Holiday sale shopping

Snowboard jacket from DC. Bought at Junkyard.se

Spring shoes from Vans. Bought at Junkyard.se

Fall shoes from Converse. Bought at Junkyard.se

Christmas day morning run

Ran 5K with my new Christmas present. Wireless sport headphones from JBL reflect bt. Bluetooth headphones, so I don't have to wear my phone.

When I run on the treadmill I keep getting tangled in the cord, but no more! Really a very good workout tool.

Weightlifting class

This Sunday, coach and me, held a Weightlifting class at Friskis och Svettis Skellefteå. Four people showed up and we had a lot of fun. They did improve during the 1.5 hours.

Afterwards it was time for us to do our own thing. I did snatches. Cleans. Got pissed of at coach because my intention had been to do a personal best, but I never told him that so he started correcting my tecnique and completely threw me off.

He told me to lift my butt off the floor one more inch in starting position. I got all wobbly, but yeah, I guess my pull WAS better after.
Anyway, so no personal record today.

I rounded up the workout with jerking from a powerrack, back raises, ab rotations and ab wheel.

Cardio, with a little something something

We're backin Skellefteå.  The town I grew up in. Snow everywhere. White Christmas.

Since we spent 12 hours on a train to get here, I chose to focus on cardio today.

40min on the crosstrainer.
Superset kettlebellsnatches with burpees. 3 sets.
Superset floor to ceiling with 15kg with boxjumps. 3 sets.

Now it's time for dinner with my family. Movietime - the Hobbit at the cinema. Then a beer at a local pub.
Nice saturday. No doubt.

Today I spent an hour in the gym being available. I am a liscensed gym instructor/trainer. Nobody really needed my help, except a guy who wanted me to get the chains from the storage so he could play around with them.

So I had basically the whole hour to myself. I hadn't planned on working out, but I ended up doing 6 sets if squats and then singles up to max, I did some boxjumps, pushed to prowler around for three lapses (70kg weights on) and finished with 5 sets of three different triceps exercises.

It ended up being a pretty good workout.

Image from crossfit ignite.

3 workouts, one post.

Competition day was saturday. On sunday I was back in the gym. I felt like just doing something spastic, so I did lunges with a sandbag, 150 beats with the ropes, 100sledgehammer hits on the tractor tire.

Then... I did 4 rounds of 25 deadlifts, 25 pushups, 25 crunches with a stick. Next round 15 reps, then 10, then 5.

Yesterday I picked up the barbell again. Snatch 2x5, 3x3, 2x2 and then some singles. Next up cleans the same as the snatches. I did the jerk from a powerrack 2x5, 3x3 and some singles.

An Iranian man walked by and told me I had good form. Then he hung out my entire workout. He told me Iran is a country good at two sports: wrestling and weightlifting.  He was a wrestler who had dabbled in weightlifting. Yesterday was funny, people sort of gathered to watch me lift.

Today I did frontsquats 5x3. Afterwards, 40min core.
Tomorrow I'm squatting hard.

Videos from my first Weightlifting competition. Highs and lows, baby, highs and lows

Lusselyftet 2014

Linköpings atletklubb

Best powersnatch in competition: 27 kg

Best Clean and jerk in competition: 35 kg

Bodyweight: 53.3 kg

This video I shall name... the Bomb. I crashed and burned, baby.

My best Powersnatch. Which isn´t saying anything. It was 3 kg under max. It sucked. I was too afraid to get under the bar. Not that I needed to, but...

My best Clean and Jerk. Wobbly. But the judges wasn´t concerned with afterpressing in this beginner´s competition.

All in all, I´d say it was fantastic to get the experience of being in a competition. I got more and more comfortable with every lift. Not that I won´t be nervous next time... but I will keep trying until I get used to it. 

Training to compete is just as important as training to lift better and heavier.

I learned that on Barbell Shrugged.

Peace out :P

Competition day

Hold your breath, it's competition day!

How Anna got her groove back with her younger coach ;)

After todays' workout my body feels like it's been hit by a car. It kind of feels good.

I started with the snatch and it just felt like I ran into a brick wall. My technique went out the window. Moved on to clean and jerk after fighting hard with the barbell during snatch. Or more like fighting with my own mind. Coming back from an injury is hard. Because I hurt my back, I don't extend my back properly in the pull anymore.
Clean and jerk was no better. The bar came up over my head, but my lifts would'nt pass in a competition.

Finally coach put me out of my misery. He had me doing only raised pulls and raised powersnatches. Finally my groove came back. I felt some flow. It made my fucking day.

Finished the workout withsquats, back raises and ab wheel.

Tomorrow I'm only going to spend less than an hour in the gym working on technique.  Mostly the pulls and extending my back.

Crawling under the covers now with a book. "The Ragdoll", by Christine Falkenland.

Rest day

Lovely and restful day. Morning walk with coach. Came back home, had breakfast and fell asleep ob the coach. Did some studying. Cleaned. Brought out the Christmaa decorations. Talked about getting a dog.

Just a lovely peaceful Sunday.

Crying

Saturday night and I'm back in the gym. Snatching and powersnatching and clean and jerking. Did some jerking and finished with biceps curl.

I felt tired today. Lot on my mind. I even cried a little during my first sets :p I'ts not funny, but hey, what can you do but laugh about it.

This is where my mindset is. Weak and spent.

Competition is 7 days away.

First practice in prep for the weightlifting competition

Friday evening, I worked out after the gym was closed. I've started preparing for my first competition. It's a competition for beginners, no licensence to compete needed.

Today I did:
Snatch 4x2 or something like that. I think I'm gonna have my starting weight for the first lift be 25kg.
Clean and jerk 4x2. These felt good today, but my body was tired (come on, I work full time with a physically active job and go to school full time). I stopped at 32.5kg when my ankle gave out, but I can definitely do more. Coach says maybe as much as 45kg.
Frontsquats 3x3, 3x2

I'm going back in tomorrow afternoon after a good nights sleep and a hopefully restful day.

It's ten pm now. We're having burgers and candy and are going to fall asleep to a movie. I'm out.

My first weightlifting competition

Ok, so basically I'm put off by weightlifting at the moment. Why? Well...
I entered a weightlifting competition. I scares me shoeless. I mean it. Now, I just want to run far far away.
December 13th is the date when I will enter the podium.

Today I did 3x3 powersnatches, trying to get close to maxing out.
I did the same with powercleans. 3x3.
I did three sets of pushpresses. Close to max.
And the squats. 4x2. Close to max.

I just wanted feel my limits. And guess what... the sky isn't. No, it seems that very low weights are my limit. I just feel unprepared. Uncapable. Weak. I guess those are all the right reasons to do it.

I already know I'll come in dead last in the competition,  but this is a good challenge. Kind of "even though you're gonna suck... do it anyway. Do it because regretting what you didn't do is worse than regretting something you've done (most if the times anyway)"

So with only four months of weightlifting practice, a year of exercise of any kind, I entered in my first weightlifting competition. 

First workout...

Of the week.

Standing snatches 3x8

Snatch complex 2x2

Hang snatches 3x5, 3x3

Snatch pull 3x5, 3x3

Squats 5x5.

It felt good, but kind likecwalking into a blob of jelly. There was some resistance.

Luckily I've been eating all day, so that helped :p

Tomorrow is cardio day. My gym has a weekly challenge. This week I'm gonna run five lapses on the track with a sandbag, hit the big tractor tire with a Sledgehammer 100 times and swing a rope 100 times. Before that I'm gonna get sweaty on the crosstrainer for 30-40 minutes.