12-06-06: Short chipper disasterpiece

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Wednesday, June 6th, 2012

The chipper. Perfectly good wood goes in. Shattered pulp emerges. PERFECT analogy for this workout. (zombiehunters.org - Making Dead Things Deader Since 2003)

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WoD: For Time:

• 3 Rounds
  
  • 20 Pullups
  • 5 Box Jumps [24"/20"]
• 2 Rounds
  
  • 20 Toes to Bar
  • 5 Pushups
• 1 Round
  
  • 8 Clean [full squat] and Jerks @ 75% Bodyweight

There is no rest as you move between rounds and movements.

Right from the get-go, this was a disaster. 60 pullups, followed by more grip-centric work, culminating in clean and jerks, which require tons of wrist mobility and grip strength, both of which were already gone? Yikes. Used a heavy blue-band for the pull-ups, and maybe should have gone even stronger for this number of reps. For the third round, I tried to add a second blue band (ie, the only nearby one to grab), and realized it was MUCH stronger than the one I already had, and using both would have spiked me like a dart into the ceiling. I went back to my original blue band and kept cranking out singles and doubles, alternating between chin-up and pull-up grips. The box jumps were easy and quick compared to that...

The toes to bar (scaled to knees to elbow) were kind of terrible, as my grip and lats were so smoked already that I could barely hang from the bar, much less add a full core contraction to the mix, at least not very easily. Slowly but surely I chipped away at them. The push-ups were easy and quick compared to that...

My first attempt at a clean and jerk nearly ended in disaster. When the bar made it to my shoulders (in a full power clean position, requiring an "elevator ride" down the bottom squat position), both pinkies slipped over the bar. I can recover ok when one slips out of the grip... but both? I tried to over-jerk the bar so that I could "catch" it overhead. Failing this, I instead guided the accelerating bar back to the ground with a minimum of injury. That one could have been bad.  After that, I took a minute or two to roll out my forearms and triceps, knowing that the accumulating tension in both areas would make my grip in the rack position less sure. I had no more huge issues, and was able to get the grip situated while still in the rack position before split jerking the weight overhead.

Total time: 17:00

11-08-24: Clean & Jerk Madness

Elm City CrossFit WoD for Wednesday August 24th, 2011

Sage Burgener demonstrates the Clean & Jerk. Click the link to Olympicize the picture. (crossfithawk.com)

(motherfitness.com)

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Strength: 3 x 6

• Clean and Jerk @ 70% w/
• 45 seconds between sets

WOD: on the minute for: 10 minutes

• 1 Clean & Jerk @ 80%
• 5 Shoulder-Width Push-ups

I totally suck at the Olympic lifts again. Seriously, its like I never even vaguely learned them in the first place. Not that I was ever coached, so maybe this is just all of my half-assed technique under the microscope of experienced coaching. Either way, even if my form has always been crap, I at least *felt* more comfortable with Clean & Jerks 6 months ago than I do now. For the record, I guess its fair to say that i really never did the full version (catching the bar in a squat), but that's not even the part that's giving me trouble... the trouble begins long before that, and the squat is just part of the ensuing train wreck.

My PR weight is 125#, so the strength portion was done with 85#, and the WoD with 95#. My wrists and forearms are *still* sore from last week's farmers carries, and the receiving position of the C&J didn't do me any favors, which added yet another thing to worry about throughout the workout. For the WoD, I ended up alternating sets of regular push-ups with fist push-ups, which allowed me to keep my wrist straight, which felt much better. Being out of shape on the fist push-ups meant that they knocked the crap out of my hands, instead.

"It's always something." - Gilda Radner

I ended the workout tired, sore, and sweating, so there was definitely some good work going on, but I can't shake the feeling that, having struggled with form the whole way through, that the workout wasn't as good as it could have been. Meh.

11-06-15: Oly lifting

Elm City Crossfit WoD for June 15th, 2011

Click to embiggenate. Natalie Burgener is just _awesome_. That third pic? The full squat while receiving the bar on the shoulders? I couldn't even BEGIN to get there today.

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Power:
Clean & Jerk 1RM – 15 min cap

WOD: 3 Rounds

• 15 Power Clean @ ¾ BW
• 200m Row/Run

Each round timed separately

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(Warning: Here's where I start whinging about how much I lost when I ended up taking a month off. Feel free to surf on if this bores you. It bores me, but it bears dealing with. As much as I try to put as good a spin as possible on my accomplishments, I think its even more important to try to analyze those things that don't feel like they came together, to hit it harder (and smarter) next time.)

After a nice warm-up, we walked through the finer points of the clean, and then of the jerk. It felt freaking ALIEN to me. I could search through this blog and find the last time I C&J'ed, but it doesn't really matter. It was too damn long ago, and I've forgotten most of what I ever learned/taught myself about it. I could NOT make the full extension make the weighted pvc feel weightless, and forget completely about hitting the receiving squat position. If I ever had it, its gone now. Admittedly, in trying to follow ECC's programming, and going at 5:30 in the morning, I'm not taking the opportunity to review and relearn tips and techniques via the ever-increasingly awesome Crossfit Exercises and Demos page. The only part that felt comfortable today was the jerk, using a split jerk technique. This isn't that shocking, since one of the most recent videos in the Crossfit Journal was Coach B (Natalie's dad, from above) coaching Dave Lipson on the jerk. While I still had coachable points in need of improvement (wider split, allowing me to get further under the bar, so I wouldn't have to jerk it as high), I had a starting idea of what I was doing, and a good concept of how those improvements could be implemented. The clean felt like I was trying to learn how to fly while stapled to the ground.

