Hurdle Hops and Me: It's Complicated...

                                                                                      

   Before we get started here, take a second and check out Houston Texans linebacker and steroids aficionado Brian Cushing performing a 64" hurdle hop:

   

   I'll spare you the suspense and tell you that mine don't look like that.  I am, however, getting better.  We're slowly moving through these progressions and I'm starting to feel more confident with this movement.  When we first started working on them, Justin told me to think of it like I was driving for a layup.  Um...I'm a 5'7" white, Jewish kid from the suburbs.   I didn't spend a ton of time in the low post making layups.  Don't get me wrong- I was an active kid and I played other sports-  just not a lot of basketball and when I did play I didn't do much driving to the lane.  So jumping isn't a natural movement for me.  Having said all of that, these jumps felt pretty good today...

A. hurdle-hop: 3 consecutive x 8; rest 2-3 minutes (allow 2 steps)

B. hang squat clean cluster: 60% x 1.1.1 x 5; rest 2 minutes
C. kb squat jump: 32kg x 6 x 3; rest 3-4 minutes

D. farmer carry: 45 seconds tough x 3; rest 2 minutes (go back up in weight - slightly)
+
3 sets:
12 glute ham raise
15 ghd sit-up
rest 2 minutes

    A.  31" x 1, 34" x 1, 35" x 6.  The two step approach felt better than before and I felt like I was building on the work that we had done last week with a one step lead in.  I was able to clear 36" a couple times but my knee knocked the bar off a few times as well so I just went back down to 35" and stayed there for today.

   B.  60kg x 5.  These felt very good today.  It's been about 4 months since I've done any Olympic lifting movements at all so it was nice to get these back into training.  I focused on not pulling too early, which is a habit of mine in the clean, and on moving my elbows fast under the bar.  Don't tell Justin, but 60kg is slightly higher than 60% of my last known 1RM clean but these felt super light anyway.  

  C. The kb squat jumps felt very explosive, especially in the last set.  I was concentrating on staying back in my heels during the squat portion.

  D.  I went back up to 122lb/hand for the farmer's carries.  I got a relatively easy :45 for the first two sets but the last set was :37 + :8.  I couldn't hold onto the bar anymore and it slipped out of my hands.  Next time I should figure out a way to do something in between 117lb and 122 so that I can get all of the time for all of the sets.  This will involve combining the lb and kg plates and, I'm telling you now, I'm going to mess up the math on that.

   I ran out of time and didn't get to the assistance work today so maybe I'll toss that in for tomorrow. 

   For few months I've been doing some coaching at CrossFit 847, mostly on Friday nights when I'm not at work.  They follow a pretty reliable formula of skill, strength, WOD with their programming and tonight the skill was rope climbs.  This is definitely one of my weaker technical moves.  I'm strong enough to pull myself up with just my arms, and the very few times rope climbs have come up in my programming that's just what I did.  When it comes to using your feet and properly and efficiently climbing the rope, well, that's another story.  Will Howard was kind enough to give me a bit of a crash coarse today in rope climbing technique and teaching progressions and I'm glad to say that the classes were a success.  I even managed to coach a few people to their very first rope climbs.  And, selfishly, I got much better at climbing the rope tonight myself.