky. Carrie’s quite small and light, but has never pushed her clean and front squat very far, so body weight wasn’t in the cards. Jason and Tony are pretty big guys, and so body weight is a lot for them, and neither of them had tried it. Mike and I hadn’t tried for body weight either and we weren’t sure either of us could get there. I had come closer to 100% than anyone on the team, so I thought I would work my way up to it and see how close I could get – but the reality is, unless I could get the full 100%, it was’t going to earn us the extra stroke off our team score. I built up slowly but managed only to get 150lbs. I needed 165lbs for -1 score. All five of us did the movement, but we were all in the 50-99% of body weight measure. So we settled for par.
Next up was pull-ups. This, I was feeling quite strong for. During the warmup my shoulders didn’t bother me one bit, so I knew I would do well. Most days I can bang out 20 pull-ups unbroken so finishing 30 with 3 sets wasn’t going to be a problem, so we would easily get a -1 score for this hole. Unfortunately there was no reward for doing any better than that, but I went for it anyway, completing my first ever set of 30 pull-ups unbroken. And I felt so good I could have kept going. But I decided initially that rest before the next round was more important. Though I still jumped back up before the round was over and banged out another 10 chest to bar for good measure.
Next up was kettle bell swings. I let the big guys ensure we got our -1 score on this one. Tony went first, making 50 unbroken kettle bell swings look easy. So we got our -1 right out of the gate. Mike repeated that performance. Jason saved his energy a bit knowing we had already gotten what we needed, and I decided to give it ago. Just about everyone had already finished, so by the time I got to 30, I was the only one still going. I failed at 49, despite the crowd cheering me on. I could have gotten another one, but it still wouldn’t have been unbroken. But the team had the score we needed anyway.
Finally we moved on to burpees and we all attacked it pretty hard, winding up with an average of 55 each, roughly. In the end, our team score was 19, having added one more stroke on the last hole as we had taken off in the earlier holes. The winning team finished with 16 – leading the way with a monstrous performance on the burpees (actually there was initially a tie that went to a tie break repeat of hole 1).
It was a fantastic workout and the sense of community and teamwork that this particular workout brought to the club was something everyone could feel. And many people participating hit personal records during the workout. Sarah cleaned and squatted a record. Mike got his first butterfly pull-ups (during the warmup). Tony killed it on the kettle bell swings. I got my own PR on kettle bell swings and on pull-ups. Sometimes this kind of workout – team workouts where you’re pushing yourself and each other as a group – can really bring out some great performances even when it’s not expected.
