The pressure is off

Seeing the final qualifier workout come up today for the last chance qualifiers gave me a nice feeling of "I'm glad it's not me." I actually am looking forward to tackling this workout again, but first I need to practice the oly lifting technique I learned at Greg Everett's seminar a few weeks back. I want that technique so engrained that some approximation of it remains my default mode of liting, even when I'm so far gassed that I can't count reps (like last Sunday).

So today, rather than trying to start rebuilding the metcon that I lost over the last couple of months, I decided nothing would be better than spending some serious time working on my snatch. I invited John Barney over, both to share what I learned and in hopes that the act of teaching would reinforce some of the lessons for myself. (I had planned to do this immediately after Greg's seminar, but my schedule screwed this idea up until I'd had time to forget much of what I had learned.) The drills, positions, and movement patterns, actually came back pretty quickly and the bar was moving well, even though I never loaded it up heavy.

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Saturday, May 30, 2009

Warmup
Shoulder mobility drills
Air squats
Lunges & sampson/psoas stretch
Boz OHS drill

Skill work
Burgener warmup elements, 15# - many times through
OHSs and snatch balance sequence, several times through at 15 & 45#
tall snatch 45x3
3-position hang snatch, 45x3x2

Snatch 75x3, 95x1x2, 125x1x2

Good speed on that last rep, but I wasn't feeling the heavy stuff today, so I moved on.

This workout has been sitting on my to-do list, ever since Byers posted it at CrossFit 603 - and not just because I'm a math geek or because BW-normalized squat workouts are in my wheelhouse and I just wanted to feel good about the first metcon in my new program. I think it's an interesting approach to build scaling explicitly into a WOD. It was also high time I had a good core-stability workout, since in my limited prep for the Qualifiers, I was mostly focusing on strength and power-endurance work.

Metcon
OHS for a total of 20xBW - choose your weight

I did 74# x 47 @ BW 173

1:57

A similar CF603 WOD, 40xBW C&J made it's way into the Rocky Mountain Qualifiers (at the Qualifiers, it was done with fixed volumes of 7000#/5000#). For the Qualifiers, this sort of choose-your-weight workout is especially interesting, because to do well, you need to know your personal power curve (those weights at which you can most efficiently move weight with a movement). By choosing the optimal weight, you maximize your power output and thus the intensity of your workout (in the strict CrossFit definition of Intensity = Power).



This was rough. With the OHS, the focus is on core (and shoulder) stability, so maximizing the power output doesn't have the same cachet. I think I ended up picking a weight that maximized my speed on the workout, and the effort left me with a nice post-WOD headache. My right shoulder was starting to take a walk around the joint capsule on those last couple of reps. I was definitely at my limit finishing this workout in a single set, but next time I'll try it at 95# and maybe heavier again after that to see how well I can keep the overall intensity going when the intensity of each rep goes up. I expect it will be an entirely different workout that way.

Ring work
1:00 in a mature support
MU progressions
1 MU
4 STC to hollow hang & quit

My post-WOD headache came back with a vengeance when I was inverted, and I called it a day.