Blog Archive

Narrow Stance 7 sec Pause Squats

Who wants an explosive squat?

A good strong squat requires some extra attention and training.  Tommy Loohou and Father Billybo gave me a heads up on these squat variations – and I like em along with all the other stuff Chad Smith recently blogged about (13 week squat day substitution program is cool) last week on T-Nation. Check it out here.

He talks about jumping squats, heavy squats, speed squats and pause squats being the 4 crucial training aspects that need addressing for an explosive squat.

Right out of the hole is the most common place that raw lifters miss squats. To train the explosive strength qualities needed to improve this area of your squat, pause squats are a simple (but not easy) answer.

The Pros do pause squats with 7, 5 and 3-second pauses in the bottom position. These long pauses will teach you to “turn it on” coming out of the hole, while building strength in the hips and back.

Paused work will also teach your body to find its strongest position and improve your ability to replicate this position during regular squatting.

He also notes that raw squatters typically miss weights as they fall forward due to upper back weakness.  Let’s address and correct those misfortunes as well.

Strength Work

Pause Squats – 7 sec at bottom (5,5,5,5) at 40%1RM

Check out the 3:10 mark in the video below for an example.

Warm-up
– work through a 500m row then some hip, knee, ankle and back mobility before the pause squats.

Workout – 1 time through the 4 obstacles
– 45 KB Swings
– 45 DBall Slams
– 45 Wallballs
– 45 Box Jump Burpees

Tbear

“‘One time, when i was really little, I climbed a tree and ate these green, sour apples. My stomach swelled and became hard like a drum, it hurt a lot. Mother said that if I’d just waited for the apples to ripen, I wouldn’t have become sick. So now, whenever I really want something, I try to remember what she said about the apples.’”

Seems like double under’s and rope climbs are those little troublesome crossfit movements that require a little bit of patience and practice to master.  Impatience breeds that nasty anxiety, discouragement and failure, though I’ve read that patience creates confidence, decisiveness, and a rational outlook, which eventually leads to success.

Warmup

– 30 Mountain Climbers, 30 Hollow Rocks x 3

Technique

– Rope Climbing (3 sets of 3)

& Various Planks (2 sets of max right, left and side planks – try wt’d or rings for advanced)

Carl goes through 8 videos (3 here) that give you more than enough to work on to increase your skills when it comes to getting up and down that evil rope.  He covers the spanish technique first which is easiest for the beginner.  Check it out.

The descent

Workout

“Experimenting Angie” performed Tabata Style

Proceed to complete “Angie” in as little tabata rounds possible of 20 sec of work and 10 sec rest and up to a time limit 30 minutes.

100 Pull-ups

100 Pushups

100 Situps

100 Squats

– all pullups must be done before moving to pushups and so on.

If you don’t have over 3 continuous pull-ups or pushups please modify the pull-ups and pushups to 50 reps.

Tbear

Hopefully you made some new friends on Monday.  I think I met 7 new people and still saw at least 20 from afar that I didn’t recognize or know their name.  I’ll get to you or please feel free to come over and say hi Tbear – even ask me for some grass-fed meat or the best bacon going.  I’ll hook up.

And how about your Monday squat session? Ask yourself. Did you feel a lot better under the barbell than you did in the past?  Hopefully your coaches and new friends gave you some pointers.  Keep it up and continue to work on those challenging areas.  The back room (kitty pool) has a shit tonne of ideas on those blue Kelly Starrett Mobility Posters.  Check em out and see if you can attempt them all this Winter/Spring.

Warmup

-practice double under’s then test how many sets of 20 consecutive double under’s you can get in 5 minutes. If you have a rope please bring one.  They are available for purchase in the store as well.  No No or Chesty will show you options and cut yours to your proper length.

