I Reaffirmed My Hatred of Pullups in 16.3

posted in: Crossfit Open | 0

Another Week of the Open Completed!

It’s taken me a little while to write about my experience with Crossfit Open Workout 16.3 but overall I was happy with my performance! I ended up doing the workout at my box’s Friday Night Lights gathering and while there weren’t as many people there we all had a good time supporting each other during this workout. 16.3 was a 7 minute workout doing power snatches and either bar muscle-ups or jumping chest-to-bar pull-ups. I did the scaled version of the workout which was as follows:

Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 7 minutes of:
10 power snatches
5 jumping chest-to-bar pull-ups

Men use 45 lb.
Women use 35 lb.

For me, 35 pounds is not a whole lot to lift so I knew I would do fine on the snatches, the jumping chest-to-bars though were another story. I’ve said it before that I have EXTREMELY sweaty hands so for me holding onto the bar past a few reps is extremely difficult. I was also initially concerned about the pull-ups because I had never done a jumping chest-to-bar pull-up before so the night of 16.3 would be my first time to attempt it. I watched the Coaches Corner 16.3: Tips for Scaled Open Workouts video that Crossfit posted on their YouTube page which I found very helpful. They recommended really using your legs to get up to the bar so I kept that in mind while I was doing the workout.

Ele doing a jumping chest-to-bar pull-up
The Open is really getting me to fly in the air a lot 🙂

Since the snatches were so light, I really didn’t have to use my legs too much. I tried as much as possible to use my hips to give the bar momentum, and to conserve energy, rather than just swinging the bar overhead. The jumping chest-to-bar pull-ups did prove to be the most difficult because I’m just not used to pull-ups. I initially surprised myself by how easy it was to jump up to the bar but later on in the workout as fatigue set in it got harder to get up there.

Ele doing Crossfit Open Workout 16.3
Getting ready for another power snatch

I also probably could’ve not gone as low when doing the power snatches since the bar only needed to go below the knees. Since it was light though I found it easier to use my legs and hips if I started lower then just past the knees. Overall the scaled version of this workout didn’t feel as difficult as 16.1 or 16.2 but I really did have to keep a good track of my pacing and time since it was such a short workout. I ended up getting a total of 92 reps which came out to 6 full rounds plus 2 snatches and my tiebreaker time was 6:11

I’m looking forward to this week’s workout. I am determined to either do 16.4 or 16.5 Rx so I’m hoping that either of those workouts I’ll be able to do for real.

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