Catalyst Athletics Workout of the Day

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Sunday August 1 2010

Rest



Saturday July 31 2010

  • Snatch - max single
  • Clean & jerk - max single
  • Back squat - max single
  • Stiff-legged deadlift - 3 x 5
  • Sit-up - 3 x 20




Friday July 30 2010

Rest

Collected Training - Watch Video



Thursday July 29 2010

  • Snatch - 90% x 1
  • Clean & jerk - 90% x 1
  • Front squat - 95% x 1 x 2
3 sets; no rest:
Sandbag bent row x 10
Sandbag halfmoon x 5/side



Wednesday July 28 2010

  • Power clean - 75% x 2 x 5
  • Clean pull - 95% (of clean) x 3 x 3
  • Snatch balance - max for day
3 sets:
A1. Ab wheel x 15
A2. Side bend x 10/side

Even if you’ve done your job in teaching your athletes not to spin and grind your barbells in the cradles of your squat racks, wearing of the bar’s knurling from repeated placement and removal from the rack is inevitable. Some gyms are fortunate enough to have a collection of beater bars that can be used for squatting, allowing the nicer bars to be used exclusively for the classic lifts. Most gyms are not so well equipped and have to use the same bars for just about everything. When you spend as much as $800 on a bar, the idea of the knurling being worn down in exactly the place your lifters are gripping it to snatch is not a pleasant one.

While we do have some beater bars in the gym, our lifters typically squat on the same bars they snatch and clean & jerk with. We are fully equipped with Werksan barbells and squat racks, neither of which are cheap. While I like the Werksan squat racks, I do have one complaint—the cradles are bare metal and not particularly forgiving against the bars. Recently I decided to actually do something about it instead of just cringing every time I watched an athlete rack a bar.

Read All




Tuesday July 27 2010

  • Snatch - 95% x 1
  • Clean & jerk - 95% x 1
  • Back squat - 90% x 1 x 5
3 sets:
A1. Good morning x 5
A2. Hanging leg raise x 15



Monday July 26 2010

  • Power snatch - 75% x 2 x 5
  • Jerk - 75% x 2 x 5
  • Snatch pull - 95% (of snatch) x 3 x 3
7 sets; no rest:
3 KB snatch
3 KB push press
3 KB overhead lunge

Complete the series of 3 exercises on each arm, then repeat the series on the other arm. This constitutes 1 set.

Week 3



Sunday July 25 2010

Rest

"Does this stuff help? If you can snatch 110 kilos, are you gaining anything by snatching set after set with 70 kilos? Or are you wasting your time when you should be doing a quick warm-up set with 70 kilos before you build up to something closer to 105-110 on a daily basis and attacking it? Let me throw out a few comments on this. If anybody disagrees with any of these comments, that’s fine. Unlike a lot of other American weightlifting coaches, I don’t think I’m the only one with the answers."

From Light Weight for Speed & Precision by Matt Foreman, Performance Menu Issue 66




Saturday July 24 2010

  • Snatch - 90% x 1 x 3
  • Clean & jerk - 90% x 1 x 3
  • Pause back squat (3 sec pause in bottom) - 2RM
  • Stiff-legged DL - 3 x 6

Circuit: Perform as many reps of each exercise as you can until you start to lose pace and slow down, and immediately switch to the next exercise. You should come nowhere near failure on a rep. Work through the following exercises for a total of 5 minutes:
  1. Push-up
  2. Pull-up
  3. Squat jump


Jerk Dip Depth: How far an athlete dips for the jerk will depend on a few things: namely, how the athlete is built and their primary athletic characteristic (i.e. speed vs strength), which largely determines their jerk style. A deeper dip will better suit very strong athletes and will be slower, relying more on raw strength to drive the bar up; a shallower dip must be very quick and will rely more on elasticity at the bottom, as well as the whip of the barbell. In either case, the athlete must control the position and stay tightly connected to the bar.



Friday July 23 2010

Rest



Thursday July 22 2010

  • Snatch - 90% x 1 x 3
  • Clean & jerk - 90% x 1 x 3
  • Front squat - 90% x 2 x 3
3 sets:
A1. Ab wheel x 15
A2. KB side bend x 15



Wednesday July 21 2010

  • Clean from blocks or mid-hang - 65% x 2 x 6
  • Clean pull - 90% (of clean) x 4 x 5
  • Snatch balance - max for day; 80% of that x 2 x 2
5 sets; no rest, with 1 pair of DBs:
5 hang high-pulls
5 power cleans
5 push press



Tuesday July 20 2010

  • Snatch - 90% x 1 x 3
  • Clean & jerk - 90% x 1 x 3
  • Back squat - 85% x 3 x 3
3 sets; no rest:
20 KB swings
10 supported DB rows/arm



Monday July 19 2010

  • Snatch from blocks or mid-hang - 65% x 2 x 6
  • Power jerk - 65% x 2 x 6
  • Snatch pull - 90% (of snatch) x 4 x 5
  • Sit-up - 70 total
Week 2

Robb Wolf will be in Oakland on Saturday, August 7th giving his Paleolithic Solution Seminar. 

Check it out and register HERE!



Hand Care


Spend enough time on a barbell, and you'll develop calluses. This is good in the sense that your hands are adapting to the stress and becoming thicker and stronger where necessary. However, some of you find that those calluses can become the cause of problems significant enough to disrupt your training.

A callus rip is inevitable over the long term, but it should by no means be a regular occurrence - frequent callus tears mean frequent training disruptions. It's tough to make progress when you have to stop doing what you're doing all the time. The solution? Take care of your hands in a way that will minimize if not eliminate tears and allow you to continue training.

