SW Portland Martial Arts Blog

http://youtu.be/LwaEMR8KSJY

What is the Thursday 6pm class all about?  Barbells?  Barbells.

Looks like they used my iPad tonight.  Shrug.  Shrug.  Clean.  Good stuff.

Wonder no longer, friends.  In the Thursday night class, you will do many a thing with the barbell.

http://youtu.be/Y8LKBNjL6pc

When you throw the barbell powerfully with your hips, it’s awesome to have relaxed arms that merely guide the weight to the right place.  When the bar arrives at the right place, you have to switch those relaxed arms to a fixed structure.

For the jerk and the snatch, this means locking your arms out overhead.  For the clean, this means slamming the elbows up into place.  In all three lifts, soft arms means either a failed lift or a crummy lift that requires extra work to save.

Lock out your arms.  Provide the barbell and your body with an awesome structure so that you can effortlessly support the weight.

Wouldn’t it be fun if fitness was a science?  Wouldn’t it be fabulous if you could see, with numbers that you are getting more fit, getting less fit or staying the same?

Now is your chance to strap on your lab coat and measure.  Find your 1rm front squat.  Find the maximum number of double unders you can do in two minutes.  Write those numbers on the beautiful pieces of paper located below the whiteboard.  Then, at the end of November, test those things again and see if your numbers are bigger, smaller or the same.

This should be a well defined experiment with easily repeatable conditions.

http://youtu.be/b0stYKwzJ1c

Since people keep asking (instead of just showing up), this is what we do in mobility class.  We pick a movement, do it, go through a bunch of mobility work and see if the movement we picked gets any better.

This week the movement was the overhead squat.  The mobility work included trying to open up our shoulders, upper back and ankles.  Did it work?  You tell me.  Watch the video and see if either of us improved from the beginning (first clip) to the end (second clip).

Carrie got a new fancy phone that lets her film in slow motion.  As you can see, it is awesome at revealing both what you are good at and what you need to work on.  I strongly recommend you have her (or anyone else who has a newer phone) film you.

Go ahead.  You can tell me how bad my lift is in the comments.