Last week I wrote about the start of my Hungarian influenced 9 week Olympic weightlifting training program. This week, I started week 2, which it won’t come as any surprise, is harder than week 1! Even my coach from Crossfit Manchester said: “This is really hard!” which is a worrying thing to hear from Mark indeed! Anyway, here’s week 2 (only 3 days as I suspect that might be all I can make this week):
Day 1
- Power Hang Clean – 6 sets of 3 reps at 75% = 75kg
- High Pull of Clean – 5 sets of 3 reps at up to 100kg
- Dead pull of Clean – 4 sets of 3 reps at up to 110kg
- Back Squat – 6 sets of 5 reps at 75% = 112.5kg
Day 2
- Front Squat – 5 sets of 5 at up to 80% = 97.5kg
- 1 Power Snatch + 2 Power Hang Snatch – 5 sets of 1+2 at 70-75% = 55-57.5kg
- 1 Power Clean + 2 Power Hang Clean – 5 sets of 1+2 at 75-80% = 75–80kg
- 2 Split Jerk – 4 sets at up to 80% = 80kg
Day 3
- Power Hang Snatch – 6 sets of 3 at 80% = 60kg
- High Pull of Snatch – 5 sets of 3 at 80kg
- Dead Pull of Snatch – 4 sets of 3 at up to 90kg
- Front Squat – 6 sets of 5 at 82% = 100kg
After Day 1 of Week 1 nearly killed me, I’ve resorted to taking a few liberties and viewing the prescribed weights as having an implicit “work up to” built in, at least for a few weeks till I get more used to it. However I have resolved to do at least half the reps at the prescribed weight. So take day 1 for example, the: Back Squat – 6 sets of 5 reps at 75% = 112.5kg. For this I did a set each at: 80, 95, 105, and 3x 112.5 and believe me, that was hard enough!
In fact, doing Week 2, Day 1 yesterday saw my first failure. I was unable to do Power Hang Clean – 6 sets of 3 reps at 75% = 75kg. First off, I can’t seem to drop that much weight (nearly my body weight) back down to my waist and hold my grip, without wrenching my arms and doing myself an injury. So I have to drop the bar complete and re-deadlift it up into the hand position. So in effect, I was doing sets of 3 singles.
Secondly, 75kg it seems is right on the limit of what I can hang power clean. I managed to do it at 70kg (I did 2 sets here) but at 75kg I could only get one per set, and had to resort to full power cleans, or just having a good attempt. Which to be honest, was rather disappointing.
I also have a bit of a problem with this program: yes it’s damn hard work, that’s a given. But compared to the fun and variety of Crossfit, it’s also rather boring and has already become repetitive and I’m only on the 5th day! It also takes a long time too. Even a deliberately expanded Crossfit workout only takes an hour, but these workouts are consistently taking me 1 hour 45 minutes to complete. Add to that an hour’s round trip travel time, plus time to change etc and you’re looking at 3 hours per session. Perhaps I’ve been spoilt by the short sharp efficacy of exciting Crossfit work outs, and am simply not used to this kind of training. Perhaps. At the moment however, 9 weeks looks a long way away.
