Occasionally every body part rebels.

This has been a hard week for me, physically, and for no good reason.

On Monday, I pulled something in my left adductor area during a light warm-up squat (55kg). I had felt super loose, warm, and flexible...and then *boom*. I was not too pleased, and the day ended up in light doubles rather than heavy triples.

Wednesday I returned to the gym, where first my right hamstring expressed some skepticism about me changing my shoes. Since most of what I do in the gym isn't terribly posterior-chain biased, I wasn't too concerned.

But then I managed to do the same thing to my right quad GETTING UP OFF THE FLOOR AFTER FOAM ROLLING. I hope the capital letters do a good job of expressing my disgust. Of all the activities I would expect to be safe from random muscular mutiny, foam rolling and, y'know, standing up are pretty high on the list. That quad got a little intensive softball therapy and eventually the work out continued, power cleans + jerks at 40kg.

AND THEN, on a particularly sloppy jerk, my right adductor area decided to get in on the fun. The next rep after that one was pretty timid, but fortunately subsequent reps were not sloppy in the exact same shape and I was able to make it to the end of the workout without further mishap.

On the upside, no upper-body pain or irritation in the jerks at all, or at any point after them on into today. Since I was in arm/shoulder pain pretty much 24/7 a month or so ago, this is a huge win. Hopefully I can get the coordination down well enough to go a bit heavier soon, since 40kg doesn't feel like much, especially in the clean.

I'm also hoping that various life processes, plus lots of foam rolling and stretching, will make tomorrow a little less ridiculous. So we'll see.

I think I'll watch other people lift

Yesterday I drove up to Petaluma to see a weightlifting competition. My weightlifting class was canceled because of the large Catalyst contingent at the meet; instead I spent the time cleaning my kitchen sink and stove top (ah, adulthood). That's exercise, right?

The drive up was really beautiful; it was a full-on sunny California day and I love driving up to the north bay when I get the opportunity. I think this is the first time I've crossed at San Rafael instead of the Golden Gate Bridge, and I loved the view of the bay below. The drive back home was quite pretty, too, but much more angsty as I realized that depending on the extremely inaccurate Google traffic estimates was going to cost me my hockey game. 

The meet was really neat to watch. There was a contingent of masters' aged beginners who were so great to see (my people!). One guy and two ladies were respectively the first in their sessions with much lower weights than the younger lifters, and I have to give them huge props for getting out there and kicking ass. The ladies also did the split snatch, which was neat to see.

I have an online acquaintance who is similar to me in strength but who has been lifting for over a years; she also competed and did well.

My trainer won her weight class but didn't look entirely satisfied with her performance. I can understand that: you're competing against yourself first of all. I thought she did great, and it was cool seeing her feedback to Greg after her attempts (I couldn't hear them from my seat, but I could see familiar gestures). I got to see several of her teammates as well, including the always super-nice Chyna Cho and super-heavyweight superstar Tamara Solari. Tamara was just amazing -- 120kg clean and jerk! She was also the only national-level super on the women's side, so all of her attempts followed herself. I can't imagine lifting that kind of weight and then having to get up and do it again ASAP...of course Greg did some weight-requesting manipulation to give her a bit more time. Her teammates and Aimee also did a great job of getting the crowd behind her, which was awesome.

My class is canceled again next week thanks to an advanced-level seminar. I really should get around to ordering a ladies' bar and some bumpers. I am itching to do some snatch balances.

Conditioning is such a joy

Right now I do conditioning at the end of two of my sessions per week, Monday and Friday. The routine has become that Monday is a more traditional gym-based -- dare I say CrossFit-inspired -- circuit of some sort and Friday is usually sprinting or agility drills outdoors. Wednesday is my "easy" day where the conditioning is replaced by some sort of back exercise and ab work.

I am so not a fan of conditioning. I actively enjoy sprinting in a hockey game where I'm chasing down an opponent or a lose puck...just randomly running in some sort of formation? Not so much. And the gym-based version has the additional problem that it often includes activities, like wall ball or ball slams, that obviously have no point. We are very fortunate as a society that we get to do pointless activities to make ourselves tired, for sure. Still, in the moment while doing them this is not a great realization to have.

Today in particular, I ran sprint intervals of varying length. Running sprints has 2 major problems: running sucks, and I suck at running. Running is an unpleasant activity, first of all. I know there are people who enjoy it, I do not understand how their brains work. And I suck at running: I'm not able to run hard enough to get to the full extent of my work capacity the way I can on skates. So the element of feeling refreshed after going all-out just isn't there.

Obviously I'm going to keep doing the conditioning; it is my goal to still be a functional human being 40 or 50 years from now. It sure would be nice if I could skate intervals instead, though!

Class recap

The weightlifting class Saturday was fun and surprisingly hard for the low weights I used. There were three guys there, one was on his own agenda and the other two were roughly following the posted workout; they were both roughly at my level and I would guess similar to me in age.