That said, I did realize (well after the fact) that I come equipped with my own re-training regimen. Tomorrow (and probably every day I workout for the foreseeable future), I'm going to work on my med ball cleans. These are what got me cleaning with a bar correctly the first time, back in the day. Actually, it couldn't have been that long ago, since I only just learned the med ball variety this past December. So, hopefully that means my bar clean and jerk can't be too forgotten, since I only started getting THAT dialed in some time after December, right? One can hope.

We were tasked with finding our 1RM for the day in 15 minutes. Spending more time working on form rather than pushing the envelope, I hit a max of #125. If I could have put the form together, I could have been lifting a lot more than that. For the metcon, it was 3 rounds of 15 power cleans at 3/4ths body weight, followed by 200m of rowing or running. Given my form struggles, I opted to drop a little weight, down to #115, and keep it there. As Rx'ed, I should have been at 155# or so. I wish. The wod was, unsurprisingly, murder, though a somewhat easy variety. I tried to focus on hitting better technique on the cleans, since now the squat was removed from the equation, and had some success. I ended up rowing on the 1st and 3rd rounds, and running for the 2nd. As always, the cardio aspect just devastated me. While I had some muscle-fatigue from about rep 10 of the first round, I never really recovered from the first row, and nearly crapped out on the run. The final row was just an attempt to finally finish the workout... hopefully within 30 seconds or so of the second to last person.

While there wasn't a huge emphasis on time (so we could focus on form on the power cleans), it's still never fun coming in last. But, there's a line from Christopher McDougall's Born to Run that I've always loved: "It's easy to finish first. It's hard to finish last." But you still have to finish it. It's not about the race anyways, at least not with anyone ELSE. In the race against myself, I came in first. And last. And sideways. I gotta work on my form.

EDIT: I just updated my Personal Records page. Turns out I set a 10# PR on the C&J today, and did the WoD at my former PR. I guess that actually makes me feel a bit better. It doesn't change the fact that I was struggling with form at every weight from an empty bar on up... but hey, I put 10# on that Personal Record! ;)

11-03-10: Squat Clean n Jerks

CrossFit WoD for Sunday October 31, 2010

155# 125# Squat Clean and Jerk, 30 reps (Sage Bergener demonstrates great technique...it looks so easy!)

The barbell goes from ground to overhead, passing through a front squat in which the crease of the hip passes below the height of the kneecap. The finish position is with the arms, hips and knees fully extended, arms overhead, with at least a portion of the ear visible in front of the arm. Dropping the barbell is acceptable.


Austin Malleolo 3:01, Camille Leblanc-Bazinet 3:53 (105lbs). - video [wmv] [mov]

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Pat Barber in the full squat clean position. Essentially the bottom of a front squat. Both suck. (crossfit.com)

So, the squat clean and jerk.  Easy enough.  The bar starts on the floor. You take a medium-width grip, and deadlift the bar off the floor, squeezing it under control, not yanking it off the floor.  When the bar hits about mid-thigh, you jump it up. You don't pull with the arms or shoulders, you explode with your legs and core, and the arms just rotate underneath, and pin the bar on your delts. To facilitate doing this with heavier weights, right after you explode, you IMPLODE and yank yourself under the moving bar (which will be slowing down as soon as you stop accelerating it), and catch it in the full squat position. What this accomplishes is that you don't need to explode the bar so HIGH, allowing you to safely and effectively clean much heavier weights than otherwise.

When you receive the bar, you catch it on your delts, and your arms (which are hopefully out in front of your body, parallel to the floor) merely PIN the bar there. You should NOT be carrying it in your hands, and certainly not on wrists that are perpendicular to the floor. If you are making that mistake, when you stand up from the squat, or when you jerk the bar overhead, utilizing a short explosive hip drive and extension, you'll end up absorbing that energy in your elbows and wrists, rather than communicating it directly to the bar. This is wasteful. It also hurts a lot. This is stupid.

By about rep 14, I was being wasteful and stupid. Most of my reps were NOT squat cleans, because my right wrist got angry at me very quickly.  It is both a lack of flexibility (seriously, look at Pat's forearms in the picture up there!), as well as a lack of clean technique.  I could feel the extra pulse of pressure every time I jerked the bar overhead, and it kept getting worse and worse. Pretty quickly, I realized that trying to incorporate the squat was increasing the amount of time I was keeping my arms in agony...so I flubbed the technique a bit in favor of trying to keep the MetCon part of the workout going. By the time I was down to the final few reps, I was resting between every two or so, just to keep stretching and massaging my forearm.  A fire-breathing workout it was NOT.

Total time: ??