12/6 - Jerks!

First off I have to reiterate how good crossfit is for my state of mind.  Nothing like stepping into the box to take my mind away from any issues I’m dealing with.  It was a great distraction last night – from things that at the end of it all weren’t really that big anyway but that’s a different story entirely…

We had a small class tonight (for a change) and the team warm-up was a team of 1 – 5 of us.  It was fun too.  

Warm-up
5 minute AMRAP
Stack of 20kg plates (2 per person which meant we had 10)
At go each person does one box jump then
Move all plates to the other end of the box – one person must walking lunge this (once) each round
Score = number of box jumps
40

Match worked in with our group and it was his strategy that helped us work so efficiently.  Basically we all lined up behind each other and kept the same order.  The first person in the line would be the one doing the lunges and would rotate to the back for the next round.  It was a lot of fun and also a good way to get moving.

We followed that up with some shoulder mobility before working into the strength session.

Strength
1 rep split jerks
20-30-40-50-55-57.5-60 (PR)-62.5(f)

In summary – I was really happy to get a new PR, I was a bit too eager to push that mark and had an epic drop of the bar (it was stupid). 

Going in I wanted 60kg, there was no doubt I was going to get it (previous PR was 57.5kg).  I did and though it wasn’t pretty I still bumped it up because I had time for one more lift.  What I should have done was a second lift at 60kg (stupid ego of mine).  Anyway, the lift went okay in that I got under the bar and had it overhead (or so I think) but I didn’t have balance and instead of just dropping the bar in a controlled manner I tried to ‘stick’ the landing and held on too long.  The weight ended up starting to twist me and so I dropped the bar and ran from it which at the moment was the instinctual thing to do but in retrospect it shouldn’t have gotten to that point and I know better.  Lesson learned.  What I did was unsafe and thankfully there wasn’t anyone nearby that could have been injured by the bar as it dropped and bounced (since I wasn’t there to control it to the ground).  Apologies to everyone in my class and it (hopefully) won’t happen again, I’ll drop it instead of trying to push it.

WOD
10 mins, on the minute every minute do 2 of the following complexes:
- deadlift
- hang clean
- split jerk (or shoulder to o’head)
- hang clean
* Choose a weight that’s challenging
* No dropping of the bar!
45kg

This WOD was much harder than it would seem to be given that half of each minute (approximately) was rest.  I was sweating like crazy and I hurt quite substantially today.  It was the second clean that made it that much harder. 

The deadlift was easy and straight forward, the first clean wasn’t too bad.  I split all the jerks right from the beginning and they felt solid but then the transition of getting the bar back to the hang position really took its toll.  My collar bone was taking a (literal) bruising every time I cleaned the bar so trying to bring it back down into the rack position as well was a killer.  There were times when I wouldn’t stop in the rack position but rather absorb most of the weight on my thighs (bruises forming there now as well) – this didn’t hurt as much though it definitely wasn’t pretty.  The second clean took a lot out of me and I was pausing briefly before doing the second rep.  My traps are killing today.

It was a good week for me, happy to be making more progress, lessons learned (thankfully with no bad coming of them), feeling good too though noticed a nice little bump on the end of my clavicle on the ‘bad’ shoulder… definitely something to be looked at.  Interesting.