Friday, February 1st

A.

METCON:

"Top Down" (Part A)

For Time: with a 12:00 Time Cap: 25 Bar Facing Burpees 25 Squat Snatches (115/80) 25 Bar Facing Burpees

“Top Down” (Part B)

In time remaining until the 12:00 cap, establish: 1-Rep Hang Snatch (power or squat)

B.

ROW CONDITIONING:

Not for Score: On the 0:00 - 50/35 Calorie Row On the 4:00 - 30/24 Calorie Row On the 7:00 - 30/24 Calorie Row On the 10:00 - 15/12 Calorie Row On the 11:00 - 15/12 Calorie Row On the 12:00 - 15/12 Calorie Row Interval training on the rower today, with a single "long" effort (4:00 window), two "medium" efforts (3:00 windows), and three "short" efforts (1:00 windows) Pacing wise, it is our aim to progressively move just a touch faster on each interval. What is it *not*, is a paced effort, to a sprint effort on the final calorie counts. Instead, think of our 80% effort, 85% effort, and 90% effort, respectively. **If a rower is not available, equal calories on a bike is acceptable.

METCON PART A NOTES

Last week, we completed a similar style "Game Day Friday" - with cleans being the focus, versus today's snatch.

Starting with a "For Time" workout, any time remaining can be used towards building to a heavy hang snatch single (power or squat, athlete's choice).

As we enter this one round chipper, we want to first recognize that the squat snatches can vary minutes between strategies. This is a movement where breaks between repetitions can last upwards towards 7-10 seconds, very easily. From the bouncing around on the floor, to the reset of the feet and hands, seconds move fast here. Recognizing the potential here, we want to approach these final 25 repetitions with energy to spare. We naturally want to push with effort on the opening 25 burpees, but our focus of effort is on the snatches.

On these opening 25 repetitions, slow is smooth, and smooth is fast. Over 25 repetitions, at an individual level, a fast pace in comparison to a reserved effort can vary in the range of about 10 seconds (about a half second per repetition). It is indeed a significant amount of time, and in person during the workout, can feel like an eternity between athletes.

Squat Snatches:

Naturally, athlete ability level on the barbell will dictate our breakup strategy here, and there is no right or wrong approach. Only the best approach for ourselves - whether that be sets, or singles. But what we are aiming for - a push on the final 10 repetitions (reps 15-25).

Often this is where athletes approach by the opposite - repetitions 0-15 are strong, potentially even unbroken. But following, the final 10 repetitions may be singles, or broken small sets which take more time than the opening 60% (those 15 reps). The squat snatch is a movement that can slow dramatically for athletes when we reach that specific lactic point, significantly reducing our sets and cycle time. Knowing this, let's back into the 25 repetitions, planning our final 10 repetitions first. Then we'll have a game plan for the opening repetitions.

As an example, to compare, let's picture two athletes: Athlete A breakup strategy - 8-4-3-2-2-1-1-1-1-1-1 In this instance, the athlete's final 10 repetitions were completed as 2-2-1-1-1-1-1-1. We can visualize the amount of time spent chasing the bar after dropping from overhead, along with setting our hands back to. This amount of time is likely 1.5-2x the amount of time it took for the first 15 repetitions.

Lastly, the final 25 burpeesto finish. Following our final squat snatch, we can expect our legs to be taxed, and our first leap over the barbell to be challenged. Yet, it is our aim to drop immediately after that snatch and just start. Give ourselves a handful of burpees to recover, as the legs will. By the time we reach the 10 burpee mark, we want to start our final push. In terms of "sprinting", a common mistake by athletes is to start too late. To start their final push at the final five burpees. If we start with 15 burpees to remain, despite it not being a "full-tilt" sprint, we still can cover significantly more seconds than the final 5-burpee sprint

METCON PART B NOTES

Using the same barbell from Part A, athletes have the time remaining the 12:00 time cap to build to a max effort lift.

Athletes choice on the style of the hang snatch - to power, or to squat. But in both versions, athletes must establish the hang position (full deadlift to extension). The bar is allowed to go as low knee-level on the descent to the hang, but not below.

After finishing Part A and recording our score, our first objective much like last week is to formulate a snap adjustment to our plan if we are minutes behind our estimated completion time. This is an important first step as if the clock says 10:30, it's a fairly different course of action than if it says 8:00.

Inside this rest, after a brief moment to focus on our breathing, aim to keep the body moving. Although this sounds in a sense strange, there is a specific reaction we are aiming to avoid - the body relaxing. Typically speaking, and in the vast majority of our workouts, we can sit (if not lay) for minutes. The body, recognizing that the effort has been given, will start to shift into the parasympathetic (recovery). Muscles and joints can start to tighten in the early stages of recovery. Naturally, something we want to avoid as we have a dynamic movement where we'll need every muscle fiber in our body to fire with accuracy if we want to maximize our lift. Give ourselves the breaths we need to recover, and simply get back to our feet. Light paces around the barbell, take a light sip of water… just keep moving. It's a simple thing to think about, but at the physiological level, impactful when we take into consideration what the body is thinking post-effort.

Our rest period before our first hang snatch will naturally vary between athletes based on the finish time, but the general area of 1:00-2:00 of rest is appropriate. During this time, along with the emphasis above on keeping our bodies in motion, focus on regulating our breathing. Long, deep breaths into our belly (versus breathing into the upper chest/shoulders), focusing on quality versus quantity.

Given how we have completed 25 repetitions at our current barbell loading, a moderate climb is appropriate (barring the desire to lift the weight an additional time to refine the movement pattern).

Here, much like how we did last week with our clean, we can apply the three themes to the snatch:

"Safe weight" "Goal weight" "Reach weight"

As a recap from last week, our safe weight is that first weight we lift in Part B. It's something we are very confident we will complete - even if, our technique is far off the mark.

Our goal weight is a loading that we would be happy to walk away from the workout with. It's not our best, not a PR, but with the full picture in mind, we would be content with it.

Our reach weight is a weight we would be ecstatic to lift. Relative to our all-time PR, it may be one, or it may not even be close. But given the considerations of the workout, it's a load we may miss more than make - and we'd be absolutely psyched to get it.

Inside each theme, there can absolutely be multiple lifts, but by visualizing the loadings falling into these three categories, it can provide some structure to our planning. Naturally, we start with the safe weight(s), and we move into the goal weight categories with the intentions on leaving more than enough time for at least 2 attempts at our heaviest goal weight. That way, we have the chance to attempt it again if we miss it.

If we make it, we now have the chance to attempt our "reach" weight, which we naturally only attempt if we made our final goal weight and we have the time for the extra and final push.