Monday 6.10: Squats, Clean, Hspu, Du's

Monday. Smolov squats 10x3 (130kg). Metcon of hang power clean, hspu and du's. Time 9.20.

Third day in four days of squatting, and the weights didn't go down this time either. Instead, heavier barbell was found on my back in the late afternoon. Luckily I had couple of training partners there at the gym to talk me up for the sets. I was looking for the metcon that was waiting as a reward after squats.

Strength.

• Smolov, back squat 10x3 (3x132.5kg, 7x130kg)

My right knee was a bit sore from yesterday's squats so I wasn't that much into hitting another tough squat session. Program said it's 10 sets of triples with 132.5kg, recover as needed between sets. I took the first set and it felt heavy already there, huh huh. On the second set it didn't get any easier. I said to Teppo, one of our work place's strongest guys, if not the strongest, that it's gonna be a long day of squatting…  On the third one I needed him to spot me and the third rep on that set leaned a little too much forward and I needed to take a short balancing step forward on my left leg.

At that moment I realized it's too heavy to complete 7 more sets. Maybe it was a psychological matter but I dropped only 2.5kg down to 130kg and the bar felt lighter instantly. Teppo spotted the rest of my sets - thanks for that - which helped mentally a lot. I was a bit cautious on that right knee from the beginning till the end which may have had its effect on these squats.

Recovery times were quite long, much longer than normally but I didn't want to take any missed lifts. I decided to hit the triples all the way no matter what, and stayed with 130kg for the remaining sets (7 sets @ 130kg). It felt good, or at least as good as it can in a situation like this, to nail the squats almost as written.

Metcon. Time 9.20. Compare to 31.8.2012

• 4 handstand push-ups
• 12 hang power clean, 60kg
• 8 handstand push-ups
• 8 hang power clean, 60kg
• 12 handstand push-ups
• 4 hang power clean, 60kg
• 50 double unders
• 12 handstand push-ups
• 4 hang power clean, 60kg
• 8 handstand push-ups
• 8 hang power clean, 60kg
• 4 handstand push-ups
• 12 hang power clean, 60kg

This was the gem of the training session. For some reason this popped into my head a while ago. I did this one over two years ago, that time I competed against my big bro. I had just started crossfit couple of months ago and didn't really know how to do hspu's. Rx'd reps were a distant dream then and full range of motion was somewhere months away. My clean PR was made that same day for 65kg. Take a look at the video if you wanna have some laughs =)

This workout is somehow genius, it was as brilliant as I remembered it to be. The number of hspu's and cleans varied between 4, 8 and 12 reps. It was a 2-part metcon, with 50 double unders between the parts. On the first round hspu's went up and cleans came down. On the second round it was vice versa.

The times between now and then are not even remotely comparable. There was 20kg difference in the weights too. I was happy that time how I performed and I was happy on today's version too. I took the cleans as hang power versions because I didn't wanna burn my legs that much. Don't remember how the sets went but those 12-rep sets were broken, maybe 8-reps were also mostly but to 2 attempts, some were probably unbroken. Double unders in between were easy, no problems.

This was a fun workout and I'm missing this kind of workouts already. It's been fun to squat but I'm missing old school crossfit workouts. I've taken it easier on them during this Smolov thing because I've tried to save my legs. It will be over soon so it's time to put the creativity-pants back on and start crossfitting for real!