Continuous snatching

I have been doing continuous snatches with multiple switches for a while and find them very useful. OTW crowd generally dismisses multiple switches as useless, but this way of training can be used to increase GS snatch numbers.

There are two major physiological components that need to be developed for snatching: cardiovascular and local muscular. Cardiovascular refers to the ability of the heart to support muscular work for prolonged periods of time. That's where VO2 Max comes into play. Muscular component reflects the efficiency of muscles to utilize whatever is needed to sustain work and is better determined by Lactate Threshold. There are plenty of good sources of info on these parameters, and I am not going to discuss them. In short though, VO2 MAx can be improved relatively quickly by high intensity training, while LT benefits more from slow sustained loads and takes much longer to get to the athletes maximum. Apparently many young cross-country skiers have the same VO2 Max as older record holders, however their times are far behind.

In order to improve cardiovascular endurance for snatching you can run. Alternatively you can snatch for long periods of time, and it will be probably more useful as it is more sport-specific. One way is to snatch intermittently. The problem with this way is that after a while you become good at it and need to either increase the cadence or the weight of the bells. Snatching at high speed is a problem because first, it ruins the hands and two, it may lead to the deterioration of the technique. Besides, if the goal is GS it feels better if the set is contimuous.

This may bring us to OTW. The problem with OTW snatches though is that your hands is going to give up relatively fast, thus limiting the total number of snatche and the duration of the workout. Snatching with multiple switches eliminates this problem. By switching every 10 reps - for example - will allow you to specifically address cardiovascular component of performance.

So what about local muscular endurance? Multiple swithching improves that too. How? By switching hands the load on the hands is imtermittent, akin to interval training for these muscle groups. Even though one arm rests while right one snatches, the rest is not enough to allow for full recovery of muscles, and this is especially beneficial for lactate threshold improvement. So with continuous snatching you get the best of both worlds: continuous cardio and intermittent loading of the arms.

This is the basis for snatch progression used in Russia. I came across it a few times on the discussion boards.

Start snatching with switches every 10 reps and aim to achieve 200 to 300 of reps in one set. Alternatively it is ok to choose the number of reps required for the ranking of choice and add 25-30% to it.

When this number of total reps is reached, increase the number of reps between switching. So the progression will look like this:

Switch every 15 reps
Every 20
Every 25, 30 and so on.

Every time the number of reps between switches is increased the goal is to reach the total number of reps in the set. It nakes sense to try max all out GS style - timed or untimed - snatches every time this goal is met. The total time of the set does not matter at this stage.

As soon as one can do the desired number of snatches with one switch, the next goal is the increase in cadence. This is done from the beginning: the pace is set higher than in the previous macrocycle and the sequence is repeated from the very beginning: switch every 10, 15, 20 and so on.

Like any other training programs on this blog this is just the template. The idea is to increase the density of snatching per arm. The weight of the bells may be varied from week to week or from workout to workout. Or not.