Tuesday 23.10: Clean and jerks, handstand and pull-up clinic

Tuesday. In the morning: clean & jerk technique with lighter weights (50kg). Handstand skills training and mobility. In the evening "pull-up clinic" and a workout.

My plan for today was a bit different than what the reality transformed to. The idea was to do heavy clean & jerks in the morning, then a rough metcon after that. I changed it on the fly to lighter workouts. The evening workout was as planned. I wanted to pay attention to my kipping pull-ups and then I took a workout including pull-ups as well.

Morning. I rowed for one km for starters, I think I'll go for that distance every time from now on. Sometimes faster 1.40-1.45 / 500m, sometimes with slower 1.50 / 500m pace. Why not go for 2k every now and then? Anyway, we took off with Toni with the clean & jerk training. Soon I found out that my both elbows were on fire so I didn't want to add weights to the bar. They were literally almost burning. I don't know why. I still took 3x5 with 50kg, concentrating in getting the form good and taking this more like a technique training as the weights were not that heavy.

I quit the jerks and tried to do dumbbell squat thrusters but it soon came evident that it's impossible to do pretty much anything using my hands. So I stopped teasing my elbows. I still wanted to get some pressure on the shoulders without doing too much movements where elbows must be bent. Do you find a better movement than handstand for that situation? I didn't so I took some skills training there =) No push-ups, just standing still, inverted. I took some sets like that my heels against the wall and then finally took some attempts to force my heels come off the wall. Someone said that once you are in the upside down position, just squeeze your butt and abs, then push the tips of your fingers to the ground. Then you'll witness your heels leaving the wall. I tried that and managed to stay inverted on my own for a few seconds.

Toni took a workout that lasted for about 11.30 minutes including. I'll add the video afterwards after some tuning.

• 30 double unders
• 30 lunges with 10kg dumbbells
• 9 knees-to-elbows
• 25 double unders
• 25 lunges with 10kg dumbbells
• 6 knees-to-elbows
• 20 double unders
• 20 lunges with 10kg dumbbells
• 3 knees-to-elbows

In the end we took some mobility with rubber bands, pvc pipes and stretching.

Evening. After work I wanted to put focus on pull-ups. As I have written earlier, the pull-up bar at the gym is too close to the wall and it's difficult to go for kipping pull-ups. I haven't had the opportunity to practice them properly. That's the reason why I wanted to take a session mainly for learning the technique and do pull-ups more than normally. I drove to the nearby outdoor sports center, the same place where I took hero wod Griffin a while ago. This is one of the venue possibilities for the HC Triplet, vol 2.

I took some pull-ups for starters, trying to find the rhythm that suits best for me, how to come down from the up-position naturally and swing right back. I somewhat found it but definitely not perfectly. I was able to use my hips and entire body to ease the movement but I must go there more often to master it. This is one of the most basic things in crossfit so I will have to find places where to practice it regularly. After doing random amount of pull-ups, sets of maybe 5-7, for some time I decided to take a short workout.

• For quality
• 5 rounds of:
• 10 pull-ups
• 20 double unders

I was able to do two or three rounds unbroken with the pull-ups and then at least the fourth and fifth rounds were done in two sets (7+3 / 6+4). Double unders were ok but still for some reason I did all sets something like 15+5. I was a bit disappointed I didn't go unbroken in all sets. They should be easy at this stage. I was pleased with the pull-ups in general. I was able to do quite a number of them during this evening training (maybe around 80 reps) and got a bit forward with my technique.

Before I headed home I still wanted to go for bar muscle-up training for some attempts. I find it difficult currently to do chest-to-bar pull-ups so that would definitely be my next progression step. As I put my hands straight up, the bar was on my wrist level so I did jumping muscle-ups.