Wednesday was filled with KOP events. There were regular classes. There was Open Strength available. There was a snatch clinic. And a happy hour to celebrate #keithie's new job. All on a school night! I'll try to cover as much as I possibly can.
Open Strength: Didn't go. (1/4 of the recap complete)
I was involved in the last 3/4 of the recap so that will take a little longer. Let's start with the WOD, shall we?
AMRAP in 12 Minutes:
10 Squat Cleans (155/105)
10 Burpees
That doesn't sound very pleasant. I feel like I have been squatting non-stop at the gym recently. I back squat at Open Strength. There have been a lot of squat-focused workouts programmed, notably one on Tuesday that included 150 wall balls in it. Even the warmups have included a lot of "do 10 air squats and hold at the bottom of the last one". So while I wasn't overly concerned with the weight being used in the workout, I wasn't thrilled about doing the equivalent of 10 front squats each round. Also, burpees still suck, so there's that.
Peeking at the results on the KOP blog helped me choose the proper weight for the workout. When I saw that very few guys from earlier in the day had chosen 155 pounds, I knew that I should scale back as well. Scores were not particularly high, generally 3-4 rounds, so I wanted to choose a weight where I was confident that I would not get stuck during the workout. My guess was that the squat cleans would become very taxing and it would be wise not to underestimate them. With that in mind, I decided to use 135 pounds with the goal of completing four rounds. (If I'm being completely honest, I didn't have much faith that I could finish four rounds, but saying my goal was something like 3 rounds plus 15 reps just sounds weird.)
Because I have done a power clean using over 200 pounds and because I can front squat over 200 pounds, it logically followed that I shouldn't have too much trouble squat cleaning 135 pounds. If I simply did a power clean followed by a front squat, then maybe this workout would have went smoother. But I wanted to do legitimate squat cleans in this workout. If only to help me when I try to clean and jerk heavy weights in future workouts. I have a bad habit of waiting too long to begin squat cleaning as I increase my weight during 1RM clean and jerk days. This was a good opportunity to practice proper squat cleans at a lower weight.
Taking the 6:30 class with me were Cline, Josh M, Giulz, Alicia, and Erika. Giulz was originally going to do power cleans, but she eventually gave in and did squat cleans. Then she started spouting this nonsense about needing 4 minutes per round so she was only getting a score of 3 rounds for this workout. We'll see about that.
After a bit of warmup, we got started. I strung my first 5 squat cleans together, but that might have been ambitious. Or perhaps thinking I would be able to string the remaining 5 reps was the ambitious part. Either way, those last 5 needed to be broken up a little bit. Cline was already on to his burpees when I finished my 10th squat clean. This might be a good place to also mention that I made the decision to wear my lifting shoes for this workout. The toughest part of this workout was going to be the squat cleans, so why not wear the shoe that was going to help me out the most during that movement? It meant the burpees would be tougher, but that was a concession I was okay with.
As expected, the burpees were not any fun, but I finished my first round. A quick peek at the clock let me know that I was near 2:15. Not bad, although I was certainly going to slow up in the remaining rounds. I grabbed my barbell and did a squat clean, but Keith let me know my form was off. Not what I wanted to hear. My focus in this workout was form and it was off less than three minutes in. I took a few seconds to listen to Keith's instructions before continuing on. Naturally, I messed up the next rep. Wow, things just went from bad to worse. Now I was seriously questioning how far I'd get in the workout. My anger was obvious enough that Mr. Intensity yelled to me "yeah Dave, get angry!" He's the best. I did try to use my rage productively from that point forward and it worked, at least in that round.
