Sunny, Sun sun Sun!! We're heading into a period of nice hot weather (which is awesome!), make sure you keep well hydrated throughout. add more water than usuual into your daily intake and your WODs will be just fine. 🙂   A): Muscle Ups, 1 x 5; 1 x 4; 3 x 2; 2 x 3. All rep sequences are to be UNBROKEN. NOTES: With the open in mind lets look at stringing numbers of reps together. Now muscle ups may not feature in the open this year, or if they do they'll be stacked at the back of a long WOD leaving you bugger all time to do any should you get that far! But if we can learn to piece together consecutive reps it'll help out in the long run. And if you can get multiple muscle ups you should almost certainly be able to string together anything on a pull up bar as the grip demand will be high on the rings. You can kip these reps, just make sure you are safe in your manoeuvres. If you don't have muscle ups you can work the banded transition to the tune of double-the-number reps looking to lower yourself down on each rep under control to string reps together. Remember to hold your false grip. If you don't have unassisted dips do chest to bar pull ups AND ring dips instead to the rep scheme of: 1x6 of each; 2x5 of each; 2x4 of each.   B): Trunk Time! 4 minutes of the "Dead Bug" (2 rounds of 2 mins! Rest 4 mins between sets). NOTES: We've had this in the programming for a bit now, and hopefully most, if not all , of you are starting to feel the benefits of the Dead bug. Think about this for a second, you are able to throw large sums of weight overhead. Even larger sums of weight can be moved up and down in a squat. And even larger sums still can be pulled off of the ground! All this is being done with a far from optimal trunk. We need to be so much more rock solid in our midline stabilisation than we currently are. Now if you're genuinely finding this easy (and i would still think there might be a portion that find it "easy" but are simply not engaging their trunk enough), then it's time to start lowering the straight legs down a bit to make the lever longer and thus create more work for the trunk to do. If this is you then feel free to add more to the movement, just maintain that low back to the ground at all times. If you are still at the "home position" that's all cool cool, below is the instructions (courtesy of CFFB) for the beginning progression, the "home position". Get good at this and it'll be time to take this to the next level. “the home position” of the Dead Bug and give you an extremely effective method to develop the ability to mobilize your trunk while actively stretching your hamstrings How do you get better at Dead Bugs? Do more Dead Bugs. The primary thing to focus on as you work on these is trunk position. You need to keep your “spine painted on the ground.” If your:

1. low back starts to come off the ground
2. ribs elevate
3. tailbone comes off the ground
4. neck “cranes” / cervical spine goes into extension
5. head comes off the ground
6. knees go into flexion to release the hammy stretch
7. hips go into extension to release the hammy stretch

… then you have failed. Basically, if your position changes, you fail. Either get back into position immediately or rest until you are capable of regaining the good position. Now, assuming you have good trunk position we need to challenge that. How we do that is by flexing your hips as much as you can with your tail bone on the ground while maintaining locked quads and dorsiflexed feet. Your feet should also be “forward” relative to a standing position. If you are duck footed may God have mercy on your soul you will need to actively internally rotate your legs from your hips. Your ability to mobilize your trunk during the active hamstring stretch in “the home position” and in any subsequent progression of the Dead Bug will transfer over to your ability to mobilize your trunk in the primary lifts: Squat, deadlift, press, bench, and power clean. Try it out. How long can you hold the home position of the Dead Bug without breaking? Fun fact, when we refer to the trunk we refer to everything from your head to your hips. Some people call this a core but John Welbourn hates it when people refer to his mid-section as a “core”…

“Apples have cores. Don’t compare me to an apple.”

P.S: Avoiding this will do you no good, this will be around for a fair while yet. Main programming and ROD programming. 😉