Friday's Final Session of the Week

I was training with Jason again today, he's following training advice from Victor Costa. It's not really applicable to Olympic lifting, but there's some interesting stuff there.

Today I started off with the usual shoulder rehabbing exercises. I'm finding my shoulders are pretty sore, so I might give them a rest tomorrow.

After some overhead squats and snatch drops I moved straight on to cleans. I only did a few warm up sets, and then moved onto the full clean and jerk. My lockout is still pretty bad, but I mainly put this down to the fact that my shoulders are fatigued. I finished the session with some squatting, which went pretty well. Here's what I did-

Clean & Jerk - 1+2*40, 1+2*50, 1+2x55, 1x60, 1x65, 1x70
Front Squat - 3x60kg, 3x70kg, 3x80kg, 3x90kg, 3x100kg
Back Squat - 3x60kg, 3x70kg, 3x80kg, 3x90kg

I left it at that. I would have liked to do a final set of 100kg for the back squat. But I was tight on time. Here's a video of my 70kg C&J, comments would be appreciated. I'm pretty sure my front leg needs to go forward more for a start. (Forgive the quality, my phone sucks!).



I won't be training again until Tuesday, as I'm working most of the day Monday. I should be training in Dublin next week, Hercs hopefully; if the roads are drivable that is.

Thursday - More nostalgia!

Today I was training with my first ever training partner, Jason. The two of us started back when we were 15, in another small local gym; learning the ins and outs of bicep curls, tricep extensions and ab exercises. Jason's more into the bodybuilding aspect of training, and I don't think I'll ever convert him to Olympic lifting! He currently weighs around 85kg at 5'8".

I didn't do any lifting today. I focused on my shoulder rehabbing exercises, and did a lot of bar work. I did the usual thoracic spine extensions, my flexibility is improving in these day by day. I also did 3x1 minute bar hangs. Even though it wasn't intended, these are really improving my grip. They also give me a great lat and pec stretch.

I did 5 sets of scap push ups as well. I got Jason to video my first, which made me realise my technique was woeful. So I worked on that, and got him to video me again. Here's a video, feel free to leave any constructive criticism. I know my hips are dropping when they shouldn't, I'm going to work on adjusting that.



That was it for today. I plan on doing some full clean and jerks tomorrow, and plenty of squatting. Should be well recovered for it.