Finishing On A High Note

Workout date: 12/18/15

Attending the final class of the day has been a mixed bag recently.  Either I'm in a class of 11 people (why is it always 11 people?) or I end up in a class all by my lonesome.  My final class before vacation was the 6:30 class on Friday and the class consisted of me, myself, and I.  And because the class was purely strength (1RM hang power clean and jerk), I felt bad asking Miranda to coach an extra class when I could go through the motions myself.  So we came to a compromise: Miranda would put me through a tabata to warm up and she would keep an eye on me as I did my lifts, but for the most part, I'd be blending into the Friday night Open Strength session.

Not only was Miranda keeping an eye on me, but so was most of the Open Strength class.  That was a blessing as I almost immediately began doing hang power cleans with about 7 things wrong with my form.  As I added weight to the bar, Shawna gave me tips on my hand placement.  I had never noticed that people adjust their hands when they get to the top of their clean, but then when I watched Faby do his cleans, I saw exactly what she was talking about.  She also pointed out that I should be stacking my wrists when I transitioned into the jerk.  As I moved from 95 pounds to 125 pounds and then 155 pounds, I tried to remind myself of the importance of proper hand placement.

When I got to my lift at 185, I was still able to clean the bar successfully, but not by much.  That might sound a little weird since my top clean ever is 225 pounds, but we were doing these cleans from the hang.  What does that mean?  Allow me to describe this really poorly.  To get to the hang position, you stand the barbell up to your waist as though you were doing a deadlift.  Then you lower the barbell to just above your knee as your upper body hangs over it.  This is technically the low hang, but it is the point most people use when doing hang power cleans.  The high hang is a more upright position where you lower the barbell to a position in line with the pockets of your shorts.  Both the high hang and the low hang are points you should be hitting along the way when you do a full clean from the floor.  The reason I struggle with cleaning from the hang is that I prefer to have the momentum generated as I take the barbell from the floor.  Others prefer cleaning from the hang.  To each their own.

My next jump in weight was going to be to 205 pounds, but I didn't have high expectations for getting this lift.  My personal best hang power clean was 215, but as is the case with most things in the gym, if you don't practice it regularly, the ability goes away.  The lift at 185 made me wary that I could get 205.  I'm not sure if that lack of confidence transferred its way into my actual lifts, but I missed three straight attempts at 205.  I had resigned myself to taking a score of 185 for the day when Miranda gave me some help after failed attempt #3.  She told me that I was not pinching my shoulders back during the clean.  I had them pinched back in my setup, as well as when I lifted the barbell to my waist, but when I lowered the bar to the hang position, I was rounding my back.  This was seriously inhibiting my ability to execute the clean.  The funny part about all of this is that I had been actively thinking about keeping my shoulders pinched back because this was the same issue Rachel had told me about when I was struggling with my sumo deadlifts earlier in the week.  I guess sometimes even when you think you are doing something right, you may not be.  (Note: the opposite is true as well, since I felt like my arms were wobbly during my jerks, but everyone kept telling me how strong my jerks looked.)

I decided to give 205 one more shot with all of my focus on keeping my shoulders pinched back throughout the lift.  Did my normal setup, went through the routine of bringing the barbell to my waist, made sure my shoulders were pinched back as I lowered into the hang, and sure enough, as if it were magic, I was able to clean the 205 pounds.  From there I did the jerk and my score for the day became a little more respectable.  But as is always the case with me, when I learn a new trick and find success with it, my eyes fill with wonder like a kid on Christmas morning.  If that worked at 205, maybe it would work at 215 as well!  I put 10 more pounds on the barbell, waited a few minutes, then gave that weight a try.  I was hyper-focused on my shoulders the whole way and once again I cleaned the weight.  I took care of the jerk and now I had increased my score by 30 pounds from what I thought it would be 10 minutes ago.

Time was running out in class, but I had time for at least one more lift, so I moved up to 225.  Miranda had gone out to the lobby for a few minutes, so she wasn't there to watch over me during this lift, but I pretended she was there, not wanting to disappoint her by having a rounded back once again.  I went through the whole routine and even though I barely got the barbell high enough, I was able to secure the clean at 225.  My adrenaline must have been pumping at that point, as the weight didn't feel incredibly heavy on my shoulders.  My jerk at 225 may have been the best one I had all night.  It was a new PR for me in terms of a hang power clean and jerk.

So what does one do with only a couple minutes left in class when they are brimming with confidence?  They add 10 more pounds to the barbell naturally.  I had a lot of confidence that I could jerk 235 if I could only manage to clean it.  Unfortunately, I hit my wall.  I only made one attempt at 235, but it was pretty bad.  Not sure I could have gotten it with multiple attempts that evening, but it may be a weight I can get if I'm a little bit fresher.  Final score: 225.

Time for the Advent challenge and somehow I was thrown a bone.  The challenge was max pistols (one-legged squats) in 1 minute.  I had a real chance of winning this challenge.  To make life even easier for me, only two non-coach male athletes had done the challenge and the highest score was 8.  I had done a cash out earlier this year where we did 3 burpee pull-ups EMOM and then tried to knock out 60 pistols as quickly as possible.  During the first minute of that cash out, I did 29 pistols, so doing 9 in a full minute seemed like a piece of cake.  In fact, my goal for this challenge was to get 35.  Or at least it was until I saw Jill A had gotten 40.  Then my goal was to try like hell to beat her score.

Shawna had just gotten her first pistol and I was convinced she could get more, so she stuck around to attempt this a second time with me.  We waited until the timer hit a full minute and then got to it.  I was slightly cautious at the very beginning, but I was still moving fairly quickly.  I had 10 pistols in the first 15 seconds.  When I went to do my 12th pistol, I lost my balance and fell over.  Oops.  From that point on, I knew I needed to move even faster if I was going to have any chance of catching Jill.  Pretty soon I began looking like a Russian folk dancer.  As time winded down, I bounced from one pistol to the next as fast as I could, but it wasn't fast enough.  Final score: 37 pistols.  At last, I had won something in the gym!  Only took an entire year.

Perhaps it was a fitting ending though.  The next day I hopped on a plane to Mexico for a vacation that will last for most of the remainder of the year.  I'll probably make it to the gym a couple times before 2015 ends, but after a week of fun in the sun, you can imagine how wonderful those results will be.  So for all intents and purposes, the pistol challenge marked the end of my 2015 adventure.  I will be writing up a recap of the year soon and providing a spreadsheet that contains all of the details from my workouts this year.  But for now, it's time to go lay by the pool.  Hasta luego!