Muscle Drills

So with buggered up knees courtesy of a critical fumble, it's rather hard to really get any running or squatting done, so of course, creativity has to come into play. Thank goodness for the insane mastermind in the form of Coach J to help me come up with adaptive drills to help build up my strength, muscle mass, and neural connections while my knees are healing up!

Friday, I was working on Soviet muscle snatches.  What's NOT shown is the massive amount of feedback and insights from Coach J between videos, as he is spread very thin between several athletes with completely orthogonal needs and skill levels.  One interesting bit of insight I got from him is that I am much smoother at the top without my glasses. I do have some issues with getting my knees back under the bar after I get the bar "around" my knees during the initial part of the pull.  What sets the Soviet muscle snatches apart is that there's not supposed to be any contact at the pocket, and if needed, I can press the bar out at the top.  It's a movement that's more supposed to help build strength and muscle mass, which I desperately need. 

Today was work on no-contact block cleans with push presses in the absence of a coach who is particularly familiar with the no-contact cleans. Thankfully, I do get a lot of feedback online from my mentor as he gets a chance to watch what I do.  I went relatively heavy for this type of drill after getting the general ok about my form on muscle cleans aside from working on getting my knees back under the bar.

And then there were the heavier singles...

And then I worked on heavy clean pulls to get used to pulling the heavier weights because I do struggle with my form on pulls when I anticipate the weights.  The trick for me will be to drop under the weight quickly enough and then stand it back up.  I'm trying to be more of an efficient squat cleaner, as I *don't* like power cleans very much.  There's much less bruising from squat cleans than on power cleans.