First PR of the year!

Well today I had my first real PR of the year. Hopefully there will be some more, but for now I figure I might as well document the first one! Well, really there were two! Today we wanted to hit a PR in the clean, and we ended up succeeding twice. The idea was to do some triples, a moderately heavy double and then hit singles. My PR in the clean leading up to today was 112.5kg. Truth be told I cleaned 110kg sometime during my Sophomore year of college and have always been upset that I haven't cleaned more. My 112.5kg PR came from about a year and a half ago at IU, and since I know I'm stronger now than I have been before, I pretty much knew a PR was going down today. Well I did my double at 100kg and then moved to singles at 105kg and 110kg. I then moved to 115kg, which was a new PR, and made it way easier than I had expected. We looked at the video and debated skipping to 125kg because 115kg looked so fast, but decided to stick to the plan of trying to make 120kg. And it's a good thing we did. I ended up missing three times at 120kg from the floor, leaving me pretty tired. I told Wil I wanted one more try at it, and he was stoked that I still wanted to go for it. On my fourth attempt I finally made it, and it was pretty sweet. I was feeling pretty happy about it, since all of our training focuses really heavily on the olympic lifting and a PR there means that the work that we have been putting in is showing results.

Here is a link to the video, which includes my makes at 110kg, 115kg and 120kg:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3olJ6Jd_v58

Stay tuned!

Jeff

Bloomington Training Rolls On

Hey all,

So to give an update, not a whole lot has changed since the last time I posted. I have been training hard 6 days a week keeping the focus on power and speed development. I feel like I have made some huge gains and am more explosive and powerful on the track and in the weight room every week.

Today, for example, I went into the weight room for a nice snatch day with 2x3, 2x2 and 2x1. My triples were 70 and 75, my doubles were both at 80 and my singles were 85 and 92. Those are some pretty solid numbers for me in training, especially since I was coming straight off of the track where I had run 10x200m. Next week I get to go for a max in the clean and the week after that I max in the snatch. Pretty exciting stuff!

My track workouts have also been really good lately, and I have sticking to the plan of acceleration development backed by speed development and speed endurance. I have been doing a lot of acceleration ladders (sets of 10m, 20m 30m), hills, sled pulls, pole runs, elastic runs and speed endurance runs (120m-200m repeats), and I am feeling really good on the track right now.

I have been sticking to the straight pole drills once a week, and have started doing 6-8 fiberglass vaults at the end of each straight pole session from 2 lefts on tiny poles. The focus is the exact same thing as the straight pole work, and things have been going pretty well with it. Here's a video of me from 2 lefts on a small 15' pole from last week.

Tomorrow is my drills/jump/acceleration dev day, and I might just move to 3 lefts and see if I can get on some sort of decent pole from there. If so, I'll post video!

Until next time, Thanks for following!

Jeff

San Diego/The Real Work Begins

I just got finished with almost 2 weeks of really awesome training in San Diego. I got the opportunity to train at the Olympic Training Center with my good friend Yoo Kim while I was out there, which was absolutely amazing. I learned a lot training with him. I spent some time doing some really short run jumping in flats and worked a lot with him on my running, plant motion and takeoff. We also did a bunch of work off of the runway on my running form. We were working on trying to keep my hips up and run tall and elastically by finicking a little bit with my run timing and foot strike. All in all I was working on a lot of new ideas, but felt like I picked up a lot of cues and am already working toward getting better in those areas. I also did some really solid workouts in the weight room, including 6x2 in the snatch at 75kg, 4x5 in the clean at 90kg and some good running workouts like 2x4x120m at 85% with Recovery of 2' and 4'. Of course I got to spend a bunch of quality time with my family, but I was glad it also ended up being a really good training trip.

On Thursday I got back to Bloomington and went to Force on Friday to test in the clean. My PR in the clean is 112.5kg, which is fairly low, and I set a year goal of cleaning 120kg. First we started with some heavy doubles from the blocks, and I made it all the way up to 105kg for 2 without missing at all. We moved to singles off of the floor at that point and I easily made 90kg, 100kg and 110kg. I was pretty happy with 110kg and how easy it felt considering I haven't yet done a ton of heavy cleaning. I felt so good at 110kg we decided to skip straight to 120kg, and I barely missed. I pulled it high and racked it, but was barely forward and missed it. I was super happy with that effort though, and will hopefully be able to make that weight in a few weeks when we test again.

Now onto the real deal. While all of my posts so far have been fine and dandy, tomorrow is when the real work begins. Tomorrow is the first day that my coach, Jake Wiseman and I will meet for training at the track. From this point forward until January I will be going to the track 6 days per week with Coach Wiseman and lifting 3-4 times per week with Wil Fleming. This is when the real work begins, and we are going to focus hard on building raw blow and power on the track just like we are in the weight room. Needless to say, I'm excited. Check back soon!

Jeff

Oakland and San Diego (... so far)

Well I flew out on Friday to Oakland to visit my brother and ended up having some great times and some really fun workouts. On Friday I went to visit his school (he teaches P.E., coaches Track and XC and is the Men's Athletic Director) and do some warmup drills and strides with his XC team. They seemed to enjoy it and so did I.

After that we went straight to King's Gym in East Oakland to do some boxing. I'd never boxed before, but Paul has been going for about three months and he hooked me up with his trainer for the day. We warmed up with 3 sets of 3 minute of jump roping, then did some basic learning stuff and then I worked the punching bag for a while before going to work the gloves with the trainer. I probably did three or four sets of 2-3 minutes on the gloves and was absolutely beat. After that we worked the heavy bag some more, and I went home exhausted. It was super fun.

