Remind me if you don’t hear back from me this weekend - want to give longer reply but about to go into an afternoon of meetings and appointments.
TL;DR is if your goal is to C&J big weights we need to get you making thigh contact with the bar on the way up.
Alright this is gonna be tricky but here goes. The best way to learn the lifts is from the top down. The logic is simple - the less distance you have to travel = less time for something to go wrong.
Step 1: power position - deadlift the bar from the floor to your thighs, then just bend your knees like you’re gonna jump, and clean it.
Once you have that down, then move on to…
Step 2: above the knee - deadlift the bar from the floor to your thighs, then just bend your legs like you’re gonna jump, then lower the bar down just above the knee like an RDL, then clean it.
Once you have that down, then move on to…
Step 3: below the knee - same as above but you’re lowering, you guessed it, to below the knee.
Don’t try to do full cleans from the floor until you are making consistent thigh contact from each of these 3 starting positions. Regress and practice as necessary. You will not come even remotely close to your potential until you make contact with the bar. I am willing to bet that doing cleans, with your strength, will feel much better right away at those first 1/2 stages when you’re not hamstringing yourself by leaving it so far out in front of you.
Look at how close Klokov keeps the bar. He is basically dragging it up his body and you can almost see it moving his tights. That is the goal.
I know this is a lot. Is training in person with someone totally out of the question? Real time feedback is pretty invaluable.
Awesome. Thanks and i will work on this.
I live in Hawaii and have a demanding work schedule and no fit friends. And 4 small kids. Its unlikely I could regularly work in person with anyone who knows how to coach these lifts.
I very much appreciate your feedback to the videos because nobody at my gym does any of this; and my previous gym didn’t even have a platform!
What part do you live in? If you go to the USA Weightlifting website and search for clubs there are 5 in the state. I know that ain’t much but it’s something. Don’t get me wrong - I don’t mind helping at all, and will continue to, but the absolute quickest way you will improve is to have someone experienced help you in real time. Even if it’s just every other Saturday or something.
Ok, brilliant, there’s one in my area at a crossfit gym. I’ll give them a shout sometime and see what i can do. Maybe like you said, a couple assessment/coaching sessions would give me a boost.
Friday 11/1/2024
Last night, trick or treating with our huge and adorable family was a lot of fun. We all dressed up like star wars.
However not only did that impact the bedtime routine; my MIL flew in last night, landing around 11:15. I was up for a bit helping with logistics.
Regardless, not to miserable or draggy this morning.
Warmup
Snatch complex with empty bar.
Snatch
20 reps, around every 30 seconds, 6 at 65, 7 at 85, 7 at 105.
Clean and jerk
I didn’t count all the reps. I did a LOT. Reps at 115, 125, 135, 145, 155.
Topping out at 155 for the day, felt like it was moving well and I didn’t want to drill sloppy form at a higher weight. Got 4 reps at 155 then dropped to 135 and knocked out a lot more, maybe 6?
Front Squats
Pretty drained by this point so I just did singles up to 195lb.
By now somehow I’ve been training over an hour!
So keeping the goal the goal, I loaded 65lbs and did some Sots presses followed by overhead squat. It actually feels pretty cool sitting deep into the bottom, and BTN pressing the bar. It’s a lot easier now than it was a year ago.
I may find a way to start doing this at home.
I have ranted at length about my MIL before. Rather than repeat any of it, I’ll share an anecdote:
Possibly for the first time in my life, I saw someone fail at an attempt to get up off the couch, and simply give up.
I liked that post, but really…I don’t like that at all. That’s a terrible state of physical decline.
Don’t worry, she got up later to eat the pizza she ordered.
Reminds me of this scene
Jesus.
I made it 30 seconds into that, stopped when he started to place an order.
Awful.
Positive note:
From the link you shared @BrandonCrawford I made contact with a local Crossfit place that can coach my O-lifts.
I’m hoping to sign up for 4 sessions and space them out every week or two, make progress, re-evaluate more sessions in the future etc.
Now, the negative part! @T3hPwnisher This morning MIL comes down and says “I’m going to be keto today. If I can do this for just 3 days while I’m here, I bet I’ll lose 10 pounds!”
Today, per plan, wife and I get a date to surf and go christmas shopping while she watches our kids. (Our first such date in over a year at least)
We come home right after lunch. She’s ordered pizza. Keto diet lasted 4 hours. Well maybe 16 hours if you count overnight.
I asked my daughter “What’d you guys do?”
“We played charades!”
“Drawing or acting?”
“Acting. Well, we acted and she stayed on the couch to guess”
Figures.
We get home and the door’s locked. I hear her send one of the kids to unlock it for us so she doesn’t have to leave her chair.
It goes on and on.
It’s frankly just sad, at this point.
I had a guy at my office that did the same thing. “I’m going to just cut out all sugar. If I can do that, I can probably shed this gut I’ve built up.”
He made it half a day. Someone* brought cookies to the office, and by the end of the day, he was munching on them.
I’m glad you’re there to serve as a positive physical role model for your kids. They’re always watching, and they’re always learning. I had to UNlearn so much.
*it was me. I bring cookies every Monday.
Rofl! Seriously!?
I love this.
Wasn’t there a whole thread or two about sweet snax at the office?
But you, in your current incarnation (pun intended) don’t eat the cookies, right?
They’re the cookies my wife makes each week, rather than storebought garbage, haha. I don’t eat them at the office, but they are part of my weekly carb heavy meal. All simple quality ingredients
Monday 11/4/2024
Warmup with empty barbell. RDL, muscle snatch, OH squat, SOTS press.
