Barbell Complexes
It can be real hard to break a bad habit. That’s also true of bad habits when it comes to our olympic lifts: finding those wrinkles and ironing them out can be especially hard because we rarely focus exclusively on those lifts in a way that allows for the time, variation, and repetition needed to break down old movement patterns and form new ones to replace them.
Barbell Complexes are an incredibly useful tool for putting smaller chunks of these complex lifts into brighter focus, while simultaneously integrating those chunks into the larger context of the complete lift. Even if this workout looks complicated when you read it the first time, I’m willing to bet that by the time class is over you’ll understand intuitively and clearly why these sets are structured the way they are, and how they can help build better habits for the olympic lifts.
WOD:
Every 3 mins, for 3 rounds:
1 Hang Squat Clean + 1 Squat Clean + 1 Push Jerk + 1 Split Jerk
– one complex per 3 min round
– all complexes must be unbroken (no putting the bar down) but don’t have to be fast per se
Then,
Every 3 minutes, for 2 rounds:
1 Squat Clean + 1 Push Jerk + 1 Split Jerk
– one complex per 3 min round
– all complexes must be unbroken (no putting the bar down) but don’t have to be fast per se
Then,
Every 2 minutes, for 5 rounds:
1 Squat Clean and Jerk
– one C&J per 2 min round
– integrate your new habits and try to max out the load