Thursday 6.2: Handstand, clean and jerk, du's

Thursday. Skills, handstand walk. Strength, clean & jerk 10x1 @ 80kg across. Skills, double unders.

Another training day. This time @ Eltsu, underground tunnel was the venue. I used to come here in the summer time more frequently. In the winter time it's mostly reserved for sports teams so it's more challenging to find a free spot in the evening. As I'm on holiday this week I had the change to go there in at noon when it's free training time for everybody. There were only senior citizens working out. It was actually pretty cool that the youngest athlete there was around 70 years and these mamas and papas were taking sprints and long jumping =) By the way, my car was on repair so it took me half an hour to walk to Eltsu (good warm-up) and another 30min to walk back home for recovery.

Skills.

• Handstand walk

This place is destined for handstand training and handstand walking so I definitely took the opportunity and practiced on my skills. My handstand skills jumped a mile forward last summer so it's vital I can maintain those skills. In the spring and summer time I'm gonna work on this element more as the weather allows to work outdoors. It hasn't been self-evident that I can practice handstand because I don't have the place where to do it regularly. It's a bit difficult to do it on a snowy ground outdoors =)

Strength. Clean & jerk

• 3x60kg
• 2x70kg
• 10x1 @ 80kg

My ambitious plans were to go 90kg or heavier on the singles today but I realized already in the morning that I'm not in a condition required to go that heavy. It's been a heavy week of training as I had planned and it's taken its toll on my body. It was a little tired so I stayed lower on the weights and tried to work on the technique.

As you see from the video, the technique definitely wasn't at its best shape. I was too slow on going under the bar, jerked the bar too much forward instead of straight upwards plus I didn't drop under the bar enough on the jerk either. More work ahead of me. It's kind of awesome that you'll never get ready in this sport and there's tons to work on. So at least the spark to be better stays bright for me and motivates me to train harder!

The bar was heavier than normally today so I left the real heavy weights alone today and concentrated in trying to move the 80kg bar. I'm happy I was able to still move it as I wanted even though there were some technical issues to be fixed.

Recap

Skills.

• Double unders

No metcon for me today. Skills and strength was enough. Haven't jumped double unders in a while so I took my jump rope and did couple of sets double unders. My focus was on keeping my torso straight, kind of like having the same form as when on top of a box jump. That's the goal I'm aiming for every time I grab the jump rope. I tend to bend my body a little on the core but today I got pretty decent reps.



I follow Catalyst Athletics regularly on their Youtube channel. They also have great articles by Greg Everett, the team's coach. This is the first commentary by him on a recap video. Enjoy!