Helton
A Hero WOD honoring Air Force Security Forces Airman First Class Matthew Helton, killed in Iraq in 2009. Three rounds of running, dumbbell squat cleans, and burpees.
- Format
- For Time
- Level
- elite
For Time
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Helton is a for-time workout by Fiz, built from 3 movements. It is set at elite level.
About Helton
Helton is three rounds of an 800 metre run, thirty dumbbell squat cleans and thirty burpees. It honours U.S. Air Force First Lieutenant Joseph Helton, a Security Forces officer killed near Baghdad in 2009.
The dumbbells are the surprise
Everybody reads this workout and worries about the running, and everybody who has done it worries about the dumbbell squat cleans. Ninety of them, in sets of thirty, with a pair of dumbbells you have to take from the floor to the shoulders and squat under every time. They are far more taxing than a barbell of comparable total load because each rep is a full squat plus two independent pulls, and they arrive immediately after a run, when your breathing is already at the top of its range.
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Round one should feel too slow
The single most common way to ruin this workout is to run the first 800 at a pace that is genuinely comfortable and then discover it was not. Run the opening round noticeably slower than you think you should, because the difference between a good time and a bad one here is whether you can still string dumbbell cleans together in round three. Break the thirty into three sets of ten from the beginning, with the dumbbells down and hands off. On the burpees, set a slow steady rhythm and never stop, since the moment you stand over them the round has effectively ended.
What's a good Helton time
Anything under twenty-two minutes is a strong Helton, and the very fit go inside eighteen. Thirty to forty is the honest range for most people, and the gap between those two groups is almost entirely the third set of dumbbell cleans. When you scale, take weight off the dumbbells and leave the runs alone. The aerobic cost of three 800s is the thing that makes the cleans hard in the first place, so a version with short runs is not an easier Helton, it is a different workout wearing the name.