Week 8, Day 2

Snatch: 2RM
Front squat: 2RM
Jerk: 2RM

Week 8, Day 1

Clean and jerk: (2+1)RM
Back squat: 3RM
Push-press (behind): 3RM

Piper has been working hard and making some HUGE gains this cycle!

I don't remember where exactly it was, but recently I read a nicely worded statement about training that went something like "you don't get stronger by doing hard workouts, you get stronger by recovering from hard workouts". This is a really nice way of summarizing the way the body adapts to training to make us stronger and achieve our goals, and the principles of adaptation upon which a lot of our training is designed. Sure, if we don't ever train hard, we won't have anything to recover from, and the body won't adapt and get stronger. You don't get stronger by NOT lifting weights. But on the flipside, if all you ever do is beat yourself into submission without giving your body a chance to recover, it'll be hard to make much progress.

We've been beating ourselves up pretty good over the past few weeks (especially last week), and it's time once again to let ourselves recover a little bit so that we can get stronger and attack the next three weeks with the same intensity we have been. Yes, that means that it's time for a "deloading" or "low volume" week. This week is intended to be super low volume. That means no back-off sets, and getting to "heavy for the day" efficiently and moving on when you feel like you've hit it. The goal this week should be no (or minimal) misses, ESPECIALLY on the squats. Squat misses are extremely taxing, and we want to avoid those in general so that we can continue to hit it hard week after week, but we especially want to avoid them this week so that we can recover from all the taxing training over the past few weeks.

This week especially, we want to remember that "RM" just means "heavy for the day". I'm not worried about adding weight from last week on anything. If you're feeling it, then great don't hold yourself back, but if you're not then there's nothing wrong with hitting something even a little lighter than last week. Do what you can, and move on. We are going to be trying to add weight every week for the next three weeks, so there will be plenty of time to hit big triples/doubles/singles!

Week 7, Day 4

Snatch: 1RM
Clean and jerk: 1RM
Back squat: 2RM, 95% x 2 x 2, 90% x 2 x 2

Week 7, Day 3

Snatch: 5 x 2 (or Tuesday's complex)
Clean and jerk: 5 x 2 (or Thursday's complex)
Sots press: 5 x 3 (or Tuesday's front squat)

Week 7, Day 2

Clean and jerk: (2+2)RM, 95% x (2+2) x 2, 90% x (2+2) x 2
Back squat: 4RM, 95% x 4 x 2, 90% x 4 x 2
Strict press (behind): 4RM, 95% x 4 x 2, 90% x 4 x 2

Week 7, Day 1

Snatch + hang snatch (knee) + OHS: (1+1+2)RM, 95% x (1+1+2) x 2, 90% x (1+1+2) x 2
Front squat: 3RM, 95% x 3 x 2, 90% x 3 x 2
Power jerk: 3RM, 95% x 3 x 2, 90% x 3 x 2

Hawk shrugging UNDER the bar to pull himself DOWN.

I want to take a moment here to reiterate an important and maybe misunderstood point about weightlifting technique: pulling under the bar. Here's the deal. Your potential to snatch and clean and jerk is MUCH higher the lower you can receive the bar. Here's a fun (and educational) exercise you can do: go to YouTube and watch the full event replays for the 2012 London Olympics, and count how many power snatches and power cleans you see (lifts received and STOPPED above parallel). My guess is ZERO. This is not because there is some rule that states that the lifts must be performed with a squat...that's just the way that weightlifters over the years have found to lift the most weight possible (the split snatch and split clean used to be popular before lifters figured out that squatting allowed more weight to be lifted). If you pay close attention to these high-level lifters, you'll notice that the bar never gets much higher than the level of the hips. At maximal weights, that's just as high as they are able to lift the bar. Squatting is then necessary to get low enough to receive maximal lifts that cannot be driven higher than the hips (notice that language, "driven" higher than the hips...I did not say "pulled" higher for a reason!).

Okay, so high-level lifters can lift more by receiving in a squat than above parallel. Now, I'm sure some of you are thinking "but Coach, I can power snatch/clean way more than I can snatch/clean with a squat! Does this just mean I am different, and my potential is higher with a power snatch/clean?" Heck no! It either means you're not a proficient enough lifter yet to fully realize your current potential in a full snatch/clean, or you need to improve your squatting strength, or both! Whatever the case, the prescription is simple: get more proficient and comfortable receiving the lifts low, and do more squatting. Does this mean that pulling power is over-rated and the power versions of the lifts are useless? Absolutely not. The power versions of the lifts are great for developing top-end speed and pulling power, and as less taxing versions of the lifts in certain points in the training, but they should be thought of as assistance exercises and not substitutes for real snatches and clean and jerks!

Assuming I've convinced you that you want to receive big lifts low in a squat, we can get on to the main point of this discussion: pulling under the bar. I mentioned above that high-level lifters really only drive the bar to about the level of their hips. Now, here's an interesting dilemma...you want to get yourself under that bar, and you need to do it before the bar drops too low. "Dropping" or "falling" under the bar is NOT sufficient to accomplish that. Why? Because it is a fact that all objects in free-fall (at the same location on the Earth, with no other forces acting) accelerate at the same rate. That means if I drop a heavy barbell at the level of your hips at the same time that I drop you, your hips are not getting any lower than the bar, and both your hips and the bar are coming crashing down to the ground at the same time! So, dropping with the bar is out. What to do then? PULL under the bar, and do so BEFORE the bar starts falling. With an aggressive enough vertical drive with the legs and hips, the bar will keep some upward momentum beyond the point at which you hit full extension of the legs and hips, and will continue to travel upwards for a moment. By immediately reversing direction after hitting full extension, you can then get a head start on that heavy bar and be on your way down before it starts to fall. Here is where that pull under comes in: in order to reverse direction and pull under the bar quickly (more quickly than the bar is going to fall), you've got to leverage yourself around that barbell by actively pulling yourself DOWN. This can occur because we unweight our feet once we've reached full extension (and move them out to our squat/receiving stance while they are unweighted) and then pull ourselves down and around that heavy barbell. The barbell remains more or less fixed in space for a short moment and we get to use it as if it were a fixed bar to pull on. Pretty sweet deal. This is really what we are practicing in the Burgener warm-up (or my variation of it) everyday. The snatch pull and snatch high pull and muscle snatch are really just teaching what the arms do when you are on your way down, and should not be thought of as how to pull the bar up. If your arms are bent, you should already be on your day down under the bar! Check out the photo of Hawk above doing just that: he is clearly shrugging his shoulders and pulling with his arms, but his feet are off the ground. He is on his way down under the bar, and actively pulling himself down around the bar to get there before the bar does!

Week 6, Day 4

Snatch: 1RM
Clean and jerk: 1RM
Back squat: 2RM, 95% x 2, 90% x 2 x 2