Happy hump day everyone! Hope you are all surviving the week. Here in the Bay Area we are going to have three storm systems in the next five days, which if you’re from the area, you’ll know that means some cray weather. Yes, us Californians are complete babies when it comes to “bad weather” – a tree falling down in a neighborhood will make the local news. True story.
Much to my delight, I was able to make yesterday’s WOD (after a rather stressful day). I don’t know about you, but there’s nothing like hitting heavy weight to wrap up a crummy day.
- Find 3RM squat clean
- 5 minute AMRAP HSUPs
I’ll be very honest up front, my squat cleans, heck, my cleans in general have been pretty inconsistent lately. I don’t know if it’s the fact we haven’t programmed since last month, or that it was my first WOD after the Thanksgiving gorge fest, but I wasn’t feeling too confident going into this lift.
Three rep maxes are an odd bird – you’re not going for heavy singles, but rather three (semi) quick reps. I know what you’re thinking, “It’s not rocket science.” But this can get kind of tricky and you will surprise yourself with what you are able to accomplish or not accomplish. When 3RM lifts start to get heavy for me, I usually hit one rep, drop the bar thinking, “shit, that was rough” then hop back on the bar and get two more.
Granted you can hit these as touch-and-go reps, but you can also afford a 30 second breather in between. Make sense?
For this lift, I worked my way up to a heavy 3 reps @ 105lb. Here’s a video of that last rep:
Not too bad. Noticed my whining expression at the end? Let me backtrack for a second. That was actually my second time hitting that weight. After the first successful set, I moved on to 115lb because I was feeling like I could at least hit one rep (which would have been a 20lb PR).
Want to see how it went?
I had it. I HAD IT. I won’t get into specifics about what went wrong on the lift because goodness knows there is a list of critiques for that attempt, but let me explain: I hit three reps of 105lb twice (TWICE) and yet, I couldn’t pull off 115lb once. ARGH. Sure, it’s probably because I was fried from the previous lifts and because my elbows were in slow-mo, but I was so close I could taste it. Talk about humble pie.
What you don’t see in this video is that I tried it two more times and it just became silly. Funny, really – I’d pick it up and just drop it. I was done. Not all was lost though, my previous 1 rep squat clean PR was 95lbs back in October and I hit 105lb multiple times. You crazy, CrossFit!
I’ve been meaning to write about my new-ish wrist wraps by Strength Wraps. I’m in love. And they come in cool colors! I’ve used them for OH squats, cleans and jerks (so far) and I couldn’t be more satisfied with the support. The best part about these babies is that you can instantly loosen or tighten them by simply twisting them around your wrist. I’m one of those people who will tie and re-tie their shoes until they feel comfortable and it’s the same thing for my wrists – I highly recommend them.
Has a lift ever left you scratching your head? Do you wrist wraps?
**Shout out to camera woman, Brittany for the videos and commentary!!