3 Rounds for time of:
50 Foot Dumbbell Single Arm Suitcase Lunge, right 40#(25#)
50 Foot Dumbbell Single Arm Suitcase Lunge, left 40#(25#)
15 Single Arm Push Press, right 40#(25#)
15 Single Arm Push Press, left 40#(25#)
15 Toes to Bar
400 meter runn
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WALLBALL EFFICIENCY
I am guessing here, but my spidey-senses say wallballs are coming in the Open. For some of you, that fills you with glee, for others, that means the grim reaper is waiting at the wallball shelf. Here are some efficiency tips from BOXROX to help you get through them quickly. You can see the full article here
1. Vertical Forearms –One of the biggest biomechanical faults that can occur when performing wall balls is allowing the ball to draw the arms downward. When this happens, the athlete loses time extending and flexing the elbows, and expends much-needed energy pulling the ball back up to propulsion height.
To avoid this costly error, focus on keeping your forearms vertical from the time you catch the ball until the moment it leaves your hands. One cue is to think of your forearms as pointing to the target. Another is to concentrate on keeping your elbows under your hands.
2. Ball Positioning –Remember, the ball is a weight. And like any weight, it gets heavier as you extend it away from your body (in technical terms, as the “resistance arm” becomes longer). Therefore, always keep the ball as close to your body, chin and face as possible.
However, finding the sweet spot at which you can catch the ball close to your face without it smashing you in the kisser is more art than science. The best way to find it is to hold the ball at upper-chest height and position your hands placed on the side of the ball toward the bottom, much like you would for a kettlebell goblet squat.
3. Upright Torso – In order to keep your forearms vertical and the ball in close to your body, you’ve got to maintain an upright torso. Concentrate on keeping your chest high and maintaining the lordotic curve (natural curve) in your lower back.
As soon as you lose the upright torso and lordotic curve, you’ll drop the ball lower and away from you — expending more energy and increasing your time. And worst of all, you’ll scrunch over. That scrunching forward (aka spinal flexion) creates two problems. First, your lower back will begin to ache as a result of working far too hard to extend the spine and counter that forward bend on the way back up. And second, scrunching forward anatomically compresses lung capacity. Within no time, you’ll need to stop to take a deep breath.
4. Triple Extension – Think of the power you generate in wall balls as similar to that of a thruster. In a thruster, you extend at the hip, knee and ankle (called “triple extension”) as you explode upward from the squat. That’s the way you should envision the upward movement of wall balls.
But even if you fully extend at all three joints, you can still lose power you’ve generated by pausing before propelling the ball at the top of the squat. Be sure to immediately continue your upward movement by exploding with your arms just as you finish triple extension.
5. Depth of Squat – The standard in wall balls, as you may know, is for the hip crease to break the plane of the knee joint in the squat. If you do not have good internal motor feedback on where that point is, practice with a ball placed behind you close to your legs so that when you reach a full squat, your hamstrings or buttocks make contact with it. That contact should then trigger your ascent.
But there’s something else to consider. The goal in the wall ball is to bounce out of the bottom of the squat and translate that momentum to the ball. That means that you will benefit from a squat that is as ballistic as possible. If you feel you can’t get a bounce until you’re too low (butt almost at the floor), then you’re wasting both movement and time. To remedy that, try shifting your feet out slightly. This will limit your depth and bring your hamstrings into play earlier, providing force for your ascent earlier.
6. Rest Your Arms – Critical to maximizing endurance in a wall-ball WOD is your ability to reduce fatigue in the muscles surrounding the shoulder joint. These muscles work when you elevate your upper extremities. So keeping your arms up for the entire length of your wall-ball session can be daunting and self-defeating. Try this: Immediately after propelling the ball upward, let your arms drop back down. Of course, within a second, you will need to raise them again to catch the ball, but, believe it or not, that momentary relaxation does indeed make a difference in deltoid fatigue. Now, it does take practice and you will need to develop a good rhythm, but it can work to extend your endurance during a grueling chain of wall balls.
