How To Go 2/6 in an Olympic Meet

I post this in complete self-flagellation as this as a very disappointing meet for me. As I text a friend of mine afterwards: sometimes you get the bear and sometimes, well, the bear gets you. I'll take from the experience what I can and move forward.

The whole thing was very very well run and I'm becoming more impressed with the Crossfit crowd the more I get to hang out with them. I still don't believe it to be the best means to develop maximal strength and I take issue with some of the means (as well as promoting Rhabdo and vomiting), but I find it very hard to argue with the amount of work and the sense of community that has been obvious at each box that has allowed me to come in and train. 

My first miscue was weigh-ins. I didn't know what the weight classes were going to look like, so I didn't make a huge effort to cut weight. I always watch things the week of the meet, just because lower bodyweight is always better whenever possible. When I got there, the weight classes were as follows: 174 and below, 175-199, 200+. I figure I'm a shoo-in for 200+ as I weighed 208 on monday, so I stepped on the scale.

201.4

Wait, what? I got on again and still rang up 201.4. If I had known I was that close to a different weight class, you can bet your ass I would have gotten that pound and a half off the night before! Maybe I should've tried to get it off as I had a half an hour or so. But I figured it didn't matter, as I was just aiming to go 6/6 so I didn't care about placement.

Moving to the actual lifting:

I was totally impressed by the female lifters. I gotta say, Crossfit has done a great job of appealing to women and actual lifting rather than being cardio bunnies. One of the female lifters turned out to be a trainer at my friends' gym. She finished second in her group and received some high praise and an offer to work with her from my Oly lifting coach/mentor. Also: she is quite strong, in ludicrous shape, very smiley and very easy on the eyes. But that's a different conversation for a different day.

Snatch-
Warmups felt very good. I lifted up to my opener and then did a high pull with 20 lbs over my opener just to feel it.

195: Good. Just wanted one to get me over so I power snatched it. You'll see in the video that I left the bar waaaayyyy out in front. This is a habit of mine, along with jumping back as I catch. You'll notice this prevalent in all of my misses. The pulls are all very high and nothing looks overly wrong, but it's incredibly tough to catch a barbell when you shift your center of gravity backwards.

205 Miss: See above

215 Miss: See above. I didn't even give myself a chance on the two misses. I basically tried to catch the barbell at a 45 degree angle. This is a great sign that I'm not finishing the pull, despite the height of the barbell.

Tremendous disappointment as I had done 105kg (231lbs) twice in training and I thought for sure 220 would be there today. In hindsight, I let me balls and my ego get in the way because I could've taken 205 again and gone 2/3. Hindsight is always 20/20.

CJ
Again, warmups felt light. I actually cleaned my opener twice and everything felt great. As before, I high pulled 20lbs over my opener just to feel the weight a bit. That's comfortable for me, might not be the best idea for anyone else. Just how I roll.

245: Good. I opened very low (again, no bomb-outs) and power cleaned it. Nothing special by any means and not a whole lot to be gained from a 111kg lift.

260. Miss. Feet jumped backwards and I got a little soft at the bottom. Bar out in front + squishy at the ottom means a missed lift.

275: I basically power cleaned this one, just left it a little in front and that was that.

So I totaled 440lbs. 200kg. My best ever total in training was 230 and I was constantly in the 215-225 area. To total at around 87% of my best ever and 90% of my average total is extremely disappointing. Brace yourself for the awful:

The training was great and I felt ok going into this meet; not great, but OK. Here is where I messed up: I cut down my training too early. Due to work committments, I only made it into the gym to train around 4-5 times. I think that going from training daily to basically every third day was a bit of a shock to the system, especially after being used to max weights on a daily basis. I did not get the chance to clean from 12 days out of the meet. I took a snatch 3 days out, which went...poorly. Live and learn.

After a bad meet, you always see people say "Well I easily did XYZ in training". Training and meet day are such completely different animals, it's almost not an apples to apples comparison. I'm a firm believer that he stress response that you body feels on meet day had BETTER be different than you feel in training. A professional dancer friend of mine (ballet, not exotic) once explained nerves like this: "The nerves you get before a performance are proof that it's important to you. If you aren't nervous, you don't really care". I like that, but clearly I didn't "use" the nerves.

Another lesson: I let my balls get in the way of my original goals. I wrote down the day of the meet: 6/4/6, No Misses. When the first miss came, I should've rallied around that and regrouped. Instead I thought "Well, there goes that idea; I guess we'll just go for broke". Sometimes this is the right idea; some of the best advice I've received about missing weights is "Well, add 5kg and pull it like you mean it this time". I let my ego get in the way and it cost me some lbs on my total. Pride cometh before the fall indeed.

Thanks to my training partners for filming my lifts and coming to the meet, and thanks to my friends at Crossfit Broadway for having their holiday party that night so I could see people I haven't seen in years, forget about the meet for the night and celebrate the one year anniversary of the gym.

I still have every intention of doing the meet in Las Vegas in January without making much change to my training. Back to the heavy stuff, but I'll do plenty of full lifts from the blocks in an effort to get my feet corrected. I will also (hopefully) lift straight through until the meet rather than a layoff. This time was unintentional, but it taught me that I need to make more of an effort to stay active and keep weight in my hands leading up to a meet.

After that meet, I intend to work with Chad Smith from Juggernaut Training (http://www.jtsstrength.com/) on some programming; he just doesn't know it yet. I've never had anyone write my training for me and I think Chad's programming will synch up well with my interests. Chad seems to program for athletes rather than purely for powerlifting, or purely for throwing, and that appeals to me greatly.

I'm not sure if this qualifies as f#ckarounditis (to paraphrase Jen Sinkler), but I'd like to be able to do a little bit of everything. I'd like to be able to do Oly meets, or PL meets, or Highland Games, or even run the 60m. I'm not an Olympian by any means, but I have every desire to still compete at the national/international level. All the time spent with rugby took a good chunk of my 20s away as far as competing in anything else, so I'm trying to make up or lost time! I realize the danger of trying to become a jack of all trades (and a master of none), but at this point I have to think my qualification level is low and the simple act of getting stronger will be more beneficial than any kind of sport-specific training. This entire year has been devoted to Olympic lifting, and I am admittedly burnt out on the idea of purely practicing two lifts. That MIGHT be a wee bit of meet disappointment talking there.

I also have some lbs to continue to drop as I'd like to be in the 190-200lbs range consistently; this is where I feel the healthiest and strongest. I started the year at 225lbs and it looks like I will end around 200-205. I'd rather this trend continue, as I've made two round trips between 235 and 200 in the last 3 years. Nothing unintentional or unhealthy; when I trained for strongman, it paid to be just below 231 so that's where I was during the summer. In the winters I'd lean out.  

That's all the news thats fit to print y'all. I keep saying this, but I really am making more of an effort to blog and write. If nothing else, it helps to keep me sane. Thanks to all of you for having a read and feel free to light me up in the comments section or on twitter (@kylef) with any questions, comments or concerns.