I've been in meetings a lot lately, so I've had to miss a bunch of these classes. This one was basically fun with a barbell (it reminded me of the bear complex and Incredible Hulk). Needless to say, you'll want to warm up your shoulders and legs. You're going to use them a bunch.
As far as safety goes, you'll need good form on all of these exercises. If you have to stop or slow down to keep good form, do it. You can hurt your back on any one of these exercises if you're not careful. You also need to pay special attention to the push presses, since that involves holding weight overhead. It's nothing to be scared of, but remember to watch your form.
WoD
As Many Rounds As Possible (in 12 minutes) of:
Exercises
- Deadlifts
Place the barbell on the floor pretty much right in front of your feet (with a full Olympic bar, you'd put your feet right underneath the bar). Stand with your feet about shoulder-width apart, and bend your knees slightly (about 20 degrees) to reach down to grab the barbell. You want your hands on the outside of your legs/knees, and you want to start with the barbell to be high enough off the ground to be about halfway up your shin (this is about the same height as an Olympic bar resting on the ground with 45lb plates on it). Keeping your head up and your chest facing forward, lift your torso a few inches until the barbell almost hit your knees. Your arms shouldn't bend at the elbows, you're just lifting your upper body with the weight conveniently attached to the upper body. Also, the weight should move in a straight vertical line, with no horizontal motion. It can help to think about it as if you're trying to skin your shins with the weight. Once the barbell is at about your knees, pop your hips forward to generate some more momentum. At the same time, contract your shoulder blades towards each other. This will naturally pull the weight up even more (again, in a straight line). You should be standing straight up with your chest out at the top of the movement. Even though it looks like you're pulling the weight up using your biceps, you should try to avoid pulling up with your arms. That actually decreases the amount of weight you can lift in the long run, and it's bad form.
- Hang Power Cleans
You'll need a barbell for this, so weigh it with whatever feels comfortable; most of the time, I see anywhere between 45lbs and 90lbs.
To begin with, hold the barbell down near your thighs (this position is considered a "high hang" so that's where the name comes from). From that position, shrug your shoulders. I know it sounds silly, but it should be an *aggressive* shrug. You really want to build some momentum in that motion. Remember, though, keep your arms locked as you're doing this, or you'll end up doing more of a curl. If you need to make sure you've got it down, practice just that part of it a few times.
The next step, starting from the shrugged shoulder position, is to quickly bring the weight up to about chest level and bend your knees a tiny bit at the same time. If you were to watch the path the weights travel, it should be completely vertical. If the weights travel in an arc away from your body, you're doing it wrong. Your hands don't lift the weight as much as they adjust themselves to hold the weight differently. At the end of this motion, you should have your palms facing away from your body, as if you were "racking" the dumbbells near your chest/clavicle. You can almost think of it as letting go of the weight in midair, and positioning your body so that you can receive the weight with the weight at your chest. Don't actually let go, that can be all sorts of bad.
However, you'll find that because there's so much momentum and you're trying to "catch" the weight with your knees bent, you're pretty much jumping into it. At the same time, your hands will suddenly shoot up to hold the weight at your chest. As always, keep a good lumbar curve. You don't want to bend over as you do this. If you do it wrong repeatedly or with a heavy enough weight, your lower back will pay for it. You can practice this one step at a time until the motion starts to feel more natural.
Lastly, just stand up straight while holding the weight at your chest. Once you've stood all the way up, you can drop the weight back down to thigh-level to start over. That's the end of a single rep. Now all that's left is to put it all together in a smooth motion.
- Push Presses
To start, hold the barbell slightly below shoulder level with both your palms facing away from your body so that you can see both palms in a mirror. You want the weights "racked" against your chest, with your elbows farther forward than the bar. You don't need to bring them all the way up like you do with a front squat, but you do want your forearms vertical and supporting the bar from underneath.
Do a quarter squat, and come up as explosively as you can. In reality, you'll end up end up hopping up a tiny bit because you're generating so much momentum/power from your legs. That's okay, but be absolutely sure that you're in control as you do this. You really don't want to trip or fall while holding a barbell. As you come up, press the barbell directly over your head. Remember, your legs should be driving the power in this motion, not your shoulders or arms. At the top of your motion, you want your arms to be fully extended and your legs completely straightened out. Also, bring your head forward a bit so that your arms, spine, and head are all aligned along the same vertical plane.
One last cue is to make sure you move the weights directly up & down; if you start moving the horizontally, you'll put extra stress on your shoulders. If your elbows flare out horizontally, that's also going to make it difficult to press straight up & down. Finish your rep by bringing the weight back to beginning/racked position.
- Weighted Lunge
To start, you'll need to rest the barbell on your shoulders. Since you just finished doing push presses, you can lift the weight over your head and then bring it down in a controlled manner to rest on your shoulders. Just make sure that you rest the bar on the muscles in your shoulders and upper back, not on your neck (that's dangerous). You also want to have full control of the bar when you go to move your legs, so adjust as necessary before you take any steps.
With the weight racked, you want to bring one leg forward in a lunge, and then bend your knees so that both your knees are bent at 90 degrees. Your front knee should be directly over your front foot, otherwise you're putting undue stress on your knees. One cue that can help some folks is to treat your lunge like you're going straight up and down with your back leg.
It's up to you if you want your back knee to touch the ground or not. Touching the ground forces you to complete the full lunge, but doing so means that you'd do your lunge slightly differently. First off, you'll want to put a mat down in front of you so that you don't end up scraping your knees every time you touch the ground. However, you really don't want your front leg to step on the mat, since that can slide as you're moving back and forth (slipping with a barbell in your hands is a BAD idea). So if you're going to make your back knee touch, step diagonally with your front foot and step OVER the corner of the mat. Again, avoiding stepping directly on top of the mat. That angle will allow you to make your back knee touch the mat, but will also give you enough stability to safely perform the exercise.
This time around, you get credit for a rep only after you bring both legs forward (or, "right/left = 1" for short)
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