Stuff

Random stuff as this is the last day of the new year, first off I mentioned in my last post that I was worried about being sore today....my worries were well warranted.  Not doing lunges or glute ham raises in a while is one thing, doing 64 of each (lunges being 64 per leg with 55 pounds in each hand) is another.  My legs were horribly sore, my quads and hamstring fairly sore....my glutes and inner thigh horribly sore....my own fault.

Second I decided to take a look back at the year, my goals I made before and how I felt the overall year went.  It wasn't until closer to the end that I was under the impression of trying to do too much at once, combining conditioning and strength and endurance all into one week.  This didn't work out as well as I had planned and it wasn't until close to the end of the year that I decided to focus purely on strength, and wow did the results ever start to come on strong then.  The inclusion of bumper plates at my gym meant I was finally able to challenge myself properly with certain olympic lifts, focussing on speed and power and strength.  Prior to the bumpers my max full clean and jerk was 200 even, now my max full clean is 250, my max jerk is 255, and put together is 245 (with a failed attempt at 250).....that's one hell of a change considering we only had the bumper plates for a few months.  Injuries, like always got in the way, gladly not my back this time but a new one, my elbow......it's certainly gotten in the way of most upper body routines, with a recent strain preventing most upper body moves safely (more so pushing ones).  It'll heal, just like my back did, just like my knees did, just like my wrist did...and I can be setting new pr's with it....till it does I am going to do what I can for the upper body and hammer the shit out of my legs.

Because of the injury I had to drop a lot of the goals from last year, but not all of them.  Of the 3 I was still able to tackle, they were trying to get 225 overhead, front squat 265 for 2 reps, and deadlift 3 good reps at 315.  I shattered the 225 goal by 30 freakin pounds, 255 being my best seen below;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsl9rLfjE54&list=UUY76daDPRwJx9guouwnll4A&index=9&feature=plcp

Then the deadlift goal of 315 for 3 reps, well here is my attempt at going for a 1RM and this is what happened;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBGYedsomSs&list=UUY76daDPRwJx9guouwnll4A&index=11&feature=plcp

So while that is a single, and being I have since done 425, I demolished the goal of 315, and I have snatch grip deadlifted that for 3 clean reps, done 3 heavy crossfit workouts that each totallde 35 reps at 315....ya I killed that one.

The front squat, that son of a bitch exercise I have probably done more than leg exercise out there, I failed at the goal of.  I tried it, but 265 is now my one rep max, BUT this requires some further explanation.  Back when I made this goal my 3RM was 235, so 265 seemed reasonable for 2, but that was when I was doing squats to just below parallel, I have no switched to hamstring to calf each and every time, making a pretty big difference.  Had I kept the same form of just breaking parallel, there is little doubt I would have made and beat the goal by a long shot.  The reason I switched to full range was because of consistency, hitting just below parallel for me can be inconsistent as I might change how much I dip below, hamstring to calf is easy....you hit it or you don't.  I don't call this a complete failure for that reason, and I hope to get it soon.

New Goals:
These goals are potentially long term, maybe not being within the next year but more like a bucket list.

Deadlift 500 pounds - 75 pounds away, doable but being I've transfered from intermediate to advanced on this lift strength gains are harder to come by, still....lifting a 1/4 of a ton, how badass is that.

Clean and Jerk 275 - 30 pounds away, and this lift is so damn technical and nerve racking when I go for a max it's hard to work myself up to it, hopefully one day.

Get 300 pounds overhead - This will be a split jerk for sure, but man would that goal be sweet, 45 pounds away.

Front Squat 275 pounds - 10 pounds away, setting a slightly smaller number here as this lift is one of my most trained and harder to get pr's on.

Back Squat 275 for 5 reps - 50 pounds away, and this is olympic style back squatting too.

This is a long term goal, but complete the crossfit workout king kong, arguably the heaviest of them all.  I don't care if it takes me an hour, but I want to be able to say I am strong enough to complete this workout.  As of now I am simply not strong enough, for reference the workout is; 1 deadlift at 455, 2 muscle ups, 3 squat cleans at 250, and 4 handstand pushups for 3 rounds against the clock.  The squat cleans would be the hardest part, and 250 is my 1RM, buut doing is 9 total times with other things is another challenge.

That's good for now, and this is getting long, Happy New Year!