Thursday, January 15, 2009

That damned last rep!

Warm-up:
good mornings
overhead squat

6x5 overhead squat (95,105,115,125 [f5],135 [f5],135)
4x3 clean pull (135,3x155)

split jerk practice w/ bar
3x max pullups (15,12,8)

Gaaaah! Really pissed to have missed the last rep on two sets. The repetition is working though, feeling better in the bottom position, although as the video reveals, I'm still a bit wobbly.

The Crossfit mainsite WOD yesterday was 5x3 OHS, and as I browsed through some of the comments, I was surprised that lots of people mentioned shoulder inflexibility as a limiting factor. Really? Those people must have some frozen fucking shoulders. Watch the video below, can these people really not bring their shoulders to that position? Shoulder dislocates are often recommended to help achieve flexibility, but I always wonder, How does that help? Then I read something over at Rippetoe's forum that led me to believe that people complaining about shoulder flexibility are doing overhead squats with everything below the shoulders positioned like a low-bar back squat (example). Now that seems insanely painful; no wonder people have trouble with the OHS. I like Everett's response to the shoulder flexibility complaint; it's because your torso is fucking horizontal ... you’re putting too much of a demand on shoulder flexibility. If you are doing OHS as an assistance lift for the snatch, it makes sense to replicate that position you would achieve in that lift, which means doing the OHS with an upright torso (and well below parallel). If, on the other hand, you are doing OHS for hip drive, you should probably just do more low-bar back squats.

Watch me wobble and grunt!

3 comments:

kenny g said...

Strong work on the overheads, B. Funny you mention the shoulder flexibility issue, the other day when I returned to the OHS I noticed it in my shoulders - and this was with high-bar like body position.

My guess is people who don't snatch regularly aren't used to the weight that far back, or to the arms being that far apart. It might be flexibility, but it also might be a not-strong-enough shoulder girdle. Perhaps it's instability mistaken for inflexibility.

That said, the low-bar position OHS looks really painful, I think I'd be limited by inflexibility too...

brian said...

Agreed, the OHS will definitely expose instability. Sometimes I wobble so much trying to keep the weight overhead that it looks like I'm dancing.

kenny g said...

Nice wobble recovery, and nice dump!