My friend Justin reminded me that April 22 marks the 10th anniversary of the death of truly unique American, clinic Pat Tillman. Pat was a Northern California kid that went on to star on the football field at Arizona State and later for the Arizona Cardinals. At the height of his football career, shortly after the events of 9/11, Pat quietly quit football and enlisted in the US Army. Pat served with the 75th Ranger Regiment until he was killed in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan.
If you are interested in Pat Tillman’s life, check out “Where Men Win Glory” by Jon Krakauer. It is a very good book by a writer that continues to explore men that seek Adventure with a capital A. As many of you may know, Tillman entered the Army by rejecting any fanfare and basically disappeared into the ranks. His death, specifically the way it was handled by the high ranking officials in the Army, should bring shame on them forever.
But I don’t want to dwell on that. Let’s celebrate the life of a truly unique American the best way I know how – by working our asses off.
Tillman is a long, heavy WOD – I’m setting a cap at 35 minutes (remember there is a good amount of built in rest). Trust me, that is plenty of time to be working your butt off. That means we’ll warm up the deadlift and have to get down to business. There won’t be a ton of time to practice/warm up pullups. Use the simplest scaling option possible.
If there are lot of folks at the gym, weight may be an issue. Please share deadlift bars. Be prepare for someone to use your bar and vice versa. Work together.
***Who should/how to scale Tillman?***
If you have a 400/300 deadlift or more, you can go RX. Any lower and you will need to scale the deadlift weight. If you completed the 275/185 set on 14.3, you can use that. If not, go with 225/155. That is plenty heavy.
If you have 20 plus pullups, you’re good to go. Any less, and you should think about scaling. Try 10 pullups per round, or even 7. If this is a lot, do jumping pullups. I wouldn’t recommend body rows today, you will get plenty of pull work from the deadlift. But maybe the rows will save your legs. Make the call and stick to it.
A fast round should take 3 minutes or less, then add 45 seconds rest. Figure 30-35 seconds for deadlift, 1 minute to run, 30-35 seconds to do the pullups, and factor in some transition time. If a round is taking you longer than 5 minutes (which it shouldn’t if you’ve scaled properly) you should drop the rounds from 7 to 5.
“Tillman”
7 RFT
7 Deadlift 315/205
Run Parking Lot
15 Pullups
45 seconds rest between each round
There is a 35 minute cap