Muster Your Focus

JT Scott | 11/06/2013 | 7

I loved yesterday’s WOD. The strength section too. Why?

The three movements for yesterday’s strength were all about finding a hollow-body position in an unusual orientation. Headstand? Done properly, it’s a hollow-body-hold while balanced on your head. Deck Squats? When you’re at the apex, balanced on your shoulders with toes pointed at the ceiling, the body should be in that hollow-body-hold with hips elevated. And of course the hollow-body slides gave us a chance to challenge our shoulder engagement at various angles while holding that core solid.

Highly Functional Fitness. Source: http://www.dvidshub.net/image/9730/sandbag-throw

Yesterday’s WOD, too, gave us the opportunity to take all of the muscle engagement we have learned in doing technical lifts (back squats, deadlifts, etc) and apply it to a highly un-technical task: dragging a sandbag. Those of you who had good core engagement and an active shoulder anchoring your arm to the floor before each pull had a much easier time… or at least got to drag a heavier bag. (Kudos to those of you who learned mid-way through the WOD to use your hips to help drive each drag-pull!)

This is transferability: building neuromuscular patterns and strength that is then used in everything we do. It makes us more effective humans.

Today the challenge is to see how well those patterns hold up under duress. Today we’re going to tax you metabolically – with burpees – and then call upon you to do a heavy single-output power task.

SCALING: For those of you who have developed the technical skill, this heavy single-output power task will be a barbell snatch somewhere in the heavy end of your range. Think 80% of your max, or maybe even higher. It should be a weight that you have to seriously set up, approach the bar, and muster your full concentration and strength to get it… a weight at which you could miss the lift if you weren’t paying attention. Don’t miss the lift, or you’ll have to refocus and try it again.

For those of you who have not snatched with us frequently enough to be very comfortable and sufficiently skilled in the lift that you do not need personal instruction on snatch day – you have a different task. It will still be a heavy, single-output power task… it just won’t be as technical. For you, you’ll have a heavy sandbag and one chance to throw it 16 feet.

Go fast on the burpees, and then muster your focus: you’ve got to get it all together for one max-power-output burst before it’s back to burpees again.

Strength:

Front Squat 4-4-4-4

WOD:

AMRAP 9
10 Burpees
1 Heavy Movement (Snatch or 16-foot-sandbag-toss)