Sixteh's training log

[Sixteh]

I've decided to set up a log since adding comments / notes about the workout and such is a bit of a pain through fitocracy, and this way I can verbalize a lot of my thoughts / plans for later scrutiny.

I'm 18 (19 in september), a sophomore in college. I started lifting in october 2010, running SS through march 2011 and finishing at 300x1/220x1/130x5/315x5 sq/bp/ohp/dl. I ran track (pole vault) until that summer, dicked around all summer, rowed in the fall and part of the next winter, and ran SS again to get my strength back last spring. This summer I've started olympic lifting with a coach on a slow cut (167 -> 162lb now, dropping about a pound per week after that initial water weight loss).

I cut my hand open last monday at work, which means no jerks / snatches for a couple weeks. My first competition will (hopefully, if I recover) be on August 5th, at the Connecticut Open.

Current stats:

5'7", 162lb, ~11-14% bf (judging on appearance, I really have no clue. I've been cutting for the beach, pretty much, and it's definitely helped).
Snatch: 60kg? My form is terrible still; I've gotten used to muscling up cleans with my back instead of scooping before the second pull, and this has transferred to my snatch.
Clean & Jerk: 95kg before the injury. I think I could probably clean 100kg with some work on clean pulls, but my jerk is still weak. I have poor stability holding the bar overhead, and my foot positioning is poor (I tend to move my feet inward in midair).
Back Squat: no idea, I've put them on the back burner for olympic work. I added them back in after hurting my hand and squatted an easy 100kgx5x5 last friday.
Front Squat: 100kgx3, 112kgx1
Overhead Press: I suck at pressing. ~135lbx5
Bench Press: I stopped benching in the spring after stalling at 205lbx5 and switched to incline for a bit, which I've since dropped due to the high volume of olympic work.
Deadlift: I haven't deadlifted in forever. Another lift I suck at, probably due to poor form.

My routine lately has been 4 days a week, as follows:
M: Heavy snatches, c&j
Tu: Front squat, overhead press, pull-ups (I've been doing heavy volume on these), accessory work depending on time and how I feel
Th: Heavy snatches, c&j (the team meets on thursdays)
F: Overhead squat, bench/incline press, pull-ups, accessory work (I go out on fridays usually and try not to overdo it so I can still recover).

I'm doing less volume than I would otherwise since I'm cutting and trying to enjoy my summer at the same time as lifting.

My goals are as follows:

By August 5th - 170kg total. If my hand recovers I'm pretty confident I can c&j 100kg, and I'm hoping I figure out the snatch by then as well.
By the end of summer - 180kg total.

I'm planning on running something SS/TM-esque in the fall while bulking up to 170-175lb over 10 weeks (so a bit over a pound per week) and getting my lifts up to:
365/265/150 sq/bp/ohp. I switched to a maintenance diet on my original run of SS once I hit about 165lb with a decent bit more fat than I'm currently carrying. I'm hoping that an additional 10lb of body mass, maybe 60-70% muscle, will let me get a bit more out of LP. If I'm squatting 365 I'm hoping I can front squat ~130kg (~290 lb) and therefore get my olympic totals to 90/115 by either the end of the fall or at least the end of the winter, giving me a chance to qualify for collegiate / junior nationals, though that's a bit of a long shot at the moment given my current numbers.

I also want to achieve a few random athletic goals at some point before I graduate college, including: 10ft broad jump, 1 arm pull-up, bodyweight overhead press, a back flip, and a pretty fast 40yd dash (not sure, maybe 4.6 or 4.7? I ran a 4.9 my last season of track and I'm a good deal more explosive now).

[Sixteh]

Last friday, with essentially one hand and a non-gripping palm:

100kgx5x5 back squat, which felt pretty easy except for the last rep of the last set which took a bit to muscle through.
90lb + the bar x3x3 on a smith machine for a seated overhead press--I used a suicide grip and don't feel comfortable doing it with free weight until my hand is more healed. I'm not sure how much the bar weighs on a smith machine, but the change to the machine, grip, and seated made these feel very difficult.
3x8 pull-ups, hanging from just my fingers.

I felt pretty fatigued (2hrs of sleep wednesday night, plus alcohol wednesday & thursday nights). I had more problems with my breath on squats than the lift itself.

The plan for today:

I'm going to go in and try front squatting and cleaning to see how my hand feels. If it's comfortable I'm going to combine my monday/tuesday workouts and move back squats to tuesday until I can snatch and jerk again, probably in ~2 weeks. If not, it'll be a repeat of last friday's workout. I could definitely use the shoulder work and upper back work.

