2014/06/30

Rather shitty day at work, kind of carried over into my lifts. Either that or it's this sun burn slowly sapping my energy.

Strength portion was heavy triples of front squat. So was not feeling this. Hit two triples at 225 and called it a day. They didn't feel bad, they just felt heavier than they should and I know when not to push it.

WoD was a 12 minute ladder of rope climbs and wall walks with five front squats at 145lbs from the floor every round. Made it through the fourth round and finished my five climbs and five wall walks right as the timer went off. Would have liked the squats, but those climbs really sap you good.

Mock Meet - Lift Videos

We took videos of all our lifts. So, here's the 93 snatch and 113 clean and jerk. 

2014/06/28 - Mock Meet

Today we our Mock Meet to let us try out our lifts that we want to hit at the meet on the 14th. So, we slipped into our singlets and hit a couple heavy pulls.

My snatches went well. Opened at 84, nice simple lift that I know I can hit. Moved up to 88 and pretty much power snatched it. Finished with 93 and felt pretty awesome about the lift. I'm comfortable there, probably don't want to go any higher if I plan on going 6/6.

Cleans went alright. Opened at 106 for an easy lift to get on the boards. Moved to 113 for an easy clean but the jerk was a little iffy. Don't think it'd get redlighted, but it'd be close. Wanted to go out with a bang, so I upped it to 121. Was only supposed to go for 120 which should have been close. The jerk was just ugly, should not have upped it so far. Should have settled for 118. Live and learn though. That third attempt will be a game time decision.

All in all, felt pretty good about my attempts. I'd be happy with those numbers at the meet. I'm not planning on medaling here, just want to get out on the platform and hit some lifts. I'm pretty pumped about it. Plus, I look awesome in the singlet.

What Ails Me

I hurt more nowadays. 

There, I said it. I'm not okay with the notion that I'm not as young as I used to be. I'm not okay with the idea that I can't go home, take a couple grams of fish oil and a cups scoops of ice cream and wake up at 100% in the morning. 

My knees have been aching for the past few days. Since those heavy thrusters on Monday, both knees have been pretty shaky. I've taken to wrapping them with some simple ace bandages. It holds everything in place and adds just a little stability. 

Here's the problem, I don't plan on stopping at any point. I have a mock meet tomorrow, a real weightlifting meet in 3 weekends, and then a few weeks later I have a CrossFit competition. 

I hurt more, nowadays, but I'll keep doing it. 

2014/06/27

Fun workout tonight. Was planning on just going in for mobility but the WoD intrigued me too much.

So the workout lasted thirty minutes.
EMOTM
1-10
Even : two power snatches
Odd : 8 push ups and 15 second plank
11-20
Even : power snatch and ohs
Odd : push up/ plank
21-30
Even : snatch
Odd : push up/ plank

Used 95lbs for power snatches. Wanted to stay light and just wok technique. Didn't want to tire out for tomorrow... But I also like heavy things. So, for the singles at the end, I added 20lbs per round.

Ended with probably the best feeling 195lb snatch I've ever landed. It just felt great. Weighed in at 195 today, so that's a nice bodyweight life right there.

2014/06/24

My strength coach and I built some jerk blocks recently and today we got to test them out.
The strength workout was 10 minutes to find maxes on each of the three movements: 5rm on Z Press, 3rm on push press, and 1rm on split jerk. Hit 115 for five and 135 for three on Z Press. 205 for 3 and 225 for 2 on push press. Then hit a 20 lb PR on split jerk at 295lbs.

The WoD was a quick little sprint.
50 double unders
1 rope climb
10 clean and jerks
1 rope climb
50 double unders

Kept the weight light on the c&j at 155 and just flew through this in four minutes even. The double unders were my only stumbling block but I'm getting a lot better at them.

2014/06/23

Our gym used a workout that I programmed today. That's pretty awesome. It came out of a question from my "Member of the Month" interview, which I was pretty proud of. 

The strength portion of today was the second week of 20 rep deadlift max. Pick a weight and go to town on 20 unbroken reps. This is something you either commit to and ruin yourself for the WoD, or you take a nice comfortable weight and just use this as hypertrophy work. I took the latter path and stayed at a comfortable 225lbs. 

