Woo hoo! Well done on the snatch PR. I reckon it’ll go up even further once you recover from the RSR.
Can I suggest maybe a little less negative introspection and a bit more self congratulation? You are making great progress, you need to start realising this, you will be happier and a happy person is a stronger person (I made that up, but it could be true).
nlmain is spot on, you can’t attempt a PR “hoping” you’ll get it, you have to think, I “WILL” get it!!
Great work Alexus.
40kg snatch?! You bitch!! hah! Great work! I left off chasing that 40k snatch, so i know what that’s like. And i’m glad you got it! Now I’m going to have go chasing you too 
And I doubly reckon what Brett says - just wait until your done running the RSR and back on the snatch wagon!
I won’t lie, I never go into my lifting sesh’s thinking about my PRs and about how “I WILL” get them. I’m a bit ant-farmish with lifting mentality. lol! I have definitely walked on the pitch though pronouncing “Today I score!!” You gotta be hungry for it, that’s for sure. (FTR, I rarely score, lol!)
Btw, I saw in Upscales log you’re missing DLs and looking to pull a few…that should be fun! I’d be interested to see if the weight has gone up too!
Lol @ “if you are female” - hah!
Maybe I should make a plank vid and show you my way of getting into position.
I wonder how many different ways there could be. lol
Congrats on the PR!
thanks guys.
TRAINING:
today was a weird one. just didn’t feel in the mood for training - but really wanted to go to the gym and do something.
so… um… bailed on squats. i do need to get into a better headspace about them.
snatch - up to 37.5kg. okay. worked on my yelling since i had the room to myself.
left arm throws - with the 7kg med ball and with my plastic softball. the med ball feeling too heavy today but maybe my standards have gone up.
does ‘throw like a girl’ mean ineffectual flailing of arms rather than putting your whole body behind it? trying to do that and generate power but timing and balance aren’t so good and aim is shocking.
not quite sure how to throw. did some like a shotput. side throw (if that is a term). overarm bowl like for cricket. this was FUN. spent like an hour throwing the plastic ball at the wall and running / limping after it.
felt a lot like learning the oly lifts. body is trying to figure it out. unco-ordinated and ballistic lol.
i wonder if there are any throwers on campus… discus… shot put… javelin… whatever it is where you run round in little circles before throwing it. my levers are better suited to throwing, apparently, with my long arms. i might actually be… capable of becoming competent at throwing things. can’t do cricket or whatever because i can’t run after the damned ball… hmm… would have trouble with cricket bowling anyway because i can’t really get the run up for speed (haha!) bowls.
pennance for missing squats: 20 minutes varied intensity cardio. cough choke 
whoo hoo alexus 
congrats on the pr …and everything else!!!
whoo hoo alexus congrats on the pr …and everything else!!!
Alexus is working on throwing stuff and yelling, watch out world!
I always find that dogs are good retrievers for balls, just see if you could borrow one ;-p
I’m getting pretty good at throwing now that I’m a PE teacher. I used to suck. It’ll come with practise. There’s a couple of med ball drills the Crossfitters do called Wallballs and Slams - there’s a nice article about the Wallball here: CrossFit
Thought you might find it useful as it has some carry over to squats and oly lifts.
Your throwing thoughts gave me a chuckle! I believe throwing like a girl refers to a lack of range of motion when it comes to overhand (baseball and football) throwing. If you didn’t throw a lot as a kid, it’s hard to gain the range of motion in the shoulder as an adult.
I don’t know that this applies to discus, shotput or medicine balls, but I find it to be an interesting factoid. I know it doesn’t apply to rugby because that is an underhand toss! Maybe try throwing a rugby ball and yelling! Those go together quite nicely. I once ran towards a girl yelling like a barbarian (my curly hair was also flying all over the place) while she was running with the ball. She literally freaked out and threw me the ball. Yelling is truly good in all sports!
I just wanted to say hello, I’m catching up. There’s so much good info in here it’s taking a while. I’m still at the part of the story where the girl (you) has just gotten vibrams and is enjoying toes!
I sympathize with the squat/ head space problem. And I admire your effort to learn how to throw. Very cool.
