Saturday's slippery ambitions

I arrived to training in a good state of mind and after stretching dynamically for half an hour to wake myself up, I got started. The plan was to Snatch, Clean and Jerk and then Front Squat to max. This did not turn out as I would have hoped however. Halfway through my Clean and Jerks, me left knee started to hurt after I Power Cleaned 120. This meant I could not generate force through my left knee without pain. Hopefully this will be one of those phantom pains that arise every now and then because my knees have been feeling great lately. Germans Snatched 119kg and Clean and Jerked 140, just missing the 144 Jerk. I was not able to Snatch with him and I missed out because of this. Zag got 97/115 and barely missed the Jerk with 120. He has been ill and overworked for the last three weeks and his training has suffered accordingly, so he is simply getting back into the swing of things. Here is what I did:

Snatch--3x3@50 1x2@70, 80, 90 1x1@100, 105, 100xxx
It was frustrating to keep on missing 110 because the bar was high enough and I was low enough. I kept pushing it out front and one thing the videos showed me was that I was not finishing my extension fully. This may or may not have been the reason, but one positive was that I felt far better yesterday than I did on Wednesday.

Clean and Jerk--1x2@70, 70 1x1@90, 100, 110, 120--My Cleans were feeling sluggish so I power cleaned 120 and in the catch I felt something tug a bit in my left knee. I Cleaned 125kg a few minutes later, but it did not feel right, so I left the Jerk and my goal of hitting 137kg for the day.

Instead of squatting, I did a few pulls off some high blocks made up of weights and then did press triples with 50, 60, 70 and 75kg. I took a video of Sami doing his mobility squats so you can see for yourself why we do them.

Altogether, this week was frustrating in that I did not hit my targets, but I can see why. On top of being very busy outside work and training, my previous weekend drained me far more than I realised it would. I have to accept where I am rather than focus where I think I should be. Next week will be a sharper week. Have a look at the video below and leave any constructive criticism.