What Would Kettle Do?

I was tagged in a post the other day on facebook. This doesn’t happen too often so I checked it and saw that a clip of me snatching was part of the discussion. Normally I do not comment on anything as most of you already know but the post had mentioned that the footage was an example of what I learned from IKSFA.  I do not look very good in this footage. I figured I had to say something or coach would, you know, like, kill me.

So what I am thinking is I will post some footage of me snatching and talk about the progress I have made and a little of the technical stuff that is going on.

The above clip is the one from the post I was tagged in. I think this is from 2009 but it could have been 2010. This footage is when I was working with a different coach and before I went to IKSFA. Obviously I am not in very good physical condition here. I was not running or stretching or doing any conditioning work at all. I was mostly lifting heavy stuff once in a while and drinking beer out of boots. It was awesome, but it was clearly affecting my lifting.

You can see there is a lot of extra movement. I am letting energy leak out of almost every joint in my body. My hips do not come through. I am not using any real leg drive and I am really ripping the bell up with brute force. Looking at this footage for the first time in a while I would guess I did that for effect

As you can see I am snatching into an undersquat. I still do this sometimes when I miss a snatch or when I am tired but I no longer do it on every rep. I have learned that if I catch the bell out in front with my bones aligned I can post up on the bell and relax my muscles sooner and for longer than I had been. In this footage I am catching the bell way too late.

I am casting the bell on the drop. What a mess. It is not the one ring to rule them all. There is no reason to cast it to hell. It’s a weight. It wants to fall. No reason to get all flowery about it Buckley.

In the above clip I had been to the coaches at IKSFA and had been working with Coach Rudnev for about 2 months. You can see that my hips are coming through…really coming through. I was snatching this bell with my hips almost exclusively. Later this would be mockingly referred to by Coach Rudnev  as “John Technique”. You can see I am using an extreme counterbalance on the drop. Like the undersquat the “leaning back” is a tool to be used as needed. More is not always better. My conditioning was much better than before but I was still getting winded pretty easily and I was using every trick I could find to get the reps in. I think my insertion is better on this set and my breathing is good, but I am still catching the bell way too high. But the two major issues with these snatches are

1)   I am not using any transverse rotation with my acceleration pull.

2)   My arm is bending around my body during the backswing (especially on the right) because of a lack of flexibility. This also affects my lockouts.

I remember slowing down at the end of the first 2 min because I was nervous I was going too fast and I had never done 40 snatches per hand before with the 28. This was in January, before Siberia, my pr with the 24kg was 63 right 54 left.

The above footage from the competition in New York. It had been 4 months since Siberia. This time I did 90+90 with the 24kg. In December, on Christmas day I did 40 left (then I HAD to rest) then 40 right in my mother’s garage in Pennsylvania.  I was happy with my result in June. My personal record more much more than doubled in the few months I had been training with coach Rudnev.

Above is a swing snatch clip I did with the 30kg in Sept. We are getting close to a year of training with coach Rudnev and the IKSFA team. This is a drill that I do and that my students might be familiar with. It is brutal but it is excellent for helping re-enforce a lifters motor patterns, among other things like grip and breathing rhythm. When I watch this clip I feel like I am much better on the left although my numbers are better with the right…weird. I am still working on it.

Above is me in Seattle 3 weeks ago. It was my first time competing with the 32kg. I was pretty excited ! In July the most I had ever done with the 32kg was 30+30. Here I did 60+45. It was an uneven performance but I hit my CMS rank in Snatch and that was the goal of this meet for me. I made the mistake of thinking and counting during the set. I couldn’t stay focused and, well, that’s all folks.

Here is my set from this past weekend. 28kg 70 reps right (2min rest) 70reps left. I thought it said 3 min per side. And for some reason I thought it was 18 rpm, which does not compute either. Actually, it was supposed to be 20 rpm for 3 min 30 sec right (2min rest) 3min 30sec left 20rpm. So as I started my set I started thinking (big mistake) that I was not going to make it and I had to go faster. Can you find the moment when I figured this out? My technique felt pretty good in the beginning. You will see when I break into my sprint that I am working much harder. I am driving much more with my legs and pulling harder with my back and arm. It is an unsustainable pace for me. Too much muscle needs too much oxygen. For me anyway. I missed the set by 3 reps and it took 3min 7sec. During the break I actually felt pretty good and thought I would try to do the second hand in 3 min even though I realized I had 30 extra seconds. I thought I could do it. So I started faster and used a slightly different technique. It is called a “swing pendulum”. This is something that I learned at IKSFA in St. Petersburg. You can see the little scoop as the bell passes my knees on the upswing. The hard thing is to time it with my transverse hip rotation and my acceleration pull. I can manage it on my left but I can’t quite find it on my right. Can you see the difference? You can see when I miss my timing that the bells lock out to my left on an angle. It’s a trip how these little things make such a huge difference. Of course, once I get super tired there is no pendulum and hardly any rotation. It’s just SMASHING TIME! Once I start lifting like that the end of my set is near. Anyway, I know there is a lot more I could write about these videos but this blog is getting long already.

I’m training for the nationals in Detroit this November. That will be a full year of training under coach… all eyes forward.

Kettle,

This entry was posted on October 9, 2011 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Uncategorized . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.