I’ll talk about the things I learned at the Fitness Summit in another post. But having gone to the Fitness Summit is relevant because that means in the last 4 days there were two days of dehydrating travel (flying means I shrink up like a prune that rolled into the back of the pantry out of the bag without anybody noticing for three years. How do I know what this looks like? Yeah, that’s how often I clean my pantry). It also meant sitting cramped up in little plastic folding chairs. And no lifting.
So I came back today dry (like two pounds of water weight lost dry) and not particularly well rested and guess what? 3 sets of Snatches in, I had to abort. They tested well in theory when I applied biofeedback testing to them, but they actually sucked a$$ in practice so before I had a meltdown, we switched gears.
I tried what were essentially banded rack pulls, but I prefer to think of them as banded snatch extensions. I get the fancy latter title because I practiced getting knees out and back, then explosively standing up and of course all that with a snatch grip.
Then fun with sleds. First, a weighted pull through 4×10, then turned around and did more of an extending-with-row-at-the-top thing 4×10. 85lbs added weight. Both were helpful for learning to dig in with heals instead of pushing off forefoot. Both were also helpful to remind me that exercising in 81F heat in Texas kinda sucks the same a$$ my snatches did. And it’s only Spring.
Finished with sumo belt-weighted deficit squats. Squatting sumo stance on boxes with a weight belt and a 25lb plate, 3×20. Yeah, 20. I, who counts reps thus: 1…2…3…1 too many….2 too many…cardio. I did cardio today.
The short version of all of this is: I need more basic strength. I’ve been so focused on technique learning the olympic lifts that I feel that I’ve let a lot of just general strength go by the wayside. Yes, my crappy squat got less crappy. But my deadlift got worse, my OHP didn’t make much progress and all of that translates into things that should feel easy with the olys taking much too much effort.
So I’m going to focus for a while on light weight technique work and a lot of heavy strength work. Assuming that my poor back extensors and glutes aren’t necrotic and dead by tomorrow 🙂
