|
"FISHING FOR A COMPLIMENT"
Obj: Power/Power Endurance/Strength
Warm up: Row 500m, then ....
5 Rounds
5x Hanging Squat Clean (Light)
5x Push Press (Light - same bar)
Hip Mobility (Dirty Dog Exercise)
Training:
(1) Work up to 1 RM Squat Clean
(2) 5 Rounds
3x Squat Clean @ 80% 1RM
Rope Pull
(3) Every Minute on the Minute for 10 Minutes
3x Power Clean
3x Hang Squat Clean
3x Push Press
(4) 5 Rounds
15m Weighted Lunge
30m Sled Push
Comments:
Should mountain athletes be doing cleans? Do they really need explosive power in the field? If so, are cleans and their
versions the best way to achieve it?
These were the questions that I woke up to this morning. (Yeah, I'm a geek.)
Mark Twight at Gym Jones has his guys do cleans - but most of the athletes training in SLC are fighters - who do need
explosive power.
CrossFit is big into cleans - but CrossFit has become a sport unto itself.
College strength coaches across the country love cleans - but they are training team field athletes like football and
volleyball players who rely on short burts of explosive power to compete.
When does a mountaineer or kayaker need this type of full body explosive power? I'm not sure I have a good answer.
So why do I still train these lifts? Here are my answers, weak as they may be ....
1) They train athleticism. Fact is, you have to be fairly coordinated to execute a beautiful clean. My own clean form
needs a lot of work, and over the course of the months it takes to get my new athletes barely proficient, I can just see their
athleticism develop. Clean form seems to mirror squat form, and push press form, and overall better movement. Is the clean
the best exercise or method to teach athleticism? Probably not, but it does work.
2) Full body power. Dan John instilled in me the truth about Olympic lifts - they simply break down to jumping with weight.
This takes power - or the speedy application of force and strength. Cleans help teach this speed strength.
3) Strength. After a heavy squat clean or even a high rep set of light squat cleans, my quads are on fire. The eccentric
catch, followed by the drive to full extension is killer, and I think, builds strength.
4) MetCon/Strength Cardio. Cleans, in all their variations, done at light to moderate weight, and high reps, take the
heart rate from 0 to 200 in about 50 seconds. I really like this movement for overall conditioning.
5) Weightroom Cool. One of the best things Greg Glassman has done for gym rats like me is introduce us to great, classic
lifts like the clean. When you learn them, they are simply cool. Even better is going to typical commercial gym and firing
through a big clean workout. You'll leave all the guys doing bicep curls and the gals wasting away on the treadmills staring
in awe. Deeper still, part of my responsibility as a strength coach is to instill a passion and love for the iron game in
my athletes, and a big part of that is continuing traditions.
*******
"Fishing for a Compliment" pushes power, power endurance and strength.
I'm patient and cautious when pushing athletes through a 1RM squat clean effort. As the weight increases, most of us
start to have "commitment issues" - we're afraid to jump under the bar. Where this occurs for each athlete is obvious.
You can see it in his or her face before the attempt, and observe it when their clean attempt turns into a high pull instead.
Most the time I'll stop them there.
Few things in the weightroom scare me anymore, but the second part of this training session is one of them. The Power
Clean/HSC/Push Press complex is a density training suffer fest. I think I got the idea for this type of effort from Wake Forest's
Ethan Reeve. He likes the Power Clean/HSC/Power Clean every 30 seconds for 10 minutes.
I like my version a little better. My grip goes on Coach Reeve's version before the rest of me. But I find with the 3x
Power Clean/3x HSC/3x Push Press, my legs, lungs and shoulders all fail about the same time.
I'd recommend starting with 60% of the 1RM Squat Clean for veteran athletes, and 50% of the 1RM Squat Clean for new athletes.
Failure will come first on the push presses, and if they are strong at the 5 round, add 5#. If not, leave it be or strip weight.
I've done this with 135# before, and started with that weight today, but failed on the HSC's at my 6th round, and dropped
down to 125# for the last 3 rounds. Weak!
- Rob Shaul
*******
ALPINE CLIMBING: MORE LIKE COMBAT THAN SPORT
By Brian Harder
For the uninitiated, there is a movement afoot in the sport conditioning world to adopt a more balanced and well-rounded
training program. If you are reading this then you are probably participating in such a program. The value of such conditioning
is being realized in many athletic and vocational practices world wide. These include military, law enforcement, fire fighting
and lay people interested in broad-based, high level fitness. What most of these activities have in common is unpredictability.
Greg Glassman at CrossFit points out that most of these participants won't know what "game day" looks like. Thus,
preparation needs to be generalized and encompass as many of the foundations of fitness as possible. Coach Glassman's list
of these includes cardiorespiratory endurance, strength, power and speed as well as 6 other qualities that are addressed in
his program. If you hit all of these with intensity and frequency, your likelyhood of success, which may be defined as anything
from winning an event to making it through with your life, increases.
There is little unpredictability in distance running or bicycle racing or any other elite level sport, for that matter.
Game day, to use Glassman's analogy, is easy to anticipate. Preparing for those sports, is relatively straight forward.
At Mountain Athlete, we would argue that alpine climbing involves an aspect of unpredictability best prepared for with a program
that includes broad, generalized training modalities. For most athletes, getting up into the mountains several times a week
and experiencing all the conditions that will push the individual to his or her limits is impractical and unlikely. But prepare
for these eventualities we must and the hybrid gym setting, we argue, is the best arena in which to do this. Like combat,
the price for failing to prepare can be severe.
Rob Shaul will tell you that the best thing he can do for his athletes is make them strong. Our observation is that many
good rock climbers have startling strength imbalances and stunning weaknesses. They pull and grip well but cannot push more
than a girl scout. This may be irrelevant on a sport crag clip-up, shirtless and eyeing the red point but drop 60 degrees
in temperatue, add a 45 lb alpine pack, some crampons, ice tools, heinous spindrift and a vicious squeeze chimney with shitty
pro and you will be wishing you had a little more going on than a wicked crimp and a one arm pull-up. Stack several days
like this on end, not uncommon in the alpine arena, and one's conditioning needs go up, way up. Mark Twight of Gym Jones
and purveyor of Grivel climbing equipment in North America knows the alpine game better than most. He trains or has provided
training recommendations for some of the best alpinists in the business and he, along with other great coaches, has helped
develop some of the programming we use at Mountain Athlete. We have tweeked and combined many or these regimes into our own
version that we feel meets the needs of this special group of athletes.
Of course, many of our athletes are not climbers at all. They are more akin to the typical CrossFit client and derive
similar benefits in our program. In the next installment, we will entertain the usefulness of hybrid and strength training
for single sport athletes like cyclists, kayakers, skiers, etc.
|
| Explosive power. |
|
| Density training. |
|
| Lunges - simple, hard, work, that make you butt really, really sore. |
|
| Backward drag is the worst. |
|