I'm writing this during lunch, and I'm going in after work. I'll edit this post with the results later:

Cleans: probably up to 80kgx2 or 80kgx3, depending on what my coach thinks. Mostly to preserve technique & explosive strength.
Front squats: up to 100kgx3, hopefully.
Overhead press: same as friday
Pull-ups: 3x8 or so

Results:
Cleans: 40x3,50x3,60x3,70x3,80x3,80x3 - Felt very easy until that last triple, where fatigue started to catch up to me. Form felt pretty good, maybe even a bit better than before since I was so careful about my hand positioning. I must have bumped my stitches at some point because I saw a few drops of blood and decided to stop. Saving squats for tomorrow as well.
OHP: 100lb in plates x 5/5/4 on the smith machine, seated. This variation feels very strange to me still, and I have no idea how much the bar weighs (so I'm going by the weight added). My right tricep started feeling a little sore / excessively pumped (I guess, hard to describe) by the end. This never happened to me on standing presses, so it could be I'm relying on certain muscles in different proportions when seated / smith machine. Still a work in progress.
Pull-ups: 8/8/10. These felt very easy. I'll probably start adding weight to these once my hand feels a bit better.

Plan for tomorrow is squat/front squat, smith incline press, pull-ups. Gonna try clean or snatch high pulls thursday instead of the full lifts to protect my hand.

[Sixteh]

Yesterday:

Squat, low bar, no belt, a few inches below parallel:
40x5, 60x5, 90x5, 100x5, 110x5, 110x5, 110x5, 110x5, 110x5

Felt pretty good. I rested 4-5 minutes between each set, but I felt like my legs were pumped / uncomfortably engorged after just the second work set. Form was perfect until the last rep or so of the 3-5 sets, which each got a little good morning in. On the last set, my back felt weak/fatigued as soon as I got under the bar, and I might have pussed out after the second rep if I were training alone. I really focused on keeping my back tight, and I cut maybe an inch of depth so that I was just a bit below parallel on those last 3 reps, and it felt a lot better. My quads felt pretty tight near my knees when I got out of the car half an hour later, as though they were gonna cramp. I chalked that up to a potassium deficiency.
I did these squats with my ristos on, even though when I ran SS (the last time I squatted heavy, really) I always wore chucks. Could this lead to a more quad-dominant squat? Because I don't really need more quad dominance than I already get from the olympic movements and front squats.

Bench, smith machine:
140lb added 5/5/5

I hate this. I have trouble lining myself up perfectly so that the bar goes right in the usual groove, so my shoulders feel like shit, my arch feels weird, and I seem to always be pushing at an angle. Thankfully my stitches come out thursday, so I can give it about a week to heal some more then go back to my normal pressing movements.

Pull-ups:
8/8/8

I didn't sleep well at all last night (antibiotics gave me an upset stomach so I got maybe 4-5 hours of good sleep) and my lats / middle back are still pretty sore right now. Must count for something.


Plan for Thursday is to try some clean / snatch pulls, see how they treat my hand, and then do some various olympic accessory work. Friday will be squats again, 120kg for 3~5x5 depending how it feels. If I remain unbelted it'll probably be 3x5--when I stopped squatting previously, at ~125kgx3x5 I was using a belt for everything past 2 wheels since that's when I initially started belting up (to get past that sticking point). The fact I hit 110kg for 5x5 unbelted without that much difficulty (I can always add in 2-3 minutes more rest time between sets) has me feeling pretty satisfied, especially since that previous 3x5 number was from the end of last summer, and I spent 3-4 months doing an endurance sport in between.

[Sixteh]

Awesome workout today. I'm really starting to develop the scoop between the first and second pull of the olympic movements instead of leaning back and jumping. Once I get the hang of it my lifts should go way up.

Also, I got my stitches out this morning and replaced them with butterfly strips + a band-aid. I'm giving it another week to heal, gonna try some light jerks/snatches next thursday.

Snatch High Pull:
40x3
50x3
60x3
60x3
60x3
60x3
60x3

Clean (full clean, no jerk):
50x3
65x3
80x3
85x2
90x2 (PR)

Pull-ups: 8/8 -- gonna conserve some energy for squats tomorrow.

What's funny is that the 90x2 felt pretty easy even though I was gassed; I probably could have made a third without too much trouble. It looked hella better than the 2 sets that preceded it, too.

Squats and overhead presses tomorrow.

[Sixteh]

I went out last night and only got 4 hours of sleep. Don't expect to get much rest / recovery tonight anyway, so change of plans. My hand felt much better today and decided to try some jerks. Felt perfect, looks perfect afterward, so I went a little heavier.

