Ellyn was right..

What a great way to start of the blog this evening than with this dashing young man! Arty threatened he'd return the favor of me recording him in the ice tub- so I might as well make his video as blatantly obvious as I can :) So enjoy his pain and embarrassment- and show your friends too! 

Thanks for being a good sport Arty!

I don't know where to go after this! I feel like the post cannot get any better! Maybe I should have ended with this video... oh well, I've gone too far now.  Practice today was pretty successful.  I'm making progress.  And getting better.  Not perfect, but better and for now that's perfect.  On the workout Ellyn sent the team there was the option of snatch or clean and jerk for the first exercise. Anyone have a guess as to what I did. Yup. Snatch. It's not even an option. But I am okay with that.  

Snatch today was 5 sets of singles with one min rest between. My snatch is getting better- but I don't have a regular thought process or pattern to consistently rehearse.  That means I think of EVERYTHING.  hips under. hold breath. feet flat. no heels. writs turned in. back tight. head up. but not too far.  focus. confidence. hips through. dont bend your knees. hips and shoulders rise together. stay tight. finish fast. catch low. feet and hands at the same time. pull back on the bar. shrug up. keep the bar close. push with your feet. elbows to ceiling. finish the pull. and somewhere in between all of that the lift happens.  There's too much going on.  Ellyn and I talked about that today- how were working on fixing the lift from the ground up and I need to pick a few (two) things to focus on and perfect those.  I made 4 out of my 5 lifts today and the one I missed was my first one. Right there was an opportunity to either get all crazy and down on myself or to use the miss as a prep for competition... what happens when I'm at a meet and I miss a lift? It can't ruin the rest of the meet.  I think I did a pretty good job of bouncing out of the first miss because the rest of practice could have gone in a completely different direction.  I also  think it was good to be shaken a little- it reminded me I needed to focus on every lift, every set, every rep.  

After snatch we moved to jerk recovery and I had a 5kilo PR from last week.  Trying to get more comfortable with the positioning of my feet with the jerk and continually pressing UP on the bar.  I think I only missed one rep of one set- and it was at a lighter weight.  I'm not sure if I felt less confident about this lift today than I did last week when I did it (for the first time) because I was thinking about the technical aspect and positions more than before.  I think last week I was waiting and feeling the positions (not over analyzing) more than I was today.  Today my mind and body were trying to remember the positions last week and trying to make them happen instead of just letting them happen.  There seems to be a fine line between listening/feeling what your body is doing and not over thinking the lift.  Over thinking can be similar to what I wrote about my thought process for snatch or it could be thinking about 2 or 3 things instead of just one.  

Today was the first time I had done snatch recovery with Ellyn.  Before today I would be at Wake trying  to do what I thought was a snatch recovery and not really sure if anything was going right... Doing the snatch recoveries in Kelly, I was in a solid, stable and strong at the bottom of the lift (which is something I have never felt while snatching).  Hopefully the positions I got into doing snatch recoveries will translate into my positions while snatching.  It's during these lift specific exercises, when I feel what a good snatch or what a good clean and jerk position is reassures me Ellyn knows what she's doing :).  Here's a video of my last set of snatch recoveries: made the first one, missed the second, reset and finished solid on the third.  

This may be an appropriate time to inform everyone that I often ask Ellyn, during practice, if she's sure about a cue she gives me or if she's sure I was doing something wrong (crazy feet).  Sometimes I don't like to believe her when she says I'm rocking back on my heels or pulling too soon or any of the awful habits I have because I feel like I haven't done them. video often humbles me.  And time and time again she's right. But I just have to ask if she's sure... just in case :) 

I wasn't sure how I was going to do today with the front squats.  Last time I front squatted it was awful and I was nervous it was going to happen again. Or the same feelings of I'm not strong enough to do this would come back and take over.  I'm not sure how I blocked those thoughts out... maybe it was one of Ellyn's cues she uses often: just this one... So I focused on just this one rep, just this one set, just. this. one. And it worked. Again Ellyn was right. It looks like that's something I'll have to get used to :) nogodeacs.