There are three questions that every single human being will ask at least once in their lifetime:
#1 Why, when taking a nap, is it more comfortable to sleep on top of a well made bed as opposed to being under the covers?
#2 Why did the oompaloompas change colors from the very first Willy Wonka movie to the more modern one?
#3 What is death?
Well I’m here to answer question #3.
Death comes in three forms:
1) Rounding the back when pulling weight off the ground.
If you do not tighten everything that can possibly be tightened when pulling a barbell off the ground, you. are. going. to. die. What happens is that the bar starts to pull you WAY far forward and when that happens, you’ve lost control of the weight. Not being in control of the weight means that you cannot use your great technique to get that barbell over your head. Instead,the bar will be flying all over the place. Trust me, that is NOT a pretty sight… And we’re all about being pretty. So squeeze your shoulder blades together, get your chest up, shift your weight back onto your heels, AND THEN proceed to lift the bar off the ground.
2) Not fully extending AKA not finishing
Some people LOVE the feeling of the bar hitting them right in the face, but I personally do not love it. I don’t know why, but I just never wake up in the morning and say, ”You know what I would really love today? A good smack in the face by a heavy barbell!” Call me crazy, but that’s just me. SO, if you’re on the same page as me, take my advice and FINISH your pull. A good finish (and by finish I mean the movement, not a Finnish person) is with the body fully extended, a big proud chest at the top, and the shoulders slightly behind the barbell. That will allow for a great path for that barbell to travel straight up. If your finish is with your hips vertical, but your shoulders hunched over the bar, you’re inhibiting that bar from taking the path that it wants to take in life, so in turn, it will smack you in the face or be out in front of you in a position where you cannot stand up with it cause its too far forward. (talk about a run on sentence) Anyways, it’s a mutual relationship here people. Love the bar, let it take it’s desired path in life (which is going over your head) by getting your chest and face out of the way, and it will do good things for you.
3) Not flipping the hook grip out on the turnover on the clean
I’ve seen broken wrists TOO many times from slow elbows on a clean. Fred Lowe, a million time Olympian, was helping me at my cert this past weekend in Chicago. He said the greatest quote EVER… “The turnover is an attitude”. He is totally right. Turning those elbows around FAST and with a “junk yard dog” (as my dad likes to say) attitude, is the only way you will not die on a clean. And the only way to get that incredibly ghettofabulous fast turnover, is by flipping your hook grip out and letting that bar land back on your finger tips with your elbows WAY high up. Keeping the hook grip means low elbows, which means all the weight is on your arms, which means arms hitting the knees at the bottom of the squat, which means broken wrist, which means death. Got it? Think about turning the elbows ALL the way around (flipping the hook grip out) the same time that the feet hit the ground. MAKE THE LIFT SNAPPY!
Don’t make me post a video of some guy doing a clean with slow elbows and his wrists are flying all over the place hitting people in the audience in the face. They show those videos enough on the news. Which pisses me off, btw. But thats a whole different blog post for a whole different time.
Caleb.active rest rx’d.
ReplyDeleteI have always wondered why naps are always taken on top of a nicely made bed too, maybe because if your under the cover its more like just sleeping. I know personally I am guilty of trying to commit suicide with a barbell. When trying to pr on workouts like Linda or Grace it’s easy to lose respect for the movements and let your form got to hell. This is where I have to applaud the trainers and fellow crossfiters for calling each other out. You’re not going to hurt my feelings by telling me my backs arched over or my depth isn’t enough you are actually doing me a favor. So thank you trainers for not letting me or anyone else get away with shit form, without proper form or technique completing any wod is pointless.
On a side note I found this (http://sports.yahoo.com/mma/news?slug=ki-carwin032810&prov=yhoo&type=lgns) interesting and motivating article on the post UFC 111 fights. NEWARK, N.J. – If Shane Carwin keeps this up, he’s going to give mixed martial arts a bad name. This is the sport that takes a lifetime to master. It requires hours upon hours of daily training. It humbles even the greatest of athletes and the strongest of men. You don’t do MMA as a side job and win championships against the best in the world. At least, that was the conventional wisdom before Carwin came along and blew that school of thought to bits. Carwin still holds down a full-time job as an engineer and is a married father of a newborn daughter. That’s plenty to make the average man weary at the end of a lengthy day. When other men are calling it a day, however, is when Carwin is just beginning. On Saturday in the co-main event of UFC 111 at the Prudential Center, he showed he’s pretty good at his side job, too. He needed just three minutes, 48 seconds of the first round to obliterate Frank Mir, as he had his 11 previous opponents, to claim the interim UFC heavyweight title and earn the right to face champion Brock Lesnar at UFC 116 on July 3.
Handstands
ReplyDeleteCore
Pistols
Kohl bw-219- Did about a 6-7 mile run
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting "What is death?". It gives me something more to think about.
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