I've been watching a lot of videos featuring elite Crossfitters, power lifters, and lots of people who have a much greater handle on the Olympic lifts than I do. The snatch is such an elusive lift. There are so many things to be aware of when you're in the movement. Oftentimes I forget one key thing and the end result is shit. But every once in a while I put up a decent snatch, and, like today, I get encouraged that one day I might actually be capable of doing these.
Sara ran us through the Bergener Warmup, ran through the movement a couple of times, and we got setup and got ready to do our best.
WOD
65 – 85 – 85 – 85 – 95 – 95 – 100
So the last one definitely belongs in the Shit category, but leading up to that I felt like I was on to something. Needless to say I was pulling a little less than the guys in the above video today. I didn’t feel as lost as I typically do with the snatch…I just don’t think it comes up often enough for me to gain much ground on this lift.
OK so lets chat for a second about this. There's a web site on this planet that actually refers to me as an athlete. Fine so it says that about anyone who ponies up the 10 bucks to register, but we need to contemplate how historical it is for me to enter ANYTHING as an athlete. Not since little league could it remotely have been said without it being some sort of joke.
Well here I am world!! I'm Reis Baron and I'm registered for the 2011 Crossfit Games. Do I expect to end up in Carson at the Home Depot Center this summer? Not at all...but at the encouragement of Crossfit NYC I'll be representing my affiliate team each week for the next couple of months, as I'm judged on weekly workouts and my times are submitted for regional rankings. Each week the top three results for each affiliate counts towards our score in the "Affiliate Cup". The top affiliates nationwide will compete at the Games.
So today's WOD was the first competition workout. I must've refreshed the Games website 50 times before finally going to bed after midnight. I woke up at my usual time of 4:00 to discover that it was just about as bad as you could imagine.
CrossFit Games Open 11.1
Complete as many rounds and reps as possible in 10 minutes of: 30 Double-unders
15 Power snatches
The Power snatch loads are as follows:
Men and Masters Men 45-49, 50-54: 75lbs/35kg
Women and Masters Women 45-54: 55lbs/25kg
Masters Men 55-59, 60+: 65lbs/30kg
Masters Women 55-59, 60+: 45lbs/20kg
Doubleunders and snatches. It's like Crossfiit HQ had a meeting and said "Oh...Reis is competing?! Well, let's make sure this one is extra shitty with a side of 'fuck you'." But hey, who was I to complain? After all I'm an athlete, right?
Sara paired up with me, which at first and afterward was a great idea, but during the workout it would prove to shave me down to the remnants of my soul. I subbed tuck jumps for double-unders and since we were able to sub clean & jerks for the snatches I sensed that I would switch to those pretty early in the game. As it turned out I didn't realize how right I was...
3...2...1...GO! I was off and, uh, jumping! Man are those damn jumps tough. I could feel my quads slamming into the ground with every rep. When time came to pick up the bar I knew I would only crank out a couple of snatches before switching, and on rep 3 I did exactly that. 13 clean & jerks later, with Sara's encouragement, I was off to round 2. Somehow I finished that round, doing 5 jumps at a time and only a couple of clean & jerks at a time. It was the 3rd round where it started to get real interesting. I remember at some point Sara announced that there were 4 minutes left and I was in sheer agony, literally capable of crying at any second knowing that we were only 60% done. I was in so much pain and there was so much to go. Sara all but pulled every rep out of me in the 3rd round. It was insane. I was completely cooked, and somehow I found these pockets of energy and kept jumping, and getting ahold of the bar. Before I knew it three round were done and I somehow cranked out 11 more jumps. With 3 seconds left I hit the ground, completely finished and spent beyond any level of exhaustion I've experienced at Crossfit yet. It was fucking BRUTAL. Worst. WOD. EVER.
I’m excited that I hit a PR in my horrible snatch. Other than that it was a fairly uneventful day.
(end quote)
Sara was a lot more excited about my form than I was. It's tough to really get a command of this exercise. I think I need to build more strength in my lats before I can really get explosive movement upward. Before I consider higher weight I need to just focus on form when this one comes around. I like how it keeps you thinking about all of the proper positions in the progression of olympic lifts (as outlined by coach Bergener), but other than that I just think I need a lot more experience before I'm feeling good about it.
Either way, a productive day, even if it didn't level me like a lot of the others do.
Something Kevin said at the beginning of today's class was a little discouraging, albeit true. He said that adding weight of any significance when you do an exercise like the snatch (as infrequently as Crossfitters do) will only yield bad results. So he encouraged us to check the egos at the door, focus strictly on form today, and not worry so much about weight. So the result was fun because I am far from a skilled Olympic lifter and I realized I needed to live those words, even though every time I walk in on a skill day I can't help but think "lift heavy". So much for that theory...
We did the ever-famous "Bergener Warmup" with PVC pipes to go through the complete range of motion represented in the snatch (as well as many other lifts). After that we were on our way, starting with the bar alone, then adding minimal weight each round.
My weights were 55 - 65 - 75 - 75 - 75.
By the final set I felt myself losing it...losing the ability to safely get under the bar with the speed necessary to do the exercise properly. So not only did Kevin nail it with his class intro, but he spared me a likely bit of pain (as I'd be inclined to throw some more weight on).
I guess I should never argue with another day to recover more and come back fresh for the average Crossfit thrashing. After doing snatches I can't say I'm nearly as cooked as I am after deadlifts, front squats or hang power cleans. But I progressed enough to know that I hit my limit, and I guess if nothing else I have some valuable perspective when approaching the next snatch skill day.
If I wake up very sore I've learned to just get my body moving and I'll be alright . A couple of times the pain has cost me a day at Crossfit. But I've learned that by the time I get to the Black Box it's almost three hours after I wake, and I'm likely favored to power through a workout without much trouble. If a metcon was on the schedule today that would have been very questionable. The only way I was getting through today was the fact that it was all skillwork...a nice chill day where we focus on the ill-named but ever-powerful "Snatch".
A nice visual breakdown of the Snatch
I was happy to get some weight on the bar and see where I stood with this exercise. I don't remember doing a straight-up power snatch (from the floor)...several times we went over the muscle snatch (starting from the bar at mid-thigh) and we did snatch balances a couple of times in the past (or maybe once in NYC and once in Morristown).
Warmup:
Pullup Attempt (got 1/2 way up with thickest band several times...this is HUGE for me)
30 Kettle Bell Swings (16 kg)
20 Ring Rows
10 GHD Situps
5 mins Double-Under practice
Snatch:
6-7 warmups with bar (45 lb)
65 lbs (x3)
85 lbs (x3)
105 lbs (x3)
I'm pretty sure the WOD called for seven rounds of one rep, but I really wanted to get comfortable with the exercise, and Sara was more concerned with that than adhering to the exact number. She had a lot of helpful comments, and she mentioned that my snatch form was better than my cleans. I felt good with the weight, and I feel like if I pushed heavier it would be borderline. I didn't want to get so heavy that I compromised the form of the exercise (or bring myself any additional pain). It gets meaningless when you do that, even though it's the most common thing I see in other types of gyms.
Either way another productive skill day in the books, and I'll have a solid reference point next time we revisit the snatch. The soreness from yesterday's madness didn't slow me down at all, but you can bet there's some solid rest coming up this weekend before I attack next week's Crossfit schedule.
