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Wellness Wednesday for May 3, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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Pentathlon Attempt for the Week

I totally screwed up two separate attempts last week. First I went for it on Cleans without wrapping my right hand, because I hadn't had callous problems on Cleans so far. Hit 120, but ripped a three quarter inch long and mega thick callous off my right hand, could not finish the sets competitively so just finished out with some reps on long rest in the Jerk and Push Press.

Then later I tried doing the first three exercises at race pace, using bear komplex grips to protect my skin. That "worked" to protect my skin, but this time after hitting 120 on the clean my forearms and biceps were so pumped from the thicker grip that I had to throw in the towel.

So this morning I finally hit a full set. I taped my right hand over the torn callous right away, and was modestly conservative on rep targets, just wanted to beat my old scores. All with 28kg:

Clean 100/120

Long Cycle Clean and Strict Press 60/60

Jerk 90/120

Half Snatch 54/108

Push Press 96/120

Total Score @28kg= 1400 Points, a 210 point improvement over last time.

Pretty happy with that workout. Might have had a couple more reps in me in every exercise but the Long Cycle, but still gassing on conditioning by the end. The Half Snatch remains my weakness, but it is much improved over last time, working towards respectability. I'm mixing in a lot more interval work to try to improve my breathing and recovery: hill sprints, thai jump rope, airdyne bike repeaters, repeated sets of loaded carries, Tabata/EMOM sets of barbell Front squats. That and core work, when I can keep my core stiffer on the overhead lifts I can hit bigger reps.

I guess I need to start training the long cycle with the 36kg if I want to add points there, though I'm not confident I can actually add points by doing that. My max points attempt might be to stick with the 28kg for that exercise and get a longer break in? I'll have to experiment. But next week I want to break 1500, which I see as most likely getting the half snatch to 70 reps and then adding a couple reps to the other exercises. Gotta work on some long rep sets of snatch this week, get stronger in deep water with those.