CF Games Open 13.4 – How Hard Can It Be, It’s Only 7 Minutes!

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I am going to summarize the video because I was a little all over the place. 🙂

  1. Position: Mobilize for the bottom of the Toes-to-Bar (hip flexors and shoulders/chest) and the starting position of the clean (hip floss).
  2. Movement: Practice moving your butt down before starting the clean, every single time you start a clean. Practice pulling your ribs down as you catch the jerk. Smash those movement patterns into your lizard brain, so that when it gets hard, like after the first 30 sec, you will use them.
  3. Strength (or strength preservation): In the description for 13.4 it says Clean and Jerk. They aren’t kidding. Use a proper (power) clean and a real (split, power or push) jerk. If it is fast enough for Spealler, it’s fast enough for you. What is a proper C & J, here is a good example.
  4. Below is a little video on how to put steps 2 and 3 together to practice what the Chinese weightlifter is doing within the context of 13.4. To learn something new simplify the movement to just the thing you want to learn. In this case, it is just to stand up quickly, with straight arms and catch your implement in a partial squat. Using the KB on this will take out the difficulties of pulling the bar around your knees and reduce the weight so that you can make the movement as simple and fast as possible.

I haven’t covered the TTB because Carl Paoli does a far better job than I could ever do. Check it out here.

Below is the suggested, but generic, warm-up. If you need help customizing, let me know.
0:00 – run, row or jump rope
5:00 – back and shoulder foam roll
8:00 – Hip flexor mobility with band or ball which ever works for you. See KStarr’s squat cycle http://www.mobilitywod.com/2012/02/prog-13-squat-cycle.html series for a refresher.
12:00 – Snatch grip T-Spine ext shown in the viedo
14:00 – Hip Floss shown in the video
18:00 – 3 x C & J at 66% of your workout weight + 3 x TTB (practice a real C & J not a CF C & J)
20:00 – 3 x C & J at 66% of your workout weight + 3 x TTB
22:00 – 3 x C & J at 100% of your workout weight + 3 x TTB

25:00 – Hit It!