Press
Performance: Low Intensity, 65-70% x 7 x 4
Add a few pounds to your last low intensity exposure.
Fitness: 3 x 5 Linear Progression
Add a few pounds to last week. If you’re missing reps, move to a 3×3 this week.
Exposure 7/8
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Deadlift
Work up to a max triple
Go heavier than last week.
Exposure 7/8
Post loads to comments.
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AMRAP 7 Minutes:
Burpees
Today’s burpees are to a 4″ height (Old 45# bumper or new 45+35# Rogue bumps). Two foot hop on to the plate is Rx. The jump is to the target, and you must come to full stand on top of the plate. Aim to maintain a steady even pace and not red line until the last 30-60 seconds.
Post reps and Rx to comments.
Coach Whitney dancing to to Nina Simone’s song “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” at the Art Show on Saturday night
I Don’t Wanna Snatch
By Chris Fox
Your flexibility sucks, you don’t move a lot of weight, it bothers your wrists, even the kids in CrossFit Teens snatch more than you… should you even show up on a snatch day? I’d argue an emphatic YES.
The snatch not only displays athleticism arguably better than anything else, it also develops it better than anything you can do—certainly anything with a barbell. You need to be powerful and flexible to move big weight in the snatch, but of course, you also need to be powerful and flexible to do a back handspring. The thing that makes the snatch a better developer of displaying those qualities is that you can start light and add weight as you develop proficiency.
In CrossFit, we work on the stuff we suck at. We become better, more well-rounded athletes when we develop our weaknesses. It’s fine if you want to specialize and become really be good at X, Y, or Z, but if your goal is to be stronger and fitter overall, then the snatch will help you tremendously.
You should work on developing a mature overhead squat. That might mean that on snatch days you power snatch and ride down to your best bottom position and hold in a more controlled manner than in a full snatch. It’s still a position worth working on. I always tell my Foundations groups on Overhead Squat/Snatch day (where the majority of people have a hard time, by the way), that if you can sit in the bottom of a mature overhead squat (feet flat, knees out, torso neutral and upright, arms locked out overhead) then there’s almost no other thing in the gym we can’t teach you over time. You’ll still need requisite strength, power, and skill to do stuff but your flexibility will be sufficient.
Snatching can be fun! It can also be frustrating because there are so many aspects of the lift that can go right or wrong, but I think it’s the most fun you can have with a barbell for exactly that reason. There’s nothing more rewarding in the gym than a hard-earned snatch PR. Truthfully, I hated the lift when I first started because I was bad at it. If you stick with it you’ll develop proficiency in time and be mediocre like me. 😉 Let’s face it, you or I will never snatch like Liu Xiaojun (holy shit! And don’t forget the ladies) but we can still improve. Before CrossFit I had practiced cleans but not snatches. The snatch had to play catch-up for quite some time. I could clean around 200 pounds but struggled to snatch just over 100 pounds. I finally put my pride in my back pocket and decided that I would work on it. Over the last few years, my snatch has just about doubled while my clean has gone up by a comparably meager 25%, but I’m a much more balanced weightlifter.
Need to work on your flexibility for the overhead squat? Do them all the damned time. Seriously, make them part of your warm up ALL THE TIME. Active Recovery is also always a good place to learn new tricks but here are a few oldies and goodies that you can explore on your own time. Happy Snatching!
More Resources:
Kelly Starrett (Mobility WOD) Snatch Prep
Greg Everett (Catalyst) on Flexibility for the Overhead Squat
Colin Burns (Juggernaut) on the Snatch and Overhead Squat
Thanksgiving Schedule Changes
Wednesday (11/25):
ON: 6am, 7am, 8am, 10am, 12pm 4:30pm, 5:30pm
CANCELLED: 6:30pm, 7:30pm, 8:30pm, CrossFit Kids
Thursday (11/26) THANKSGIVING:
ON: 8am, 9am, 10am
CANCELLED: 6am, 7am, 12pm, 4:30pm, 5:30pm, 6:30pm, 7:30pm, 8:30pm, Active Recovery, Comp Class
Friday (11/27):
ON: 10am, 11am, 12pm, Open Gym 5:30-8pm
CANCELLED: 6am, 7am, 8am, CrossFit Kids
Saturday (11/28):
CANCELLED: 8am, Yoga for Athletes, Active Recovery
Sunday (11/29):
CANCELLED: Active Recovery
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Describe your relationship to the snatch.
