Tuesday 1.10.17 “Quality is not an act. It’s a habit.”

1. CLEAN PULL
5 Sets, resting 1:00 between:
2 Pausing Clean Pulls
Pause at just below the knee for one second. At this position, focus on the shins being vertical, with a rigid mid-line.
After the pause, finish with an aggressive drive through the ground and a powerful shrug at the top. Keep the arms long as loose – they do not bend. On the “clean high pull”, the elbows bend. On the “clean pull”, they stay long.
Purpose here is to train positioning off the floor, priming our movement for the conditioning piece to follow.

Set #1 – 80% of 1RM Clean
Set #2 – 90% of 1RM Clean
Set #3 – 100% of 1RM Clean
Set #4 – 105% of 1RM Clean
Set #5 – 110% of 1RM Clean

2. BENCHMARK – “GOOD VIBRATIONS”
5 Rounds for Max Reps:
1:00 – Row for Calories
1:00 – Power Cleans (135/95)
1:00 – Barbell Facing Burpees
1:00 – Rest
Total repetitions added together, across all five rounds is your score. Log to the leaderboard below.
This will be used as a benchmark for our current cycle, “Racehorse”. We will be re-testing in mid-February, before the Open.

Strive for consistency across all five rounds in each movement. On the power clean, we are looking for a weight that we could complete 15+ repetitions unbroken with if we had to. Striving for a moderate load where a single repetition is always there, regardless of fatigue.
On the row, aim for for a pace that is a couple seconds slower than our 2K pace. Whats equally as important as our pace here is our transition to the barbell to start our first repetition. At the start of each row minute, “sprint start” – give a quarter pull, a half pull, and two full strong pulls to get the calorie count immediately up to speed.
Unless we are very strong on the cleans, fast singles from the onset (dropping from the top each rep) is a wise strategy to take. This can preserve consistency in not only our cleans, but also our ability to perform burpees in the following minute.
If we are looking to complete touch and go cleans, focus on short rest periods. 1:00 moves quick. If we need more than 5 seconds of rest, we likely are biting off too large of sets.
The last piece to consider here is our equipment. If our plates bounce excessively when we drop the bar, we want to take this into account. Fast singles with a very bouncy barbell can result in more time spent chasing weights, as opposed to completing reps. The difference in bounce between “high temp” plates and “dead stop” plates can be significant. In the Open, having access to such dead-stop plates can be something to look into, especially if there is a workout where fast singles can result in our best score.
On the burpees – footwork. Dial in the methodical step-up and jump over. No wasted motion. Bring the lead foot close to the bar to minimize that hop over. Two steps max to turn around and drop, with the controlled breath up top. The tighter our motions here, the less effort we expend per repetition. The less effort we expend per repetition, the more we preserve ourselves for the duration of the 5 rounds.