Wednesday 26.12: Clean and jerk, 12min amrap metcon

Wednesday. 1k row, time 3.24. Clean & jerk 3-3-3-1-1 (max 80kg). 12min amrap of hang cleans and hspu, result 54 reps. In addition biceps and triceps training.

Back to business! Me and Pauliina met with Toni at the Box to do some serious training and we succeeded well today. For starters we took over the rowing machine and the speed was faster than normally for both of us. I have been eager to go for clean and jerk for several days so today I got my chance. Toni concentrated in back squats and done very well, the guy increased his max load with 10kg! Pauliina took an upper body exercise.

Got an iPod Christmas present from my baby :)

Strength. Clean & jerk 3-3-3-1-1 (60, 65, 70, 75, 80kg). If my elbows allow me, I'm absolutety going to do c&j every week from now on. At some points I didn't do them pretty much at all because I did cleans and presses on different days. However, I've realized this is the thing I must improve. It's one of the basic movements in crossfit, the foundation of olympic lifting and I simply love it.

My clean and jerks have basically been clean and press. Today was the first time I took a first step to jerking the bar up. I'm confident that when I reach the point of making this movement naturally, the movement becomes way more effortless. I succeeded in some jerks pretty well in my opinion. Sometimes I've had some problems with my elbows that have hindered my training. Due to the Christmas break I got the rest that I needed and was ready to do c&j again. I reached my max of 80kg. I put 82.5kg on the bar and tried once. From the video afterwards I realized I did the right things, I bounced the bar with good timing, shrugged my shoulders up at the correct time and was able to lift the bar to chest level. However, I wasn't able to use the momentum to my advantage and go under the bar. That's why my new record will have to wait for a while.

Clean & jerk, 80kg

Metcon. Result, 6 rounds and 2 hspu, total of 54 reps.

• 12min amrap
• 4 hang cleans, 60kg
• 4 handstand push-ups

I have a desire to master handstand push-ups well. My hands are long so I have to travel rather long distance up and down the wall but I will strengthen my triceps more in the future to ease this awesome movement. Even though I couldn't go many reps unbroken in this metcon, I still managed to do 26 reps of HSPUs during those 12 minutes. Only on the first round I went unbroken, then on the second 2+2 and then in 2+1+1 / singles.

For the cleans / snatches I've finally got that upper thigh bouncing going well as opposed to how I did them earlier. I used to just lift the bar up without giving that extra speed upwards by bouncing the bar "from the pocket". It's more difficult to bounce the bar by doing hang cleans rather than lifting it from the ground, or at least for me it was. This was a good lesson to remind doing different types of cleans constantly. I suppose performing hang cleans compared to cleans from the ground results in more strength in upper back. Correct me if I'm wrong. I did my hang cleans today unbroken in the beginning, and mostly in two sets later on. This was a good day of training, high rep metcon with semi heavy weights. With every rep my technique becomes better. You'll see the hang cleans in the Youtube Channel.

Toni's workouts. Metcon's result: 8 rounds and 2 cleans, total of 66 reps. Strength: Back squat 3-3-3-2-1-1 (80, 90, 100, 110, PR 115kg, PR 120kg).

• Metcon,12min amrap
• 4 hang cleans, 60kg
• 4 handstand push-ups (assisted with foam roll)

Toni's PR, back squat 120kg

He did good today! PR improved with 10kg, that's remarkable :) And the amount of reps in the metcon was high, well done! For now, he is doing handstand push-ups assisted with a foam roll, very natural way of starting with the movement. We are both in love with HSPU.

Handstand push-ups