Crossfit Armoury - August 2, 2017: Speciality class: Olympic Lifting

Wednesday; August 2, 2017 @ Crossfit Armoury - West

Coach:  Meaghan B.

Thoughts:
Programming done by Head Olympic coach AJ Facendi; but she is away for the month of August for holidays.  We have a guest coach to help us with our lifting.
While she get's use to our warm-ups and schneegans; some of the class members who's been here longer than I have had taken charge and lead the warm-up (Terry B.).   Coach Meaghan was cool with that.   

If you have been reading my blog on the olympic lifting class; you will notice that all our warm-up and empty bar daily warm-ups are the same.  We may occasionally forget certain wooden dowel movements or the initial rubber band warm-up, missing a few along the way.  Usually, someone will remind the other.

Snatch:
Snatch warm-up this week is working on Tall Snatches.  Something that I had to find on YouTube, what it looks like before class.  My curiosity always gets me.   It's essential the movements that I need to work on as mentioned by Coach AJ last week to me directly.   And if anything, it will help me get under the bar more efficiently.
Coach Meaghan demoed it in class to all of us.  While keeping the body in an upright position, slight dip in the knee and pull the bar up and shrug at the top.  Follow thru to the end with the snatch movement.   A few rounds of this with the empty barbell, it is sinking in a bit more with me.   I see myself practicing these movements a bit more after class or when I need to do some extra work.

We've been working on percentage load of our max and building up accordingly.  Surprisingly, I've been able to moderately hit my 80% and when push; I'm able to hit my 85 to 90% mark.  

The weights I used for this exercise (rounded up to nearest weighted plate); and at our own pace was:

3 Reps @  60%                    = 80 lb
3 Reps @  70%                    = 95 lb
2 Sets of 3 Reps @ 75%       = 100 lb
2 Sets of 2 Reps @  80%      = 110 lb
3 Sets of 2 Reps @  85%      = 115 lb
2 Sets of 1 Rep @  90%       = 120 lb

Believe it or not, I actually had some issues at the 85% mark.  First set, I failed on my first rep as I didn't get underneath the bar (bar was too far forward) - aborted it.   Second set, felt clumsy and had to take a few steps forward after standing up.   Third set, didn't engage my core and kinda rush thru my lift off; thus stumbling at the end.   I really had to focus on slowing myself down, engage the core and wait until things are stable at the bottom of the catch.
Once I did all that, the 90% sets went up without any issues.

Clean & Jerk:
Seeing that we did Tall Snatches, there is now Tall Cleans.  Essentially following the same format as the Tall Snatches; we practice these new movements for 3 sets of 3 reps.  Again, more work is needed/practice with this movement.

The exercises calls for building up to our 75 - 85% of our max.  The complex was 1 Power Clean + 1 Hang Clean + 1 Push Jerk, in an EMOM style for 10 minutes.

I had calculated my percentage before the class and wrote it down on a blue Post-it note.    I opted to use 135 lb as my weight.    Call me lazy as i didn't want to swap out my plates.   I was warned by my classmates that it'll get heavy at the end.

Surprisingly, it wasn't so heavy that I had issues.   I felt a bit fatigue around the 8th round but no issues getting the weight up (clean, hang clean and push jerk).   Personally, I was excited that I could do a hang clean at 135 lb.   In the past, that weight would not had been possible without me running for my belt.   

Accessory/Homework/Misc:
Coach AJ had posted that next week, we will be testing our max.  It will be good to see how close I can get to my previous Max, and seeing what kind of progress that I've done in the last 4 weeks of Oly.  And it will let me see how well the techniques that I've learned, will it stick with me when I need it the most?

As for homework; will work on both the Tall Snatches and Tall Cleans after one of my crossfit classes.   I will also need to work on other things as well.

Remember to stay consistent with your training!