SHANE'S TRAINING - Week of Sep 25, 2023

SHANE'S TRAINING - Week of Sep 25, 2023

Below is the table with training from last week (9/25-9/30). Things are a little bit different from the previous week, while still keeping to the usual structure. There were a couple of factors that required me to change my training schedule.

1. I smashed my left thumb between the two halves of a folding table and couldn’t really bend it, nevermind hook gripping. I tried to make do with straps where I could, but even that was tough since I couldn’t bend my thumb.
2. I had a sick kid at home 3 of the days, which meant my time was very limited and I had to drop some of my usual warm up.

Everything felt weird this week. Since I had the messed up thumb and had to cut my training time down from my usual 75 minutes to around 45, it meant that my grip felt very unsecure and I didn’t get to rest as much between sets. I definitely noticed the difference, as you can see on day 3’s workout when I had a couple of misses. I started day 1 with the idea that I wouldn’t even be able to do anything I had planned except front squat, so I threw in some rows to make up for it. After doing those two movements I felt good enough about the thumb that I could still stick (somewhat) to the plan. 

Day 5 started out terribly. Trying to clean with straps is always a little awkward, but this day the timing of my elbow rotation/rack position was off because of the straps. I just couldn’t get the front rack/catch position right with the straps on, so I decided to shut it down before the reps got even uglier than they were. Fortunately, I had a client cancel and had a free chunk of time to try and redeem things with the hang cleans. For whatever reason those felt fine and I had no issue catching correctly with the straps.

I’ve been feeling like I have lost some strength lately and need to start incorporating more traditional strength builders into my training, which the addition of overhead press and good mornings is part of. Many Olympic lifting coaches say that overhead presses don’t help the lifts. I think this is probably true for young, explosive lifters with picture perfect technique. Since I am an old, slow lifter with questionable technique, I find that I benefit a lot from them. Specifically on my jerks. I seem to have an easier time locking them out when I am pressing more. I think doing more strength work in general is valuable to make up for the shortcomings I mentioned.

I hate doing good mornings; they are so hard. My squat, however, is always at its best when my good mornings are strong. So I shall be doing more of them, along with more pressing, dips and deadlifts.