The Calm

Today I spent a lot of time moving and stretching, and I feel good because of it. My hamstrings are very tight and sore from yesterday, but hopefully I will feel much better come monday, and will be able to work my hardest my first squat day.

Started with a normal dynamic warmup, then did a quick bodyweight metcon just to get myself sweating and do a little bit of conditioning - 21-15-9 reps of air squats, pushups, and situps. I moved well on everything, didn't take any significant breaks, although I definitely broke a few sets of pushups and squats, even if it was only for a second or two. Still, did the whole thing in 3:30, so not bad. As I wrote in my post about new programming, I'm going to continue doing a little conditioning every saturday - and I like taking the mini-metcon route, this was fun.

After I recovered, which was a little too long hahaha but not bad, I started some static stretching. Did calves, hamstrings, quads, butt, and ended with a minute each side of the couch stretch (I really need to do 2 mins from now on). After this, I grabbed my wood bar and did a bunch of practice squats in my oly shoes. The stretching and squatting got me nice and loose, and the 75-100 squats I did looked and felt really nice. Here's some video:

My torso was very upright, my elbows weren't turning under so much (moving my grip out helped a bit). These are the cues that are helping me most - thinking about sitting directly in between my heels, and pulling down on the bar to keep my back tight and my elbows back. The other thing I just have to be careful about when I add weight to the bar is to make sure I'm squeezing all the way down into the hole before exploding out, not dropping too hard and loosing tension. With this new style, I definitely want to make use of my stretch reflex and explode out of the bottom, but I can't make the mistake of feeling like I have to dive-bomb into the hole to do a beautiful high bar squat. Here's what I want to look like.

Anyways, I'm in good shape for mondays workout. I have to not get frustrated, no matter how the weight feels, because this will be the first real test of how much weight I'll be able to move with this new squat. It could be rough, and if it is I need to not be disheartened, simply keep at it and take the weight back. HOWEVER, I'm feeling very optimistic and INCREDIBLY excited to resume training.