12 Days of Hell, I mean Christmas (Crossfit Style)

In the Crossfit world we like to celebrate Holidays with horrendous WOD’s that test you mentally, physically and emotionally, more so than your average day at your local affiliate. This year being my first, has shown me that I although I enjoy the work, I have to endure the torture. If you have ever said these five words before a WOD: “That doesn’t look so bad” be prepared to have your ass handed to you, twice.

I had seen memes about the 12 days of Christmas WOD but I never understood them, until now. The most popular one I have found is posted as the picture here and reads “12 days of Christmas WOD, DEATH, your present is death” and I couldn’t agree more. Every box has their own spin on this WOD unlike a MURPH WOD or one of the “girls” WOD’s, so everyone get’s their own personal programmed hell. How thoughtful!

Our WOD reads Like this: Translates into this:

1. Wallclimb 1. 12 Wallclimbs

2. Pullups (ring rows) 2. 22 Ring Rows

3. V-Ups 3. 30 V-Ups

4. Burpee Jump to Bar 4. 36 Burpee to Bar

5. Pushups 5. 40 Push Ups

6. Box Jumps (step ups) 6. 42 Step Ups

7. Abmats 7. 42 Ab Mats

8. Plyo Lunges 8. 40 Plyo Lunges

9. KBS (1 pood) 9. 36 KBS

10. SB (20#) 10. 30 SB

11. OTL WB (14#) 11. 22 OTL WB

12. 1.2k Run (walk/jog thing) 12. 1 1.2k Run

You do this WOD just like the song, so you would do one wall climb, then move up to one wall climb, two pullups, then one wall climb, two pull ups, three V-Ups… until you die. Now I have to be honest here, there were plenty of people whizzing past me doing great and getting killer times, this is just my feelings on the subject so don’t let this scare you away from Crossfit! I would also like to note that our box owner did say we could make this harder if we wanted to and do T2B instead of Ab Mats, Muscle Ups instead of Pull Ups, prescribed weight on the KBS were 1 pood for the laides and 1.5 pood for the men but you could go up, etc. I declined.

I started out on the first wall climb, which I don’t do RX (chest to the wall) because I am not there yet, but I did my best. I checked the board and went back and did my wall climb and then hit my ring rows and then proceeded on at a nice even pace. I glanced up at the clock when I finished my 3rd round and I was somewhere in the 5 minute range. I recall thinking to myself “you’re pacing this right, just keep chipping away at it, it will be over before you know it”. That was the first lie I told myself that day.

The second lie I told myself was “thank God for Ab Mats” because by the time you have done everything else and you get back to those Ab Mats, it is surprisingly hard to peel your butt off the floor. I watched one of my buddies drop her Kettlebell and walk over the slam balls as I was starting the Plyo Lunges and that’s when it hit me, she was at least 2 rounds ahead of me. Fatal mistake, I looked at the clock again and we were 30 minutes into this WOD. 30 minutes? Where did the stinking time go? OMG is that my husband walking over here to see how I am doing? Is he freaking done? How far behind am I? I stopped thinking about myself and started looking around to see what was going on and I saw that there were only a few of us left in the box, which meant the rest of them were already running or DONE.

Panic set in. I was never going to finish this WOD. I was going to get time capped! Wait, was there a time cap? NO?! They are just going to let me go until I pass out? It took every ounce of energy to keep going, to ignore my bruised ego, to keep breathing, to keep counting my reps. Welcome to the mental hell of Crossfit! By the time I made it to the wall balls, I had started in on my third lie “Ok, wall balls aren’t going to be bad, just nice and easy”. I did five and dropped that ball like it was made of fire. I was smoked and I still had ONE more round before I had to run.

One more round doesn’t sound bad until you realize you have 1 wall climb, 2 ring rows, 3 V-ups, 4 burpee to bars, 5 pushups, 6 step ups, 7 Ab Mats, 8 Plyo lunges, 9 kettlebell swings, 10 slam balls, 11 wall balls (over the line) and 1.2k run. I was the only one still working when I made it to the slam balls, people were walking around talking, putting up equipment, the music stopped for a second because the coach thought everyone was done and then it came back on and I heard “You got it Carly!”. I was physically exhausted, I was mentally drained and emotionally I was embarrassed.

By the time I made it to the door to start my run I just wondered outside. There wasn’t anything left in me to run. My husband teamed up with me so I wouldn’t have to run it alone (endless gratitude there I was really embarrassed) and did the whole 1.2 k jog, walk, shuffle with me. One of our buddies teamed up with us for support when I had my last 400m but he even lapped me. I made it into the box at 53:14. I finished.

Working at 100% for that long is not normal for me, these special occasion WOD’s really remind me of how much it sucks to asthmatic, overweight and slow. It took me a few days to get past the bruised ego and to look at all the positives of that day. That was my first Holiday WOD that I finished and didn’t have to scale the reps, that was the first Holiday WOD I did in the middle of a rigorous training schedule and that was the first Holiday WOD that I did and then learned a new movement/skill after.

The biggest lesson I had to learn is that sometimes you just need a pity party after a particularly rough WOD but that doesn’t mean you quit. The day after that work out we did a team WOD and I realized how exhausted my body was, apparently, 53 minutes of work will really take it out of you! Regardless of the amount of time it takes you to do it, I think we can all agree, that the 12 Days of Christmas WOD isn’t as friendly as it pretends to be.

#12daysofxmas