Essentials, Day 2

2:00am - Wake up suddenly, worried that I have overslept.

4:40am - Wake up again, realize I still have a half hour til alarm goes off. Fuck.

5:10am - Alarm goes off.

5:20am - Take dogs for a brisk 1mi loop.

5:40am - Feed dogs, pound a protein shake.

5:50am - Off to the gym!

6:00am start sounds pretty awful, but truth be told I felt better today than I did on Monday. I'm not sure if I'm getting used to it, excited about the class, better rested, or some combination of the three, but I feel pretty good.

The morning started off with the same warm-up exercises. I forgot about one of them in my prior post. It was simply kicking your heel into your butt and grabbing the foot to stretch the quads while extending your opposite hand toward the sky. By the way, the inch-worm warm-up still kicks my ass.

Today was about learning the deadlift, the sumo deadlift, and the clean. As per the first class, we started with PVC tubes, then graduated to training bars, then to adding plates. One neat thing I had not previously noticed is that the plates are foam-covered, thus making it safer and quieter when the bar is dropped to the floor after a clean.

In this class, I was taught to perform a deadlift as follows:

The standard deadlift

1. Place feet beneath your hips, as though you had just let your legs fall into a neutral position. Face toes forward.
2. Your grip's width is determined by where your hands lay on the bar when you hold your extended thumbs against the outside of your shins.
3. Raise your tailbone as high as you can and keep your shoulder blades "down". Keep chest high.
4. Lift the bar, keeping the bar as close to the legs at all times.
5. As the bar is approaching the knee, straighten the legs and continue lifting the bar along the leg. Keep a tight core and keep tailbone pointed "up" as much as possible.
6. Finish the lift by driving heels into the floor and driving hips forward. Shoulder blades should still be "down".

This is more or less how I learned to deadlift back in college. However, the straightening of the leg as the bar passes the knees was a new sensation for me as it really highlighted my poor flexibility. At no point did I feel the lift itself was physically taxing, but maintaining strict form really stretched my hamstrings to the point that the tension was a little uncomfortable. I am told that my flexibility will improve naturally over time.

Next was the sumo deadlift. This lift is done with a wider stance than a standard deadlift, with toes pointed outward a bit. Like a sumo wrestler's stance, duh.

Sumo deadlift

1. Assume sumo stance, minding the same posture requirements as the standard deadlift. Kettle bell should be in the middle of the stance.
2. Grip kettle bell and begin deadlift.
3. Explode upward, driving heels down and hips forward.
4. Leading with the elbows, row the kettle bell up to your chest.
5. Lower the weight to its original position.

After that we moved on to our first olympic lift, the clean. This is a pretty old school movement, designed to be a multi-jointed, full-body exercise that trains nearly every muscle in the body to provide explosive power. The clean, deadlift, squat and jerk are lauded as core weightlifting movements since they recruit so many muscles in such a way that universally prepares the weightlifter for almost all of life's physical challenges and athletic requirements. To my knowledge, every legit athlete incorporates these movements into their workouts. And I don't doubt it. Whether you're breaking tackles, driving the lane, catching a wave, or running from a lion, there is no situation in which you don't need to be able to generate high amounts of force per unit time.

This was easily the best lesson I ever got learning the clean. Rather than using a bar, we were given medicine balls (the large, cushy kind). We got into the starting squat position, placing palms on either side of the ball.

1. Begin the upward lift of the ball.
2. As the ball approaches the waist, explode upward while shrugging the shoulders.  Do not use the elbows or any other "throwing" motion to help the ball up.  It should travel upward strictly due to the upward momentum of the squat and shrugging movement.
3. Rotate hands around the ball while lower yourself into a squat position so as to catch the ball before gravity takes over the ball's trajectory.
4. Stand straight up, hips forward.  Drop the ball when finished.

To practice this, the instructor broke up the movement by catching the ball for us at its apex and giving us however much time we wanted to get used to getting beneath it.  It was extremely helpful in learning the motion and getting comfortable.

The workout for the day was the following:

3 RFT (reps for time)

12 deadlifts

9 cleans

200m run

I deadlifted only 65 lbs and cleaned only a 10 lb med-ball.  Neither my classmate nor I really pressed hard and we finished simultaneously, in 9:37 I believe.  Despite the low weight, it was more sufficient to work up a sweat.

Tomorrow is Day 3 of the Essentials Program.  I will report back soon!