Tag Archives: Clean & Jerk

My Thumb Hurts

I couldn’t think of a better title. Sorry. I think it hurts because I was really forcing the hook grip last night and I think I might have mashed it a little too hard. Anyway… it was another long night with some awesome programming, great PR’s, and lot’s of hard work by some good friends. Here’s mine:

  • 50 GHDs
  • 50 GHBEs (35#)
  • 3 minute KB complex (1.5 pood)

Then, we did the the following protocol for dead lift, clean & jerk, and front squats:

  • 5 @ 60%
  • 3 @ 70%
  • 2 @ 80%
  • 1 @ 90%
  • 1 @ Current 1RM
  • 1 @ Current 1RM + 2-5%
5@60% 3@70% 2@80% 1@90% 1@RM 1@RM+
DL

285#

315#

365#

405#

455#

465#

C&J

115#

145#

165#

185#

205#

205#

FS

165#

185#

215#

265#

315#

285#

A few notes on the fails… my grip totally went away on my dead lift. I think it was actually due to the again faster grip things. I was able to hold on to 465# just fine with just chalk. For the C & J, my hook grip psyches me out. It still feels really weak, so I’ll start to pull, then just drop it because it feel like the barbell is going to fly out of my hands. For the front squat, I really just don’t know my 1RM, so after doing 265#, which felt easy, I decided to jump up. A little too much, I think.

Then:

  • 1 set of max reps dips: 16 reps

In other news, little Miss Brenna has actually slept really well during the past 2 nights which has been absolutely phenomenal. The different in how I feel when I get sleep is completely night and day and affects almost everything about my daily life. I can handle things so much better. I am sure that this is true for everyone to some degree, but I do know some people that can operate just fine on 4-5 hours. I am not one of those people. Never have been.

At the suggestion of my good friend Ryon, I am experimenting with the lean gains protocol (http://www.leangains.com) and actually seeing some results. This is very exciting and after the first week of following it, I am compelled to continue on to see what it does for me. I can see (again, in just 1 week) difference both in the mirror and on the scale, which has not really budged for quite a while.

There are some things about this that are not “paleo”, like the use of supplemental protein, but I have always been OK with self experimentation as long as I see good results from it. Hell, I was skeptical about “the paleo diet” a few years ago and decided to give it a shot. If I were stubborn about trying that, I don’t know where I’d be right now.

At any rate, I have learned a few things about my particular eating situation over the past week that I think are really simple tweaks that might work for other people that aren’t seeing results on “paleo” aside from the 16 hour fast/8 hour eat window:

  1. I am eating just too much from a caloric standpoint. Robb Wolf talks about “not being a hoover”. As in, it doesn’t matter what eating diet/protocol you follow, if you are a normal size person that has a normal level of activity (i.e. NOT Michael Phelps @ 12,000 cals/day), eating 5000 cals/day of all paleo foods isn’t going to help you drop LBs. Lean gains requires that you count calories to some degree. While I am not neurotic about it, looking at how many calories are in certain things, especially fats/oils has been eye opening. I still use the same cooking oils, I’m just not as liberal with them. Which leads me to point #2.
  2. I was not getting nearly enough protein. Both Robb Wolf and Martin from lean gains talk about getting 1-2g/# of bodyweight of protein per day. For dude like, me, that’s A LOT. While I typically don’t like to supplement with whey and things like that, getting at least 200g of protein per day results in A LOT of meat and eggs, so I’ve started adding some whey in on workout days. The right tool for the right job, right?
  3. Timing of meals totally matters (for me, anyway). Lean gains is a protocol of timing your eating, not so much WHAT you eat. I suppose it’s not technically “paleo” although it can totally be. It sounds really complicated at first but after a week of working on it, it’s really not that bad. It’s really split in 2 columns:
Workout Days Non-workout Days
  • Eat a bit more from a caloric standpoint*.
  • Eat a bit higher carb.
  • Eat your largest meal of the day AFTER your workout.
  • Eat a bit less from a caloric standpoint*.
  • Keep the carbohydrate intake low.
  • Eat your largest meal as your breakfast.

*This requires finding your BMR and knowing approx. how many calories are in what you eat. I have pretty much ball parked it up until this point, but am slowly figuring stuff out.

End of the week…

This weeks “Heavy Metal” class (Friday, 4/3/2010) was a lot of fun. Our friends from Ft. Hood (Centurion Crossfit), Amy & Donny came to work out with us. It’s always nice to have people from other places come down to visit and workout with you. It helps build the community which you are probably sick of hearing about.

We started out with the Bergner warm up, like we do every week. We went over some different snatch drills and the moved on to talking about the clean & jerk. For this class, we concentrated on the split jerk.

After going over drills with the PVC, it was time to start playing with some weight. We started out with a modest 65lbs to work on form. I have some flexibility issues going on in my upper arm/shoulder area that make it really hard for me to get the bar racked. I am working on this.

