I'm catching up on my back log, so this was from a while ago. That said, it was a pretty simple one. You only have a few exercises to worry about, you just have to do a bunch of them. Just give yourself some space for the burpee box jump overs and the thrusters.
As for safety, watch your form on all of the technique exercises (deadlift, clean pull, and power clean), as well as the thrusters. All of them can tweak your back if you're not careful, and no one wants to see you get hurt. As always, protect your back with good form.
Technique
10 minutes of:
- 9 deadlifts
- 6 clean pulls
- 3 power cleans
WoD
5 rounds of:
- 10 burpee box jump overs
- 15 thrusters
- 20 V-ups
Exercises
- Deadlift
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.
- Clean Pull
Make sure you have a barbell with weight on it for this exercise; I usually see anywhere from about ~45lbs up to ~90lbs.
To begin with, put the weight on the ground in front of you. Squat down to grab the weights, but remember to face forward and keep your chest facing forward (i.e., don't bend over). 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. A lot of people end up on their tip-toes because they generate that much upward momentum; that's a good thing. However, keep your arms locked as you're doing this, or you'll end up doing more of a curl.
From there, control the descent of the weight back down to a standing position. Normally, you'd try to continue the motion upward in order to complete an Olympic lift, but in this case, we're intentionally stopping here just to learn the mechanics. In our case, bring the weight to about mid-thigh height, and then squat down to put the weight back on the ground.
- 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.
- Burpee Box Jump Over
If you're used to regular burpees, the only real difference is you jump on to your platform at the end of it and then jump off. Just make sure that you jump forward (not laterally) to get up on to the box. It's up to you how many risers you use, but remember that you are combining burpees with box jumps.
If you're unfamiliar with the technique for the burpee, it's a 6 step motion: 1) squat down & touch the ground, 2) kick your legs out into a push-up position, 3) do a push up, 4) jump back to the squatting position, 5) come up from squatting and jump onto your platform, 6) jump back off to finish the rep. Once it starts to feel normal to do this motion, you can start to make it a smoother motion by essentially dropping down into a push up position, rather than squatting and then kicking out your feet. It requires a little bit less energy, but it also requires more coordination and muscle memory.
For the jumping part, you need to jump forward on to your platform, so gather your feet underneath you before you do so. You don't want to start jumping and crash into the platform. You can step forward to do so, but make sure that you're not doing a long jump just to get back to the box. Also, you have to come down on the opposite side of the platform (it's a jump over). Whether you jump or step off is up to you, but both feet have to touch the platform simultaneously when you're jumping over.
Scale down: Step back into the push up instead of jumping. Same goes for when you go back to the squatting position (step 4); step forward instead of jumping.
Scale down more: Step up & down from the platform instead of jumping.
- Thruster
Grab a barbell and weight it as heavily as you can handle; most people use between ~45lbs and ~90lbs.
To start, hold the bar slightly below shoulder level with both your palms facing away from your body so that you can see both palms in a mirror. 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 a lot of reps. Regardless of how high you bring your elbows, the bar is "racked" against your chest.
Keeping the weight racked against your chest, do an air squat so that your thighs end up parallel to the ground; if you can "break parallel," that's even better. As you come up, press the barbell directly over your head, until your arms are fully extended. Push the weight straight up & down, since any horizontal motion will put undue stress on your shoulders.
To finish the rep, you have to bring the bar back to a rack position. For this, you can actually make it a smooth motion, and go straight into the next squat instead of stopping at starting position. This is fine so long as you fully extend the weight at the top, bring the weight back down before you start your next squat, and keep a good curve on your lower back the whole time.
- V-Up
Lie on your back, putting our hands parallel to the ground "above" your head (if you were standing, they’d be directly over your head). Lift your legs off the ground and bring your torso up at the same time to touch your toes. In essence, your body makes a "V" shape. Go back to lying on your back to finish the rep. Be careful about slamming your legs into the ground when you finish the rep, that can hurt your lower back. Some people call these "jack knives," if that helps at all.
Scale down: Bend your knees as your bring your lower body up. You only have to touch your knees this way
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