Finding a balance

1. 3-position snatch: heavy triple; 90% (of heavy triple) x 3 x 3
2. Snatch pull: 90% x 5 x 4
3. Back squat: 75% x 5 x 4

Try to increase weight on the snatch over what you did last week from the hang. Shoot for 75% - 85% here, and remember, don't push lifts that aren't there. We are looking for "technically sound" triples. Only go up in weight if you are CONFIDENT you will make the next lift!

Tommy with some pretty solid footwork!

With the new cycle well underway now, and lots of new faces in the gym, now is a good time to talk about how best to incorporate weightlifting and the rest of your weekly training that you may or may not be doing in addition (i.e., CrossFit). The one thing I want to make very clear is that our weightlifting sessions are WORKOUTS, and are more than sufficient to substitute for your "WOD" on the days that you train with us! Don't think that you need to do a CrossFit workout in addition to weightlifting on days that you are weightlifting. If you were to do this all four days that we train, you'd be doing 8+ workouts a week, plus whatever you do on non-weightlifting days. This is not only completely unnecessary, but a recipe for overtraining! In terms of weekly volume, I suggest trying to find a nice balance between the two depending on what your goals and interests are. What you are able to manage will depend on a lot of different factors, including your eating, sleep, stress (i.e., work), and genetics. Ultimately, you will have to figure out for yourself what you can handle and what works best for you and is most enjoyable!

In terms of the day to day, if you are following our weightlifting programming pretty consistently, I recommend NOT doing heavy squats, snatches, cleans, or jerks, etc. when they come up in CrossFit class. We are on a meticulously planned out 12 week cycle that includes very specific periodization with loading and unloading phases intended to maximize your strength and performance gains over the 12 weeks, and throwing more heavy stuff on top of that is not going to help. Go nuts with the met-cons if that's your thing, but save the heavy stuff for weightlifting if you're going to train consistently with the club! If you stick with the programming as written, eat, sleep, and rest enough, you should see impressive improvements in all of your strength numbers and classic lifts (snatches and clean and jerks) by the end of the cycle. It'll probably help your CrossFit too!