Tuesday 8.7: Gymnastics, Tempo squats, Diane

Tuesday. Gymnastics, C2B progressions. Strength, tempo squats, 5x2 (max 120kg). Metcon, Diane 21-15-9, deadlift (102.5kg), hspu. Time 8.06.

Squats, yammy! Started this training session with similar type of chest-to-bar progressions as I took on about a week ago. Then tempo squats / pause squats to make my legs stronger. Finally ended up doing a benchmark workout Diane.

Gymnastics. Compare to 29.6.2014

• Chest-to-bar pull-up progressions
• 7x7 reps, with 0:50 rest between sets

This is similar to the one I did on the last days of June with the exception that there was 1 rep more per set today compared to the first progression set. I've considered C2B's a weakness of mine but only because I haven't practiced them. Regular pull-ups are more like a strength and this difference between them has puzzled me so much that I decided to correct this flaw. I've done couple of strict c2b's in every training sessions for maybe 2-3 months now. It's about 95% probability that I've done those strict ones as a warm-up, no matter what's ahead of me in the actual workouts.

This movement is getting together pretty well nowadays. I don't consider it that difficult anymore. Earlier this year I felt like I have to do those repetitions as singles and I couldn't link reps at all. Didn't want it to stay like that so I made my moves. Increase the amount of reps, a lot.

Strength.

• Tempo squats, 5x2 (100, 105, 110, 115, 120kg)
• 5 seconds down, 5 seconds hold in the bottom position, then up

Wanted to have some sort of pause squats for my legs but I wasn't sure how to make it in real life. I follow Chad Vaughn and his pal Mike Cerbus in Instagram and they seem to do a bunch of these for strengthening lower body. Vaughn is a 2-time olympian and a bad ass in all means when it comes to lifting weights.

I wasn't sure how many reps to do without resetting the bar in between, and I finally ended up doing doubles, with 5sec descending time and 5sec bottom hold position, before coming up as fast as possible. The weights were also a mystery me with these kind of squats. Had I done regular pause squats, I could have carried more weight because I can hold the package tight for a shorter time. But for as long time as these were, I gotta let loose the air and catch some more before standing back up.

The "negative" rep on my way down was as developing movement as getting back up. I really enjoyed tempo squats this time. Last time when I did pause squats my left hip flexor got inflamed for couple of days. Now I'm feeling better after today's session =)

Diane. Time 8.06. Compare to 20.2.2014

• 21-15-9
• Deadlift, 102.5kg
• Handstand push-ups

This really got to me. Not the best day for me for sure. Deadlifts have never been this heavy in a metcon of 21-15-9. I should be able to knock them through unbroken but that wasn't the case this time. It's a light weight, about 50% of my max load and there is no excuse for dropping the bar unless it's intentional for saving gas for hspu's. Now I had to take extra breaks there and it cost me a PR in Diane.

There was about 30sec difference to my best result (7.34). I think I made it 14-7 on the deads, then 10-5 and finally 5-4. My back was in fire and I didn't want to hold on to the barbell so I had to drop it. Even though it feels it's just couple of seconds your hands are off the bar, it's more in real life. I've witnessed these occasions on video.

Don't know what to say about hspu's. I got them 11-5-5 on the first round, probably something like 5-5-3-2 on the second and finally 5-2-2 on the last one. Deads ate some of my energy from hspu's so I couldn't make them as efficiently as I'd want to.

All in all, this training session was great indeed. I got to practice on my C2B's in the beginning with about 50 reps. Those tempo squats were great in nature and even though I wasn't able to smash top time on Diane, it's still a kick ass workout and I enjoyed every second of it!

Tuesday 19.2: Squats

Tuesday. Back squats 7x5 (120kg), tempo squats 3 sets, overhead squats 3 sets.

Back in business! I took it light today with squats. Several 5-rep sets but I didn't go near maxes. After strength training I wanted to try out something I saw from another cf blog, regular light weight back squats with pre-determined tempo. In the end I took some overhead sets. Toni also continued to work after flu and took old school push presses.

Push press, 70kg, Toni

Strength. Back squats 5-5-5-5-5-5-5 (100, 110, 120, 120, 120, 120, 120kg). Even though I'm not in 100% shape those squats felt very good. My goal today was to concentrate purely on form and technique, and complete the deepest squats I'm able to. I was not aiming to the heaviest weights possible. Beforehand I thought about doing 5 sets but it felt so good in my hips and hamstrings that I wanted to do a couple of extra sets =) I believe my form was good, my heels were pushing the ground and thus I found a stable stance. The depth was also good and I'm proud of today's squats.

Tempo squats. 60kg back squats with a tempo 2201. This is something new to practice about. I made the barbell light, only 60kg on it. Tempo in this one means that ideally it would comprise of a slow lowering of 2 seconds, 2 seconds halt in the deepest possible position, explosive rise back up of theoretical 0 seconds, and finally 1 sec rest before completing the same set again.  I did 3 or 4 sets with 10 reps each. I was surprised how deep I was able to go when I was concentrating in it. It was way over 90 degrees, which is astounding. Along with that main focus was in the quick return to standing position. This was a good variation and supportive training.

Overhead squats. Three sets of 5 reps each, max 40kg. Some time ago my form was pretty horrific but I'm finding this one! I don't have similar troubles with this one anymore. After doing that one snatch/overhead squat workout with Toni, some issues revealed to me and now I'm able to correct my stance to find a good overall form.

Toni's workouts.
Push press 3-3-3-3-3-3-3 (60, 70, 75, 70, 70, 70 failed only 2 reps, 70kg).
Toni did push presses after a looooong break. After doing the sets of 60, 70 and 75kg he decided to stick with 70kg until the end. At the second last set he made one failed rep, other than that he nailed that bar upwards each time. At some attempts it was more like a shoulder press but once he concentrated well he took advantage of a proper "dip and drive" method and was able to utilize his legs more than normally.