As I turned to do more burpees, I saw Giulz was working on her second round of burpees as well. In fact, she finished one rep ahead of me. When I turned to begin my third round, the clock was around 5:30. Four minutes per round, Giulz? Riiiiiiiight. Meanwhile, Cline was starting his third round of burpees as I got going on my third round of squat cleans. This would be the round where I noticed that my calves were starting to tighten up again. I'm not sure why this has become a persistent problem for me, but all the stretching and rolling out I have been doing has not seemed to fix it. It wasn't preventing me from cleaning the weight. It just made it extra painful when standing up out of the squat. One by one, I got through the squat cleans. Then I did my best to crawl through 10 more burpees. 3 rounds down. Time: about 8:45.
Having done the last two rounds at a pace of about 3:15 per round, it was going to be tight finishing this fourth round. I did my best to ignore the pain in my calves, telling myself that I needed as much time as possible for the burpees. I gave myself less than 1:30. When Keith yelled "one minute left", I had 8 burpees to go. It was time to pick up the speed of my crawl. There needed to be constant motion. Because the clock we were using was behind me, I didn't have a good idea of whether I was moving fast enough. It wasn't until Keith followed up with "thirty seconds" that I knew I was going to make it, since I only had 3 burpees left at that point. With 10 seconds left, I stood up from the floor having finished my 40th burpee of the workout. I ran over to the bar to get one last squat clean and stood it up before time was called. Final score: 4+1. Very pleased with that score.
A shirt change later and it was time for the snatch clinic. This week's episode was entitled "Let's Be Friends! Keeping the Bar Close." There will be three parts to this series on snatchology, but this was without a doubt the one that I needed to attend. I am consistently letting the bar float away from me when I am snatching (and cleaning as well), so I needed all the tips I could get on keeping the bar close to my body. Weren't able to attend? That's okay, I took notes for you. And by notes, I mean I took a photo of #keithie's head, but everything we covered in the clinic was written on the board behind him.
Here were the highlights:
- The Snatch Start illustrates how technical of a lift the snatch is. You're moving the barbell less than 18 inches and you're not doing it particularly fast, yet if you do this part wrong, it can impact your chances of finishing the lift successfully. Naturally, I messed this up when Jim first came over to watch me. He explained that I needed to be moving my knees back without losing the rest of my from as I drew the barbell up from the floor to about knee-level. It wasn't something that was difficult to adjust to, but it was also something that I wouldn't have thought about it doing unless we had practiced this tiny piece of the movement.
- The Snatch With Pause piece segment was the easiest part for me. It involved doing the Snatch Start, pausing for a count of three, then completing the snatch. I wanted to practice doing this while going into a squat. The barbell would likely be moving at a slow rate of speed initially for heavier snatches and I would need to squat for those lifts. We used a light weight here, but it was good practice to do this as if there was twice as much weight on the barbell.
- Snatch Pulls are a movement that I will need to work on. There is an urge to pull or to keep your arms rigid during this movement. Steph let us know that neither of those things should be happening. Only problem is I tend to do one or the other, depending on which mistake I am trying to correct. So I'll be incorporating more Snatch Pulls into my strength routing once I'm done with my back squat program.
- The biggest thing I will need to work on, though, is a new setup. When Jim was demonstrating the Snatch Start, Steph pointed out that you can do your setup from the top down or from the bottom up. Most people (myself included) do the top down setup, but I have a tendency to begin hunching over in that setup. Jim thought I might be a good candidate for starting at the bottom. After some adjustments, I got into a proper position that I can practice going forward. Unfortunately, this led to the discovery that I have no glutes. I went to stand out of this new setup using a light barbell and my glutes screamed out in pain. I might have ample cushion back there, but I'm lacking in the strength department. So I'll be mixing in some lunges with those Snatch Pulls in upcoming strength sessions.
Having soaked another shirt in sweat, I went and changed clothes again for #keithie's happy hour. Important parts of the evening included:
- Keith feels that he has been name...molested
- "Megs" may not have a future in magic
- I beat Samson in the sweetie contest
- Movember could be epic this year with Cline involved
- Left-handers are going to hell
Thursday preview: apparently the Pope is too busy at KOP to visit the poor souls at Endurance. Whatevs!
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.