A decent 7 hours of sleep. Weight: 177 3/4 lbs. The weight is slowly going back down again as lately I have been cutting back on snacks. The left knee feels real good and my back, shoulders and elbows are a little sore from yesterdays sledgehammer work. The plan today was to take it easy today and get in some snatches.
Z-Health R-Phase and some Neural Warm-up Level 2
24kg Snatches:
2 x 3/3
2 x 5/5
10 x 5/5 @ 90 secs/set
Total: 132 reps
50K Snatch Race Total = 198+132 = 330 pts
Great progress on the snatch front as this was the 1st time I tried to increase the intensity with timed sets. Following Steve Freides, RKC article on How to Pass the RKC Snatch Test, I have successfully exited his Level 2 goal (10 sets of 5/5 @ 5 mins/set or less) and now I enter Level 3 where I must shorten the intervals to 1 minute and try to get to 20 minutes. If I continue to approach this in a sensible step wise manner I know I will succeed.
I just read Rif's latest post on his blog regarding his acknowledgment of the fantastic progress he has made concerning his ability to snatch consistently with great volume and intensity. All this in light of a debilitating shoulder injury which at first left him little hope of ever snatching again.
Reflecting further on this, I too am amazed that just this January, the idea of being able to snatch the 24kg with any kind of volume seemed impossible given the chronic soreness of both my elbows. Obviously, his snatch volume and intensity dwarfs mine, but the point is 132 reps is a great start for me and a decent accomplishment at this juncture.
This evening I decided to do a few fighter pull-ups. I thought I would do a few sets of single and doubles with an emphasis on exploding up per Aaron Friday's (who recently posted three very impressive PRs in the latest TSC) recommendation. I had done these a GTG style a few days ago and the volume spread out over several hours seemed to not bother me. (Previously I had hit a plateau with Pavel's Russian Fighter Pull-up Program with a 5RM.)
Fighter Pull-ups Neutral Grip: 6
Holy crap! My first two were so explosive and easy to do, I kept going and did a total of 6, a new PR. I still can clearly remember when I only had a 2RM just a few months ago. Given how I have had to back off for the last two weeks due to my left quad pull and sore right elbow this is amazing. I hope someday I have enough sense to voluntarily taper without depending on tweaking something to force me to!
BW 2 x 10 Power Wheel On knees Roll-out,5 sec Hold, and Back
I am now using 5 seconds per hold instead of 3. With the increase in hold time I'm starting to feel it in my shoulders and not just my abs. Also no cramping at all in my abs. I'm going to wait until Monday to do crawls with my co-worker.
A few more snatches before off to bed practicing hiking the bell on the descent very far between the legs to help facilitate catching with my hips and gluts and loading for the next rep. Also practiced some cork-screws with my right arm only as left was too tired. Finally, made sure the bell is held in the hook grip where it lays diagonally across the palm. What I noticed is that when snatching this way, instead of being sore on the pads just below the fingers, I now get a little soreness further down in the palm. This is good as this area seems to be tougher. Another observation is that I have virtually eliminated all forearm slamming during the flip at the top.
24kg Snatch
1 x 3/3
2 x 5/5
1 x 10r
1 x 12r
Total = 48 reps
50K Snatch Race Total = 330 + 48 = 378 pts
Late next week I am going to experiment with snatching the 32kg particularly with my left as I will have a good volume of TGUs and OH static holds by then.
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Diet and Nutrition Log
Breakfast:
1 bowl of Kitchari, Green Gram Curry with sweet potato
2 cups of coffee with tbs of 1/2 and 1/2
4 dates
1 banana
Morning Snack:
1 banana
Lunch (out):
1 moderate helping of Kung Pao Chicken with white rice
1 large helping of Chinese Broccoli
1 tangerine
1 Sesame cookie
Dinner:
1 bowl of leftover cilantro salmon, mapo dou-fo and brown rice
1 small Japanese purple sweet potato
2 scoops of ice cream
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2 comments:
You are moving right along! 132 snatches is a very good total. I know you've got other plans, but I'd be hiking that number up, up, up to 200 for a nice volume PR.
Great job on the pullups. If you can ride your current methods up to 10 reps or so, adding weight at that time might give you a turbo charge.
Thanks Aaron!
Your suggestion regarding increasing the snatch volume to 200 reps is one to seriously consider.
Also again today I was exploding up during my 1,2,3 rep pull-up sets so much so I was almost literally smacking my chest to the bar. This is a new and exciting development.
And please, I encourage you to continue to stop by and offer your training insights .. they haven proven to be quite effective for me! .. not surprising coming from the man who just finished in the top 19th percentile of the men's open division of the April 2008 TSC competition.
Finally, I hope you guys get a little sunshine out there in MN .. the good weather has finally broken through here .. most appreciated after one of the coldest winters on record here in the Boston area.
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