Today's strength workout called for 6 sets of 1 jerks and 6 sets of 1 cleans. I need work! My strength is there, I can tell because going to jerk 245#, I feel my arms snap to a locked position so quickly. It is my lack of confidence to keep them locked out that causes me to fail. I am nervous about my shoulders I think, and I tend to allow things to lean forward too much. With heavy weight, this is just no good at all. I really need to just get a full blown refresher course on the Olympic lifts, and focus on them with a couple people around working together. I can not be failing on 245#, I should be in the 275# range if I expect to compete at a high level in CrossFit. Same goes for the cleans. My strength is beyond there, it's my shaky mobility and lack of confidence that leads to my splaying my feel apart, ducking my hips under the bar, and relying too much on my upper body. I failed at 255#, and know I should be in the very high 200's for this lift. I was so frustrated with my performance today.
I was able to feel a bit better on the day with another visit to the Burlingame High School Track. I did 4 rounds of a 400 meter sprint and 100 double unders (with 3 minutes rest between rounds. Another hot day meant some good sweat, but I was able to get numbers I thought would be good for this workout: 2:42, 2:54, 3:05 and 3:09. I would have liked to keep them all under 3, but man was this a tough one. My lungs burned, and thanks to the workouts yesterday, my arms got so pumped from the double unders, I felt like I was running with my elbow a foot from my torso. But let me get back to form focus, returning to the fundamentals.
I have always been an advocate for getting back to the basics when things seem to be going wrong. Where I ended up using this the most was in baseball. I recall vividly a time when I was struggling with my batting mechanics and this causing about a week of horrible slumping and some pretty decent depression. After getting all sorts of advice from anyone and everyone, I finally just got an early start on batting practice one day, grabbed a coach and a few buddies, and just simplified my stance. I literally mimicked the most basic of all stances and swings. The result? I went 3 for 4 with a home run. The point here folks is that if you already know what to do that does not mean you will always be doing things right. How your body is built, imbalances, weaknesses, your programming, your lifestyle, all these things will begin to change the way you move through space, and the more your body changes the more you will need to focus on keeping your mechanics from being screwed up.
Return to the fundamentals! It is so easy, so basic, but for some reason, we seem to neglect this simple rule because we just want to do too much all the time. But the thing to remember is this: the more reps you take with poor mechanics, the worse you are going to get! So for me, if I just keep going out and trying to max out on cleans, jerks and snatches, I very well may see some gains, but no where near the gains I would see if I was doing everything with great form. So, it's time to study up, go to a class, find a group of people who I can practice with, and then I can maybe feel a bit better about these lifts.
Check out these sites for some good info on O lifting:
T-Muscle Article
Mike's Gym
O Lift Resource
Never Stop, GET FIT.
Josh Courage
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