10/7/08


Today was day 1 of 4 of track evaluations.  I had to get a physical at 2:30, and I was pretty pressed for time since evaluations started at 3:30.

Warmup
Body Squat - 20

Workout (Note: all are best out of 3 attempts)
Standing Vertical Jump - 25"
Standing Broad Jump - 8'5"
Standing Triple Jump - 24'4"

1 "Wheel" Note: on a standard track, run 100 meters, walk back 50 meters.  Repeat 7 times.

Cooldown
Walk 100m
Jog 150m
Walk 50m
Jog 100m

Stretch - 10 minutes

Total workout time: 1:30 hours

I had intended to do the APK WOD today (20:00 min handstand/planche progressions), but I decided to watch the presidential debate instead.  Kind of wish I would have done the WOD.  Also, I may be getting into a little bit of a fever.    Orange juice and sleep are both in my future.

245 squats with 105 P.Cleans?

I would put my savings down that your P. Clean form is awful.  Your hip extension is plenty strong.

Hard to explain how to clean over the internet...i suggest checking out x-fit for videos...

The steps are as follows:
1) Stance - Put your feet such that your shins are ~1 inch or less from the bar.
2) Grip - WITHOUT MOVING THE BAR, reach down and grab it with a hook grip.
3) Shins - WITHOUT MOVING THE BAR OR YOUR FEET, let your shins meet the bar
4) Chest - Lift your chest up, tighten your WHOLE BACK and ARMS
5) Pull (Slow) - Pull the bar up over your knees, slowly at first while you learn form
6) Torso - Make your torso go a bit more vertical
7) Explode (Fast) - When the bar passes your knees, with a vertical torso, EXPLODE your hips and SHRUG your shoulders violently upward
Catch - Throw your body under the bar into a quarter squat while simultaneously THROWING your elbows out -- good cue is HUMERUS OUT so that its parallel to the ground.
9) Stand up.

The SS clean differs from the O-lifting clean.  Its something you become more aware of as you learn how to clean properly.  I still do the SS clean and have gotten quite strong with it.  There are som minor differences in a "proper" O-lifting clean but the SS clean is the best way to start, imho.

The SS clean IS identical to the deadlift.  The deadlift in the SS clean gets you to the knees then step6 in my list where we straighten the torso gets you to the hang clean position.  From there its just a hang clean.

The hardest thing to learn is to SHRUG the weight up so it floats and goes weightless.  If the bar doesn't FLOAT then you aren't cleaning anything, you are curling.

A good way to practice the shrug is to take a medicine ball of 45# plate standing on its edge.  Do the clean pull so that the ball/plate goes weightless and pops up without your bending your arms.  A good clean shrug will have the 45# plate/medicine ball fly upwards without turning at all OR without having the laces of the ball rotate at all.

From there it is just being more violent with the shrug, doing it with a bar, and getting under the damn thing

So I've pulled a muscle in my back.  More specifically, I think I've pulled both of my trapezius muscles near where they insert in the middle of my back.  I felt sore and a little bit worse than sore this morning after my workout last night, but I didn't notice much of a change throughout the day.  After evaluations this afternoon I was feeling it just a little bit more, and it really hit me when I went to do parkour this evening.

I was really excited because a friend who does parkour here at college decided to take me on a run he does around campus.  It's really good, practical training for parkour (i.e. you're going to be running a lot more than anything else), but after the first few vaults I noticed my back was feeling a lot worse.  Like a fool I kept on pushing, and soon it was hard for me to move without stabbing pain in my back.

Now I'm here in my dorm room, feeling really sharp pains no matter how slightly I move.  Many times it's hard to breathe because of these pains.  I've got ice on my back right now, and the plan is to do as little activity as possible tonight.  I think I also plan on not working out tomorrow, and depending on how I feel I may not do anything at the weekly jam on Saturday, which would completely suck.  I need to be completely better by Tuesday at the latest, for the next day of track evaluations.

Any advice?

10/10/08 - Rest Day 1 of 3

My back pain was easily twice as bad as it was last night, and I decided I had to do something about it.  I remembered that it felt almost identical to a time a few months ago when my lower back relapsed into its former state of awfulness, so I decided to try and get into a chiropractor today, or risk letting the possibly maligned joints get a chance to settle in their position.

I scheduled an appointment with a guy I had never heard of, but he was the only guy I could get ahold of on such short notice (it was 2:45 this afternoon).  I also have never needed a chiropractor anywhere but in my hometown, so I figured it wouldn't be a horrible idea to try out someone here in case I end up living here after college.

As it turns out, I really enjoyed this visit.  The chiropractor felt around on my back (which is something my old chiropractor never really did) and determined that in addition to some minor slippage here and there, the thing that was causing all the pain was a rib that had come out of place.  He righted me six ways from Sunday and told me to take it easy for the next couple of days.  He also said that the muscles in my back were probably strained a little, and I assume they are strained from trying to keep that rib from doing anything worse for such a long time.

Something is leading me to believe that I need to work on my kong form over rails.  The last time my back relapsed was when I was practicing the upward jump at the beginning of a kong (to get the body parallel with the ground), and this time the closest I can hone in on when it started to hurt really badly was when I tried a kong over a rail.  I think it's such a psychological thing for me to bring my feet up over a rail (I'm always terrified that I'm going to hook my feet on the rail and faceplant at least a few feet below) that I tense up and my form falls apart.  One of the things I notice especially is that I tend to grip the bar instead of using it to push off of and away from, which I think causes me to compress my body too much too fast, hence things popping out of place.  When I get better (i.e. hopefully by Tuesday, we'll have to see) I'll have to gently toy around with this and find out where the problem lies.

10/14/08

Today was track evaluations day 3 of 4, and it was a joke.  Granted, it was probably the most challenging joke I've ever experienced, but a joke nonetheless.  We warmed up with some jogging, ran 300m for time, cooled down with some jogging and stretching, and were out of there.  The whole thing took, like, 45 minutes.

300m sprint: 00:44:12

I was 5-6 out of 6 in my group.  It ended up working out so that there were three groups of two guys running side by side, trying like anything to beat the other one.  I think the fastest guys ran 39:something, and considering that the 300m for me four years ago would have resulted in my hospitalization due to a horrible, HORRIBLE cardio system, I'm pretty proud of myself.

You have 8'6 Jump with a 100# Clean man..

Be a sprinter and work cleans for this year.  Sprinting will increase your performance in pretty much all domains you are interested in.  200m would be a good sprint to prepare for.

Next year, with the sprint and clean work, you will likely be in a lot better shape for long jumping.  Make sure to work jumping technique at the same time, as well, to get those numbers up.

Next season/acadmic year...

The limiting factor is form...when u learn the form u will still not be at ideal explosiveness...your squat numbers are high enough that you should have a heavier clean than 100#.  150# at least is what I would expect...

You can't use the clean to train explosiveness unless you learn it though...

You CAN use sprints, though.