Your Knees Hate You

If you attended the afternoon classes on Wednseday, you likely heard me talk about squatting properly through complex movements (cleans, wallballs, etc.), and prioritizing good movement (if you aren’t doing it right, scale more and slow down a little).

Let me preface the next part by saying this… we can only tell you how to do it, and that your doing it wrong. We can also only tell you so many times before it sounds so repetitive you just stop listening. If it sounds repetitive, it’s because you haven’t made the necessary adjustments so we have to repeat ourselves. With that said, we took all of these photos in one class yesterday. It wasn’t a necessarily big class, and it wasn’t the worst class of the day. It was just the class we decided to pull the camera on.

You don’t need to be a Physical Therapist or experience Certified Trainer to see the issues here. Oddly enough, when frozen, these all look identical. Toes out, knees in, collapsed ankles, round back(s), weight forward. There are two potential causes here… either they are new and haven’t mastered the movement yet, or they are lacking range of motion in one or more joints, limiting their ability.

You all just got owned by a toddler squatting in wet sand.

The take away… If a coach tells you to change the way you are squatting (knees out, feet straight, chest up, stay on the heels, etc.), then you probably look like the people in the first photo, or worse. If you don’t have full range of motion in one ore more joints, you need to fix it. It will NOT fix itself. The 80 year old version of you will love you for it, especially when they don’t need help getting off the pot.

WOD

Extra) Push Press 15 min to find 1RM

1) Four attempts to establish a Max Weight for the following complex, must be performed UNBROKEN:

9 Deadlifts
6 Front Squats
3 Shoulder to Overhead
Rest 2-3 minutes between attempts. 20 min cap.

2) For time:
1K Row
-or-
800M run
-or-
Both… if you do both. Rest between efforts and try to PR on both.

Competition Training

You’ll need to schedule things properly so that you can lift, then attend a group class. The workout Invictus had planned was horrible, so we are going to have some fun with the group WOD. Do it with a class AFTER you finish 1-3. (Aren’t you glad I’m doing the workouts again… otherwise you would be doing this.)

1) Snatch, 15 minutes to build to a heavy single

2) Clean & Jerk, 10 minutes to build to a heavy single

3) Bench Press, 15 minutes to find 3RM