front squats=pain=improvement

another day another dollar! I mean that in every sense of the word.  another split shift at the Y with exciting news to follow for y'all in the next few days... and practice and more front squats.. ohhh baby i'm going to have amazing quads!! as hard and as awful and as painful as the squats were today, it's cool to look at the numbers i was struggling to hit a few months ago (anyone remember the complete failure (and meltdown) with sets of 3 at 105k in September??) well i use today's lifts at 110 for 3 sets of 5 as proof positive of my progress. 105 is just a faint memory... but now the fears(?) of the 105 have moved to the difficulty/reps/intensity of the front squat workouts i've had recently.

the first time i did sets of 10, 8, 6, 5, 3, 3, i was dumb(?) enough to not worry about the volume and intensity a workout of that caliber would take, so i put weight on and lifted it. done. good. no problems.  the next time (i dont think ellyn was there... but she may have been) Ellyn told me she wanted 5 more kilos added on each set.  woah okay. that's going to be hard. and painful. scared. nervous. yikes.  the second time i did the lifts i had more trouble with the lifts than i would have liked... i dropped a few weights and couldn't finish all the sets at once. dang it. womp.  the third time Ellyn was there and before i started i told her i was nervous/anxious about the front squats.  she told me to do them and to practice being nervous and anxious.  so i did.  there was more success when i did these squats.  The whole purpose of this story was to let everyone know i was having the same nervous and anxious feeling with my 3 sets of 5 as I would have with my reps of 10, 8, 6 and 5.  yikes.  i think part of it was because i got my numbers for my 5 rep max from the hard and scary workouts i had done the week before.  I tried to tell Ellyn I was feeling the nerves come to the surface again, but my spotter was in a rush to get to class or internship or something important, and they encouraged told me to go. so i did.  i made all 3 sets of 5.  and i guess that means i just need a good (or nice..both??) kick in the ass to get the nerves out of the way and probably more importantly getting myself out of my way.

ohh and today i had 8x1 of one handed snatches at 90lbs.  Made them all.  and i had some really good ones.. or i guess i can say better than average ones.. but i was able to work on the things i wanted to do.  Ellyn added another thing for me to focus on when i was lifting and that was 'concrete feet' meaning i needed to stay off of my dagguum toes and keep my whole foot on the floor.. and catch with my whole foot on the floor.  when they're good, they're good.  i did have a few wobbly, loose, and weird snatches, but i was still able to make them all.  I think during some of my rest time Ellyn asked me if i had done the math about my single arm snatches and what that ideally would mean about my two handed snatch.. and i told her i had already done it... so now my left arm just needs to get with the program. :)  11 more days and i'll be free and able to bend my wrist.  I think the next part that will be hard for me will be not going right into the lifts.  I want to. but i know i wont be able to. but i want to. i really want to.  I want to be back to full swing in 11 days. but i wont. dang it. patience...? I do know that it's more important to wait and be 100% before i start going 100%.. i've got to look long term- not just now.  patience, perhaps? umm maybe :)


I'm still learning.... patience