Press – 135x7x4 – not easy, but didn't feel significantly harder than 120x7x4 did at the beginning of the cycle
Deadlift – 395×3 – last rep was tough but doable – last heavy single was 415 so I'm excited to test again
Metcon – 113 burpees – stayed 1-1 with Michael through about 85 before he pulled away
6am with Nick and McD
Press: Did 135# x 4 x 7. It was a little more than 70% but everything moved well last week so I decided to push it. Last 2 reps of the last set were a little grindy. I realized in the first two sets I didn't breath at all. Correcting that in the second two sets helped.
Deadlift: 395# x 3. Loving the progression each week here and am excited for the 1RM attempt sometime soon.
Metcon: Burpees, my favorite. Got to 121 reps. I thought I would have more gas to sprint the last round but the double-step to the plate really slammed my quads. DanL was a great pace car.
Press
115# Perf Style. This is close to 80% of my 1RM and still moved well.
Deadlift
Another 10# jump made this 355#. Felt lighter than 345# did last week.
WOD
84 reps.
QOD
I hated snatch for a full two years. It used to bother my thumbs, my wrists, my shoulders and I used to get way too in my head before each pull. It really wasn't until I took Frankie's Oly Class that everything started to click. My old bad habits (bar going out too far in front, bending arms too early) were replaced with a different set of bad habits (pulling too hard off the floor, not getting down quick enough) but if I remind myself of those two things I'll have a good snatch day. It has definitely become my favorite lift.
6am with NickDowell
Perf Press: 63x7x4, which is 70% of my 1rm. The last set got a little grindy, but I may not have taken enough rest between sets.
Deadlift: 275×3, new 3RM! I made sure to chalk up and used McD's tip from last week to switch grip with my left hand over and right hand under. The bar felt much more secure and now I'm excited to test my 1 rm next week since I've always failed because of grip.
WOD: a leisurely 53 squat thrusts to a 4" plate
QOD: The snatch is the lift I have the most room to improve. I must've done hundreds of them in Frankie's class, and while I fixed some issues, there's still lots to work on, especially with my mobility.
6am
Press – 132.5x5x3 – layback got bigger as reps and sets added up, but better than the end of previous cycles.
Deadlift – 440×3 – first and second moved well, but the last one ended up a bit forward and grindy.
Metcon – 75 burpees – relatively happy with this. Hard to be especially spry after heavy deadlifts.
Press: 53#x7x4. Stayed at 65% because of some lingering shoulder discomfort and they moved pretty fast. DL: 190#x3. This is only 5# off from my 3 rep max – yay! Burpees: 59 to a 4" target. I wasn't expecting to kill this one today, but it certainly killed me.
Oh, and regarding the QOD: I absolutely love the snatch. Probably my favorite barbell movement in the gym, and despite being pretty mediocre at the slow lifts, I feel like the snatch is one of my strengths. There's no better feeling than nailing that particular lift, and nothing more frustrating than when you're having an "off" day with it.
6am with NickDowell
Press 125 x 5 x 3. Moved surprisingly well. Last few reps at 122.5 were so grindy last week and my legs were shaking so badly I didn't think I would make them all at 125 but they felt lighter and easier then last week. 3×5 PR for me.
Deadlift 325 x 3. Moved well but I still have a bad habit of not locking my hips out all the way at the top. Need to have someone yell at me every time about it. Still hook gripping it and the bar isn't slipping. Excited to test both the press and deadlift 1RM's next week.
WOD – 79 burpees. I tend to redline during burpees so I took them too conservatively to start. Never came close to redlining and I think left 15-20 on the table. Didn't even start sweating until minute 6 and that should have happened by minute 2-3.
