This one had a strength portion, so give yourself a little bit of time. This WOD was also of the "every minute on the minute" variety, so you'll need a good way to keep time. Essentially, find something that will beep or notify you every 60 seconds. If you finish before the 60 seconds are up, rest during the remaining time. Also, the WOD has a bunch of leg work, so be really good about warming up. You're going to beat up your legs.
As far as safety goes, you want to protect your back on the squats and cleans. Both can hurt your lower back if you get sloppy about your form. So, don't get sloppy about your form. It sounds easy, but it's a good reminder, especially when you're doing this in the later rounds.
Strength
10 minutes of:
WoD
Every Minute on the Minute, for 10 minutes:
Exercises
- Front Pause Squat
You'll want to weigh a barbell with as much weight as you can handle. The most I usually see anyone use is 4 sets of plates on each side, which works out to about 90lbs total. You need to get the bar to a racked position for both variations of this. You'll rack the bar against your clavicle/shoulders in front of you (a "front rack").
Once you've got the bar racked, do an air squat. Make sure you keep a good lumbar curve the whole time (you can tweak your lower back otherwise), and you bend at least far enough so that your thighs are parallel to the ground. You need to pause for 5 seconds at the bottom of the squat. To make sure you're counting a proper 10 seconds, add in "thousand" after each number.
Once the 5 seconds are up, come back up to the standing "racked" position to finish the rep. You want to drive the weight up, not just stand up, so think about squeezing your glutes together to generate some momentum. It might sound a little silly, but that motion helps to really push the weight upward. Each time you come back up, that's one rep.
- Power Clean
You'll need a barbell for this, and you'll want to weight it fairly heavily. I usually see between ~45lbs and ~90lbs.
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.
- Box Jump
You'll need to set up a platform with risers. I usually see between 3 and 5 risers. Before you even start the WoD, stomp on it really hard. You want to make sure it'll support your weight & won't move around when you jump on it. Just in case, look down at the platform when you jump. If it does move around at all, keeping your eyes on it should help prevent injury.
When you do jump on it, you want to make sure that you stand tall once you're on the platform. If you stay hunched over the whole time, you're not getting the full effect of the exercise. One way to think about this is that you want your hips to "open up" on both the jump up and the jump down; all that really means is that your hips should be pushed forward once you're standing on top of the box.
Scale down: Step up to the box, and then step down instead of jumping on the platform. If you do step, make sure you alternate which leg steps up onto the platform first (and which legs steps off the platform first).
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