Olympic Lift : 9/1

I can't believe it's September already!?! One of my main goals this year was to start incorporating more olympic lifting into my training. Little by little since obtaining my Crossfit Level I certification I've become more and more comfortable with the movements of the olympic lifts. My main concern first and foremost is the movements, the weight is secondary. Today's plan was to focus on the clean and jerk. The workout today called for 6 C&J every minute on the minute for 10 minutes. Unfortunately because I'm still a novice at these lifts, it took me almost 1 minute to complete a set of 6 reps. After my first set I decided to scale the workout down a bit to allow me to still focus on the technique and I took 1 minute recovery after each set of 6 and went for a total of 25 minutes. I ended up completing 13 sets of 6 reps of the clean and Jerk. All in all it was a great training session and I walked away from todays session much more confident in my ability to clean and jerk. Next olympic lift that I need to work on is my snatch, and the snatch is a lift and movement the scares the hell out of me. I once read that in order to feel alive you should try to do something every day that scares you, does it count if you try to snatch everyday?

After my last set I cleaned up my mess and headed out to meet with the RBR boys XC team for their last summer practice. School starts tomorrow and my work and training schedule will change again now that practice will move from the mornings to the afternoons. We had another great session as a team and I think things are finally starting to come together. The guys are buying into the system and it's starting to show in all aspects of their training. The goal everyday is to improve by 1% from the previous day. I love it when a plan come together! After our run we headed into the weight room to do some general strength work (bench press, push offs and dips 3 x 15) and then the guys were off to enjoy their final hours of summer vacation.

After practice I hit my second strength session focusing on the squat. I warmed up with three light sets of 10 rep back squats. After my warm up I threw some weight on the bar for 5 x 5. My recovery after each set was the time it took to add more weight to the bar. Squatting with weight is another skill set that I hope to improve on in the next few months. The up side to this is that it is all so new, that there is only one way to go and that's up. Up in weight that is...