It’s official: I’ve become a pussy. I got caught between improving my 1RM and attempting to perfect my technique with just the bar. Sometimes (but not always) I think it actually does help to add a little bit of weight (e.g., my air squat got better when I trained more with just the bar). I suspect my bar squat will get better when I train with more than just the bar. My technique doesn’t seem to get worse with adding a little bit of weight and sometimes my motor patterns actually seem to improve a bit as the muscles start to need to work a bit more. I will be careful to keep an eye on whether I do get better muscular recruitment with lighter weights but I need to improve my work capacity and not be a pussy, too, so today:
FRONT SQUAT 6x6:
20kg 1x3, 25kg 1x3 warm up
27.5kg 6x6 allowing myself only one (or two on a couple of the later reps in the later sets) breaths between reps
WAH!!! some of these were a bit shaky… need to work on driving hips up and using glutes to get out of the hole because I’m not doing this very successfully (but less weight doesn’t seem to help me do it either).
next time: glute activation before squatting.
SNATCH PULLS 8x3:
20kg 1x3 warm up.
25kg 8x3 not losing contact with the bar between reps (except to shove the plates back on)
Tried getting my hips a little lower to start to use my legs from the floor. Felt better. Getting a bit tired on the later sets so needing to hip drive properly to get the height on the bar. Remembered that this was more what I was doing before christmas. Simply do get too fatigued to pull the bar high enough eventually and then NEED to get under it in order not to miss. Want to get these work sets to 27.5 or 30 so that this starts happening again (and I find the balls to get under).
CLEAN AND JERK 5x3 (will increase to 8x3 but wasn’t sure how this would go)
30kg powerclean x2, powerclean and jerk x1
2x 30kg powerclean and jerk x2, clean and jerk x1
30kg clean and jerk 5x3
Work. Standing it up felt hard but manageable. Ditto for jerking it. Pulling it… Easy… Not pulling very high actually, just thinking of the pull as positioning it good for me to practice getting under fast and standing it up. Think these were okay - but I’ll video them soon and we will see…
OVERALL: Hips feeling really very good today 
I’ve decided to do the exercises from the 13th post on this thread:
I think that is about the level of rehab that I need. While I can activate my glutes my hip flexors don’t much like my doing it so need to practice glute activation. My old strategy of trying to stretch them really wasn’t working out for me (was making them feel inflamed).