The WoD was an 8 minute timer of:
3 Thrusters @ bodyweight(195lbs for me today)
5 Chest to Bar Pull Ups
7 Bar Facing Burpees

When I programmed it, I figured people would fall right around 5 rounds. I finished 4+10, and the rest of everyone fell right around 5+a couple. So, right where I expected it. Not as many people went as heavy as I was hoping on the thrusters... 
Our coach changed it to be "unbroken thrusters", where you weren't supposed to drop the bar. That gets people thinking they should go lighter so they can safely rerack the weight. I wanted them to do singles at as heavy as fucking possible. Either way, was a really grueling workout. Would love to be able to help with programming the workouts again someday. 

High Rep Complex Movements

This topic comes up from time to time on CrossFit and weightlifting blogs. How the CF community takes a very complex movement, mainly the clean and jerk/snatch, and then have people do a lot of reps of these movements. People say it's an awful idea and I for the most part, agree. I say for the most part, because I do have some reservations about it.

I hate trying to do a workout RX when it's a rather large weight and a movement that I think is unsafe at high reps... like today's. If I had known that the workout was going to take such a downward spiral, I would have dropped the weight and approached it differently. This was a bit of hubris and a bit of it being far too early to think properly.

So, the main reservation I have about the approach of high reps of complex movements, is that I subscribe to the idea that you need to complete 10,000 reps of something to truly master it. It's a common enough idea, you do something 10,000 times and you're probably going to be pretty well versed in it. It changes from person to person, some say 10,000 hours. 

There's an obvious flaw to this logic though(don't mind me if I tend to talk in circles and disprove myself when I ramble). If you're doing 10,000 reps incorrectly, you are mastering something incorrectly. But I'm thinking that if you do something over even a 1000 times, you're not doing it incorrectly. You're inherently going to fix your form. Sure, you could do Isabel with shitty form(Isabel is 30 snatches for time). You could definitely throw your back out doing such a workout. But, if you want to get good enough that your times are starting to be competitive, I'm positive that you can't do so with bad form. 

Your body is going to figure out how to do that movement correctly. Is it "perfect" by someone else's standards? Doesn't have to be. I'm sure Coach Pendlay has some issues with Jason Khalipa's snatch form, I know I do. But you know what, he does it sub 2 minutes. Is it pretty? Nope. But, his body has figured out how to do that very complex movement safely and efficiently.

So, the take away. Go lower weights. That's what I should have done this morning. In a workout where there is something that is complex(read: C&J, Snatch, Deadlift, etc.) drop the weight and get your reps in. Figure out the movement; listen to your coaches and listen to your body. If you're ever going to master a movement, you need to get your reps in. Just be smart about it.

2014/06/21

Got in for a morning WoD today. Looked like a fun one, I was incorrect.

15 minutes to find a heavy snatch single. Hit 185 pretty easily but missed two attempts at 205. Not enough warm up time.

5 rounds for time of:
7 Snatch Grip Deadlifts
5 Hang Power Cleans
3 OHS
10 Burpees

7-5-3 had to be done unbroken, so no fixing the grip or dropping. This completely fried my hips and quads on the reset of each hang power clean.
Stopped on fourth round at 10:42. Just didn't want to strain something and too many parts were hurting.

2014/06/20

WoD today wasn't too my liking so I didn't do it. Had an OLY session instead.

Snatch Complex :
Snatch Pull + High Hang Snatch + OHS
3 x 155, 2 x 165, 1 x 185

Jerk Complex :
Push Jerk + 2 Split Jerk
165 - 215 @ 10lb increments

Front Squat
Heavy Doubles
235, 255, 275, 300

Everything felt great today. Little wobble on the heavier snatches and jerks, but nothing that made me miss.
Front squats for s double over three hundred is a milestone. Pretty pumped.

2014/06/18

Strict pull ups. 4x7

1000m Row
21/15/9
2pd Russian KB swing
30" box jumps.
9:22

Cardio is starting to feel better and better. Did Russian swings instead of CrossFit style. Want to save my shoulders for the competition coming up.

2014/06/16

Started the day of right by getting there an hour early to get some lifting in.

