Skills to pay the bills

As we are grow and develop our CrossFit wheelhouse, its important to take a look back the the basics that got us there. Some of you may watch individuals like Dane do a Clean which such ease, and wonder how did he get so good? If you ask him, or anyone else who has developed to an elite level, they will answer the exact same… Practice.

Here's Dane getting ready for his next Vball practice session!

My goal for this post is to provide you will some basic “Skill Transfer” or practice exercises that will assist in your development of the two Olympic lifts. These exercises are designed to speed up and assist in the learning of the Olympic lifts.

This is acomplished in several ways:

1. They improve and develop the appropriate movement patterns.
2. Increase flexibility at the active joint.
3. Develop strength in the same planes of movement as the Olympic lifts.
4. Builds confidence by working less technical lifts in a success-orientated environment. (how many of you are timid about putting weight over your head?)

Remy overcomes this fear by getting angry...

At the professional weightlifting level, a coach wont allow their athlete to even attempt the competition lifts (Clean & Jerk and Snatch) without mastering their Skill Transfer exercises for the day. Now if we sat there and made you do nothing but skill transfer work for a whole hour no one would be having any fun, nor getting any real work done. However, we do want you to concentrate on your technique to both avoid injury and develop to new levels of fitness.

Rather then go into a lengthy explanation of each skill transfer exercise and create both the worlds longest and least read post, I’m going to list them out. Forrest will be programming them into our WOD’s for the next couple of weeks. The goal is to fine tune three of the most technically challenging movements that are performed at our little box. The outcome will be two fold- 1. arm you will an arsenal of specific movement preparation drills for the days we do max Olympic lifts/WOD’s with Olympic movements in them, 2. challenge you in new ways, taking your fitness levels to new heights.

The skill transfers are performed in the same order that the United States Weightlifting organization recommends that an athlete learn their Olympic lifts, variation can be applied here based on the individuals weaknesses/strengths:

Skill Transfers for the Snatch:

1. Overhead Squat
2. Pressing Snatch Balance
3. Heaving/Pressing Snatch Balance
4. Snatch Balance

Skill Transfer Exercises for the Jerk:

1. Push Press (Behind Neck)
2. Power Jerk (Behind Neck)
3. Push Press (Proper)
4. Power Jerk (Proper)

Why behind the neck? Three reasons 1. Your 15-30% strong when performing movements from behind the neck 2. its easier for a lifter to get the bar off a rack and safer to execute the movement. A Bulgarian Weightlifter actually perfected the technique of cleaning the bar to the behind the neck position check it out here. Here is a article on the Eliko website about the same guy, and the debate that continues on about its legality in the world of Weightlifting…

Skill Transfer Exercises for the Clean:

1. Front Squat
2. Power Clean from Bid-Thigh
3. Power Clean from Knee-Height
4. Power Clean from Below-Knee
5. Power Clean
6. Clean

Now some of you might be looking at this wondering how someone does all this and a workout? Here is a little sample of how a weightlifters workout is structures compared to ours: Pretty different huh?

Workout of the Day 7/30/2010

A. Straight Leg Deadlift 3-3-3

B. 8 Rounds

10 Overhead Walking Lunges (45/25 plate)

10 Unbroken Wall-Ball (20/16)

*The overhead walking lunges count for 1 when you have stepped with each leg. The wallballs must be performed unbroken to be Rx. If you have to break up the wallball start over from one in that given round