*Disclaimer...I am crabby today, so I apologize now if the tone of this post reflects that.
Mark is awesome and he's making me a different dinner from him because I didn't like the salmon. I feel bad, but he insisted. :( While I'm waiting, I'm snacking on some broccoli and guacamole. I found that I was very hungry today between meals. Breakfast every morning has been tiding me over pretty well, but not today.....I was out of the office (away from my snacks) and starving by 10. I stopped and got a coffee at Speedway to help take my mind off of it - just plain 'ol coffee with a little bit of cream and cinnamon. For lunch I ate the rest of my scallop dinner from last night (still really good) and a few pieces of chicken lunchmeat. I didn't snack in the afternoon, so by the time I got home I was starving. Before we went to the gym I had an orange.
Dinner has ended up being 1/2 a sweet potato with Irish butter and cinnamon + some chicken.
Tonight we did to the Olympic WOD.
Clean and Jerk: 50% x 3, 60% x 3, 70% x 3, 80% x 3, 80% x 3, 70% x 3 ....my shoulder pain started IMMEDIATELY once I put weight on the bar. I struggled through a couple of sets and kept stretching after each one, but finally I mentioned the pain to Cori. She watched me and discovered that when I was doing the jerk part of the movement (blah blah..that's what she said...blah blah blah) my shoulders were rotating forward - causing the pain. She reminded me to stand tall when I do that and drive from the hips. The next 2 sets were much less painful. As far as weight...I was pissy about it, but if I'm pain free going forward - that's ok.
Hanging Snatch: 50% x 3, 60% x 3, 70% x 3, 80% x 3, 80% x 3, 70% x 3...these felt pretty good...I'm just working up in weight now. My 80% reps were about 40 lbs.
At some point Mark came over to ask how I was doing and I got all sassy with him out of frustration. I'm not sure how he puts up with me when I do things like that. Clearly, its not personal, but I am such a pain in the ass sometimes. Almost in tears, I tell him that I'm so sick of not moving up in weight and stuff ....its the same thing EVERY week for me. What the hell am I doing wrong?! Because he knows that he cannot talk me out of this mood right now, he wisely walks away and let's me do my thing. :P
Backsquat: 50% x 5, 60% x 5, 70% x 5, 80% x 5, 80% x 5, 70% x 5.... My 80% weights were about 82 lbs, which is pretty much on target with my 1RM being 100 lbs or so. My legs were pretty spent at this point, but my last set of 70% felt really easy.
Tomorrow is a needed off day for me. Two things I've noticed are probably holding me back from making gains on the OLY side: 1) I do not want to fail and bail on the bar in front of anyone....so if a weight seems very challenging...there a good chance that I will psych myself out and then not try it. I *have* to get over this if I'm ever going to improve. 2) I haven't learned what it feels like to know a weight is challenging and how much I can do to push through it. To explain that better I mean that I see people who squat down with a weight that is crazy heavy and then they fight it the WHOLE way up...grunting..making faces...really pushing themselves to get it. That is not me so far. I am as quiet as a mouse in there. I haven't turned on "the fight" yet. Somehow that has to happen, too. Improvements will not come if I'm not willing to really push it. I don't know what's going to turn these 2 things around yet, but I hope I can figure it out soon.
I did a few band pull-ups while I was weighting for Mark to finish and also some negatives. I was tired and I probably did about 10 of each before I was done for the night.
Erica is a HUGE pain in the ass!!! Ok not really... but I feel bad when she gets frustrated. I have some idea what it's like cuz I didn't start that long ago with CrossFit, but it's hard to verbalize that sometimes and like today I have to let her work herself out of it. We'll just have to keep practicing techniques. As slow as we need to. I know she'll probably get impatient with it and, by association, me, but I think it will be worth it in the long run.
