Evolve Strength - April 5, 2018: Olympic Lifting with O.P.F.

Getting use to the kilogram plates

Strength work:  ~70% of 1 RM, Back Squats

Programming and coaching with Olympic lifting coach:  Kevin Zimmerman

Thoughts:
Second day of training with O.P.F. (Olympic Power and Fitness weightlifting club) at Evolve Strength South.  This time, I'm a bit more prepared as I came a bit earlier so I wouldn't have the same issue as Tuesday.  Plus, as much as I love working out; three hours is a tad much for my body.

Warm-up:
Coach Kevin asked me to start by working on my front squats and build to a heavy weight.  I did 5 reps and then would swap out the plates.  Yes, I'm still trying to remember the weight of each of the colors.  And everything is in kilograms!

Technique fixes:
Coach Kevin had me worked on Clean Pulls and Hang cleans throughout the bulk of the 2 hours.  We went thru my form, foot stance, body positioning.  I used a lighter weight to start and ran thru drills with the clean pulls.  Then as I was more proficient in those movement, coach would ask me to increase the weight by 5 kg.    This was repeated for the Hang Cleans.  Same methodology applied here.

Strength:
I'm starting to see a pattern here.  We worked on strength at the end of the session.  Although, I did talked to one of the other lifter and assistant coach; Zach that sometimes strength portion comes at the beginning of the programming and can be a challenge.

Coach asked me to do 4 sets, 3 reps
@  70% Push Press
@  70% Back Squat

Taking a look at my spreadsheet with 1 RM; 
  Push Press is 180 lb (81.8 kg);  70% works out to be 57.26 kg
  Back Squat is 295 lb (134 kg);  70% works out to be 93.8 kg

Those were the weights that I tried to aim for.

I was more surprised how relatively easy that those weight were.  Considering how long I was working thru my drills, and practicing.  I even did some of my back squats with a 2 second pause at the bottom of the squat.   Am I being too cocky?  

MISC:
One of the olympic lifter, Nelson Lau came around the time I was just finishing my last set of the strength work.  He gave me and the rest of the O.P.F family one of these to munch on.  Sake Flavored Kit Kat  3% alcohol content!   Yum! 

Sake flavored Kit Kat
(courtesy of Nelson Lau)

Thanks for sharing and now I wish they sold them here!!!


Practice, practice with consistency, practice with intention.