Friday 12.9: Cleans, Squats, Jerk and Du

Friday. Strength, clean singles (max 110kg). Smolov squats (max 130kg). Metcon, 10-8-6-4-2 push jerk (60kg), 50 du's between sets. Time 7.45

I was waiting eagerly how this frequent squatting will feel like in my lower body today and especially after today's squat sets. At least now I feel good and it doesn't bother me at all. Before squats I wanted to take couple of heavier cleans and then a great metcon in the end combining push jerks and double unders. Combo of strength, skills and metabolic condition. Simply said: crossfit.

Strength.

• Clean singles 1-1-1-1 (80, 90, 100, 110kg)
• Back squats, 4x5 (100kg), 1x3 (110kg), 2x2 (115kg), 1x1 (130kg)

It was a bit intimidating to do heavy cleans after giving lots of pressure for my legs but I still needed to get couple of reps just for my mental well-being. I love lifting heavy and to be honest, I believe lifting heavy develops people the most. Staying too light doesn't bring that much improvements in my opinion. At least that's what I've noticed. Of course it's okay to lift light too for technical purposes and to gig the body some recovery. And sometimes it feels body is not necessarily that receptive to heavy weights so the loads must be brought down to where they are easier to handle.

Anyway, I took couple of clean reps from floor. Lately there has been a lot of progression in hang cleans so I wanted to try it from floor for a while. I climbed up to 110kg (5kg shy of my 1RM) and then called it quits. Those reps felt fine, the last one stayed a little too much forward from my torso and it didn't land perfectly on front rack position. Other than that I'm very pleased on the outcome.

This is 3rd day in a row back squatting and getting these legs stronger. Today the reps and weights were different from the first 2 day of Smolov squats. And we got a little heavier, for a single 130kg lift. At first I was thinking that 130kg is quite a lot if you compare the weights thrown around lately. But then again, 130kg shouldn't be that bad. So I went and took it up, it wasn't remotely as tough as I thought it might be. That was encouraging. Good squat session!

Mostly squats

Metcon. Time 7.45

• 10-8-6-4-2 push jerk, 60kg
• 50 double unders

As my lower body has taken hit on the past days I figured the workout should be something that would involve of course entire body but mostly put pressure on upper body to give a break on these legs. I'm very satisfied on the way I was able to come up with this workout. It worked for its purpose perfectly. My shoulders were burning all the time, at least from the second round on.

Got the push jerks unbroken, that was a clean plan, and I had no doubts of getting it done as planned. But the double unders killed my shoulders to the ground. There was practically no rest for shoulders in this workout as they were working big time in both movements. This time it was possible to tape this entire session so I utilized the chance so you'll see it below.

First set of double unders went great, 50 unbroken. From then on I changed my tactic to complete them 30-20. On the second round I had one miss but then on the remaining sets it was pure 30-20 reps. Last round was actually 30-10-10, my shoulders simply couldn't handle it anymore.

I'm positively surprised this 3-day intensive squatting has not had its downsizes this far. It's been okay to adapt to these volumes. Hopefully I'm able to continue finishing the Smolov squat program till the end. Time will tell. The metcon in the end was way better than I thought. It didn't take my breath away entirely but it surely burned my shoulders.