Sunday 1.12: Ring mu's, clean and jerk, pair chipper

Sunday. Skills, ring muscle-ups. Strength, clean & jerk (max PR 100kg), clean PR 102.5kg. Pair chipper with Toni: 120 wall balls (8kg), 100 pull-ups, 80 kettlebell swings (32kg), 40 hspu, 20 cleans (80kg).

GREAT DAY!!! My first touch at a crossfit affiliate. I went to "open gym" with Toni to work on ring skills, we were looking to improve on our ring muscle-ups. Then it was time to do some personal records with the barbell: clean & jerks and clean PR's both saw the daylight. Toni also did clean PR. We finished the workout session by doing a pair wod, bad ass chipper.

Skills. Bar muscle-ups and ring muscle-ups.

After doing some stretching and foam rolling I grabbed the pull-up bar and did some pull-ups and chest-to-bars. It felt easy to pull myself high so I decided to go higher, and ended up doing some bar muscle-ups. Haven't done them probably in a month so I completed 10+ reps, couple of singles in the beginning, then 4 in a row, and then 3 unbroken.

Then it was time to do some ring muscle-ups. I feel like it hasn't been that close this far. Okay, I've got the height at a decent level but I haven't been able to duck my head forward through the rings. Today something happened and I got there. We did progressions with Toni's coaching. He's been learning this movement lately and seems to have an obsession of completing a successful rep before the year changes. And I'm sure he will with this level of determination.

We lowered the rings and did some transitions plus we did muscle-ups by sitting on a resistance band that was tied between the rings. It felt so easy to do one muscle-up with the help of those. Maybe that's the reason I understood the transition stage better. My last rep was pretty damned close as you can see from the pic and the video. I know it looks nasty once I dropped there but don't worry, nothing bad happened =)

How close is that?!?

Strength. Clean & jerk freestyling (5x60, 5x70, 3x80, 2x90, 1x95, 1x100kg PR, 1x102.5kg clean PR).

Two PR's in one session, not bad, I'll take that! The idea was to do clean & jerks and I had not scheduled to do records today but there was something in the atmosphere and the barbell felt lighter than normally so I figured why not hit the max load. And this is one of those places where you can drop the bar and not having to think about being too careful. At my work place's gym you are not allowed to drop the bar so you've got to be careful not to miss a lift.

The 60kg reps we did from hang clean position, then jerked it up in different variations. I took power and squat cleans, push jerk and split jerk, just to get all styles involved and muscles ready for anything that's coming up. On the 70kg I did regular clean & jerks push jerk style. At 80kg I still went touch'n'go for all 3 reps. On the 90kg I did 2 singles and it felt awesome and my form stayed good all the way. Probably haven't jerked that easy 90kg ever.

Took a single lift at 95kg, then moved on the the PR attempt. I have cleaned 100kg twice and jerked it from a rack once but never have I got it to the sky all the way from the floor. My confidence level was high and there was no doubt if the bar would come up or not. Clean was rather easy, and on the jerk I had to do some work. The local coach gave some vital tips on the use of my back leg on the split jerk. I tend to position it a little sideways even though it is critical to have the toes pointed forwards for stability's stake. Next time I'll be split jerking with a better foot positioning for sure. Thanks for the coach Aleksi!

I still took one clean @ 102.5kg for a clean PR, this time the jerk stayed in the middle and I had to drop it. Technique wasn't there on the jerk. There had been quite a lot of work for the shoulders so it was time to catch a breath and move on to our pair chipper.

Pair wod. Chipper

• 120 wall balls, 8kg
• 100 pull-ups
• 80 kettlebell swings, 32kg
• 40 handstand push-ups
• 20 cleans, 80kg

We had thought about nailing some thrusters after kb swings but our shoulders were smashed already atfter the muscle-ups and strength training so we decided to skip it. The idea was that one partner works at a time. We split the wall balls in sets of 20 reps, both completed them unbroken. Then on the pull-ups we went "you go, I go", meaning that I started, did as many reps as possible, then we switched turns. Alternating on the pull-up bar, we moved to kettlebell work after we finished 100 reps. On the swings it was 4 sets of 10 reps for both of us, on the hspu's the principle was same as with the pull-ups. And finally some heavy cleans (at least at this stage of the workout) in singles, alternating.

Shoulders were burning already after wall balls. All the work put in prior to the chipper really had its effect on us. Wall balls were okay, the ball was 8kg, the heaviest they've got. I've done some hundred reps with my brother's self-made wall ball out of basket ball which is half the size of this one we used today. It was awkward handling this big a ball, and it slipped sometimes from my hands. Pull-ups felt normal, easy in the beginning, then turning uglier after couple of tens.

Kettlebells seemed like the heaviest movement in this one. For some reason the bell felt way heavier than normally. Maybe it was the combination of the movements, there was quite a lot of action for the upper body. We both managed the hspu's nicely, I did 7 reps on the first 2 sets, then 5-3 towards the end. It was genius to program quite heavy cleans as the last movement in this workout. We both had never done that.

It didn't start well, both took a failed rep as the first rep =) I tried the first attempt as power clean so it didn't take long to make the decision to change it to squat cleans. And they felt great from then on! Got to do more stuff like this where there's a heavy barbell included in a metcon.

Recap of the training day!

All in all, it was a spectacular training day with Tony the Pony, the guy I basically did my crossfitting for the first year. Now he's been working out at this affiliate which obviously has lots to offer for a humble athlete. Plus the atmosphere seemed to be encouraging as well, obviously, it's a crossfit Box.