In April, we spent all month practicing drills for the snatch and clean & jerk. Over the course of the month, we were happy to see people moving more naturally and building good habits with the most technically difficult lifts to learn. This month, we will continue our work on these lifts but alter the approach. Last month was not about weight but about learning the form and creating the muscle memory needed to perform the movements quickly and smoothly, hitting the necessary positions for a successful lift.
If you made it in to class today, you had a chance to test out your skills. Of course, you might have found that adding weight makes these lifts a completely different ballgame. Over the course of May, we will work on adding volume to our training. This means that you will have the opportunity to practice the lifts with weight four times a week. We will begin with a relatively low percentage of your max weight for each lift and progressively add as the month goes on. Our goal is to keep the weight light enough that you can really focus on good quality reps. Each week, we will add 5% more weight to your sets. Here is what a week will look like:
Monday: 3×3 Clean & Jerk (3 sets of 3 reps at the same weight, resting in between)
Tuesday: 3×3 Snatch
Thursday: 3×3 Clean & Jerk
Friday: 3×3 Snatch
The weekly weights will increase from 55% to 75% by the end of the month, so it would be helpful to have some idea of the most you have done for these lifts. You will not be maxing out on these lifts during the month; however, by adding plenty of volume to your training with excellent form, you should find that by the end of the month, you have increased your skill level significantly when performing these lifts with weight. Hopefully, that will transfer over to some sweet PRs as well! Oly Lifting work will not impact the amount of strength days we include; they will be done additionally as part of the warm-up.
La Mar (our wonderful oly lifting coach) will be helping us put on an Olympic Lifting event (in the format of a traditional meet) toward the end of the month to put your skills to the test. Stay tuned for details.
What about Wednesdays you ask? We are going to take a break from oly lifting mid week and brush up on our gymnastics skills as a review of our February/March focus. Look forward to more handstand push up, muscle up, and pistol progressions!
