The 5 by 5 empty bar OHS warmed up my knees for the 6 sets of 3 reps at 85#.  Constantly keeping in mind my cues ‘active shoulders, keep the bar centered, elbows behind the ears, keep the weight in my heels, knees out, get deep but not so deep I lose my neutral back, bounce out of the bottom of the squat, weight in the heels, knees out again, keep the weight centered and stand it up.’   I expected the working weight to be a little challenging and I was surprised that it felt rather easy, no form foul-ups and I was able to move the weight with confidence which was the focus of this in the first place.

Two more technique days and I will try to move the weight up from 70% to 80% of 1RM(5 by 3 @ 95#) and see if that gets a bit more challenging.  I don’t want to get too repetitious with the strength programming, but I want to force some adaptation and maybe retest for 1RM in 3 or 4 weeks and see if the combination of constant technical work and working up and down the table will give the gains I am after in the short run and lend itself to a more long term methodology.

So what does all of this mean?  Where am I going with this?  Two words, Olympic Snatch, the most beautiful movement I have ever seen.  I want to do it, I want to excel at it.  My weakest body part is my knees and the squat is essential to a good snatch.  A fully developed squat allows me to lift maximum weight and catch it in the receiving position and then stand it up, simple as that, no short cuts, no work arounds.  For me, I have a hard time thinking and doing at the same time, so by learning the snatch backwards, starting with the last part, the overhead squat and progressing to the snatch balance and drop snatch then to sumo deadlift highpulls, tons of turnover practice and power clean work to get really fast off of the floor I should be able to put it all together at the end and pull some decent KG’s.  At least that is the plan.  Go lift something heavy a lot, later.