You ever have a lift that gets in your head? For me, it is the clean.  Still not adept at the squat clean, I prefer the power clean, and have felt permanently stuck behind 225lbs.  I have hit that twice but it was always a struggle.  Today’s WOD was simple: 1RM ground to overhead.  I have jerked 245 off the rack and have a 1RM front squat of 325, so my thought is that if I could catch the clean in a squat I should be able to hit at least 245.  I clearly need to work on my squat cleans. I worked up to 225 and failed twice.  It really ticked me off.  I regrouped and finally hit it.  It felt pretty good, like I had a little bit more to go.  I bumped it up to 235 and hit that, finally failing at 245.  Despite ending with a failed rep, I was more than happy to finally break beyond 225.  I have a long way to go still, but this was a big thing for me this morning.
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You ever have a lift that gets in your head?

For me, it is the clean.  Still not adept at the squat clean, I prefer the power clean, and have felt permanently stuck behind 225lbs.  I have hit that twice but it was always a struggle.  Today’s WOD was simple: 1RM ground to overhead.  I have jerked 245 off the rack and have a 1RM front squat of 325, so my thought is that if I could catch the clean in a squat I should be able to hit at least 245.  I clearly need to work on my squat cleans.

I worked up to 225 and failed twice.  It really ticked me off.  I regrouped and finally hit it.  It felt pretty good, like I had a little bit more to go.  I bumped it up to 235 and hit that, finally failing at 245.  Despite ending with a failed rep, I was more than happy to finally break beyond 225.  I have a long way to go still, but this was a big thing for me this morning.

FINALLY

Have you ever had a lift that gets into your head to the point where breaking beyond your personal best feels impossible?  Power cleans for me have been that way.  Not really sure why, but I think it is one of my weaker lifts.  I was stuck at sub-200 for what felt like forever.  3 weeks ago I hit 215 and since then I have attempted 225 several times, failing each and every time.  225 has been in my head big time.  The last time I failed I had the bar up to my chest and couldn’t drop under it.

Today, I finally hit 225.  Finally.

Oddly enough, it was during clean & jerks (155x3; 175x3; 185x3; 205x3; 215x3; 225x1) so for me it was not just a PR on the clean, but the clean & jerk.  Despite my shoulder hurting, I was able to get under 225 and jerk it.  I feel like I could have gone a little heavier but was so happy with breaking past that point I stopped there.

What were you doing when you were 19 years old?  If you were anything like me, you weren’t breaking world records in the Olympics. Zulfiya Chinshanlo set a new world record for the women’s 53kg weight class with a clean & jerk of 131kg.  That is 289 pounds.  Let that sink in for a second.  A 19 year old weighing less than 117 pounds hit a clean & jerk of 289 pounds.  That is more than double her body weight.  In her last attempt, she loaded the bar with 135kg but missed the lift.  Still, she nailed the 289lb C&J and made it look easy.  She only appeared to be really challenged during the jerk. Check out the video here.Another athlete in the 53kg weight class, Cristina Iovu, hit a 99kg (218lbs) snatch.  218 pounds.  218 freaking pounds.  Watch that here.
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What were you doing when you were 19 years old?  If you were anything like me, you weren’t breaking world records in the Olympics.

Zulfiya Chinshanlo set a new world record for the women’s 53kg weight class with a clean & jerk of 131kg.  That is 289 pounds.  Let that sink in for a second.  A 19 year old weighing less than 117 pounds hit a clean & jerk of 289 pounds.  That is more than double her body weight.  In her last attempt, she loaded the bar with 135kg but missed the lift.  Still, she nailed the 289lb C&J and made it look easy.  She only appeared to be really challenged during the jerk. Check out the video here.

Another athlete in the 53kg weight class, Cristina Iovu, hit a 99kg (218lbs) snatch.  218 pounds.  218 freaking pounds.  Watch that here.

I will be watching the Olympics a little differently this year, specifically the weightlifting.  I would venture a guess that there are athletes out there looking to break the world record on the lifts.  From what I found, Hossein Rezazadeh holds the current clean & jerk record with this lift of 263.5kg (580lbs).  From reading some of the comments on YouTube, folks like to talk trash about this guy being so big and not really looking like an athlete.  I really don’t care what they say.  Putting 580 pounds overhead, at the freaking Olympics, is impressive to me.  On a side note, Behdad Salimi holds the current WR for his 2011 snatch at 214kg (471lbs).

I could only imagine how amazing it would feel to stand there holding that kind of weight overhead.