40 kg snatch; learning to throw; yelling practice
me like!
hammer throw!! that is it!! it confuses me because it doesn’t look like a hammer. they come with spikes, too, like on ‘kill bill’ - right?
carl darby does that… i wonder if he taught himself… i’m having weird ideas about learning such things with my left and right hand to prevent imbalances (which of course will meant that i’ll suck. i really do seem to be determined to suck by standard measures of what sucks and what does not).
bio-dictated deload time. surprised because i think it is very early this month. feeling very sensitive and vulnerable and like i just want to curl up and feel sorry for myself and cry. at least i know why i’m feeling like that, though, so that is actually a huge relief. lots of stress right now with work, too. and applying for jobs that i don’t want that take so much time to apply for. wtf is a ‘policy analyst’ or a ‘project manager’ (rhetorical don’t worry i’m going with wiki lolz) blargh.
upper back still DOMS from the throwing i did the other day. that is good. surprising to me, but very good. i’ve been learning a little about shoulders / upper backs because i’ve realized i actually don’t even know basic anatomy of those regions. have discovered what rhomboids are (thanks oly lifting! i have those!) am learning about the stability and mobility functions of the shoulder… ah… stability. that is what my shoulders need (they have been getting cranky).
there is something. serratus?? something like that. when you really pull your shoulder blades back together hard. that feels good. whatever does that needs / wants more activation. that is what i’ve been trying to get from chin-ups / inverted rows / bent over rows. was feeling like i’m not using my lats - but really i was trying to get whatever it is that pulls the shoulder blades together going on but not very successfully. think whatever it is is a stabilizer and it needs more work. it is very DOMSy right now. have learned my throwing did indeed suck (compared to progressions on teaching kids to throw a softball anyways). you ARE supposed to flick your wrists and hold the ball in your fingers for accuracy (oh didn’t know that). wasn’t following through properly either. but got the DOMS job done.
looking forward to some face pulls. i think that is what i need. not sure. need to learn more about shoulders / upper backs.
need to get better at setting my upper back / shoulders for oly lifting, too. so it is tying together.
okay enough procrastinating… time to figure why i wanna be a something or other that i don’t even know what that is. blargh. pays good, though
Alexus, I love hearing about how you are exploring your back anatomy. Like many of us, I find the minutia of how muscles work fascinating. I hope this deload is good for you.
Um, does bio-dictaded mean TOM? If so that’s when I would normally do my deload too, 1-2 weeks before is when I can really pump-up and push it, but then I slow down for ‘IT’. It’s ok to feel sorry for yourself for a little while, get it all out, lol.
Best to learn about a body part BEFORE it becomes a problem, like I did AFTER my injury ;-0
I’m so close to getting rid of this shoulder problem and a lot of it like you is to do with the parts that stabilise the shoulder, more specifically my right scalpula (middle & lower trapezius, rhomboids, and serratus anterior, blah blah blah)
Erp, looking for a job, yeah never really nice, especially if you don’t want the job.
thanks arachne. i really do find this stuff fascinating. if only i had have figured that out much earlier so i actually did a physiology or biomedical science or whatever degree. oh wells.
that kitten is so cute pch. me like.
learned today that the next informal club olympic lifting competition is this weekend. holy crap. guess that means i’m deloading tomorrow… just some active mobility / technique drills… need to check whether it is saturday morning or sunday morning. fingers crossed that i’ve gained weight. i think i have. i think i’m starting to grow. a bit fatter, yeah, but i think there might be some quads under there somewhere.
will definately aim to replicate a 40kg snatch - but will try not to be too upset if i don’t get it. if i get 37.5kg then i’ll take that thanks very much.
will see about the clean and overhead. don’t want to risk my back. sure i’ll get conned into doing something.
hips and lumbar spine cranky today from monthly friend. did the RSR base anyway of 6x2 @36kg. missed a couple of the first reps - because i wasn’t sitting hard into the hole so lost the bounce and got stuck. lacking confidence in my bodies mobility, basically. oh wells.
yeah minimal - TOM. some months i hardly know it is there… other months i can hardly forget it is there. get this weird thing going on with my LT junction (old fracture site) where it feels like holding a good solid lumbar arch is compressing the posterior part of the disks in a bad way. also find it hard to activate my hip flexors (they feel stiff and cranky) so very hard to hit a nice tight bottom position for snatches or cleans or squats. last month things felt good… i’m pretty sure it wasn’t a month ago, though. right now they feel awful. just need to roll with it and realize that it will sort itself out in a couple days so no need to panic about what is wrong with me.
trouble with me is i don’t really want any job…
i would like to do something in mobility assessment / rehab. something like that. but i’m only trained to do philosophy in academic settings. so… graduate entry program to working for some government department for some policy analyzing or project managing or whatever seems to be what people tend to do around these parts. i’ve needed to work for a while now and it makes it really hard for me to finish my thesis… and even once that is done academic jobs are few and far between. so… i don’t know what i’m doing with my life basically. i didn’t get into med school. whatever. life sucks (jk - i’ll feel better in a couple days).
What Go Go used in Kill Bill was a mace, not as heavy as a hammer.
The one in this pic is a mace also some maces have a handle with a short chain and the spiky thing attached to the chain.
In the case of home/self defense I’d go with the one in the pic. Chains sound complicated. lol
i was thinking of this (at 1.00):
of course i am (probably kinda sorta) joking.
edit - my monthly went away. it really is too early for it… i don’t feel good, though. maybe i’ve been more stressed lately than i’ve properly appreciated :-/
