That just about sums up today’s short sharp shock workout.
It’s been a rough week or so with my 1-year-old teething so sleep has been something of a rare commodity of late. However that all seems to be over and he’s back to normal, however getting my own routine back hasn’t been as simple, what with starting a couple of new Personal Training clients, launching this site and running Wild Geese. The last few weeks I’ve been attempting to train in the Girevoy Sports style, extended sets of kettlebell Jerks, Snatch and Long Cycle. It’s an exhausting process that takes a huge amount of mental strength as well as physical ability. After a week of no sleep I just wasn’t up to it, so I listened to the body (for a change) and instead did some low rep brute force lifting. I combined two drills in a contrast fashion to give me a power boost when I return to GS training. Here’s how it looked:
Perform 3 deadlift then move immediately to the kettlebell and knock out 5 snatch on one arm, use the other arm on the next set.
Deadlift 120kgx3 / Snatch 36kg x 5 left Deadlift 130kgx3 / Snatch 36kg x 5 right Deadlift 135kgx3 / Snatch 36kg x 5 left Deadlift 140kgx3 / Snatch 36kg x 5 right
Whats the benefit of this? Both drills use the posterior chain, ie the hamstrings, glute and back to lift the weight, but they do it in a different manner. The Deadlift is a slow grind (I know you may lift more than 140kg, but for me it’s my limit since my old back injury) you squeeze the bar off the floor and while you then try to accelerate it upwards, gravity has other ideas. The snatch on the other hand uses a much lighter load, one that you can quite literally throw overhead.
So we’re using much the same muscles but in different ways, pure grinding strength, then immediately switching to explosive power. Best of both if you like. All in all it was a 20 minute session including a short warm up, and because of the low rep count, it’s easy on the head. Believe me, a heavy dead for 3 reps is less stressful than 5 minutes of kettlebell jerks!
So the lessons today are threefold:
Teething sucks, for the parents as well as the kid
Listen to your body and cut back when other stresses are high
Brute force and ignorance solves just about anything
Regards
Dave Hedges