Nov Meet Training - Day 1

Today I did my first day of training for my next weightlifting meet, which is on November 19th. That's 5 weeks away. My goal is to meet or beat my lifts from last September.

For the first week I'll be incorporating skill sets from this article by Greg Everett(pdf), and testing maxes in several lifts.

For the next four weeks, I'll be following a program from Michael Hartman. It was intended to be used to prepare for a meet with only power cleans, which works fine for me since I feel my clean needs the most work right now. That 15-20 pound disparity between my squat clean and power clean is really bugging me! I'll worry about jerking more once I can clean more.

My motto for my training approach -- "If it's important, do it every day".  I plan on squatting every day that I train, alternating front squats and high bar back squats in different rep schemes. I'll also be working on low back strength and chinups/pullups.

--
Skill Sets:
OHS 5x3 barbell
Pressing snatch balance 5x3 barbell
Drop snatch 5x3 barbell

Work Sets:
Hang snatch
55x3
60x1
65x1
70x1
75x1

Snatch: 1-1-1-1-1
75-80*-80-85-90
*missed on first attempt, immediately got back on the bar and completed; decided to repeat the weight for the next rep as well

Front squat
3x3 @ 115
2x3 @ 120

I wasn't sure how heavy I could load this, but by the end I felt I could've done more. I'll amp it up next session. And I may stick with 5s too.

Finisher:
4 rounds
Max chinups/pullups
20 AbMat back extensions

Weightlifting practice

Attended my weekly weightlifting practice today. And saw the effects of not attending practice regularly for a few months...

1 snatch + 3 OHS
4 sets @ 60% (65#)

All solid here.

Clean & Jerk
4x3 @ 70% (95#, 1 set at 85#)

Form was awful on the cleans. My power position has completely disappeared, and my knees never popped back under the bar. I think I am afraid to get into certain positions, for fear my back will just tweak out again. Dropped weight to see if that helped, and I still did the same thing. Hoping this was just a bad day, and I'm not regressing back to old habits...

Snatch balance
3x3 with empty bar

Cake.

Knees to elbows
4x5

These need a lot of work, especially doing more reps before dropping off the bar.