QOD – I really enjoy the snatch even though it is easily my weakest lift. I like how technical it is and really requires strength and coordination for every body part. Also blows my mind that people like Jake can snatch what I can barely deadlift.
Olympic lifting and I have been broken up for a while and are just starting to get back together. 😛
I suck at both lifts and I feel like I'm never going to be better than "not abjectly terrible." Right now (although I've missed the last three exposures, and I swear it's not because I'm trying to avoid something I suck at) I'm reintroducing the snatch but not clean and jerk, since I still cannot hold a front rack even with an empty barbell.
I'm hoping that this whole being injured thing has taught me enough patience so that when I do start failing spectacularly (which I know will happen once keeping my wrist safe is not the limiting factor in my choice of weight), I'm able to use it as a learning experience instead of getting frustrated and emotional. For those of you out there who've been embarrassed because an Olympic lift has made you cry, I'm just going to put it out there: You're not the only one.
@Fox: Is there value in warming up with OHS every time if you can't do much more than the PVC? It's kind of weird that I'm able to snatch when I think of it that way, but I guess it's because I'm not holding the OHS position for more than, say, 5 seconds at a time. I do find that when I hold the barbell overhead with snatch width grip for more than that, it starts to get uncomfortable. (Or maybe that's a sign of a fault in my positions when stabilizing the bar?)
@Stella – Instead of OHS in warm ups you could do 5-10 hang snatches.
I spent the last five years actively avoiding the gym on snatch days. Mostly because my flexibility sucks, I don't move a lot of weight, and it bothers my wrists. But for as much as I hate snatching, I hate burpees more, and eventually Fox started programming enough burpee days that I couldn't stay home from the gym every day; I decided it was time to finally get serious about olympic lifting so I joined Frank's oly program so that I could stop doing burpees. So now I snatch 3 days a week, and it's made such a huge difference to try to force my body into that position so often. It is so rewarding to actually be making progress on this lift, and it's really only because I'm actually doing it. I wish I had learned to snatch a long time ago. Kids, let my life be a lesson to you. Show up on snatch day.
Belated thanks to Kate for putting on another awesome art show! I had a great time, and I loved that this year Whitney raised the stakes with dance. But the true star of the show, in my eyes, was BAZ yet again. Loved that sculpture, BAZ–sorry I didn't get a chance to tell you in person on Saturday!
Thanks for this post Fox,
It was as if written for me because I am totally guilty of constantly skipping snatch day.
This is a great reminder that we should work the most on the stuff we suck at.
I will jump back on the snatch train.
Thanks again!
Just yesterday, on the way home from yet another snatch day stuck at an ugly, quarter-squatted, not-locked-out 95 lbs., I told Seth I was giving up. "I'm trying to learn too many new skills at once," I whined. "I'll focus on other, easier lifts and come back to this really hard one when when I'm fitter."
And then omniscient Fox shamed me with this post. So I'll keep on trying.
OG Make up Post
Snatch 3,2,2,1,1,HS
80
93
100
106
113
HS: 121, 132, 136.4 (Fx4)–have these, more legs, less arms, and not push it after 11 reps.
C&J: 3,2,2,1,1,HS
99
116
124
132
140
HS: 154
Front Squat :Heavy Single:
154
165
176
Cash out: food
QOD: Love olympic lifting, but, snatch has been on vacation since max out in July. Slowly piecing things back together more efficiently. Very pleased to start hitting my 90%+ numbers more consistently as of late. Practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanence. Keep on grinding.
I was once the textbook snatch-h8tor. I can distinctly remember thinking "these people (i.e. the wonderful coaches of CFSBK) are crazy if they think I'm gonna do this lift." I don't remember exactly when that relationship changed but at some point snatch became my #1 favorite lift without question. I count the number of sleeps I have until my next opportunity to snatch! I think the reason why is well illustrated by this diagram. It's magic!
I've been doing the specialized weightlifting class/club for a year now with Frankie to feed my obsession but I gotta give a shout-out to all the coaches at CFSBK who have given me so many invaluable tips/encouragement over the years. Such incredibly good coaching on this very challenging lift, I feel we are very lucky in this regard. Just a wealth of knowledge from all of you guys — and since you never know where the miracle is gonna occur, it's great to have some different perspectives on what to work on.
