Saturday Strongman Training

With a bit of encouragement from my ride-or-die training buddies, I decided to give the Strongman class a try. As it turned out, the actual instructor wasn't around, but the brain behind the Un-F*** Yourself class took the reins of leadership.  It was rather filthy, as always, but I did get to give myself a challenge outside of my more natural tendencies surrounding Olympic lifts.  The Saturday CrossFit WOD involved an obscene number of power snatches for speed, which I was NOT messing with in the midst of repairing my form, although I could have easily scaled to overhead squats or snatch balances. 

I had massive fun pulling sleds today... along with working on figuring out how to safely handle a sandbag and improving my ability to do a bottoms-up overhead kettlebell carry.  Filming courtesy of one of my fellow Hobbits, A. Gray-Baker.

Speed, Position, and Balance...

There's hope for me in the snatch after a mentally taxing training session with Coach J, who has been especially nice to me and taking the time to really work with me to try and clean up various habits of mine.  Once we got the general movement patterns, which incorporates a fast halting snatch deadlift, a modified fast Romanian deadlift without full extension, snatch pulls, and eventually muscle and power snatches, we experimented with weight to see where my form tends to break down. It broke pretty early at only 50 lbs.

The rationale for this drill is to help maintain proper balance, bar path, and tension in the right areas. Apparently, I have a tendency to tense up in my arms and shoulders way too early in anticipation of pulling up, so I'm also learning to "fire" up when the bar contacts my pocket, which also forces me to drop down much faster (usually...)

Dropping Under Drills: The Epic Continues

So along with some issues with my pulls and raising my elbows, which are starting to resolve a bit after a small modification to my snatch and clean setup and bar path along my legs, I have a tendency to not drop down properly. I seem to be stuck in a perpetual power position (above parallel) before riding it down to kimchee position.

I decided to amuse myself today by watching my movements as a function of weight. The idea is that I'm setting up for a tall power jerk (eventually to become a squat jerk... hopefully in the style of Lu Xiaojun) with the bar already set up at about eye level when I'm at full triple extension. Then, once I'm at full extension, I drop down and lock out and stand the weight up to the best of my abilities. Typically, this is a heavy drill, but I started light, as supervision was a bit scant because the brains behind me working on this was occupied coaching an actual CrossFit class. That being said, the brains still takes the time to make sure I'm NOT going to rack up critical fumbles during quiet times like when the class is occupied with a 500 meter row. I also had a fellow athlete assist me because sometimes, it's a bit hard to reach things!

Besides my general drop drown drills and scarecrows, I now have these to work with in an attempt to develop my Olympic lifts to a higher level beyond scaled CrossFit.

Snatch pulls and snatches

So I struggle with my snatch pulls because I'm maintaining tension in the wrong places and not getting enough of the up component on my chest and elbows. Working on pulls from various points has helped significantly, as well as adjusting my stance and grip.  This was from a solo workout today, minus Coach J, who has been instrumental in reversing years of questionable habits and trying to get me to lift more like the Chinese and eastern Russian athletes based on my anatomy and build.

I'm hoping to spend some quality time with Coach J, who troubleshoots the folks that Coach T hasn't quite been able to debug, so I can develop a much more powerful, efficient snatch and get past my 85 lb barrier.  I'd also like to get past my 120 lb barrier on the clean & jerk...

Dropping Under Quickly

Today was focusing on power jerks after realizing that my split jerks are not the most reliable, although I am eventually looking at moving into squat jerks because they play more towards my mobility combined with needing less thinking.

And then there were the heaving snatch balances to help me work on dropping under the bar faster.