I did timed reps yesterday - ten singles in the snatch and ten singles in the clean and jerk, with between 1:15 and 1:45 between reps. The weights here weren't earth shattering at around 80% of my gym maxes. Doesn't look like much on paper but I am SMOKED today. In an effort to figure out why the hell I'm a mess today, I crunched some numbers:
Snatch -
80 x 1 x 4 = 320kg
82 x 1 x 2 = 164kg
85 x 1 x 4 = 340kg
=824kg (check my math)
CJ -
100x1x2 = 200kg
105x1x3 = 315kg
110x1x5 = 550kg
=1,065kg (again, check my math)
Compare this to a recent Saturday max-out workout. Note: I'm only including +80% lifts in both places:
4/6
Snatch:
85 x 1 = 85kg
92 x 1 = 92kg
80 x 1 = 80kg
85 x 1 = 85
90 x 1 = 90
95 x 1 = 95
=527kg
CJ
100 x 1 x 2 = 200
110 x 1 x 1 = 110
117 x 1 x 1 = 117
122 x 1 x 1 = 122
127 x 1 x 1 = 127
120 x 1 x 1 = 120
=796kg
As usual, math is tough to argue against. I did 297kg more tonnage in the snatch and 269kg more tonnage in the clean and jerk. Why am I shocked that I'm hurting the day after?
Now, are these maximal weights? Of course not. Is there some room for error here? Of course. But that is an awful lot of work accumulated towards the upper end of the percentage spectrum in a very short amount of time.
This is something that I'm going to include on Tuesday for the next two weeks to get some specific work done. Tuesday also keeps it as far away as possible from my Saturday max-out work. I want it to complement, not replace or affect. I'm not one to be changing things with a month to go until a meet, but I feel like this will be an excellent specific training modality as I get closer to the meet. I'll probably replace Saturday max-outs with these for the first block or two of my next training cycle as well to really do some base building.
Programming squats becomes a bit of a problem here, but this probably just means I'll front squat for a heavy single or two either before or after these sets. Back squatting will only be on Sunday until after the meet. Combined with my front squatting on Tue/Thurs and this will naturally reduce the tonnage of my squats, which will hopefully carry over to the lifts in the next month.
BeeTeeDub: I threw the original article on timed reps and Joe Mills' 20/20 in my blog right here.
Showing posts with label Joe Mills. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe Mills. Show all posts
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Joe Mills' 20/20 Workout
Here is the original article on Joe Mills' 20/20 workout written by one of Joe's former athletes, Gary Valentine. I wish I had found this two years ago when I started this wild goose chase. Better late than never.
Joe Mills' 20/20 Workout! by Gary Valentine, MA, CSCS*D
"The woods are full of strongmen, but very few great Weightlifters!" this was the first of many aphorisms I was to hear when i began training with the legendary Joe Mills of Central Falls Rhode Island. He had so many of these humorous sayings that summed up his philosophy, and 10 years after his passing, I find myself thinking of, or using one of them almost daily.
Joe was 82 when he passed away in 1990, a Member of the Weightlifting Hall of Fame, National Champion in the 30's, and coach of some of Americas greatest lifters, Bob Bednarski and Mark Cameron to name but a few. For many New England Lifters, the trek to Central Falls to be taught Weightlifting and to socialize with Joe was an experience never to be forgotten.
The above quote rang true for me, and so many trainees that sought out his direction. I knew little about the sport in 1980 when I met him. AT 22 years old, I had lifted weights initially to improve my baseball playing, and did what everyone was doing at the time in the gyms - a bodybuilding/powerlifting kind of workout. I soon learned that size and strength were ok, but unless they helped you snatch and clean and jerk more, he was definitely not impressed. At 200 pounds or so, I had done the lifts on my own for about 6 months, learning from an old manual I found somewhere. My clean of 300 pounds was more of a high rounded back deadlift, and what I hoped would impress him made him cringe terribly! "You keep doing that you'll kill yourself" was his comment as I recall.
Style.
Technique.
Body speed.
Fluid motion.
Timing.
This is what he was teaching, with an insight that I continue to find amazing to this day. Today's researchers have discovered "Rate of Force Development" training, and "Task Specificity", as if new and startling discoveries. These were the foundations of Joe's philosophy.
