training, day 4.
I feel so stiff today. on Tuesday I submitted to my hubris and went to my old gym after work to workout for the second time that day. it was sort of like running into an ex. I brought my over-inflated sense of self-worth and acted like the whole workout was beneath me. well all that push jerk Terry had me do that morning took it out of me way more than I thought because on Wednesday morning I was sore as hell in my shoulders and it didn’t make this morning’s workout any easier.
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all we worked on today was the clean and mixing it up with other olympic lifts. for 4 months I have been reading about these lifts yet the names still confuse me. they do not really make sense in a logical way so I apologize.
the power clean is getting a barbell from the floor up to a front rack position in one (clean, haha) movement. the best way to imagine it working is that your legs and torso snap up while your arms act as slack parts of the chain. this lift isn’t ever about pulling the weight up with your arms its about using your body to jump up and get the barbell moving and then to get under it and rack it.
this photo is a little out of context but it shows the bar passing my hips and if you look at my feet I’m off the ground.
here is a video of the top olympic lifting coach, mike burgener, having his daughter demonstrate the power clean.
once I got 3 of these from the hang position (barbell resting on your thigh, not the floor) we worked on putting a push-jerk in after the power clean. then I did a power clean, front squat, push-press.
after Tuesday’s metcon of with 55 push-jerk, my collarbone had a bruise on it from front-racking. I have trouble with them because it feels like the barbell is going to choke you and there isn’t a lot of natural padding.
the WOD:
5 rounds for time
200m row
5 power cleans 105#
5 front squats 105#
200m of rowing is pretty short so I came out strong doing it in 21 pulls. terry reminded me that I’m going to be doing 4 more rounds so don’t get ahead of myself. the power cleans we really worked on getting my butt down and chest out at the bottom and then moving my elbows real fast and catching that bar in my throat. it is tough to remember all these things while you’re doing the movement but gains come steadily.
the only real mistake I made was dropping my bar down after my 5th power clean when I had to do 5 front squats. so I picked it up and cleaned it a 6th time to get into my front squats.
another thing for me to watch it when I breathe. there are some bad habits I have of not taking a good breath and holding it through a movement. it also means my core isn’t tightened up and that hurts stability.
Final time: 13:09
each day seems to be getting easier, but don’t tell Terry cause he’s the one that loads up my barbell. he also snuck in this photo of me right after the workout. it’s a pretty funny photo with everyone just going on about their workouts behind me, no big deal just a dude collapsed in exhaustion.
whiteblackred, for time. 