I Heart Cleans

Friday was a great way to end the week at the gym. I had been struggling with some mental battles of not seeing the progress I have made because my PRs have been so little. But a PR is a PR. So I walked into the gym telling myself to forget about the rest of the week and my struggles and get after those cleans. It’s a new day and a new lift. Granted, this was hard for me to do because I had been struggling with my clean for months, I wasn’t even coming close to being comfortable at my old SRM. So this one was a total mental battle for me.

Strength: Clean 1-1-1-1-1
83(x5) – 103-115-125-138PR-143PR

Warmed up at a little heavier set just to get the blood flowing and my back loose. Then I started to get after it with some singles. A few months back I was struggling with 125 and Friday it went up like nothing. Felt smooth and the squat was light. My old SRM was 135, so I decided the next rep would go over that to go for a PR. Pull was smooth and the front squat part felt good too. I actually screamed “PR!!!!” half way up in the squat. HA! I was THAT excited because of the last few months! My next rep I decided to try 145, made 3 attempts at that and every time the pull was perfect but then I got 85% of the way up on the squat and couldn’t finish it. I was determined to get it, but decided to take 2 pounds off and go for 143. The pulls felt great once again and the squat was a liiiiitle bit of a struggle because I was starting to fatigue, but I got it up and ended with an 8 pound PR. This was a HUGE accomplishment for me and I was happy I got past that mental block! Can’t wait to work my cleans some more.

WOD:
50 Calorie Row
2 Rounds:
10 pull-ups
20 Thrusters (65/65)
30 ball slams (30/20)
10:24

This one was a breather! Really got that heart rate going and kept ya moving. I finished the 50 calorie row around 2:55, which was a pretty good pace. This WOD, Brandon and I decided to just use the kip for the pull-ups instead of a band and do dead hangs. They weren’t the greatest because we haven’t done many pull-ups lately to begin with, but my shoulders didn’t feel warm yet, that was destined to change soon…I broke the first round of thrusters to 10-10, and the ball slams were straight through. I LOVE ball slams, but holy crap did 30 seem like forever! I took a couple breaths then went back up on the bar, I think it was broken 4-2-2-2, thrusters were 10-5-5 and ball slams were 20-10 for the last round. The second set of thrusters felt REALLY heavy, like they were never going to end. Crazy how much the ball slams had an effect on them! Overall a great wod and really got me breathing. I found that to be the most difficult part, was trying to catch my breath!


Saturday morning I went in for Open hour to help Alicia with her squats. I took it as an opportunity to help a friend and myself. I decided to stack some plates to make a 12 inch box that we could squat to. This way I could give her a breaking point just below parallel where she doesn’t butt wink and lose all engagement which causes her to hinge forward. It’s amazing how we all have a similar problem of squatting ass to ankles and when we squat to just below parallel we feel like we aren’t anywhere near deep enough! I think if both her and I stick to training like this for awhile, she’s going to see some major improvement with all of her squats. If I learned one thing from this week, it’s that I NEED TO SQUAT MORE!! The fact that I could get 85% of the way up on my front squat, back squat, and clean and then fail, sucks. So the solution is more squatting. I’m going to try and squeeze in some extra squat therapy and training throughout the week to see what kind of improvements I can make.

After that, Alicia and I did a rowing wod:
8 x 500m with 3:30 rest in between.
Time – 15:55.9
Average 500m – 1:59.4
Average S/M – 28

I would pace myself to be around a 1:58-2:00 500m with about 24-26 s/m for the first 350m of every row. Then I would increase the pace for 50m and sprint the last 100m. It felt great, and I feel like my endurance is coming back.