Deth

Fitness and everything else

Fifties For Clean And Jerks

Today I was in the mood to push myself with weight on a WOD. I wanted to get out of my comfort zone with clean and jerks with the dumbbells. I’ve been getting the hang of the cleans a bit more lately. Not only that, but I’ve just had more consistency with not getting sloppy.

Those just took me a long time to get. I think it’s because when I think of cleans I think of the barbell and that’s just muscle memory for me anymore. The dumbbells are different, so the mechanics are different, but I think the barbell mechanics try to slip in. Me being anal about doing the best I can to do things properly, I just can’t allow myself to basically curl it like so many people do. I’ll hit a wall with that.

I had the idea in mind to find an older low rep WOD with the dumbbells, so I could give the fifty pounders a try. After too much searching, I found an old one that was just a ladder of clean and jerk and burpees. That was precisely the type of WOD that I was looking for. I did it and got close to the goal. One mistake I have to admit is the fact that I came on too hot early in the WOD. It was trying to recover a bit after the first three or so minutes in.

I took some videos of some dumbbell work, and it looked great. Much better than I thought they felt or expected on a good day with just the forties even. For some reason, I was right on with them today. I had very fast cycling too!

The biggest and only real issue I had at all with them today wasn’t even the weight. Just that the handles and dumbbells are a bit bigger. It made them a little tougher to hold on to and shifted by rack positioning just a little. It’s not like it was a problem. I would best describe it just a slightly different feeling.

Music for the WOD was Dream Theater