I didn't have an on ramp program when I started CF. I had a rough idea was the clean and the snatch were and just sorta made them work for me. Over time at BTB I refined them bit by bit with some help from trainers and friends there. But I didn't get a good appreciation for the intricacies and the technique until I took an Oly seminar one weekend with CJ Stockel in Atlanta.We spent all day with a PVC pipe drilling movements and positions. I was more sore from that than most WODs! But it also taught me some valuable lessons as a trainer and a trainee. Those "simple" repetitions created some important muscle memory, corrected some flaws, and improved my timing on the lifts. Not to say I was suddenly proficient at them, I'm still not, but I truly think I was an order of magnitude or two better than before.
Since then I've taken my Level 1 CF cert (which didn't have as much specificity in the movements) and my USA Weightlifting cert. The latter provided additional coaching points and movements to drill. And yet again the emphasis was on technique. PVC was used then the empty bar. All reinforcing movement patterns that helped improve my lifts. I still have a long long way to go, but I do appreciate having the little background I do have. My goal is to share some of that knowledge with Erica. I know she may not be as into CF and Oly lifting as I am, but I know it will help her reach her own personal goals in the end if she spends some extra time drilling the hell out of these movement!
Meals today were delicious. Breakfast was bacon and eggs. Like Erica, it didn't really hold me over. I had the same amount of eggs (3) as yesterday and 2 pieces of bacon instead of roughly half a chicken sausage. I even added some blackberries to my meal but still I was starting to get hungry at like 10 or 1030ish this morning. I had packed a lunch today but one of my coworkers wanted to go out. I found a Flat Top Grill in the loop and convinced him to try that. I made my dishes 99% paleo... The first dish had a bunch of veggies and chicken with just a single scoop of the spicy lime basil sauce. It was gluten free and soy free but it did have sugar according to the website. My other dish was more veggies and this time pork but with only "garlic water" as the sauce. I didn't finish this dish cuz I was plenty full.
It is simply ridiculous how many things on the buffet contained soy or gluten (and probably high fructose corn syrup too!). These additives/chemicals/whatever have infected (for lack of a better word) so many things in the supermarket. Even some of the meat choices at Flat Top and Chiplotle may be gluten free but because of some marinade or another contains soy! It's kinda frustrating to eat out when you get more than what you think you're ordering.
Ok off my second soapbox for the evening.
Dinner for me was salmon (now two pieces... see above), some broccoli, and half a sweet potato. I'm trying to limit fats and up carbs post workout to try and some of that glycogen replacement. I think by the time I've eaten I'm probably outside of that window (20-45 min post workout), but thats ok for tonight. In the future I hope to have more meals prepped to be able to hit that window.
My lifts today all felt pretty strong, relatively speaking. My C&J numbers were solid and I felt good there. I'm still having technical issues on the snatch and I was initially thinking that today being a hang snatch day would be helpful. I still felt pretty frustrated with the movement. I'm missing that explosive hip opening that fires the bar overhead. Cori was telling me i need to start "jumping" even though it's not technically correct. I'm fast enough to beat the bar to the bottom, but I'm not powerful at all and I know it will stunt my progression on the lift. After talking with her I tried my heaviest set of the night. my first attempt I missed. The next two however things must have just clicked because the bar shot overhead so fast that I wasn't ready to catch it. My timing in the hole was way off but I was able to recover and complete each rep. I couldn't repeat that "pop" the rest of the time though. I know what it feels like though now and can at least aim for that. Back Squats were difficult at the 80% mark tonight. I hit my limit on the 5th rep of the 2nd set. I know I lifted heavier on Monday night so that may have affected tonights lift. I believe I am doing the low bar back squat correctly but hopefully any little flaws will be corrected next weekend.
Here were my numbers (in kg) for the night. Percentages were given in Erica's portion above.:
C&J: 45, 54, 63,72,72,63
Hang Snatch: 26*, 34*, 40, 45, 45, 40
Back Squat: 70, 82, 95, 110*, 110*, 95
*These were a kg or two above or below the % based weight.
I didn't get to the RDL's in time tonight.
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