Skills

Power Cleans – touch and go (2,2,2,2,2,2,2) – attempt and work up to your 2RM

Workout

Shaking up the Chief WOD:

max rounds in 3min

3 Power Cleans (135/85)
6 Toes to Bar
9 Lunges (alternate)
Rest 1 minute. Repeat for a total of 5 cycles.  So it’s a 19min WOD,

Remember – this one looks easy on paper but see if you can keep your rounds and reps consistent throughout the 5 cycles. Will your TTB hold up like your pushups would??

Enjoy Tbear

**Bring some long socks Wednesday** – we’ll work some Rope Climb technique.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you took a little vacation and got some super relaxation, meditated, de-stressed and found a point of clarity where you understood so much more of this crazy world. You know – you addressed and worked on your weird hypochondriac thoughts, put a good long fuse back on your patience stick and could clearly wordsmith a quote like that.  I’ve always thought that it might happen to me some day, and I hope it still will.  Those words of course are Mahatma Gandhi’s and not mine.

Over the holidays I did finally get some downtime to read a paper and surf a little more creatively, both on the ocean and on the interweb.  I’ve become a new fan of a couple web apps that not only grabbed my attention for few minutes but gave me ideas, inspiration, and a better understanding for style, travel, food, science, music, etc in more of a visual form than my recent and lovely pseudo science nutrition books.  There is some cool stuff out there.

Who likes Tumblr and Flipboard?  They are freakin awesome. That quote above was from a sixteen year olds website. These cool apps make me want to be a part time Graphic Artist.  Our website may need a facelift much sooner than later.  Try Google searching Crossfit and Tumblr or Tumblr and whatever your into.  It’s visually pretty amazing.

So Happy New Year to all.  Let’s have a great week and don’t come in if your sick – ok? I’ve heard the rumors.

Warmup

Mix up some Windmill Stretches and Goblet squats – coaches discretion

Skills – Heaving Snatch Balance (HSB)

In groups of 3 to 5 – Make some new friends (try for 2 newbs and 2 vets), grab a rack, help coach and critique each others squat movement, overhead position, and HSB.

Work on 4 things:

1. A better squat

2. Heaving Snatch Balance (2 to 5 reps)

3. Mobilizing your problem areas. (bands, boxes, rollers, and friends work real well)

4. OHS with perfect technique

Why the heaving snatch balance?

Greg Everett blogged about it here.

I’ll summarize and add my thoughts.

Understand the Movement:
Start with the feet in your squat position and the bar on your back with a snatch grip. Dip at the knees smoothly and heave the bar up slightly so you can punch down under it into an overhead squat position. The feet remain flat on the floor. This ends up being somewhat of a hybrid between a snatch balance and a snatch push press + overhead squat.

Why do we like?

• Maintaining a connection to the floor allows lifters to feel the proper placement of the feet in the receiving position of a snatch.  The variance seen in Snatch classes last Thursday was a bit alarming.
• It serves as a great flexibility (assess and correct) test as there’s no real moment of slack for your knees, shoulders and hips to move in ways they shouldn’t.
• It’ll help translate the pull to the turnover of the snatch. Rather than just over-pulling (majority of our students all have early arm pulls) and hoping to catch it – you’ll be punching/pressing up against the bar to resist at arms length.
• Gives your coaches and apprentices multiple opportunities to address your particular issues, in a much simpler teaching progression for the snatch, which this is.

Don’t aim for huge weights (It takes skills to bring the barbell back to the correct shoulder position w/out bruising your boney areas)
Think 50 – 60% of 1RM OHS.

Be interested in smooth movement, quick elbows, perfect balance and posture.

Explosively punching under the bar will get you to the next level.

& Let’s rid ourselves of squirrelly foot placement.

Tech
Heaving Snatch Balance (2 to 5 Reps) x 5 – rotate through your group

OHS (10,10,5,5) if time permits

Your Team Workout (In your 3 to 5 person team)

– 210 burpees rotating in each and every person for a group total 30 rounds of 7 each.

Tbear