Training Log: Entry 3095

AM WORKOUT (0425 wake up via alarm)

**CHAOS IS THE PLAN: THE CIMMERIAN CHRONICLE** Week 2, Workout 4-“Unbearable Suffering on the Tree of Woe”

THE WORKOUT:

For 40 Minutes…

* Hang from a pull up bar as long as possible

* Every 30 seconds on the bar: do 1 pull ups (this is a Dan John prescription)

* Whenever you drop from the bar, do a bear complex (clean into front squat into press overhead into back squat into press from behind the neck) with 95lbs

* Get back on the bar and repeat

* Add a bear complex each time you drop from the bar (so it’ll go hang, drop, 1 complex, hang, drop, 2 complexes, hang, drop, 3 complexes, etc)

I was on a round of 13 complexes when the timer ran out

16 minutes of

2-3-5-10 ladders of Prisoner Squats and Push ups (managed 170 reps total)

Breakfast

Walk w/wolf (no weight vest)

Notes:

* The story: our Cimmerian has been sentenced to hang from the Tree of Woe.  The carrion eaters are circling, and whenever he tries to escape he must fend off the bears that crave his flesh.  The longer he spends on the tree, the more beasts gather, hoping to overpower and consume him.

* This was so much more brutal than I anticipated.  I initially made it through 2 minutes before dropping.  Dan laid out a challenge for 3 minutes, so that’s something to shoot for in the future.

* There is genius in the sadism here.  Hanging from the bar SUCKS, but the longer you hang from the bar, the more time you have to “recover” from those Bear complexes AND the fewer complexes you have to do in total.  If you tap out to the Tree of Woe too quickly, there is no reward: only suffering.  So you have to suffer in order to prevent OTHER suffering.  Meanwhile, as those bear complexes stack up in number, your grip has more time to recover, so you have a chance of hanging longer from the tree.  That said, my hands got CHEWED up from the barbell, so this was just agony all around.

* More interesting to me was how much HANGING was gassing me out.  I would drop from the bar and find myself out of breath before the bears started.

* Got in some of my daily push ups and squats afterwards, because I was really too wasted to do anything else meaningful.  Same reason I went without the weight vest: I’d trained “enough” at this point.

* THIS workout has legs.  Definitely encourage others to give it a try.  It doesn’t HAVE to be bear complexes either: I picked those just to get in the overhead focus (by my count, I got in 71 complexes, which is 142 reps overhead w/95lbs).  Making this full on Dan John, Armor Building Complexes would fit perfectly, as would a simple thruster (barbell or KB), Devil presses (I originally wanted to do that, to simulate dying, going to hell, battling the devil and returning back to life again, only to find myself STILL hanging from the tree, but felt bears would get me more reps), or even the ever reliable and simple burpee.