I’m full of bright ideas!! Seriously why not take on a competition with just 8 weeks of training and giving my coach 5 weeks to prep me?? Well as it turns out i performed well, achieving my main goal of completing the 5mins in both jerks and Snatches and knowing that i had the 10mins in me. In fact i was a little disappointed in myself for not doing the whole 10mins but i got time on the platform, in front of judges and i got a feel for how competitions work.
I came into the competition feeling confident with my jerk but quite worried about my snatch, only in this sport can a man talk like that and not get funny expressions! At the end of the day it was the other way around, Jerks were survivable but not as great as i hoped and snatch i felt i could have kept going and going?? In my 5 mins i finished with 48 jerks and 94 snatches, both numbers i feel were a little low, but the most reps i had done so personal bests anyway.
Then the rest of the Arnolds i spent networking, building some awareness of girevoy sport here in Australia, getting contact information and the travelling around to the powerlifting and strongman events to watch the best in Australia and the world come together and lift some REALLY heavy weights. Again i spent this time talking with other coaches both local and international from both sports. Some big things are coming later in the year at Be Strong Training if all goes to plan now.
The weekend was great but then came Monday, the start of my level 1 girevoy certification with Sergey Rachinskiy. I was pretty pumped to get to learn from one of the world's best athletes and coaches and the experience was all it promised to be.
Day 1 was jerks and long Cycle practice, Sergey considers these the less skillful of the disciplines, with snatches being the most technical. We went over technique in each movement before completing a workout based around building that movement, so the 2 days was a lot of physical practice and working out which is the best way for me to learn.
With jerks the key is the Rack position, surprise, surprise! Staying connected and driving from the body not the arms was key and during this to be honest my coach had drilled this so much into me that although it was great to get some feedback i didn’t get many corrections as they felt my form was pretty good.
After Jerks we went over programming for jerks and Long Cycle, this i was very excited for, as i am a nerd when it comes to programming. Initially it all looked so confusing but then it all started to make sense. He Started by looking at a present max effort (comp performance) and then set out a sensible “new” achievement to be aimed for. In the example below the 77 reps was what had been achieved and 90 reps decided as a reasonable goal for next comp.
That was when all the workouts then got layed out and plotted into a monthly program. Again i was a little confused to start with as it looks so different to how i have programmed for powerlifting and strongman. When i reviewed everything though it all seemed to make more sense. Workouts are planned out in time frames, then allocated a place within the monthly cycle. For example workout 1 was an interval session, 1min work with 1min rest for 10 total sets, this one was then plotted to days 1,4,25 and 28. The language gap made things a little difficult at times here but what it came down to was spread out the easier sessions, these provide the core of the training with only a couple of ‘hard” sessions each monthly cycle.
So as an example a hard session would be the third workout, which was a 5 minute set of 10,9,10,9,10 reps each minute. This was allocated one session on day 17. Same with workout 8 which was an 8 minute set of 10,9,10,9,10,9,10,9 and allocated to day 26. What i gleaned from this is basically most sessions should be relatively comfortable. Sounds very similar in many ways to what Paul McIlroy, my coach has taught me about training philosophy. In talking a little more with Sergey this program would not look exactly like this as it was being created on the fly in front of the group. But i got the idea.
What i found extremely interesting was that not many sessions were done with heavier bells. Only a couple through the cycle and from speaking with both my coach, Antoni Stojak and Sergey i see a wide variety of methods being used to achieve a common goal. We did some work with these timed tempo sets and i had set that up in my own training with Paul’s methods and i really found these helped me alot with my jerks.
We then moved onto Long Cycle Clean and Jerk and i instantly loved this movement. Sergey explained why, this is the least technical in his book and the one with the most variety of ways to get the job done. He demonstrated 4 variations of the clean and got us to practice them all. He then helped us discern which one seemed like the best fit for us AND which one we might need to revert to when things got tough. That was pretty cool.
Complexes are a big part of his training system, using a variety of movements to complement the one being trained and again this was a big part of what my coach had me doing also. I will say that even the basic complexes we went through with Sergey were epically long:- 1min per movement:-
- Swing L then right
- Clean ^
- Static hold at hip ^
- Clean and jerk ^
- Good mornings
- Squat jumps
- Clean and jerk 4 min/ arm to finish
We did this with a 12 kg bell and whilst feeling great it was tough going by the end. He had others with bottoms up work and double bells too but this gives you an idea. That finished up an action packed day 1.
Day 2 we went right into swings to prep for snatches and this helped me immensely.
Started with swings, then went into another wonderful complex similar to above but with lots more jump squats and good morning, as well as swings and holds in various positions. I felt this little workout everywhere, it did go for about 30mins. Started off with 1min per exercise, then onto 2mins, before finishing with 3mins of swings/ arm. I was amazed at how this just forced me to relax, it actually got technically easier as it went along? Tough but got a good lesson out of it:- RELAX.
Obviously then we went onto snatches and this was really well explained and demonstrated. He went through up to 6 optional styles of snatch and got us to practice them 4 of them, thumb forward, thumb back, off to the side and deep. As we practiced Sergey went around giving corrections and suggestions and I personally found that shifting to the side felt much more comfortable for most of my work then reverting to a thumbs back style when i started to fatigue and finish off the set on that hand.
Once we finished Snatch practice again we did another complex of movements but this was relatively easy before going through programming info around the snatch. To me this seemed much simpler? However the workload seemed fairly epic.
So Using the example on the left, at present you can achieve 90 reps with a 24kg Bell with the goal to achieve 100+100. This would be some example sessions,broken into phases. How i understood this section was the first session you do 100+100 with a 10kg bell the 90+90 with a 12kg bell then 70+70 with a 16kg bell. The next session you progress up the chain of reps until you are able to achieve 100+100 with all the weights. Then you progress to the next phase
Now this is my interpretation though and is very different to the method described in the Denis Vasilev manual which is broken into timed waves for the snatch. This was the hardest part to understand the explanation but basically work the first phase, then progress to the next one.
From here we went onto GPP work and this was explained pretty well before we jumped in WITH Sergey and did the whole Workout with him. Will break this into bullets for ease:-
- They don’t train heavy EVER
- Weights match those you are training with/For so 50kg and 24kg if your comp is with 24kg bells
- 100 reps is the standard, can be more but not less
- Try to get the work done in the fewest sets possible
- Move at a fast pace but quality of movement and power/ speed is important.
Our workout as this diagram explains was 
- Back squat 50kg/ 30kg men/women
- Jump Squat 24kg/10 kg
- Dips or Push ups for women
- Deadlift 50kg/30kg
If you look at the bottom 100 reps and 50+50 dips is excellent the other option listed right of it would be “GOOD”. At the bottom in little writing is what i completed it in, Sergey said “VERY GOOD.” which made my day.
After that it was all stretching, which was discussed at great length throughout the 2 days. The setup, which i forgot to mention earlier is equal parts warm up, workout and stretching/ cooldown. So if you plan to train for 30 mins of work, then warm up for 30 mins and stretch and cooldown for that same time. I have been very guilty of not giving enough attention to this as well as skimping on my cardio which was also discussed often, the cardio is set EVERY DAY, easy on training days 2-3km run or similar time rowing and harder on non-training days 5-7km or rowing. Again this is the stuff i have stepped up, easing into it starting with 4 days a week and at least 20mins stretching after each session.
Hope this rundown of my experience helps in some way and that you found it interesting.?
