Heavy weights

Workout of the Day:

Squat Clean – 3, 3, 3, 3, 3

Front Squat – 5, 5, 3, 3

4 minute Tabata Rounds with no rest between: pullups, pushups, butterfly situps, squats

So, a good and bad review for the return to heavy weight training. It looks like any heavy lifting I want to do will be no problem. Heavy dropping may be another issue. The space is crowded and I don’t think dumping weight from overhead is going to fly. Obviously, this is disappointing for maximum efforts in jerk and snatch attempts. But I think I will survive using slightly less weight and doing doubles and triples for a while, then hope that people will get used to my presence and be less shocked if I miss a jerk and have to drop the weight from 7 feet.

Today’s session was the perfect workload. My weights for the squat cleans were: 100 kg x 3, 105 kg x 3, 105 kg x 3, 105 kg x 2, 105 kg x 2. The last 2 sets I couldn’t get the 3^rd clean up out of the hole, once because my stance was too wide, and the other because I just didn’t have the pop left. These tired me out and were challenging from a concentration standpoint as well. Imagine about a meter of space in every direction from my center, with people milling about refusing to grant me any breathing room whatsoever. Given these factors, I’m very happy with how these went.

Moving to the squat sets, I knew they would be tough after the cleans. My weights were: 100 kg, 100 kg, 110 kg, 110 kg for each set, respectively. The focus was on getting great depth and maintaining my upper body posture throughout the movement. Depth was not a problem. Posture was a problem. 5 heavy front squats is a lot, and I could feel my balance shaking towards the end. Same story on the 110 kg sets of 3. I did everything in my five fingers, which is not ideal. I really need some Olympic lifting shoes.

The Tabata rounds went fine as well. I scored 82 pullups, 78 pushups, 65 situps, and 119 air squats. After the heavy stuff, I really didn’t feel like doing a bodyweight metcon, but was so glad I did it in the end. My lungs felt much better than yesterday, and the muscle recovery between intervals wasn’t too bad. Minus some shoulder soreness from yesterday, everything felt good. Of course, as I write that I am noticing my chest and triceps hurting more and more from all the dips. In a good way, naturally.

Afterwards I joined Didzis, Maurice, and Liza to go explore 2 of Paris's parks, one of which was absolutely unbelievable. There is what appears to be an ancient temple up on top of an enormous rock jetty right in the middle. There's a full blown moat/pond around it and a waterfall behind. Truly incredible to find something like this in the middle of the city. I hope to return with my rings and some sand later this month...