Tuesday's temptations with a Crossfit report for good measure

I had a great day's training today and the weather made it all the nicer. All the lads had a good one and I have some great footage below of some of the double Cleans followed by a Jerk. Sami did 105 when his one rep max in the Clean and Jerk is 110!
I warmed up with some light joint mobility that Shane Lawlor--the ART guy--gave me and did some glute activation stuff as well as some light partner stretching. With the weather being as beautiful as it is it was easy to warm up. Shane gave me a nice 110 words of what ART is and I will post it tomorrow.

1. Power Snatch: Work up to 82kg for 4 x sets of 3--This was 2kg more than last time and it was tough.

2. Push Press: Work up to 80 kg for 3 x top sets for 5 x reps--These were fine because I am starting to get used to the exercise.

45 minute break

3. Clean & Jerk: Work up to 120kg for 3 x sets of 2+1--This was 7kig heavier than last time so I was happy with these. There is a video below of one of the sets.

4. Front Squat: Work up to 140 for 3 sets of 3--These were tough just because my legs were tired from the Cleans and the squats yesterday. The positive atmosphere was infectious though and there was no way I could fail.

5. Jerk Supports: Work up to 150kg for 3 x sets of 3--I am working on getting an upper back arch with these but it is not happening yet.

At the bottom of the post is a short video of some of our lifts.



Here is a report that Colm the Crossfit guy wrote about his visit yesterday:

After lurking on the Irish Olympic Lifting forum long enough, and seeing they'd an open day, I decided to register and ask about coming along to a few of the Squad sessions the guys were having in Dublin I was directed to speak to Barry, who told me to come on down on Monday.

So myself and Will picked up our lifting shoes, a bottle of water, and strolled on down to Herc's to see how the specialists do it.

We poked our head in the door rather sheepishly, and were instantly greeted by Gillian, who came out to the CrossFit Invitational a few weeks back. We were introduced to Tommy Hayden, who rather begrudgingly took the €5 guest fee from us and we waited around a bit for the rest of the lifters to show up. I think Tommy is more interested with people lifting and enjoying the sport than collecting membership fees.

Barry rolled in a few minutes later and greeted us enthusiastically, and very quickly we were chatting away about lifting, CrossFit, the weather, and everything else.

Honestly, we were expected to be left in the corner to go do some lifting, and maybe pick up a few pointers from the guys whenver they got offended enough by our home gorwn technique. Instead, Harry Leech spent the guts of two hours with us, essentially giving us a workshop in snatch technique.

We were working in with Paddy, who was relatively new to the sport having come from Rugby. It seems a good few Rugby players are into the lifting, and move to it once they've had their fun vehementally arguing over the placement of a odd shaped ball in the muck.

Harry took us through some Snatch assistant drills, starting with the Overhead Squat and the Hang Squat Snatch (I'm using Catalyst Athletics/CrossFit terminology here so if there's confusion, apologies). Both of these were described as 'perfect' by Harry - which I reiterated to Will with extra emphasis. On a couple of these sets, myself and Will got in a sneaky 4th rep ;)

My start position and first pull are all over the shop though. While Will has pioneered the Really-Fast-Deadlift-Get-Underneath-It lift, my start has never been consistent. Harry gave me some good pointers but due to my lack of kinestethic awareness and poor hammie flexibility this didn't improve as much as I'd like. It definitely got better as the session went on, but still a lot of work to do on this.

After this, we started Snatching a bit, starting light enough at 30Kg. Just before I started my first lift I was terrified I'd lose the weight. Sometimes, it can take me a while to get into a rhythm in the snatch (badomtish!) and I didn't want to be the douche who showed up and dropped a light lift. But all good in the hood with that.

We moved on up the weight in 5Kg increments with further pointers and tips from the guys. Over to our left Cathal Byrd was pulling 130Kg off the floor. I didn't get the chance to chat much with Cathal as he appeared in the zone, but I will say this about him - what a jerk! (I think I'm out of weightlifting puns now) His jerk was really tight and sharp. He'd take his few breaths, one big explosion and then land - bar locked out overhead, feet in receiving position, everything looking in place.

We moved on up the weights til I settled on 50Kg for doubles/tripples and Will on 55Kg for tripples. Will's snatch technique had never looked smoother or more controlled it must be said. Obviously something was clicking inside of him and I don't think it'll be long before new PBs are set for either of us if we keep up our technique work.

After a couple of sets the platform was getting crowded at that stage with a squat rack behind us in use, Roy doing one handed 45Kg Snatches and some Powerlifters in for their Monday deadlifting session.

Roy's one handed snatches with pretty cool to watch, they'd shoot right up overhead and by Barry's count he did about 27 sets of 3 in that hour. Maybe I should throw that out as a WoD some day? Hmmm...

(The guys in Herc's generally train in this confined space, walking around guys doing squats, cleans, snatches in a tight space. Really makes us appreciate our hyoooge space up in Tallaght :D )

We spent some time working on foot position in the jerk and jerk bounces before finishing up. Would have definitely liked more time on the jerk as we both know our Jerk technique wouldn't be the smoothest.

We wrapped our session up then and there, with Barry inviting us back to any of the group sessions we wanted to this week. I look forward to the next one already.