Gotta show up.

If it's Sunday I'm not supposed to be training but we planned on doing Saturday's workout today as we knew it was going to be a very late night,especially for us, on Friday and didn't want to risk anything trying to train on very little sleep and too much wine ;).

Still it felt very weird going to Girya this morning but as I always say, it's consistency that crucial to keeping one's training momentum, not so much the intensity.It's a VERY slippery slope when one decides to start missing workouts and the more you do the weaker your mind gets and the more easy it is to miss the next one.

Until one morning you wake up and it's been weeks or even months and you're totally deconditioned and weak as a kitten. Starting over is way harder for me than just keeping going so that's what I did today. As is usually the case, you never know when you are going to pull a good workout out of the hat and today was a solid one. Go figure .

Plus, I never feel better from not training, just weaker, stiffer and older.And even though I stretched out and did tons of mobility drills yesterday it's just not the same as swinging those freaking cannonballs around. Swinging bells is just hard. But I feel so much better when I'm done.

I also did what I was supposed to do and got there early and spent a solid 30 minutes doing stretches and mobility work.

Played with the jump stretch bands tractioning my hips and shoulders ala Kelly's stuff and it was good. I did lots of what I called scap trap distractions( one arm stretch then straight arm retraction) and retractions when I first started getting into my shoulder rehab but I haven't for awhile. It's good stuff.

Never tractioned my hips before and I still have to play around with it and study more vids as it didnt feel quite right. Did do starretts couch stretch for my quads and hip flexors yesterday and got a surprising release on that area which let my hips open up even more. Nice.

When I went to bed last night I knew I was going to snatch the 24kg today instead of volume or heavy swings first. The message was sent and knew I should listen.Turned out well.

Snatch

12 kg x8/8

16 kg x6/6 x2

20 kg x5/5

24 kgx5/5 x 5 sets

x6/6

x7/7

x8/8

x10/10

112 reps

5936 lbs

I did feel a bit rusty as I haven't snatched the 24 much of late even though my snatch volume is way up since I've started snatch vo2 again.The 16 is just not the same as the 24 and it took a few ( 5) sets before it didn't feel a bit heavy.

Technique, however( from the max day) felt great and bell speed was very good as well as overall total body coordination.

I did start running out of gas though and skipped set 9/9 as I wanted to do a 10 rep set per arm and didn't think I had both sets in me.

One arm swings

24 kg x5/5

28kg x5/5

32 kg x5/5

36 kg x5/5!!!

Nice. I also knew last night that I should not worry so much about one arm swing volume and focus on it as an assistant exercise for my snatches and cleans and get it as strong as I can. this was the first time I've one armed the 36 kg. Left grip was a bit dodgy, actually, and strangely( perhaps more chalk) but the right arm was solid.

Five is definitely my favorite rep number in anything,lol.

Hike swing park

24 kg x 1 x 10 reps

28 kg uphill ladder

1x1

1x2

1x3

1x4

1x5 x 3 sets

what this means is that I would do one hike pass, then an extra swing,then park the bell. then one hike, two swings then park again,Up to five, which was way harder than I thought. Sixth rep would have been slow and that's a no-no. No slow ballistics.

Did it three times and it was killer, especially at the end.

Two clubbell swipes

(2) 10 lbs x 25

(2) 15 x 20

x15

x10

grip was going at the end so I stopped. solid though. Strange how I prefer to do one-two longer sets with this exercise and not "train" it. just the opposite of how I feel about kb swing and snatch work.

post stretch

lots of foam roll, ankle mobility, hamstring stretches and overhead hangs. Finishing with a solid stretchout has really reduced post workout stiffness and DOMS. Nice.

datsit. back on schedule