Saturday, December 26, 2009

Volume first, then speed.

Back to work today in the max vo2 snatches and still choose to focus on getting my volume back before I start to really push the speed. I am still in the process of figuringout where my center of balance is, and although it is going well I don't want to get greedy and try to really accelerate maximally before I know my back is safe enough to tolerate it.

One of my discoveries of late is that my back injury is as much related to my thoracic immobility as it is to my back. Thanks again to Leslie Wu for pointing out the in "Z" world, the thoracic region is the corresponding area to the lumbar spine. Duh. I should have known that but now i do.

So I went to work there and realized just how rotated I was left to right. LOTS of overhead stick stretches; freestanding, on the floor on my back as well as against the wall( which REALLY showcased how rotated I was). The one against the wall also showed me how interelated it all is because as I stretched myself into "square" I noticed my middle finger going numb, a sure sign of C7 compression. Wow.It went away but I approached that stretch much more gingerly.
Bretzels, standing bow stretches right arm only, behind the back stick stretches with both grips AND reconfiguring my center base by standing on my LEFT leg THEN resetting my right leg down.

Way too much work just to be almost square but hey, whatcha gonnna do? Lie down and watch TV. I would but that hurts too,lol. Another of my five million favorite sayings is that"the only thing harder than figuring something out is remembering to do it" and that goes for me as well as you. I realized last year that I had to set my center base off my left leg but forgot how crucial that was. THings were going so well I thought it had solifified. Guess not.
If I have my base off my stronger, more dominant right leg my thoracic area shifts left and everything goes wrong. Now I know. Just have to not forget again.

Got to Girya early after a 'passive warmup' super hot bath; did all my stretching then started in with light swings with the 12 and 16 kg to warmup. Swings will become a mainstay again, slowly but surely.

Snatches 15:30 freestyle max vo2

12 kg x 7/7 x 3

16 kgx8 x38 sets
304 reps
10994 lbs

This went very well.As usual I started off slow and got faster. I decided since I was not on the clock I had to get 8's at least. I tried not to rest too long between sets. The entire thing took me 30 minutes which is how long it should take for 60 sets on the clock. MY sets of 8 were in the 15 sec range I'm sure but my rest was probably 30 seconds average. Maybe longer at the start and faster towards the end.

Tracy asked my how many sets I was going to do and I told her " one set less than will tighten up my back". I wanted to do 50 but at 35 felt some tell tale sign and settled on 40. I decided to stop at 38 as I really don't want things to go south tomorrow and decided discretion was the better part, etc. etc.

Had I know I would be TWO REPS behind Rob O'Brien in our snatch race I would have done another damn set,lol:

Rob O'Brien 44,860
Mark Reifkind 44,858

One arm swings

20 kg x10/10 x 5 sets

2 reps per arm more than last week. Damn these were hard after snatches.

Clubbell arm casts

10 lbs x 100 reps continuous switching after 10 reps per arm

15lbx100 reps continuous switching after 10 reps per arm

these went great.

Two Hand Clubbell
25lbs x 5/5 barbarian press
x5/5 sheild casts
x5/5 Barbarian sheild casts

great! slowly ramping up the volume of the total workout.

off to yoga in an hour.

datsit.

2 comments:

Rob O'Brien said...

Nice Mark!

I alturnated dips and snatches until I had about enough. No snatches for me tomorrow as well.

Enjoy your weekend!

Rob

Mark Reifkind said...

you too rob.I snatch again on wednesday.

205, 215, 217.5,205 x 1 x 6, 190 x 1 x 3, laterals, rear delts bw pushups

 Well this went great. not perfect but the basic premise worked and I'm happy. I was not optimistic at all about this at all given recen...