The workout as written on the board was:
Segment pull + pull 3 x (1+1)
3-position snatches 5 x 3 (up from the floor)
Front squats at 75%, 3 x 5

What I actually ended up doing:
Segment pull + pull 3 x (1+1) @ 20kg  (Coach Steve explained this as more of a warm up)
3-position snatches 8 x 3 (down from the hang) also @ 20kg
Snatch balances 4 x 3 at 20, 25, 30kg
Front squats: totally screwed up the math switching to pound plates and generally got confused and flustered - 5 each at 83lb, 103lb, 113lb (66%)

Even though 20kg is not much of anything -- it really did not feel harder than the bare bar -- I was occasionally light-headed in the 3-position snatches and really did need my rest after each set of 3. I think my breathing pattern was partly to blame. It was occasionally nerve-wracking to have Steve watching me, which is something I need to get used to. I'm so comfortable with my usual trainer now that it hadn't occurred to me it would be different with a different watcher.

I like snatch balances a lot and think long term they will help me with my "sneaky feet" (i.e. not landing on my heels). I know I was sandbagging it with the weight, but it's only the second time I've done them and I wasn't totally sure I wouldn't do something derpy.

When it came time to squat, the competitive team started to arrive for their training session and we were asked to move off the platforms onto the gym floor. No problem, except that meant moving to the other style of squat stands, which I am exceedingly awkward and dangerous moving around, and the non-metric weights. So that kind of threw me off track.

I'm voting for snatch

I'm interested in trying the Olympic lifting class at the gym, which no longer takes new people unless they've had a session or two of one-on-one training in the progressions for the lifts. So Friday my trainer took me through most of the progressions for the snatch, first with a PVC pipe and then with a 10kg bar. We continued Monday, ultimately moving on to snatches from the floor with 15kg. 

The snatch feels so much more natural than the power cleans ever have. Even at the super-low weight -- I have an issue with "not feeling" movements when the weight is low -- and ridiculous slow-motion coordination in most reps, it just makes sense to me. I can more easily feel when I'm too far forward, or not aggressive enough (what I call "fake" reps), or whatever else. The receiving position is also comfortable, particularly after the overhead squat breakthrough, which seems to have carried over to the lighter weights. Getting to full extension -- actually knowing if I did or not in the first place -- is always a weakness for me, but so far I'm a lot better at knowing it with the snatch than I have been with power cleans. It's pretty amazing. I also intuitively understand (although certainly don't do right) where the parts need to go in the second pull...whereas with hang cleans or high block cleans I stand there perplexed for a significant fraction of a minute before I can figure out how to move.

So, woo! I have a lot to learn and a lot to practice, but I'm so glad it's starting out so much less painfully.

Surprise new max

After not being able to do overhead motions for 3 weeks, I assumed overhead squat max day would fall by the wayside. Not so, yesterday was an impromptu max test.

My previous max was 45kg, and I honestly wasn't totally sure I could do that reliably, partly because of the lack of push-press practice in the meantime. I've also picked up a bad habit somehow of lowering the bar too far back on the right side, so after 38kg or so I'm afraid I'm going to end up dropping it down my back (possibly with bonus arm-wrenching) if I lower it back to my shoulders. So my max testing ends up being a session of light power cleans for my trainer as well (which I always feel bad about).

Anyway, we proceeded, and the new max -- which is also a new push-press max -- is 48kg! I tried for 49kg, but didn't quite connect the leg drive on the push press and it was literally the second to last minute of my hour session so there was no chance of retrying. I have no doubt that I can do it, though, and probably 50kg as well.

The real breakthrough of this session was that somewhere in there, possibly my second attempt at 46kg (after dropping it on the way up from the squat the first time), I just suddenly figured out the balance point overhead. After that, everything was much easier than the light weights had been. I'm not sure if it's another example of my needing a fair amount of weight to really figure things out, or if it's just a matter of having enough repetitions in a row, but I'll take it.

New max of the time period

Hello, sadly neglected blog.

I haven't been inspired to write too much this month because so much time was dedicated to shoulder rehab and many of my favorite activities have been off-limits in the gym. Band external shoulder rotation moves and new stretches have been extremely effective, but not very interesting blog post fodder. Fortunately, last week saw my return to overhead movements, and this week I will be learning snatch progressions, whee!

While the shoulder was healing, the front squat cycle continued as per usual, and this week was max testing. My new front squat max:
77kg!

I unracked 78kg and started to squat when I lost my nerve, mostly because I felt a little light-headed. It's the first day of Shark Week, which may have contributed, but most likely I just didn't breathe properly. I would have taken another shot at it, but I was already running out of time. It's extremely frustrating sometimes to have a limited slot of gym time vs. the freedom to stay until the job is done.

Another thing that happened over the last 3 weeks is that I returned to ice hockey. I play on a Saturday night league, and I've noticed a little leg tiredness on Mondays. This week was particularly tiredness-inducing because my team was super-shorthanded, with only 8 skaters. I had expected it to take a toll on this front squat max, and maybe it did, but it's hard to tell. 77kg is proportional to my back squat max, but it didn't feel like it was as hard as I'd expect a "real" 1RM max to be.