Pain

Lately progress on the burpees has stalled.  I'm stuck at 69.

Yes, I do 69 burpees a day now, and I have for many days in row.  I'm aware there is something about 69 everyday that could be funny, but my humor would have to be much less mature.

After going into overtime Monday to get 69 done, I felt a little like the bird who flew into the window a couple minutes later while I was still panting, head hung.

One fucked up little bird.

At first I thought the bird simply had a great workout trying to fly through the window, so I took a picture - thinking, I suppose, that perhaps he could post it on beakbook later.  But I as I watched I realized the poor guy was seriously fucked up.  He was feet up, and he seemed to be in the midst of the bird equivalent of convulsions.

I wasn't happy about this, but I thought I should go out and mercy kill him rather than let him slowly die convulsing under the already brutally hot Sun.  That though would have been hard for me to do, so I had a back up plan to put him in the shade and give him a chance to either recover or at least, hopefully, expire from something other than dehydration.

But as he heard me approach, he righted himself and began staggering away, so I did what coaches do: I said, 'that's right, walk it off."

I'm pretty sure the little guy made it because I didn't see him when I drove off some minutes later.  And I thought to myself maybe I should be more like the bird.





It's not all burpees of course.  I lift three days a week, and I don't write about it because I use what for me are pretty light weights.  There's nothing exciting about the programming either.   I do two work sets of five, and on my last work set I supposedly do as many reps as possible.  In reality, I decided to stop with the press and the bench press at 10 because my shoulders start to feel sloppy, and I don't want to make them any worse than they are.  That has been working for me, so I decided I'd cap my deadlifts and squats at 10 also.

Last Friday I squatted 270 x 5 x 2.  On the third set I felt good and Motorhead was playing so I went to 13.  Afterwards, I wasn't sure why I stopped there.  I didn't feel great by any means, but I was sure I had left a lot in the tank.  So I began to think that just maybe on Monday when I would squat 275, I should take the last set to 20.

Here's the thing with 20 rep squats: they're only worth doing if you use a weight you damn well know you shouldn't take to 20.  Usually around 13 I start thinking there is no way I will survive, and the most I've done before is 255.  I was wondering all weekend if I had any business 20 repping 275.

But then it was Monday and I didn't finish my burpees on time, and the bird smashed his head into the window and walked it off.

Syn Martinez, owner of CrossFit Harlem, recently posted that he was going to do 1,000 burpees because, "sometimes you have to man the fuck up."

I'm not sure about that.  It seems possibly even a little immature to me, but I needed redemption, so I did what I do that is unquestionably mature.

I looked at myself in the mirror and said, "I GUESS YOU REALLY DON"T WANT TO PLAY IN THE NFL, NOW DO YOU?"  Besides, what would the bird do?

I knew that this was going to hurt much worse than the burpees, but I twenty-repped 275.

I was correct in thinking that if I could pull off the squats, the burpees would never hurt as bad again.

They don't hurt as bad as they did before.

Now they just suck, and I'm still stuck at 69.