Thursday, September 4, 2008

The Road to 200

My next competition I will be competing in will be the Kettlebell World Championships just outside of Turin, Italy the weekend of November 15-16. It is here that I have set the goal for myself to complete 80 jerks and 200 snatches. Its the 200 snatches that make this one interesting because the best that we can find is only 5 other individuals that have ever completed that task in competition. So this is the start of my journey to 200 snatches.

It would not be an exciting journey if there wasn't a little adversity to get things started. This Tuesday morning at 3:55am I rolled over in bed to a loud pop and excruciating pain in the right rear of my neck. I new immediately that I had shifted vertebra in my neck and tried immediately to hang my head off the bed into traction to try and reset myself. No luck, so I fought sharp shooting pains til 11:30am when I was able to get to the chiropractor. He was able to get me realigned and now I just needed to massage the neck muscles from cramping up. Still it would delay any training til at least Thursday, Sept. 4.

To steal a line from Randy Pausch, 'Roadblocks to our goals are put there not to stop us, but to see just how bad we want something.' If you have never listened to Randy Pausch's last lecture, please do immediately, just youtube his name.

Training Day - Thursday - Sept. 4

KB Snatch
- 10 minutes @ 12kg, 12 rpm
- 10 minutes @ 12kg, 15 rpm
- 10 minutes @ 12kg, 20 rpm

Snatch sets were done with 5 minutes rest between. I stayed with the 12kg because I wanted to make sure my neck was going to stay in place. Interestingly, the hardest set of all was the 12 rpm set, you will see me doing lots of slow sets. A weakness of mine is the overhead lockout and the slow sets really seem to help me.

I was able to get some training in later as well.

1-arm Jerk
- 6 minutes @ 24kg, 8rpm
- 6 minutes @ 24kg, 10 rpm
- 6 minutes @ 24kg, 10 rpm

I stayed with 1-arm Jerks again to keep overall louding down on my neck muscles. I only used one arm switch at the 3 minute mark. I really concentrated on be quick back under the bells at lockout. By being quicker under the bells I will ultimately save more energy. The 1-arm Jerks will also help me develop my shoulder flexibility for a better rack position.

1 comment:

climber511 said...

I'm following your training closely as it mimics what I hope to do later this year except with lighter bells of course. I'm also curious what other work you will be doing during this time of specialization training.