Maybe if you walk through the front of TwinFreaks CrossFit you'll see a whiteboard with three wavy lines running asynchronously along a horizontal axis marked with the first initials of the twelve months of a single year. That was my first, and maybe my last, attempt to explain how I attempt to periodize training as a three sport athlete.
While I think I know what I'm doing, it's hard to implement my training in practice, and sometimes an intelligent cycle will not fit in the available time before an attempt. Following the Colorado Masters CrossFit Open and preceding the USAPL state meet, I was able to fit six weeks of a nine week peaking cycle. I knew I would not be at my best, but this seemed like a good opportunity to get more meet experience and test my lifts before undertaking the next cycle leading up to the 03/04/12 NASA meet.
I decided that since it couldn't possibly be a perfect meet, I'd relax and not worry about anything - body weight, wraps, hitting big numbers - really I didn't think much about the meet at all until 6:30 am Sunday when I deduced that my inability to find my gym bag meant it must be at TFCF. I had located my singlet, deadlift socks, and ammonia the night before, so worse case scenario was that I would go to TFCF, pick up the Purple Power Belt, and carry everything in a shopping bag. Actually had I not in fact found the gym bag, I'd have achieved a nice thematic unity with a shopping bag as I was already wearing two t-shirts of questionable origin since it was so cold.
.D.B.1, D.B.2, and I arrived at the meet site in plenty of time to weigh in several pounds over 181, and to have all my t-shirts fail the equipment check. I had to pay $15 for a Rocky Mountain Lifting Club t-shirt, and while the RMLC is a fine organization, I wasn't happy being compelled to support them.
My goals for the meet were so:
1) Test the raw squat and try to find something close to a 1rm
2) Try to PR the bench big
3) Feel out the sumo deadlift with some real weight, and if possible push above 400 pounds,
And it all went like this:
Squat: we learned last July that the USAPL deserves its reputation for merciless judging in the squat, so I opened at 150 Kg, which I should be able to do naked at 4:57 am when I get up and without a warm up.
First attempt: 150 Kg good lift.
Second attempt: 160 Kg good lift.
Third attempt: 165 Kg good lift. Honestly I blew this. I had no idea what I could do without wraps since I usually start with loose wraps right around 150 Kg in training. I left way too much on the platform in the squat. I probably should have taken a second attempt around 170 Kg, and a third around 177-180 depending on what 170 felt like.
Bench: I opened at 107.5 Kg which is more aggressive than I"ve ever been, but I thought it was a reasonably sure thing. Good Lift.
Second attempt: 115 Kg I got sloppy on the descent, and the bar was headed for my stomach. I was able to pull it back into a decent position and drive it to lock out for a good lift and a meet PR.
Third attempt: I tried 122.5 Kg. This felt much better than 115, but when I got the "press" command, it stalled about 4" off my chest. As sometimes happens, the bar started a death arc towards my face, and the spotters did a fine job of jumping in before I lost any teeth. No Lift.
Deadlift:
As far as I know, all powerlifting federations allow the deadlift to be performed without a t-shirt. I've always just kept on my t-shirt, and I even thought going shirtless showed a lack of class. But hey, I had an opportunity to protest my forced acquisition, and I took it.
I opened at 160 Kg which was again more aggressive than I've been, but I needed something in this range if I was going to PR. The bar got too far in front of me which is often the end of a sumo pull, but I was able to grind it to lockout. In the sense that it got three white lights, it was a good lift, but it was a serious blow to my confidence since I thought an opener should be no problem to lock out.
Second attempt: We knew I needed 175 Kg to total over a thousand pounds, so I thought I should give it a go. Here I had no problems.
Third attempt: It was a long day and the animal in me wasn't coming forth. I was more affected by the horrible first lift than energized by the smooth second, and I tried 182.5 Kg - really the smallest unit that would get me over 400 pounds and break any mental barrier I had suffered there. This went up fine, and I was left feeling that I really should have tried 190 Kg.
The all important third deadlift can be seen here:
<iframe src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/33175768?title=0&byline=0&portrait=0&autoplay=1" width="398" height="299" frameborder="0" webkitAllowFullScreen mozallowfullscreen allowFullScreen></iframe>
The deadlift has been a struggle for me since blowing up my back over a year and a half ago, and while 402 pounds is really just enough to qualify me as a healthy adult male, it took a lot of hard work for me to get there. I converted to the sumo deadlift some time ago, and in addition to having a fear of pulling, I had difficulty learning the sumo pull which is surprisingly technical for a slow lift. Since I am in general weak off the floor, I have to angle my feet apart quite wide and attempt to externally rotate my hips hard. This leads to a precariously balanced position, and I try to use the teeter-totter pull where the lifter attempts to pull back as much as up. Too many times in training I fell on my ass or on my face trying to get this right, and it felt great to have the last one groove almost perfectly.
Like it was told to me, if you're not falling down you're not trying. Lifting can be frustrating, but it eventually rewards patience.
Thanks to D.B.1, D.B.2, the huge guy who passed around the bottle of Nose-Tork, and those who show varying degrees of interest in what I try to do. At this point I know that I'd be fine falling on my ass alone for five years, and so it's huge to get a simple, "how did it go?"
Yeah, you know who you are :)
No comments:
Post a Comment