Going in Reverse to move forward...

As I enter my 6th year of doing CrossFit as a means to health and fitness and competition, I have finally had to come to the realization of something. I really suck at the snatch and clean. Here's an abbreviated version of my history with the two Olympic movements and my current status. 

When I did my first competition that had snatches and cleans in the line-up, I had to look up what they were and to see how you did it. Wow. Then, I had to try it out. Fail. The problem was that I had the strength to muscle the shit out of the weight and complete the range of motion with the most ridiculous form. The other problem with this was that most of the other guys competing out there had the same crappy form as I did. And now for the biggest and final problem, I never took the time over the last 4 years to devote attention and time to these two movements and actually get better at them. I definitely always did them but only every so often and just got through them. Never with any purpose. My attitude was to always just get through them in workouts and competitions and then do really good at the movements i excelled at. Another fail. Everything short of a well rounded athlete. More like a specialist. 

My thing is that I don't want to be a specialist, I want to be great at everything. Throw weight out the window. I just want to be able to move fluidly from start to finish over and over again without getting hurt. That's it. 

Back to my old school training idea, I always did weights much heavier than I should've been doing because my thought process was that I was going to be exposed to those weights in a competition so I HAD to expose myself to them during workouts. I had to know how I would feel under those loads. 

And guess what, during competitions, I was exposed alright. I was left staring at the barbell not being able to move the weight while other guys next to me would motor through. Some faster than others but moving through nonetheless. 

So now what?

Lately, the bars I have been using weigh in at a whopping 15lbs. The plates I stack on have 5's, 10's, and 15's stamped on them rather than 45 and 25. The result is much more fluid movements and ease of movement. You see, before I was always stacking weight on a foundation that was very unstable. Now, I am building a solid foundation that, in the end, will be able to support the kinds of weights I want to stack on. 

Below is a pic of the first competition I did where I actually felt like was able to do a correct version of the snatch. 

 

 

Take the time to work on the mechanics of the movement. Learn the movement patterns. Learn what mobility limitations you have and what you need to do to improve in those areas. And for the love of God, take the damn weight off the bar! Every class is not a competition. In fact, not one single class is a competition. It's ok to go slow and use light weight. In fact, it takes a ton more discipline to do that than it does to continue to pile on weights. 

Weight doesn't impress me if the movement pattern to complete the range of motion looks like shit. That's it. Stop trying to impress someone with weight.