I got in early and sat on one of the benches with the guys from the 10:30 class. They told me that none of them finished the WOD today. Not even the coaches. Great.

Sure enough, after the stretches, Coach Jordan skipped the warm-up and had us set up our bars for snatch grip deadlifts.

That was the the easy part.

Part 1 – Snatch grip deadlifts. 3 reps on every minute, for eight minutes. I only used 80 lbs.

And then came the killer.

Part 2 – Hang power cleans, 13 to 1 reps / handstand push-ups, 1 to 13 reps. Time = 13 minutes.

You start with 13 hang power cleans and one handstand push-up. Then you do 12 hang power cleans and two handstand push-ups. Followed by 11 hang power cleans and three handstand push-ups. And so on and so forth.

Instead of handstand push-ups, we had the following options:

• handstand holds (- hold for one second, then two, etc.), or
• pike push-ups, or
• hand release push-ups – Guess which one I chose?

I started off slowly. Those are a lot of bloody hang power cleans.

Even with only 45 lbs., I had a difficult time doing 13 straight hang power cleans. My back was still protesting from yesterday’s deadlifts. I struggled through 12 and 11 reps. When it came to the 10 reps, I decided to focus on doing five straight hang power cleans, resting, then doing another five straight. By halving the count, I managed to catch up. I finished at four hang power cleans, and five of the ten hand release push-ups.

As I write this, I am lying supine in bed. My back doesn’t want me to move for a while. If it is still unhappy tomorrow, I may have to do the 11 AM Bootcamp (CrossFit Manila’s all-bodyweight WOD) just to give it a break.

Even my fingers are in pain.

I’m calling a masseuse.