Fitness-9/8-hang squat clean and jerk, pull-ups/burpees/run

Tuesday WOD

I'm back! Portugal was amazing and quite the experience for me. I did pretty well over there in the health and fitness department. I ate relatively well (I actually lost a couple pounds on my trip) and got a good bit of exercise in. I was able to get after two good workouts in a gym over there. Aside from those, I spent a lot of time trekking around to different sites and getting some good "active rest." I hiked up to 3 different castles during my trip and managed to turn all three of those journeys into lung burners. Got some great looks in the process. I did well to get some good rest there too. I spent about 3 days total relaxing on the beach and swimming in the ocean, it was grand. In hindsight, I wish I would have spent another couple days working on my sun soaking skills but it was pretty tough to sit still being in a new place that yearned for exploration. I had a great trip and definitely have the travel bug. I'm already starting to formulate a plan for my next adventure.

It felt great to get back into the gym today. My flight home got in to Seattle Monday evening and I was able to get a great night's sleep. And I've not had any issues with jet-lag. Pretty awesome.

Today we went after 5 x 3 max effort hang squat clean and jerks. It was brutal. My sets looked as follows:

3 x 135#
3 x 185#
3 x 205#
3 x 215#
3 x 225#

My strength in the bottom of the squat continues to improve but still has a long ways to go. This was a good bit of work but I know I can do more. I struggled with this one on the mental front. Especially with the jerk. I only got one successful jerk on the last set at 225#. I got each of the cleans but was having a hard time getting fired up for the jerk. It's amazing how hard it is to jerk after a squat clean. Takes a lot of practice to transition to the jerk and get aggressive with it. Apart from one another, I can both clean and jerk significantly more. Together, the numbers fall dramatically. I'll keep after it.

After the lift, we went after a 12 min amrap of:

-10 x chest to bar pullups
-burpees, max height jump/max reps (jump as high you possible can on each rep and when the time between reps surpasses 3 seconds, the set terminates)
-run 200m

score=4 rounds, 48 burpees

Not bad here. I was really going after it on the burpees. Jumping high and hard. I hit 16 the first round, 11 the next, 10 the third and then fired out 11 in the fourth round. The chest-to-bars are improved! I cycled all 10 the first set. I was pretty pumped. The remaining pull-ups were slow but still improved. A good first day back!