Training partners

My last two training sessions have been pretty excellent, mostly thanks to my superlative training partners. Ross and Alexis were in town from New York over the weekend and Ross got up early to train with me on Saturday morning. It was overhead press day, and I was starting my next week's training a couple days early, mostly to take advantage of the opportunity to train with Ross, which is always a good time. My deload week went well so I was feeling good and ready to get back to some heavier weights.

Ross does a lot of Crossfit so is vastly more experienced with all the Olympic lifts than I am. It was great to be able to have him coach me through my split jerk sets, both to get some confirmation that my form looks decent, and to have someone there to encourage me to be more aggressive and explosive. I miss having a coach, and I think my training numbers/recent frustrations reflect that somewhat, as I respond really well to being told what to do in the weight room, and miss having the affirmation and corrections that Chris provided. (I know I wrote recently that I am trying to be better about being my own coach, and that is an ongoing and important process, but I still miss Chris and his coaching a lot.)

Another reason I love training with Ross is that his boundless enthusiasm for what I can do pretty much erases any doubts in my head. Rather than worry about my heaviest set of the day (99# split jerk), and whether I would be able to get the prescribed 5 reps, I asked Ross to push me as much as possible and pretty easily worked up to 99#x8, a 3-rep improvement over the last time I split-jerked 99#.

Saturday training:
Warmup: Is, Ts, Ys
Split Jerk: 6 sets working up to 99#x8, supersetted with inverted rows
Accessory: Speed bench and single-arm rows
Finisher: Every minute on the minute: 6 burpees and 6 medicine ball slams (I threw this in instead of rowing because I love doing hard finishers with other people as it always pushes me to work harder and push to the end. Also, Ross sweats even more than I do with burpees, and that is always amazing to see.)

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This morning Eric met me at the Y for squat day. Eric is my most frequent training partner and I am going to miss him like crazy when he leaves Cambridge later this month. It was great to have him there this morning as he has been trying to help me figure out what I did to my left knee and how best to treat it, as it continues to bother me with squats and at random times throughout the day. The treatment plan we came up with last week was to avoid painful activities and take ibuprofen for a few days to try to calm down any inflammation and let my body heal (working hypothesis: I irritated the articular cartilage in my knee with my shitty squat form a few weeks back and it hasn't really had the opportunity to heal since then because I just keep pushing it.)

I already had plans to drop my squat weights significantly because I have been struggling so much with depth and missing reps. It's definitely a blow to the ego to go from a working 1-rep-max of 245# to 225# and then to 205#, but I think it's the right call and will pay off in the long run. My heaviest lift today was supposed to be 175#x5+, but by the time I got to 126#x5, my L knee had already started to ache (and I had taken ibuprofen before heading to the gym) and had also cracked pretty loudly in the middle of my 111#x5 pause squat set, so with some consultation and encouragement from Eric that it was the right decision I completed a set of 155#x5 partial squats and stopped there.

It's really difficult for me to not complete a prescribed training session because I feel like I am cheating myself of potential progress, and I hate that feeling. In this case, having some external confirmation that it's the right call to take it easy for now allowed me to do so without beating myself up about it. I still have my eye on the October competition, but am also trying to be smart about staying healthy overall and also recognizing that pushing through pain now will get me nowhere if I still can't squat clean and heavy in October. I am hoping that if I take it easy on my knee for a couple more weeks I can get it to heal up so I can start squatting to depth again without pain. Only time will tell . . .


Training today:
Pause squats: 3 sets working up to 126#x5, partial squats: 155#x5, walk-out w/ mini-squats: 221#x5.
Accessory work: good mornings and a kettlebell complex (with the 16kg bell for the first time!)