Thursday WAR Strength & Conditioning

WAR Strength & Conditioning WorkoutA. Snatch Balance- 3 reps X3 (light weight, work on speed and posture) rest 90 sec B1. Back Squat 5 reps X5 @ 75%(intensity); NO RESTB2. Full squat box jumps 5 reps X 5 (30/24 inch, immediately following back squat) rest 2 minC1. Bulgarian split squats 10 reps @ 75% (intensity) x3 rest 10 secC2. Stiff leg dead lift 10 reps @ 65% (of back squat) rest 30 secBelow is part of an article I read last night.  Take some time to read it.  Here is the link if you want to read the entire article. http://startingstrength.com/articles/strongstartstarr.pdf

A Strong Start

by Bill Starr

An exercise consists of three parts: start, middle, and finish. I’m often asked which of the three is the most important in terms of making a heavy attempt on one of the primary movements. The answer is all three play critical roles, but the start has the greatest influence on the outcome when doing a lift with a heavy poundage. It’s similar to the first step in a sprint, or the initial move of a quarterback throwing a football, or a swimmer coming off the block in a race. What happens in the beginning always has a direct bearing on what follows.While this article is aimed at those doing the two Olympic lifts – snatch and clean and jerk – the information is also beneficial to anyone who is trying to get stronger and only doing exercises like the deadlift, squat, and bench press. Or someone who mixes dynamic movements like power cleans or power snatches into his strength routine. Any program worth its salt has at least one pulling exercise in it where the bar starts on the floor, so I’ll begin with the basics and use the power clean as my example lift.The key to having a strong start in this or any other pulling movement is to set your body correctly. Should your starting position be incorrect, your form at the beginning of the movement will also be wrong. So I’ll go over the fundamental points. Your feet should be shoulder width and your toes pointed forward. The bar should be touching your shins and your frontal deltoids must be slightly out ahead of the bar. This is a key point. Whenever your frontal deltoids move behind the bar you will have less power to elevate it higher, so this should not happen until the very end of the lift.The grip that fits most for the power clean can be found in this manner. Extend your thumbs on an Olympic bar so that they barely touch the smooth center part of the bar. That works for most, but if you have very wide or very narrow shoulders, you need to adjust your grip a bit to accommodate for that difference. Where you set your hips also varies with body type and sometimes preference. If you can set them rather high, even as much as having your back parallel to the floor, you’re going to have a much longer lever to work with. However, your lower back and hips must be strong enough to allow you to hold that starting position firmly in order for that high position to be effective. If you can’t, then the bar is going to run forward and this will result in a failed attempt if the weight is demanding.Most beginners and intermediates that I have trained are unable to use a high hip starting position. Mostly because those muscle groups which are responsible for locking the hips into that position just aren’t strong enough yet. So it’s better to lower the hips a bit. But the same rule applies: the hips must move upward at the same rate as the bar, because even when you start with the hips low, if they rise faster than the bar, the bar will move out of the correct line of flight.