{"id":294,"date":"2008-11-04T22:30:17","date_gmt":"2008-11-04T22:30:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/?p=294"},"modified":"2008-11-04T22:30:17","modified_gmt":"2008-11-04T22:30:17","slug":"2-new-personal-bests-in-the-last-7-days","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/2008\/11\/04\/2-new-personal-bests-in-the-last-7-days\/","title":{"rendered":"2 New Personal Bests in the last 7 days"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was ecstatic last Wednesday at getting <strong>a 100kg Clean<\/strong>.  It&#8217;s a land mark point and as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/29\/bethnal-green-weightlifting-club\/\">Giles Greenwood<\/a> said: &#8220;<em>You never forget get your first 100!<\/em>&#8221;  Ok, I didn&#8217;t get the jerk, but I was just concentrating on the cleans.  And I dropped it a couple of times first, but I got it.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m particularly pleased for 3 reasons:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li> It&#8217;s a major milestone in my weightlifting career.<\/li>\n<li> It&#8217;s my first proper PB for 2008 since my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/2008\/05\/31\/the-cure-for-golfers-elbow-medial-epicondylitis\/\">elbow injury<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li> Suddenly qualifying for the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/2008\/03\/16\/crossfit-at-bwla-championships\/\">British Masters Weightlifting Championship<\/a> in February seems possible.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Today I was back at Bethnal Green and I resolved to work on my <a href=\"http:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/2008\/10\/13\/olympic-weightlifting-video-from-last-weekend\/\">Snatch technique<\/a>.  No complicated routine, no rush, I just had a simple plan: <strong>do a pair of Snatches every 5 mins<\/strong>.  Starting at 50kg I wouldn&#8217;t move up in weight until I&#8217;d done 2 pairs with good form.  So how did it go?<\/p>\n<p>50kg was good. 55kg was ok.  60kg was not going well!  At 60kg every lift was different, power snatches were popping up by accident as often as not, and <strong>I was dropping every third lift<\/strong>.  Things were not looking good!  Then the break through, in the form of 45 minutes of 1 on 1 from World Masters Champion lifter <a href=\"http:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/2008\/08\/26\/finding-a-crossfit-friendly-gym-in-london\/\">Patrick Atteridge<\/a>:<\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 481px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" title=\"Pat Atteridge and Colin McNulty at Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club\" src=\"http:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/images\/patrick-atteridge-bethnal-green.jpg\" alt=\"Pat Atteridge and me at Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club\" width=\"471\" height=\"461\" \/><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Pat Atteridge and me at Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club<\/p><\/div>\n<p>The night was quiet towards the end and I was very lucky to get Pat&#8217;s undivided attention, there were several bits of advice that Pat gave me.  First, and contrary to what I had been doing, was to <strong>relax my arms. <\/strong>I had been tensing everything that I could before the snatch, but Pat explained that you should only tense the muscles that are needed, and everything else should be relaxed.  If you&#8217;re too tense, you can&#8217;t move fast and <strong>the snatch is all about speed.<\/strong> Doing this did seem to make a small improvement.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Second was to keep looking up <\/strong>(at about a 30 degree angle) fix a spot on the wall and stare at it.  This keeps the chest up and helps prevents shoulders drooping at the catch.  At first this decimated my snatch and I dropped 3 in a row, but after 20 minutes I was getting it and was doing better.<\/p>\n<p>The third tip was a total focus on speed, realised by <strong>concentrating on catching the snatch in the lowest possible squat<\/strong>.  Pat said: &#8220;<em>Catching 3 inches lower will add 10kg to your max snatch.<\/em>&#8221; It took me half a dozen goes to really get a deep landing and I was getting under it, but kept dropping the bar forward.<\/p>\n<p>Finally Pat told me to really punch my arms and shoulders up and back at the bottom of catch.\u00a0 That was the key ingredient.\u00a0 It took a few goes to get everything coordinated, and I dropped at this point to singles, but 15 minutes later I was nailing a fast and deep landing.  <strong>The snatch has never felt so easy!<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The 60&#8217;s were shooting up, so I jumped to 65, which is an equal PB lift, and I got it comfortably first time.  With only 10 minute left till the gym shut I quickly moved to a PB attempt at 67.5  Something went wrong in my head and the first attempt went no where.  However the 2nd went up nicely and I nailed the landing.  <strong>A new 67.5kg PB, woot!<\/strong> I had a couple of goes at 70 in the dying minutes but couldn&#8217;t quite get under it properly and lost my balance.  Another 10 minutes and I reckon I&#8217;d have got that too.  Well, that&#8217;s something to aim for next time.<\/p>\n<p>Now if I can just get my jerk up to 95kg tomorrow, I&#8217;ll be well pleased&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was ecstatic last Wednesday at getting a 100kg Clean. It&#8217;s a land mark point and as Giles Greenwood said: &#8220;You never forget get your first 100!&#8221; Ok, I didn&#8217;t get the jerk, but I was just concentrating on the cleans. And I dropped it a couple of times first, but I got it. I&#8217;m [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,115],"tags":[77,111,365,124,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-294","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"category-olympic-weightlifting","8":"tag-bethnal-green","9":"tag-clean-and-jerk","10":"tag-olympic-weightlifting","11":"tag-patrick-atteridge","12":"tag-snatch"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colinmcnulty.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}