Thursday, February 26, 2009

Good Clean Fun

There's something about the olympic lifts that is just plain fun. A weight rests on the floor, you pull, and bang, it's suddenly racked or overhead. Of the oly lifts, the clean is easily my favorite. I'm better at it than the overhead lifts, and I get to put more weight on the bar.

I didn't have a lot of time at the gym last night and I came in feeling a little lackluster because of the late hour, but as soon as I hit that first pull from the ground, I knew I was in PR territory. When you're on a good day, it's not time to be shy about your loads. My old PR was 200, but in each case I was tired from hours of previous work. Tonight I decided I'd pull 215 (1.25 x BW).

I forgot the camera yet again. I promise to bring it next time out, so the blog isn't so dull. I especially wanted videos of my cleans, so I could check form. Like I said, next time.

Warmup
Jump rope 3:00, 5 consecutive DUs

(It's a rhythm thing. I can jump and spin the rope fast enough, but I can't seem to break through. Maybe I need to give this a good solid 15 minutes some day.)

Hip mobility drills
Burgener warmup (cleans)

Heavy metal
Hang squat clean 45x5, 95x3, 115x3
Clean 135x3, 155x2, 175x2, 185, 195, 200, 205, 210 (PR)

I took two halfhearted attempts at 215, but after a tough catch at 210, my shoulder hurt a tiny bit and I chickened out. It was purely mental. The first attempt was two pulls, but I didn't give it enough to have a good hope of getting under it, and I skipped the 3rd pull. The 2nd attempt was a deadlift. Oly lifts are technical and fast, and they go wrong just as quickly. Add a couple of pounds or lose a tiny bit of mental or physical strength and they go south in a hurry.

This was my first go at heavy squat cleans in over two months. I'd done heavy hang power cleans, some tall cleans, some DB squat cleans and an Elizabeth since then, but the bar was way easier to move yesterday. I love CrossFit. With a good mix of general strength and mobility work and a little skill practice, you still improve at things that you aren't directly working. Like I said, that was fun. I'll hit these again in a couple of weeks.

Had a metcon planned for ages - 50 in the Clip, which is 50 95# burpee C&Js, but after the push presses yesterday and with more overhead work tomorrow, I had to come up with something else.

Metcon
AMRAP 10 minutes:

    5 Squat cleans, 135#

10 pushups
15 box jumps, 20"

    5 rounds even

    This could use more pushups, more weight on the cleans, and maybe fewer box jumps. It was a quad burner like this, but the metcon hit wasn't as much as I'd hoped.

    2 comments:

    jenna said...

    Solid work Patrick. Aren't PRs grand?

    Patrick Haskell said...

    PRs are grand, but training is the point, and I haven't done anything resembling training since that session. Work just exploded on me, eating into my vacation even. Ugh. At least I can get to an affiliate tomorrow, so I don't have to self-motivate enough to come up with an appropriately brutal program.