C&J:
40x3
50x3
60x3
70x2
80
80
90x -> dropped my jerk, jumped up instead of pushing myself underneath immediately

Front Squat:
60x3
80x3
90x3
100x3 -> felt pretty easy

Jerk (out of the rack, trying to really emphasize pushing myself underneath the bar):
60x3
60x3
60x3
70x3

[Sixteh]

I feel like a baller after today. Left work an hour early to squeeze in a quick workout before heading to the Dream Theater concert in Boston (which was great). I did my entire workout in about 40 minutes, including my warmup stretches.

Snatch:
40x3
50x3
60x2
60x2
60x2

My snatch is terrible still; my pull has improved but I still jump early, causing the bar to loop outwards. I'm pretty bad at getting under the bar as well.

Clean and Jerk (# of reps of clean, then a jerk):
50x3 (power jerk)
70x3 (power jerk)
80x2 (power jerk, though I didn't get under the bar very well so my lower back felt very weak)
85x1 (split jerk)
90x1
95x1
100x1

5kg PR. I even caught the clean an inch or 2 above parallel and rode it down, albeit with a slightly narrower grip than I would've liked. I think I could clean 5+kg more; it's just a matter of getting my jerk down consistently. I felt fantastic today which is why I attempted 100. My previous PR of 95 went up easily, feeling way more stable and clean than my original PR lift, which was questionable at the jerk lockout. Gotta work on really shoving my head through the window at the top of the jerk, getting my front foot a little further out, and timing everything to be more simultaneous.

[Sixteh]

Fuck yes! I don't think I've ever had such a productive 2 days in the gym. I was waiting for when technique would finally start to click into place on my snatches, and today I went from having really messy half-power half-pressed out snatches 60kg to making 2 (essentially) snatches at 70! I almost had 75, too, if only I was a bit more flexible I think.

I walked in feeling pretty tired after the previous workout, but it improved greatly as I worked.

Snatch:
40x2
40x2
50x2
60x2
60x2
60x2 <--finally got the bar where I wanted it
65 <--first attempt
70x <--dropped forward halfway through the overhead squat T_T I was so pissed when I saw the footage
70 <--uglier snatch than the previous attempt, did a half-jerk hop sort of thing to get upright
75x <--caught overhead in position but lacked the flexibility to keep the bar overhead while squatting down, losing the bar forward
75x <--same as the previous attempt only a bit worse
75x <--too tired. Only got the bar up to mid-sternum

The lifts

C&J
50x3
70x2
80x2

I was pretty damn tired so I stopped there.

[Sixteh]

Shitty workout today. Got greedy and thought I could start working on new technique changes without fully cementing the scoop I learned on monday/tuesday.

Snatch
40x3
40x3
50x3
50x3
50x3
50x3
50x3
55x2
60x2

It was until the last 3 or 4 sets before I got my shit together. Really tried to work on suppressing the donkey kick here, but I think my history of low bar squatting and poor shoulder mobility is going to keep holding me back on snatches.

Clean & Jerk
60x2
70x2
80x2
90
95
100x

I was pretty fatigued from snatches going into these. Really tried to keep my feet planted on the ground and was successful until I reached that last set. The 95 was a hard fucking clean, but the jerk felt alright. But I was way too tired to make 100, I managed to squeeze under it but got flattened.

Pull-Ups
8, 8


I made some progress today but I'm a little sad overall. I made both PRs without the rest of my team / coach present and when they were I fucked up.

[Sixteh]

I don't expect to recover well tonight so I kept it pretty simple:

Front Squat:
60x3
70x3
80x3
90x3
100x3

Klokov Presses (decided to try these to help my strength at the bottom of the snatch, these are hard):
20x5
20x5
30x5
40x5
40x5

Pull-ups:
10
8
8

[Sixteh]

Got some good work in today. Really dialed down technique and got a few attempts / reps in at limit weights on my c&j

Snatch
40x3
40x3
40x3
50x3
50x3
60x3

I'm really working on dialing my snatch technique without the donkey kick. These looked pretty decent today.

C&J
40x3
60x2
70x2
80x2
90
90
95
100x
100
105x (got plenty of height on the clean but pulled early and caught it forward)
105x (really bad, I don't know if I'd even count this as a valid high pull)
70x3
70x3

Missed the first 100 on the jerk. Felt weak on the clean. Took a few minutes and nailed the second one easily. I think I was too fatigued to hit my 105 attempts very well.

Overall not a bad workout.