Tuesday 10.12: Back squats, long clean emom

Tuesday. Back squat doubles. Clean emom, high-rep ladder.

Main focus today was on my cleans. You can call it a mixture of strength, technique and metcon. Lots of reps, got a good amount of repetition, the load started to get heavy and the recovery started to play a significant role. My shirt was soaking sweat. I started this day with some back squats for fun.

We made some incredibly tasty protein bars with Pauliina yesterday, self-made and healthy!

Strength. Back squats 2-2-2-2-1 (100, 120, 130, 135, 135kg). My main focus was on the cleans but I needed to get some squats in the program so I took squats with short recovery between sets. Just doubles, those went well. The last set was just a single, it felt so heavy and I didn't have my head in it so I stayed at a single. The previous sets went as planned. I think I'll take low-rep sets towards the end of the year.

Clean ladder. Every minute on the minute

• 5 reps @ 60kg, for 5min, then 1min rest
• 4 reps @ 70kg, for 5min, then 1min rest
• 3 reps @ 80kg, for 5min, then 1min rest
• 2 reps @ 90kg, for 5min

I was looking forward to this one. I saw Rich Froning this workout in the air some time ago, it might have been snatches as well. This was basically a "20min, every minute on the minute" type of workout. Starting at 60kg, 5 reps per minute, then rest for the remaining of the minute. Repeat for a total of 5 minutes, a.k.a 5x5 = 25 reps. The 6th minute is rest period as you're changing the weights. Then add weight and drop one rep per min. Repeat for a total of 5 minutes and so on…

Had determined the weights beforehand, adding 10kg on the bar after every rest minute. Went on power cleans for 60kg, 70kg and 2 first sets of the 80kg. On the 3rd set I took the last 1 or 2 reps as squat cleans, from then on it was all squat versions. I was very proud of myself being able to finish the workout as planned. Completing 2x90kg after having done 60 reps of cleans is not a given. But the time frame was perfect for me with these weights. The 90kg lifts needed definitely more work than normally and that was exactly what I wanted.

This worked as some sort of metcon as well. My heart was beating faster, not as in a bad ass metcon but still it was cardio as well. I have nothing but good things to say about this one. Go and try it! For comparison, my max load is 102.5kg on clean.

This is sick pace. Check the weights on "Godzilla": snatch 102.5kg, back squat 165kg…