"Sure you’ve got to be strong" he'd say sarcastically, "but if you don’t know how to use it, what good is it?!"
"Perfect practice makes perfect" he repeated constantly. Knowing that the biggest need for most trainees that came to him, myself included, was to learn to apply their strength to the Olympic Movements, he recommended the 20/20 workout. This consisted of 20 progressively heavier snatches and 20 clean and jerks, under his constant constructive criticism. This "got you in shape for Weightlifting" he said, and frowned upon the overemphasis of assistance lifts. "Endless drilling" he claimed was necessary to ingrain the proper motor pattern so that when maximum weights were attempted in a meet, all energy would go toward explosive effort, with no slowing sown of the movement due to conscious thought.
"Don't think, you're ill-equipped!" he remarked, half jokingly, but also to bring out the point that the movement had to be automatic.
"You play baseball right?" he asked, "When was the last time you thought about where your feet were while you were swinging a bat?!" That hit home with me, because I'd been playing ball since age 7, and the only times i was in a batting slump was when I started to think!
After warmup, you take approximately 70-75% of your best snatch. This is performed in exact competition squat style for 5 singles, about a minute or 2 apart. Usually you'd do one, turn to re-chalk for 30 seconds or so while hearing a coaching point, do another, then rest a few minutes while another lifter went and you discussed your lifts and what to work on. After five good singles were completed, you add 5 kg to the bar, and continue for another five singles. Then 2.5 more kg for another five singles. You've now completed fifteen lifts. At this point, if your style was good and the lifts were "pulling you up" - his criteria for a good training lift and the sign that you had more in you- you would continue with 2.5 kg increases for one single at a time until missing. If you made the 20th lift, you were close to your best lift. If you make 21 or 22 consistently, this was the sign to increase the starting weight, and therefore the whole sequence, by 2.5 kg. After a 5 - 10 minute break, clean and jerks were done in the same fashion. Some days you'll do just 15-17 of each lift, or once every week or two, depending on your recovery ability, you would push to 20+. Assistance lifts were something he did not recommend "while trying to learn how to lift weights". Believe me, if you put everything into this workout as you were supposed to, you weren't asking for anything more!
"You just did 40 of your pulls, squats and jerks exactly the way you need to, so go home and recover!" was his recommendation.
I've found this to be an incredibly demanding workout that truly tests your desire to be an Olympic Lifter! It is ideal for building confidence, and helping determine your openers. Always better to start a little lighter, I learned, and do them sharply. Used exclusively of course, it can easily lead to overtraining or staleness, so try it a few times and see where it fits for you. I learned from Joe that this sport is a perfect blend of all athletic qualities. Unfortunately, many people in it overemphasize the strength or size aspect, almost downplaying "technique" as some sort of trick or something. Joe knew that you had to have it all. If you had strength without style, you’d probably never realize your full potential, and injury was almost inevitable. All technique and no strength would not cut it either, but he realized that strength was movement and speed specific, so a workout like this was designed to apply all the strength you had.
Please give this a try! I'd be interested in your experiences. Feel free to email me garyv@optonline.net to tell us how it goes or with questions.
I'll end with another Mills quote that you'll need for this workout -"You’re never as tired as you think you are!".
I don’t know about that one! Good luck, and enjoy your workouts!
Joe Mills' 20/20 Workout! by Gary Valentine, MA, CSCS*D
"The woods are full of strongmen, but very few great Weightlifters!" this was the first of many aphorisms I was to hear when i began training with the legendary Joe Mills of Central Falls Rhode Island. He had so many of these humorous sayings that summed up his philosophy, and 10 years after his passing, I find myself thinking of, or using one of them almost daily.
Joe was 82 when he passed away in 1990, a Member of the Weightlifting Hall of Fame, National Champion in the 30's, and coach of some of Americas greatest lifters, Bob Bednarski and Mark Cameron to name but a few. For many New England Lifters, the trek to Central Falls to be taught Weightlifting and to socialize with Joe was an experience never to be forgotten.