First, don't shave off your calluses. They're there for a reason. You want that thick, tough skin. What you don't want are rough or sharp edges that can hang up on the bar and start a tear. Some people get crazy with the callus shavers and take the skin right down to the weak stuff below. Or worse, they shave them down so much that the area formerly armored is now sensitive to the touch.

I prefer fine-grit sandpaper to any other tool out there (200-220 type stuff). Cut some pieces and fold them into little 2x2" or so squares and they'll be a little stiff, but flexible enough to get into the places you need. Smooth out the rough edges before and after workouts and you'll be fine.

To improve on this, start using a liberal dose of Cornhuskers Lotion every day. Don't use your girlfriend's silly body lotion - it won't do the job. Just rub some into your hands every night when you're going to bed and pretty soon you'll have hands like baseball mitts. In fact, you might want to try rubber-banding your hands shut around a barbell-sized chuck of pipe all night to break them in.



Sunday July 18 2010

Rest



Saturday July 17 2010

  • Snatch - 80% x 1 x 5
  • Clean & jerk - 80% x 1 x 5
  • Pause back squat - 3 sec pause in bottom; work up to a 3 rep max
  • Stiff-legged deadlift - 3 x 8
3 sets; no rest:
5 box jumps - mid-thigh+
10 topside halfmoons

Topside halfmoons: Perform a halfmoon with a plate or sandbag starting and ending with the weight at about hip-height and a slight bend in the knees and hips.



Friday July 16 2010

Rest

Wrist Mobility Work with Scott Hagnas - Watch Video



Thursday July 15 2010

  • Snatch - 80% x 1 x 5
  • Clean & jerk - 80% x 1 x 5
  • Front squat - 85% x 3 x 3
3 sets; no rest:
Pull-ups x max reps; minimum of 10
Hanging leg raise x 10



Wednesday July 14 2010

  • 3-position clean (floor, knee, mid-thigh) - 65% x 5 sets
  • Clean pull - 85% (of clean) x 5 x 5
  • Snatch balance - max for day; 75% of that x 2 x 3
3 sets:
A1. Ab wheel x 12
A2. KB side bend x 12



Tuesday July 13 2010

  • Snatch - 80% x 1 x 5
  • Clean & jerk - 80% x 1 x 5
  • Back squat - 75% x 5 x 5
4 sets; no rest:
1-arm KB swing high-pull x 8/arm
1-arm KB push press x 8/arm



Monday July 12 2010

  • 3-position snatch (floor, knee, mid-thigh) - 65% x 5 sets
  • 2 power jerk + 1 split jerk - 65% x 5 sets
  • Snatch pull - 85% (of snatch) x 5 x 5
  • Sit-up - 60 total

Week 1



Sunday July 11 2010

Rest

"While I have been wanting to write this article, and my good friend and training partner, Kara Yessie, has been encouraging me to write it, I was avoiding it simply because I didn’t want it to seem as if I were pulling out a page in my diary for ya’ll to read. But I figure someone other than me may struggle with this little thing that is a pretty important factor in one’s training: motivation."

From Motivation by Aimee Everett, Performance Menu Issue 66




Saturday July 10 2010

  • Clean + 2 front squat + jerk - 60% (of clean) x 5 sets
  • Front squat - 60% x 5, 65% x 5, 70% x 3
  • Good morning - 3 x 8 light
4 sets:
350 m row
1 min rest



Friday July 9 2010

Rest

3 rest days this week. Don't get soft.

Collected Training - Watch Video



Thursday July 8 2010

  • Snatch + 2 OHS - 60% (of snatch) x 5 sets
  • Snatch pull - 80% x 3 x 3
  • Snatch push press - 3 x 5
  • Planks - 2 x 1 min; no weight


3 Days Left - Win a Ringside medicine ball or jump rope

Send us photos of your training and we'll pick our favorite and give away a Ringside medicine ball for the best and a Ringside leather jump rope for the runner-up, courtesy of Elite MMA. We must receive your photos by Sunday July 11th. All photos we like will be used on the Catalyst Athletics website. (USA shipping addresses only.)

Email your photos to photocontest@cathletics.com



Wednesday July 7 2010

Rest

If you're feeling good, spend some time doing very light technique work where you need it. No more than 30 minutes.



Tuesday July 6 2010

  • Back squat - 55% x 10, 60% x 8, 65%, 8, 70% x 5
  • Press - 3 x 8
  • Bent row - 3 x 8
3 sets: no rest:
20 m bear crawl
10 halfmoons



Monday July 5 2010

  • Hang power snatch - 60% x 2 x 5
  • Hang power clean + power jerk - 60% x 2 + 2 x 5
3 sets:
A1. Sit-ups x 15
A2. KB swing x 15

This will be a light transition week so we can move into the next cycle. Lots of ice, stretching, foam rolling massage, and whatever other work you need to get you back to 100% by next Monday.



Sunday July 4 2010

Rest

"Program design is one of those topics that is overwhelming both to read and write about. Most literature is necessarily nebulous and vague, and individuals interested in learning more often find themselves inundated with a collection of concepts that fail to fit together easily than with a set of practical rules they can implement. So instead of talking about ideas in this article, I want to run through the process of actually designing a real program and discuss the rationale for various decisions. The athlete whose program I’ll be using as my example is probably fairly well representative of many PM readers with regard to age, obligations, recovery and the other factors that contribute to her particular difficulties."

Free article - Weightlifting Program Design Case Study by Greg Everett, Performance Menu Issue 66




Saturday July 3 2010

  • Back squat - Max
  • Snatch - lift according to how you feel
  • Clean & jerk - lift according to how you feel
Snatch/CJ: Take singles or doubles at whatever weight feels good today, even if it's 40-50%. Spend 15-30 minutes with each movement and don't worry about pushing the weight.