The (mis)adventures and thoughts of an aspiring master archer, lifter, and fantasy author who happens to be irresistibly drawn towards wolves, raptors, and parrots. They may say there's no such thing as Paradise or Perfection, yet I'm still searching for them. Why do I keep searching? A voice speaks to me and says: "Search for Paradise and aspire for Perfection"...
Front squat 125 lbs. This is about 90% of my single rep maximum with acceptable form. My goal is to reach a 155 lb front squat this year, so I have another 15 lbs to go. For back squat, I'm looking to exceed 185 lbs. I am currently at 170 lbs on my back squat.
The snatch videos are rather out of order, but this is how it uploaded... I'm slowly making some progress on my overall snatch form, but it may be a while before I attempt to get my 1RM past 70 lbs while I clean up a few quirks. I still have difficulty in dropping under the bar in a full snatch, but my coach wants me to focus on hitting bottom on my overhead and front squats more consistently first before working on speeding up my drops.
Hang snatch, 55 lbs.
Full snatch, 45 lbs. I am still keeping the weights fairly light until I clean up a few quirks in my form, particularly in dropping under the bar and locking out a little more consistently.
Snatch, 55 lbs. I was looking down, which made the lift a little less smooth.
Snatch 55 lbs, from the side. I still have a bit of a tendency to look down-ish.
Snatch 55 lbs, also from the side. I still need to work on head alignment a bit more as well as dropping down and having a smoother ascent, but it looks like my overhead lockout is getting much cleaner.
Snatch warmup with the ultra light bar. Movements include the three pulls, full extension, muscle snatch, power snatch, snatch balance, overhead squat, Sott press, and duck walk forward and backward. Still not exactly the most graceful with this, but my range of motion in my shoulder and hips are getting better. I could not do the Sott press reliably up until maybe a week ago... and it usually involved some salty language, but it's now to the point where I can do it without anything hurting.
And there was a beautiful yellow rat snake when I took a desperately needed sanity trip out of town after some enduring massive quantities of illogical bovine manure.
There are a few more pictures from Rage of the Berserkers and then the heavily anticipated Alpha Beast events.
The Rage of the Berserkers run... or more like bathroom shuffle with the barbell.
Doing 20 shoulder-to-overheads (mostly in the form of push presses / jerks) does get pretty tiring, but I was able to do all 20 at 65 lbs!
And then there was the final event, the Alpha Beast. This was a blissfully short event. On one hand, I still missed breaking my PR by 10 or more lbs when I kept missing 115 lbs, mostly from not being able to drop down quickly enough to catch the bar, but I did finish 35-95 lbs in record time of 26 seconds. This also meant 95 lbs was surprisingly easy that time!
This last picture always puts a grin on my face after repeatedly missing the 115 lb clean. This was literally my moment of trying to get my brain to stop getting the best of me. I love how well L. Tevebaugh does a great job of also capturing raw emotions!
I definitely need to continue to watch my eating habits! Thank you Luke Tevebaugh of LTevebaugh Photography for these amazing pictures!
Yes, that was a 240 lb deadlift for the scaled female division. No, I didn't attempt the 285 lb deadlift for Rx female. I was tempted to try it, but decided that I needed to conserve energy for the primary WODs.
These were my hammer strikes from the Fall of Hrurgnir WOD, which was an 8 minute AMRAP of 10 burpee pull-ups and 20 hammer strikes.
All of these pictures were from the Rage of the Berserkers WOD, which was a chipper WOD with a 15 minute time cap. It consisted of 40 deadlifts at 65 lbs, disassemble barbell and run 200 meters with it, reassemble barbell and do 30 power cleans at 65 lbs, disassemble barbell and run 200 meters with it, reassemble barbell and do 20 shoulder to overheads (push jerks for me) at 65 lbs, disassemble barbell and run 200 meters, then 10 power snatches at 65 lbs. I ran out of time on the final lap... which was probably good for me considering 65 lbs is uncomfortably close to my 1RM on a snatch!
