Make sure to warm up your shoulders, quads, hips, and arms. Do so unweighted presses, air squats, and/or up/down dog. Anything to warm up the muscles you're about to expend.
As usual, descriptions below. Enjoy and have fun!
Strength
- 3 x 5 strict presses
- 3 x 5 thrusters
- 3 x 5 front squats
WoD
13 minute cap - Rep scheme: 21-15-9
Exercises
- Strict press
Grab a barbell and load it with plates. I usually see between ~45lbs and ~90lbs.
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.
Once you've got the weight racked, lift the bar straight over head without using your legs. You are not going to dip or do a quarter squat. This is pure shoulder strength, with no legs to drive the momentum. Be sure to lift the weight straight up and down. In order to do that, though, you'll have to move your head backward as you lift. Otherwise, you'd hit yourself in the chin with the bar.
At the top of the press, lock out your arms. The bar should be directly overhead, and you shouldn't have your back arched at. I've often heard this described as having everything "in line:" your legs, back, arms, ears, and the barbell should form a straight vertical line perpendicular to the ground.
Bring the bar back down to the starting position in a straight line, as well. Again, move your head out of the way as you lower the bar. Once you've got the bar back in a racked position, you've finished the rep. - Thrusters
Load the barbell enough as you'll be doing 90 of these so think wisely. Most of the women did 1.5-2 plates, guys did a range of 2-4 plates.
So hold the barbell in a rack position up and resting at your shoulders/clavicle. Your elbows should be pointing outward and upper arm parallel to the ground. Your feet should be hip width apart with toes slightly pointed out. Then you do an air squat trying to break parallel. As you finish your air squat and you're standing up, you "thrust" the bar up into the air like a push press so that your arms are fully extended and bar above your head. Then as you bring the bar back onto your shoulders to rest again, you should be ready to repeat the motions back into that air squat, throw the bar in the air...you get the drift. - 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 and 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. - Overhead squats
Grab a bar and weight it as heavily as you can handle. Most people usually put between 45 and 90lbs.
Standing, hold the bar over your head with your arms locked. Your arms should make a "Y" shape with the rest of your body. You want the bar directly over your torso, so that your spine and the bar are lined up (the idea is to keep you from leaning forward on the actual rep). This actually feels a little bit like you're holding it behind your head, and your shoulders should feel like they're actively trying to push the bar.
From that position, you want to do a regular squat. Keep your arms locked as you go down, but make sure your knees stay lined up over your toes. You don't want either of them to "buckle" by facing inward when your toes are pointed outward. That puts a lot of (unnecessary) strain on your knee. You want your butt to go at least as low as your knees, though if you can go even lower (i.e., "break parallel") that's ideal.
Once you've reached the bottom of the squat, stand back up to your starting position. At no point should you bend over or move the bar horizontally. The bar should move straight up and down. Once you come back to your original standing position with the bar overhead, that's 1 rep. - V-ups
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 - Burpees
It's a 5 step motion: 1) squat down and 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 2 inches off the ground. 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.
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.
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