Sunday, May 31, 2015

2015.05.21

This one was one where the reps decreased as you went along, so it got easier near the end. It's actually a modified version of something we did on October 23, 2014, with the jumping lunges thrown in. Remember, you have to do the same number of lunges every single time, after every round except the last. There was some confusion about this, so I'm going to write out the whole rep scheme. It's going to tax your legs, thanks to both the deadlifts and the jumping lunges. If you want a target, the fastest finish time was 6:40.

We did some skill work after the warm up, to try to build muscle memory for good form. This is a little harder to do on your own, since you can't exactly watch yourself from all sides. One interesting note, though, was that we did all of this facing away from the mirrors. We focused a lot more on posture (e.g., where to put your feet, keeping a lumbar curve, keeping your chest up), to the point where we transitioned to set positions prior to doing the lifts. Also, you're not allowed to drop the bar between the deadlift & power clean, or the power clean & front squat, to force you to handle the barbell with strict form.

As far as safety goes, protect your lower back. Don't bend over or "round" your back when doing the deadlifts, that can hurt you. Also, make sure that your bar doesn't roll around at all after you put it down. You're going to be jumping for a bit, and you don't want to twist an ankle by landing on a barbell.

Warm Up
2 rounds of:
Skill
15 rounds of (broken up into sets of 5):
WoD
Exercises
  • T Push Ups

    Drop down in to a push up position, and lower your body until your chest hits the ground. Push your body up off the ground, but as your arms start to get fully extended, lift one of them off of the ground. Rotate your torso towards the side where you lifted the arm, so that you are now facing sideways rather than towards the ground. At the same time, extend the arm you lifted straight up in the air. This is actually where the name comes from: at full extension, your body will make something of a T-shape. Lower your arm and rotate your torso back in to a regular push up position. Repeat this motion by lifting your other arm in to the air to complete a single rep.

  • Bottom Downs

    From a standing position, reach down and touch your toes. Without letting go of your toes, squat down in to a full squat. Hold the bottom of this position for three seconds, and then stand up without letting go of your toes. Your feet should be as close to locked out as possible, so that you're essentially bending down to reach your toes. Hold that position for three seconds in order to finish the rep. The idea behind the hold is to ensure that you don't cheat by only coming up or squatting down part of the way.

  • Good Mornings

    Grab a bar, but don't put any weight on it for the warm up. Standing, rest the bar on your shoulders behind your neck. You'll want to squeeze your shoulder blades together, and keep your hands slightly wider than shoulder-width apart. Keep your feet about shoulder-width apart, and keep your legs locked. Bend at the waist (as if you’re bowing), keeping your eyes forward. Your back needs to be flat as you do that, and you should finish so that your back is parallel to the ground. Come back up to standing to finish the rep. Notice that this variation doesn't require a bend to your knees.

  • Deadlifts

    Place a 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 hits 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.

  • Power Clean

    You'll need a barbell for this, but this time around, don't load it as heavily as your max. The focus is form, not a personal record.

    To begin with, put the weight on the ground in front of you (this is different than the "high hang" where you start with the weight near your thighs). Squat down to grab the weights, but remember to face forward and keep your chest facing forward. Stand up, but as you do so, shrug your shoulders aggressively. I know it sounds silly, but it should be an *aggressive* shrug. You really want to build some momentum in that motion. However, 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 do a quick hop at the same time. If you were to watch the path the weight travels, it should be as close to your body as possible, and as close to completely vertical as possible. If the weight travels 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 weight near your chest/clavicle.

    You can almost think of it as letting go of the weight in midair, and positioning your body underneath the weight so that you end up with your knees slightly bent and the weight at your chest. Don't actually let go of the weight, that can be all sorts of bad. However, you'll find that because it's a quick hop, 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. Again, practice just the squat motion a few times so that it feels natural.

    Lastly, just stand up completely while holding the weight at your chest. You basically just need to straighten your legs out, but you don't want to do this step until you've got full control of the weight. Normally, you would then put the bar back down on the ground to finish the rep, but in this case, you are considered done when you stand tall with the weight racked at your chest/clavicle. All that's really left is to put it all together in a smooth motion.

  • Front Squat

    Hold the barbell at about shoulder level, with your palms facing away from your body so that you could see both palms in a mirror. In a sense, the weights are "racked" against your chest. If you've got enough strength and flexibility in your wrists, bring your elbows straight up so that they point away from your body. This will force more of the weight against your upper torso and put more of a strain on your wrists, so only do this if you can sustain this position through lots and lots of reps. Regardless of how high you bring your elbows, the weights are "racked" against your chest.

    Keeping the barbell in this position, do a squat. The same rules apply as always: keep a good lumbar curve while you do this, keep your weight on your heels, keep your head up & look forward, and keep your chest facing forward (don't bend over). With weight in your hands, these cues become more important. If you do enough reps poorly, you can tweak your back. Incidentally, this is also why we try to learn good from with air squats; so that it's habit by the time you put weight in your hands.

  • Hand Release Push Up

    Bring your chest to the ground for every single rep, and lift your hands off the ground at the bottom. This forces you to go all the way down (gravity will take care of the rest if you don't actually bring yourself to the ground). At the top of the rep, make sure your arms are fully extended.

    Scale down: Do the push ups on your knees. You lift less weight this way, so it's easier.

  • Jumping Lunges

    Start by doing a regular lunge: bring one leg forward in a straight line, and then bend your knees so that both your knees are bent at 90 degrees. The back knee should be close to the ground, and 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 front leg. Your knees don't quite have to touch the ground (you might get burns/scrapes that way), but come as close as you can to that. If you need extra support, you can use your hands to push up off of your lead leg.

    Instead of standing up from that position, jump up in to the air. You want to switch which leg is forward and which leg is in the back in mid-air. When you land, go right into your next lunge. Essentially, you're just jumping from one lunge to the next. Same rules apply on subsequent lunges: keep your front foot farther forward than your front knee, and go all the way down. Keep jumping between each lunge.

    This time around, you get credit whenever either leg comes forward. You can also think of this as getting credit for a rep every time you jump in the air. Either way, our short-hand for this is "left/right = 2."

    Scale down: Do regular lunges.

As always, have fun with it.
Posted by at
Labels: , , , , , , ,

1 comment:

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)