Mattie Rogers is one of my favorite lifters to watch (she's competing in the World Championships this week by the way) and one time she wrote something on Instagram to the effect of she's still learning about the snatch. I mean, she holds several American records, and if she's still learning, that definitely tells you something!
Snatch is far and away my favorite lift but requires the most care and feeding. As Fox notes, it pretty much reveals all of your weaknesses in terms of strength and mobility which is great because it lets you know what aux. stuff to work on. I am taking a break from Frank's class but intend to be back soon. Also, when you actually hit one the skies part and all that is knowable is revealed . . . (or so I am told)
Noon class with Fox and Nick. Fox, great article and perspective on the Snatch lift, I know I am guilty of "avoiding" this day of the cycle. I have grown more fond of the lift and you are right, nothing more rewarding than a snatch PR.
Press – Performance
53 x 7 x4, very last rep SUPER sticky but with some encouragement I got my head thru, YES!
Deadlift – Very soft and rounded last week so I repeated the weight
200 x 3, spinal alignment felt better than last week. Happy here.
Burpee WOD – 78, I really wanted 80 and up'd the exertion in the last 30 seconds, but just couldn't get there. I think I could have been more efficient on the 4 inch decent, by going right into the next burpee and not shifting my feet, think I lost some time on transitions. More conscious of that next time.
Fun class!
Someone at SBK needs to get this for Chrismakwanzukkah:
http://www.grubstreet.com/2015/11/gift-guide-food-drink/slideshow/20/
Question for the MGMT: Will 608 be open for those with an Open Gym membership on Thursday morning?
Relationship with the Snatch: not good at it by any stretch of the imagination but I still love it because it's scary and fun and hard and at times a very fair weathered friend. I've been trying to come in for one group class a week on Sundays while my oldest is at Crossfit Preschool and I've been pretty pleased that Sundays are snatch days.
9am
Squat
255x5x3
Press
125x5x3
Deadlift
345x3x3
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Loving the comments about the snatch article. I think it's the most rewarding lift to succeed at, with the back squat a close second
Yes AM OG Block will operate during the hours it overlaps with group classes through the week.
QOD
When I started CrossFit I never olympic lifted because I didnt know how to do it. So to fix that I signed up for an olympic lifting meet 6 months ahead of time and got my ass to lost battalion hall (a lengthy trip to woodhaven by subway) 2x a week for several months until I had a decent looking lift. On most days I love snatching, on some days, I don't. But It's the most "athletic" thing we (I) do really, so I value that about it the most.
12:00pm Group Class
3 Rounds NFT
5 Thrusters
5 CTB Kipping Pull-Ups
Then I fooled around with some bar muscle-ups and other stuff.
Press
95x7x4
Deadlift
315×3
Metcon
88 Burpees
I thought I would crack 100 but I started a little too conservatively.
Press: 58#x7x4
Deadlift: 3 reps @235#. I asked Noah afterwards how it looked. His response: "You got the lift, but used all the wrong parts." Sigh. Should've stayed at 230# for a third week.
WOD: 94 burpees
Quad burner.
QOD: Snatch day is my favorite day!
6:30 1-on-1 w. McDowell.
Warm up of 3 rds of 15 Russian KB swings (12 kg), 15 hollow rox, 5 strict chin ups.
More step ups onto 16" box, 4rds of 5 reps w. each leg. Got a few unassisted steps up in with my right leg (improvement!) but needed to kind of slide the tip of my left foot along the box for balance. Okay for now, but will work on better balance and form in future.
Press @ (33 x 5, 45 x 3, and) 50# x 3 x 5. All felt good.
First WOD type workout after coming back, and the familiar feeling of doing work while out of breath while trying to keep form came back like it was just yesterday that I did it last. AMRAP in 7 min of 10 slam balls and 5 push ups. Got in 6 rds + 2 push ups. I'll take it.