Worked a complex of power snatch + 2 snatches from 95 - 155, progressing by ten pound increments.
Then switched to power clean + clean + 2 jerks from 165 - 205 in ten pound increments.

Class was some time under tension weighted push ups and planche. Much more painful than you'd think. Exposed s major weakness in my core. Will need to spend more time on that static hold.

Finished with 600m x4. Splits were 1:26, 1:30, 1:31, and 1:26. Not a huge fan of cardio but it serves a purpose.

So Much Free Time

I've been meaning to get back into tracking my workouts, and everything else, for a while now. Luckily, I'm a bit laid up at the moment, so I have a ton of free time. 

Here's a little note, kids. Don't pull on your rower harder than you should, even if you're sprinting for 200m bursts. Because you will pull something, like I did. I think I just went a little too hard on the rower with some bad form and ended up loosening up something in my rib cage. The next day's session had me doing some weird lateral movements which caused that loosened up rib stabilizer to tighten up. 

And here I am, on the couch, prepping a workout blog. Lucky me.
I'll be back in the gym on Monday, should be good by then. Which is necessary, as I have a competition in 30 days. I really need to get back into a micro-cycle for my weightlifting. 

Drinking That Koolaid

Yeah, I know. Crossfit gets either a bad rap nowadays, or it's praised as the second coming of sliced bread. Either way you look at it, I'm a part of it now and have been for a year. 

It was a year ago, almost exactly, when I started. Since then, I've taken two strongman seminars, two weightlifting seminars, a rowing seminar, I've competed in three events now, I've placed on the podium of two of those events(both scaled), and I've run more than I care to mention. 

I've ripped both my hands open. I've accidentally dropped 165 lbs on my back when missing a snatch. I've puked twice. I've lost the ability to walk after trying to deadlift too fast with poor form and I've matched every single one of my lifts from my powerlifting days. 

People want to talk about the cult like community of Crossfit and that's fine. They're right. I hang out with my gym friends a lot more than other people and I'm okay with that. I also hang out with people who give zero fucks about the gym, so I don't talk about it with them. No problem. 

I'm enjoying it. I really am. And I'm going to keep at it. I've entered my first RX competition in August and my first weightlifting competition in July. I'm going to keep lifting the way I want to and following the advice of my dedicated coaching staff. And I'm going to love every second of it. 

You Can't Do That Here

What happened next was a bit of a twist. I fell in love with the Olympic lifts. Snatching and Clean -n- Jerking are just two amazing movements. They're so incredibly beautiful to watch and so incredibly frustrating to master. 

So here I am, in my globo gym, throwing around this bar with iron weights on it, trying to figure out form from videos on the internets. As a side goal, I was trying not to kill someone. Nailed it. 

After about a month, I realized I had to move on. I started looking around for a gym that would let me train the way I wanted to. I live in a metropolitan area, should be easy to find a weightlifting club, right? Well, you'd be surprised. 

I ended up at a Crossfit gym, because they have bumpy plates and a weightlifting coach. I needed both of those things. I went there with the whole idea of just getting deeper into the Olympic lifts, but I kind of went in a different direction. 

Powerlifting Beginnings

I lift things up. 

I started training as a power lifter sometime in 2011. I say "training as a power lifter", but what I really mean is that I started lifting with a purpose. Rather than just do whatever I felt like at the gym, I started following a program. Starting Strength to be specific.

I was in doing Squat/Bench/Deadlift 3x a week, following that linear progression until it would run out on me. I kept chasing that dragon until I stopped seeing that progression follow the straight line, which took about a year. Then I switched to a Texas Method cycle for about 4 months. 

In the course of about a year and a half, I worked from weights something like:
Squats : 225 x5 -> 345 x5
Bench : 155 x5 -> 225 x5
Deadlift : 225 x5 -> 385 x5

I topped out as a power lifter at my last "meet" with friends at a bodyweight of 202 pounds with a 385 squat, 255 bench, and a 455 deadlift. A 1095 total was about as far as I was going to get. I just missed my 405 squat at that meet, I wanted it but it didn't come to me. That would have put me over 1100, but it wasn't meant to be.