The above quote rang true for me, and so many trainees that sought out his direction. I knew little about the sport in 1980 when I met him. AT 22 years old, I had lifted weights initially to improve my baseball playing, and did what everyone was doing at the time in the gyms - a bodybuilding/powerlifting kind of workout. I soon learned that size and strength were ok, but unless they helped you snatch and clean and jerk more, he was definitely not impressed. At 200 pounds or so, I had done the lifts on my own for about 6 months, learning from an old manual I found somewhere. My clean of 300 pounds was more of a high rounded back deadlift, and what I hoped would impress him made him cringe terribly! "You keep doing that you'll kill yourself" was his comment as I recall.
Style.
Technique.
Body speed.
Fluid motion.
Timing.
This is what he was teaching, with an insight that I continue to find amazing to this day. Today's researchers have discovered "Rate of Force Development" training, and "Task Specificity", as if new and startling discoveries. These were the foundations of Joe's philosophy.
"Sure you’ve got to be strong" he'd say sarcastically, "but if you don’t know how to use it, what good is it?!"
"Perfect practice makes perfect" he repeated constantly. Knowing that the biggest need for most trainees that came to him, myself included, was to learn to apply their strength to the Olympic Movements, he recommended the 20/20 workout. This consisted of 20 progressively heavier snatches and 20 clean and jerks, under his constant constructive criticism. This "got you in shape for Weightlifting" he said, and frowned upon the overemphasis of assistance lifts. "Endless drilling" he claimed was necessary to ingrain the proper motor pattern so that when maximum weights were attempted in a meet, all energy would go toward explosive effort, with no slowing sown of the movement due to conscious thought.
"Don't think, you're ill-equipped!" he remarked, half jokingly, but also to bring out the point that the movement had to be automatic.
"You play baseball right?" he asked, "When was the last time you thought about where your feet were while you were swinging a bat?!" That hit home with me, because I'd been playing ball since age 7, and the only times i was in a batting slump was when I started to think!
After warmup, you take approximately 70-75% of your best snatch. This is performed in exact competition squat style for 5 singles, about a minute or 2 apart. Usually you'd do one, turn to re-chalk for 30 seconds or so while hearing a coaching point, do another, then rest a few minutes while another lifter went and you discussed your lifts and what to work on. After five good singles were completed, you add 5 kg to the bar, and continue for another five singles. Then 2.5 more kg for another five singles. You've now completed fifteen lifts. At this point, if your style was good and the lifts were "pulling you up" - his criteria for a good training lift and the sign that you had more in you- you would continue with 2.5 kg increases for one single at a time until missing. If you made the 20th lift, you were close to your best lift. If you make 21 or 22 consistently, this was the sign to increase the starting weight, and therefore the whole sequence, by 2.5 kg. After a 5 - 10 minute break, clean and jerks were done in the same fashion. Some days you'll do just 15-17 of each lift, or once every week or two, depending on your recovery ability, you would push to 20+. Assistance lifts were something he did not recommend "while trying to learn how to lift weights". Believe me, if you put everything into this workout as you were supposed to, you weren't asking for anything more!
"You just did 40 of your pulls, squats and jerks exactly the way you need to, so go home and recover!" was his recommendation.
I've found this to be an incredibly demanding workout that truly tests your desire to be an Olympic Lifter! It is ideal for building confidence, and helping determine your openers. Always better to start a little lighter, I learned, and do them sharply. Used exclusively of course, it can easily lead to overtraining or staleness, so try it a few times and see where it fits for you. I learned from Joe that this sport is a perfect blend of all athletic qualities. Unfortunately, many people in it overemphasize the strength or size aspect, almost downplaying "technique" as some sort of trick or something. Joe knew that you had to have it all. If you had strength without style, you’d probably never realize your full potential, and injury was almost inevitable. All technique and no strength would not cut it either, but he realized that strength was movement and speed specific, so a workout like this was designed to apply all the strength you had.
Please give this a try! I'd be interested in your experiences. Feel free to email me garyv@optonline.net to tell us how it goes or with questions.
I'll end with another Mills quote that you'll need for this workout -"You’re never as tired as you think you are!".
I don’t know about that one! Good luck, and enjoy your workouts!
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