Tuesday 13.11: Snatch, overhead squats

Tuesday. Snatch 6x5 (max 40kg), overhead squats 5x5 (max 40kg). Kettlebell clean & jerk.

Morning gym club gathered again, Toni arrived in the morning with fury, he was determined to go for heavy kilos with his deafdlifts. I wanted to do clean & jerk but my elbow had other thoughts. I took some reps with warm-up weights and decided to drop it and focus on snatches and overhead squats. Someone had brought his own kettlebells to our gym so now there's two kb's for 1 pood, that is 16kg. I took some reps with 2 x 1 pood kettlebell clean & jerks in the end, as did Toni.

Kettlebell clean & jerk

Snatch. 5-5-5-5-5-5 (30, 35, 40, 40, 40, 40kg). This definitely is a technically difficult movement. I know it's hard for me to convey the bar close to my body from down to up. It's coming up in a swing mode, way too far a way from my knees, hips and chest. It's coming up and feels good but I can see it afterwards from videos that it's coming in a different way than I'd like. The other big issue is my squat during snatches. I have no problems doing normal snatches but as I start adding plates on the bar it gets heavier and "power snatch" is not possible anymore. It requires me to squat snatch. However, my overhead squat is not so natural yet so it hinders me adding more weights on the bar. My max snatch holds currently at 40kg, I have no problems doing the snatch with forty but adding five more kilos made it impossible today. That's odd. The bar should explode as I bring it up, it should definitely come up faster + closer to my body and I should be squatting simultaneously. Then it would be logical to get let's say 60 kilos up just like that.

Snatches, 40kg

Overhead squats. 5-5-5-5-5 (20, 25, 30, 35, 40kg). After snatches I took sets of overhead squats. I still remember the time when I couldn't do any overhead squats because of bad mobility. Now I'm able to do 40kg, that's the highest I've tried. My mobility is not an issue anymore, I've improved greatly. However, I better concentrate in pushing my knees out in a similar way as in normal squats. I've noticed that in overhead squats my knees turn a bit more inside compared to other type of squats.

I had done snatches and overhead squats for several sets, as I had also taken numerous sets with only 20kg bar and then added weights. At some point I thought ok now it's time for a metcon. I realized that I had been doing snatches and OHS for one hour… So I didn't have any time for a workout. At least I got huge number of reps for these two technically challenging movements. I enjoyed putting this much energy and focus on snatches today. I really hope and believe this one's gonna improve quickly. This is one of my favorites, it's so overall movement and really gives satisfaction as you're able to get the bar travel from the ground to overhead rapidly.

Deadlift

Toni took deadliest today, sets of 3 reps, I recall the highest was 135kg. Here is a sample how he lifted 100kg

Deadlift, 100kg, Toni