Snatch
Worked my way up with several reps at each weight from 65lb to 125lb. Noticed that the transition from 115lb to 125lb is where technique got much worse, feet way too wide and body just refusing to get under the bar the right way. So back to 115 and did a few more reps there.
Squat
5x5: 135, 185, 195, 205, 215
Squats at 215 are such good-mornings for me.
Shoulder rehab
Yesterday during surfing, my right shoulder “went out”. It just ached awfully all day. It still aches this morning. So I did a million reps with 5lb dumbbells of various positions targeting the rear shoulder musculature, where the pain is.
Finished off with an overhead carry of the empty barbell.
REALLY looking forward to Thursday evening. I have a session scheduled with a coach.
Thinking ahead for Thursday - I know I’ll need to be able to state my goals.
Rather than simply “Improve my snatch and c&j” I think I’ll formalize with something really aspirational - well beyond what I even feel like is attainable - but that should be possible.
Snatch Bodyweight (175-185lbs, wherever that ends up)
Clean and Jerk 225lb.
That’s around a 50-lb increase on each lift from what I can do in the gym today.
I have no idea how long that should take. But I do know that today, I can’t front squat 225lbs (have done it before though) and don’t think I could overhead squat 175lbs, and am on the fluffy side this week at 190-192lbs. So that goal isn’t close, and won’t be easy. But… I mean there are a LOT of people who can hit those numbers. My body’s not that broken, although it’s remarkably resistant to improvement. I should be able to to this.
11/5 couple random thoughts.
I’m crazy sore on the posterior side of my shoulders. And this should be expected given the accessory exercise yesterday being targeted there.
However, I’ve had sore shoulders almost every session since starting to take O-lifting seriously on 9/27. What does this mean? For me, it’s encouraging - if every day I’m stimulating my shoulders enough to create soreness, every day must be driving an adaptation. I hope so, anyway. And 6 weeks of that adds up to… a significant amount of improvement. So while I don’t have a tangible, quantitative shoulder improvement to boast about, I have reason to believe that improvement has occurred, and I can be happy about that.
The muscles on the outside of my hips are sore.
This is a new feeling.
It’s literally the muscles that would activate if I stood straight and tried to spread my feet apart against resistance. So weird! What could have caused this? I didn’t do anything yesterday that I don’t do often… maybe squatting a tiny bit heavier shifted the load to a different part of my body? IDK. Weird.
My MIL is still here. Leaves tomorrow night. I won’t soapbox about it here, but… damn. It’s hard to fathom how someone can… be that way. On so many levels.
11/6/2024 Wednesday
Warmup
Empty barbell complex: 8 of each. Snatch-grip all. RDL, rows, muscle snatch, OH squat, SOTS press.
Snatch
A few warmup reps, 3 each at 65 and 85, then:
20 snatches at 95lbs, going every 30 seconds.
I like this. It’s serious work but never hard enough to make my form bad. Tiring enough and fast enough to remove my brain from the work, which is key - it’s a big limiter for me.
Cleans
Lots and lots of cleans. Worked up to 135lbs, did 7 reps there going every 50 seconds, and made the last one a clean-and-jerk. Then worked my way up further, plenty of reps along the way, to a rep at 175. Maybe more than one? Probably not but don’t remember.
After that, dropped back down and did more reps at 135. And a clean-and-jerk or two mixed in at 155 or so.
Overhead squat
I couldn’t match or beat last week’s performance. I just didn’t feel safe with 135 overhead. I did:
3x5, 95, 115, 135. Couldn’t try another set at 135, the first one was like a newborn deer.
(All knobby knees and unsteady, if you don’t know how a newborn deer walks)
More work
Push presses at 135, 145, split jerks at 145, 155.
Strict presses at 115, 95.
BTN press the empty bar.
Attempted barefoot Sots press with empty bar and couldn’t get into position. My shoes help me a lot I guess.
Rehab
All this time it was evident my right shoulder hates me. So I had some extra time (over an hour session, but that’s the beauty of starting so early) and laid on a mat with a 5lb plate and did weird stuff with my shoulders. There’s a major diff between my left and right shoulders - where they go and how they feel in overhead extended positions.
Today (wednesday) is the last day of my MIL being here. Tomorrow night I see a coach for O-lifts. And after that - by Friday - I can FINALLY hang out with my wife again. Perhaps this is unusual but I love hanging out with her in the evenings, and with her MIL around they’ve been occupied. I’ve just been hanging with the kids and feeling like a loser for not taking advantage of the time in the evenings to do garage projects. But the fact is I’m just too exhausted by that time of day.
And in world news, well it’s november 6. If you’re American you may be happy, sad, disappointed, glad it’s over, or some mixture of those.
May we all chill out now and not hate each other please.
11/7/2024 Thursday
So thrilled to report this. I got a coach for the o-lifts.
Within a few minutes he was able to tell me tiny things about my snatch that I can tell will make a huge difference.
Example: During snatch lockout, point your elbows at the wall behind you. That way the force of gravity doesn’t line up with the available elbow flexion and you’re more stable overhead. I’d been wondering which way to rotate my arms and now it makes sense.
Example: @BrandonCrawford this is exactly what you were trying to tell me. I can’t put it into words here but it has to do with where the hips are and where the bar is, when the bar begins to explode upward. How I was moving was essentially humping the bar OUT instead of UP, sort of. He explained it and I can feel the difference.
Example: Vertical shins when the bar is just above the knee. Then, knees move forward from there. I never understood this before.
So we had a great 90 minute session focused on snatch, we’ll do another hour session in a couple of weeks and go from there.
Meanwhile my training will be adjusted slighly to incorporate and focus on these things.