Press: Failed after 3 reps at 62.5# again this week. Did 3X3. Definitely doing performance next cycle. I've had enough of these shenanigans! My form isn't the problem…at least it wasn't tonight.
Deadlift: 175#x3. PR! My 1 RM last cycle was 170 Great reminder from Noah: it is possible to move more weight than you should on the deadlift. Gotta always remember technique is more important than any number!!!
Burpees: 101. I admittedly slowed down (and did step ups) in the last :30 when I knew I'd meet my goal of 100. Quads burned more than anything else. 121 is INTENSE!
Snatch: I really love this lift because it does seem like magic. (Great link, Amanda!) I've felt the weightless magical power one time, so I know it's possible. It frustrates me because the RX versions of workouts so often call for 95# snatches from women; it seems like I will never get anywhere close! That makes me want to work harder and never miss snatch day though. Especially watching tiny, tiny women snatch more than I deadlift on instagram. It's possible!!!
It was great to read the OHS article. I actually had a breakthrough with my bar path while doing them during warm-ups today! Hopefully this will help my snatch 🙂 Thanks for the article!!!
7:30 with Ro and David.
Press at 68. Failed the 5th rep on the 2nd set because I didn't rest enough. The third set was tough but fine. going up again next week.
Deadlift 2×208. This felt so much harder than last week. Ro called it so I stopped.
88 reps in the burpee wod. Zero fun was had.
The snatch is such a frustrating lift. In the past couple months I finally made some progress thanks to some tips from Ro. Slow progress is still progress.
I haven't been able to snatch (or clean and jerk) for months now due to an injury and while it is my worst lift, I feel like I finally started to get the feel of it right before I stopped be able to do them. After over three months of only powerlifting, I look forward to being able to work on them again (hopefully soon).
Press 3×5 67.5 – new PR
DL – heavy 3 at 195
I tweaked my back after lifting this weight last week. I knew my body was tired, so I feel rested today and tried it again. Did some mobility work at home to try not to tighten up. So far no back pain..
WOD
83
David!
88 reps?
Grrrrrr…
Snatches are lots of fun especially when everything goes right. Some day I will be able to snatch a lot of weight. Some day. I try to incorporate OH squats into my warm-up every time I work out. Great article- and thanks for the links. I really need to mobilize more instead of complaining about tight hips.
6:30 with NoRo.
Press
45 x 5, 65 x 7 x 4. I think my third set was actually 70#.
Deadlift
135 x 5, 185 x 4, 225 x 2, 285 x 1, 300 x 3.
Shook a bit on the last rep but Noah said my back was in a good position.
WOD- 83 burpees.
Nowhere near as bad as I expected. I kind of liked jumping on the plate once Arturo switched them out for me near the beginning because they were sliding all over the place. I think I made a bit of a burpee breakthrough this evening. Hard to explain but it's like I found my bounce or something ha. We'll see if I remember next time. I could definitely have pushed myself harder I this, I suppose, but I had kind of a hectic weekend and just didn't want to go there.
Warm up x2
3 pull ups
10 push ups
16 reverse lunges 35# plate OH
Press
15kgx5, 20kgx3
24 x7 x2
25 x7 x1
26 x7 x1 good
Deadlift
115# x3, 145 x2, 175×1
200 x1, F
Tried to repeat last week's set of 3 at 200# but do a better job. Didn't work out
7 mins of burpees to a 4" plate — 96
Harder than I thought. Mashed out foot cramps afterwards
Today was alright… 7am with Nick and McDowell.
Press 3×5 at 93# failed the last rep on last set. Nick said I rushed my last set and I agree.
Deadlifted 275 x6 last week hitting 300×3 left he hobbling around work for three days and screwed up my wed. Squats. Took it lighter but more reps.
88 burpee son and felt I didn't pick up my pace soon enough near the end.
I love to Snatch but it also scares the shit out of me.
I have to make instant split second decisions if my shoulder/scapular will receive the weight or give out and drop on me.
It's the one reason I tend to not only stay conservative with what I put up, but also not really progress in gaining more weight on that lift.