Thursday, November 20, 2008

Kettlbells, Oly lifts and a deep freeze

Wednesday November 19, 2008

Weight: 179 7/8 lbs

This morning when I woke up at 6am it was 18 deg F. Last week at this time it was 40 deg F. I knew it was cold when I got up and my left heel was split .. ouch! The bag balm I normally use at night for my hands is now being shared with my feet. Although yesterdays session represented the greatest Oly training volume to date, I felt pretty good in the morning. As a resulted, I decided on a moderate KB session with one of my clients:

24kg Two-hand Swings
2 x (5, 10, 20, 25, 30) Alternating turns with my client
Total: 250 swings

24kg x 1 x 7r Seated MP

24kg x 2 5-rung Viking Push Press Ladder
32kg x 3 3-rung Push Press Ladder

I got a great sweat going from the swings. I really threw the bell down hard on the negative to really work the movement .. makes a huge difference. I was a little wary about my left wrist so skipped on the seated presses on left side.

Thursday November 20, 2008

Weight: 180 1/2 lbs

Another blistering cold and windy day. Usually by February my body slowly gets used to these temperature but such quick transitions are very tough. Fortunately, I feel pretty good considering this will be the third training day in a row (Oly, KB, Oly).

Morning:

Z-Health: Neural Warm-up Level 2 (Dynamic Joint Mobility Drills)

Back & Ab Complex: 1 set
A1:BW x 1 x 10 Heavy blue band Goodmorning
A2: BW x 1 x 9 Ab wheel on the knee rollouts, 5 sec hold and rollback

Evening Oly Session:

40kg x 2 x 5 Squat C&J
50kg x 2 x 3 Squat C&J
60kg x 1 x 2 Squat C&J
70kg x 1 x 1 Squat C&J
80kg x 1 x 1 Squat Clean (failed on the jerk) (PR)
90kg x 1 x 5 Squat Clean failures
60kg x 3 x 2 Squat C&J

Front Squat (lbs)
135 x 1 x 3
155 x 2 x 3
165 x 1 x 3
175 x 1 x 3
185 x 1 x 3 (PR)

10lb x 2 Two-inch Wrist Curl
BW x 3 x 4 Tactical Pullups

Tonight I was prodded by Assistant Coach Jascha Kahn into the full-squat version of the clean. Fortunately this went very smoothly as I had been doing front squat assistance lifts for a few weeks in preparation. As a result we decided to see how far I could go with the new technique. After working up the 70kg and having it go smoothly, I decided to jump right to 80kg. Although I could not jerk the 80kg I did squat clean it pretty easily for a PR. After another jerk failure with it we decided to focus on the squat clean. Going right to 90kg I got a little freaked out about the jump in weight and subsequently resulted in four horrible misses. After a five minute break I was able to psych myself on a fifth attempt where I was able to get underneath it and raise about three-quarters of the way up when I got stuck. I felt darn good about coming very close knowing I will nail in a week or so.

Following this I dropped back down to 60kg to work on improving my jerk form with the C&J. After three more sets of doubles I stopped with enough in the tank left for front squats. I decided to use a wrist strap technique I found on-line to take pressure off my left wrist while it is still recovering .. the front squat strap usage is demonstrated in the photo below:




This went very well with PRs at 155, 165, 175 and 185 an increase of 40lbs from last Thursday. Next week I will shoot for a triple with 200 to help give me the confidence to squat clean it. In the meantime I need to work hard on my jerk technique .. I know I am strong enough to jerk 80kg but my technique is lacking.

Total volume: 6920 lbs

2 comments:

Martin Schap said...

Just the other day was the first time I had ever actively pushed the bell down on the negative of the swing. I was surprised how much of a difference it makes. Great work on the O-lifts. Progress is a great motivator. Are you using a split jerk or the push jerk?

Franklin said...

martin,

Yes the push down swing neg also really helps new clients in getting them to hinge at the waist .. I stand to the side and actively push the bell down at the top their swings.

We are being taught the split jerk although I have seen some of the advanced lifters work power/partial squat jerks (check out the youtube Pyrros Dimas videos for the greatest use of this of all time) from off the rack as an assistance lift.