After working with 65lbs for a bit, we started upping the weight. I won’t bore you with the weights for every lift in between, but I eventually maxed out for the night with 205lbs. I was pretty happy with myself there. There’s a video somewhere, but it’s still on the flip camera, un-rotated, and unedited. By the time it gets on here, I will probably be pushing 300 =). P.S. There’s also a video of my falling on my ass and dumping like 155lbs or something. I told V that she can only post that one if it’s cut with some funny music and sound effects.

Saturday morning (4/4/2010), we decided to head on over to Crossfit Leander. We had met some of the people from there when we were selling at sectionals. They all seemed really nice. When we got there, surprise, everyone was super nice. I love that Crossfit is a douche-bag barrier.

The WOD that they had planned was pretty cool. We started out with a pretty lengthy warm up. It’s pretty much the same one that Crossfit Central does with some ladder drills thrown in at the end.

Once that was done, we had to find 3 eggs out in the area. Inside of each egg was a piece of paper with an exercise or “EGG-zercise” as they called it that day. These 3 movements made up your Tabata set. I drew box jumps, air squats, and pull ups. They had the Tabata sets as 15/15 (as opposed to the normal 20/10) as there are new people. The 15/15 is a bit less work and a bit more recovery.

I didn’t track my numbers but it was still a good workout that tired me out.

Our eating has pretty much been crap since about Friday. I feel pretty awful right now. I can feel swelling all over my body. My joints feel like crap. I am bloated and am producing some pretty bad smelling… well… never mind. You get it.

It’s weekends like this that make inspire me to get down and dirty with Paleo for a while before “cheating” again. I NEVER, repeat N-E-V-E-R feel like this when sticking to paleo foods.

There’s a lot of other stuff going too, but I am finally feeling sleepy again. No doubt, tomorrow being Monday will suck the life out of me, so I had better try and get some sleep to deal with it as best I can.

SUCK!

The last few workouts have been nothing short of brutal. On Friday (2/12/2010), we did this lovely number:

  • 10 cleans
  • 10 burpees
  • 10 jerks
  • 10 burpees
  • 10 clean & jerks
  • 10 burpees
  • 10 jerks
  • 10 burpees
  • 10 cleans

I finished this one on 10:44 (Rx’d with a 135lb bar). I really liked this one. It was fun and pretty challenging.

I didn’t go to open gym on Saturday because we had the garage sale for Big Brothers Big Sisters. Thanks to the people who helped with their time and to the people that donated things to sell. Mostly, thanks to Crossfit Cedar Park for letting us do it there. It was a great location and we raised about $300. Not bad for 1/2 a Saturday of selling people’s junk.

Last night (2/15/2010), I went to the gym in the morning to drop off some macaroons to sell. While I was there, I happened to see the WOD and then dreaded it for the rest of the day. When I arrived at 5pm, I warmed up and then had butterflies until this thing started:

4 burpees on the minute while completing:

  • 20 Thrusters
  • 20 Sumo Deadlift High Pulls
  • 20 Push Jerks
  • 20 Overhead Squats
  • 20 Front Squats

It didn’t seem SO bad when I first started, but, as with any “on the minute do something” workout, it got bad really fast. The fastest time for this workout in the sectionals was in between 3 and 4 minutes. Wow!

The longer time goes on, the more frustrating this thing gets. Just as you’re about to pick the bar up, the clock beeps and it’s time to do burpees again. BLARG!

Anyway, my time was 14:42. I was pretty happy with this, mostly that I finished in under 20 minutes.

18 Minutes of fun…

… if by “fun” you mean “breathing really hard and feeling like death” then, yes, fun. This workout was pretty challenging but all kidding aside, it was fun. Here it is:

2x

3 minutes each of

  • Row
  • Clean & Jerk (Rx – 135lbs)
  • Jump Rope

This workout is 18 minutes long no matter what your fitness level is. We were told to calculate a score by adding calories burned on rower + number of clean & jerk reps + number of jumps. My total came out to be 713, which I was pretty proud of. Here’s how my reps looked:

  1 2 Total
Row 50 cals 37 cals 87
Clean & Jerk 12 reps 13 reps 25
Jump Rope 309 jumps 292 jumps 601
  371 342 713

Wow! I came out swinging! The first round felt great! I felt strong on the row and clean & jerks. I got into a great rhythm on the jump rope. We got a 1 minute rest before round 2, then it all went to crap. I felt like I was rowing as hard as I could on round 2, but I am sure if I were in a real boat, I’d have been slowly drifting down a lake.

The clean & jerks were worse. I felt gassed and weak every time I tried to get a rep. To my credit though, I didn’t mess any up or waste any reps like the last workout with cleans. The fact that I got one more clean on my second round can only be attributed to Wladi yelling at me to get back on the bar and do one more.

I was trying like hell to get to 300 jumps on the second round. I had Duan AND Johnny U encouraging me to go but I just kept tripping up on the last 50 or so jumps. Close… maybe next time.