30 December 2008

BB squat:
50 kg x 5
60 kg x 3
80 kg x 2
90 kg x 5 x 2 sets
90 kg x 3

3 km treadmill run.
Making progress, ran at 9 - 10.5 km/hour

24 December 2008

The leap, albeit small: I have finally found the time (and overcome my lazyness) and filled my Etalon bells with extra 2 kg of leadshot. So now I am working out with 18 kg bells. They don't seem much heavier, to be honest. As the workout progressed though the I became conscious of extra kilos.

We just came back from a restaurant, so I didn't want to try something very strenuous. Due to the lack of imagination I decided, what the hell, I will start Russian EDT all over again with the new bells. So here it was:

2 x 18 kg jerks:
10 x 1 min sets, 1 min rest in between, 8 reps/min

2 x 18 kg LC: 2 min/10 reps
2 x 18 kg cleans: 15 reps

While doing the LC I realized that I really suck at it (even more than at jerks!), the main problem being poor clean technique. As cleans are a good exercise for general purposes I decided to do some. Planning to include them in future sessions.

Total volume - 3780 kg.

Push press

Browsing through the old posts of Rybinsk forum I noticed the thread on schwoong, or push press, assistance drill popular among many Russian gireviks. The initial question was on the technique of this drill. One poster, Mandrigelya, who happens to be a GS coach, replied that he discourages his trainees to do it. According to him the jerk is done mostly with the legs and not the arms. He says once you learn pressing with the arms - the legitimate part of push press - you may have hard time unlearning - or not doing it - during jerks. Interesting.

Working on speed

If you read my blog and posts on IGx you probably know that I am not a big fan of long timed sets, at least at this stage of my GS training. I recently tried 10 minute double jerks with two 16-s and got 65 reps. If you check previous posts, you will see that the focus of my training was building the session volume and had I never done a set longer than 5 minutes before. Now that I can last whole 10 minutes, the question is how to increase the cadence. OTWers generally recommend to re-start from 3 minute sets at higher cadence and work up to 10 minutes or even longer. While this approach is valid, I was curious about other methods and posted the appropriate question on Rybinsk GS forum.

One of the posters (he is MS) suggested the following. The basis is to do multiple sets at high(er) cadence, in one of the two ways.

1. Lift at maximal cadence trying to keep the tempo constant. As the tempo starts decreasing - stop the set and take liberal rest. Repeat. Build up the number of sets in a workout. This particular guy, Valentin, says that his normal tempo with 32-s is about 8-9 per minute, so he does speed sets at about 15 per minute and manages to do about six sets in a workout.

2. Set the tempo of the set slightly higher than your usual and try to keep it constant. When the tempo starts falling - stop. Next set - increase the tempo more, and so on. This type of training is ideally suitable for training with a partner: it becomes more competitive and you can keep the score for each other.

Valentin also recommends doing control sets – 7, 8 or 9 minutes (in different sessions) and doing 3-4 sets of 3-4 minutes at higher tempo.

This is fully in keeping with what I believe works: volume (I guess Pavel must have subliminal influence on me!)

21 December 2008

BB squat:
50 x 5
60 x 3
65 x 5
70 x 5 x 4 sets

3.1 km treadmill run

Still far from reasonable runner, I am making modest progress. Couple of months ago I ran at 6.5 - 7.0 km/hour, today I set the speed at 8.0 and made it fairly comfortably. Taking into account that I run after doing squats, the progress is ok. I am getting to the point where I can understand (though remotely) how some people enjoy running.

20 December 2008

20 kg snatch:
10L/10R
15L/15R
15L/15R
10L/10R
20L/20R
10L/10R

Untimed rest - sort of GTG workout.
160 reps total (volume 3200 kg)

16 December 2008

BB squat:
50 kg x 3
70 kg x 2
80 kg x 2
90 kg x 5 x 5

3.2 km treadmill run

14 December 2008

2 x 16 jerks:
20 reps/1.5 min

2 x 24 jerks:
12/10/10/10/10/10/10/10/6/7/5 = 100 reps total (!)
Fairly fast (8-10 reps/min)
liberal rest in between the sets

Total training volume - 5440 kg (11968 lbs., I wonder if there are smaller units to make it look more respectable :)

10 December 2008

16 kg snatch:
arm switch every 10 reps, 200 reps total
about 15 min

BB squat:
50 kg x 4
65 kg x 4 x 4

6 December 2008

2 x 16 kg jerks: 10 min/50 reps
2 x 16 kg jerks: 5 min/35 reps (sprint on the last minute)

24 kg OA Press: 10L/10R

3 December 2008

2 x 24 kg jerks:
10 x 1 min sets
1 min breaks
5 - 7 reps/min
58 reps total

Sweaty... Will call it "easy session"...

1 December 2008

BB squats: 85 kg x 5 x 5
3.5km treadmill run

Main observation: squats progressing better than double jerks.