The next day we got up early and went to a cross country race that my brother was running. He ran well and we had a good time people watching and talking about how funny those cross country races are. Everyone takes it super seriously, which is really cool at times and pretty funny at times. Anyway, after that we hung out for a while and then he took me to a place called the Great Western Power Company, which is actually a cross-fit gym and a rock climbing gym all rolled into one. I got a good workout in with some snatch complexes, medball, core and KB swings, and we went home. That evening we went out in Berkeley with my friends Mike Morrisson and his girlfriend Herdis and had a great time.

On Sunday I flew into San Diego, where I will be training for the next two weeks. Today (Monday) was a super fun day, as I got to do some stand-up paddleboarding for the first time ever! I've really been itching to try it, and my step-dad Jim got a board and a paddle recently and let me try it out. Here I am in beautiful San Diego Bay on my first paddleboard trip:

Anyway, Jim and my Mom hopped in some kayaks and we ended up paddling around the bay about two and a half miles. Afterward, Jim jumped on the paddleboard and showed me what I should really look like paddling that thing around. I hope I'm that smooth when I'm 60! Here he is trimming the bay:

Anyway, this is a pole vault blog so I guess I should get back to that. Later in the day I went over to UCSD, a weight room I love to train at, and got in a really solid monday workout with some good hang cleans, plyos overhead pressing and split squatting. Tomorrow I'm going to head out to the Olympic Training Center to train with my friend Yoo Kim. We're going to have a little jump session out there hopefully, which will be my first real jumping of the year. I'm not planning on doing much, but I'm excited to bend a pole a few times late in the session after some more straight pole work. Hope for the best! Until next time...

Jeff

Maxes and Travels

So this week was max week in the weight room. On monday I went in hyped and ready to max in the snatch, only to have my shoulder flare up during the warmup to the point where I just went home and went for a jog. I came back in Tuesday and did my Monday workout minus the max, because my shoulder was still bugging me. I went in Wednesday ready to max in the snatch and the front squat, and was able to get both in. I warmed up and started my snatch progression. I started with some 5 rep sets at 40, 50 and 60 kg. I then hit triples at 70 and 75kg pretty easily, and moved up to make 80kg for 3 from a hang. I was real happy about that one, and you can watch it here. I moved to the squat rack, where we were going for a 5 rep max in the front squat. I have never been much of a squatter (at all), but was able to do some warmup sets at 50 60 and 70 before moving to 85kg for an easy 5. I probably could have gone for 6-8 at that weight or gone up to 90 or 95 for a true 5 rep max, but we decided to cut it off there where I was fairly comfortable but it felt heavy. I was really happy with my maxes, since both of them were probably rep PRs, and then I moved on to do 12 sets of 10 second weighted vest vertical jumps with 40 seconds rest and was done for the day!

The rest of the week has been interesting. After my weight session Wednesday, I jumped in the car and headed to Manhattan, Kansas (9 hrs) to pick up my friend John Jefferson, whose car had completely broken down in Colby, KS. His friend Christian Smith was nice enough to give him a ride to Manhattan, and I met them there, had a snack, drank some of Christian's coffee, and headed back to Bloomington. All-in-all it was a 20 hour trip through the night, and I took a 4 hour nap today followed by my jog and now I'm spent.

Tomorrow I get on a plane and head to Oakland to see my brother for a weekend before heading down to San Diego for about 10 days to hang out with my parents and hopefully do a little bit of training at the Olympic Training Center with my friend Yoo Suk Kim. Should be good!

Jeff

Progress etc.

Well this week was a down week in the weight room but I did manage to get in a couple good workouts in there and otherwise. I have been sticking to doing some straight pole work a few times per week so that I can learn some new concepts there (getting the top hand moving up off of the ground, jumping through the center of the pole with elastic arms and pushing through the penultimate step to name a few) during the fall and transfer it to my fiberglass vaulting in the winter more easily. This week I managed to do a stay behind drill with a grip of 12'10", which is basically a 6 step or 3 left straight pole drill with no swing-up. The highest I've ever really been able to hold before and swing up is about 12'3", so hopefully if it gets even a little bit better and I can start to swing up on it, I will be ready to approach some serious 6 step straight pole PRs. My goal this year was to be able to swing up with 13' of grip comfortably, so I'm right where I need to be there, and it has been 100% a result of working on a number of technical changes on the runway and at takeoff.

Anyway, this week is going to be pretty fun. Tomorrow I get to put up my first max of the year, which is going to be a 3 rep max in the hang snatch. I'm looking for something around 70kg, and 75kg would be absolutely awesome. On Wednesday we go for an 8 rep max in the front squat, which I'm less excited about haha. I'm not much of a squatter but while we're all friends here I can tell you that something around 80kg would be pretty darn good for me at this point. I operate only in kg, so hopefully I'm not confusing you too much! Thats all for now.

Jeff

Change of Plans?

I had a chat today with one of my good friends, Aarik Wilson. Aarik is hands down the best triple jumper in the USA and quite possibly the world... when he's healthy. In 2007 he was beating the best of the best in europe regularly, and posted something like 20 out of the top 25 results of the year in the US in the triple jump, and also has long jumped over 8m!

Anyway, he has suggested to me that I should take indoor a little more seriously this year, and try to get after it a little bit and even get over to Europe. That of course sounds great to me, since I'm itching to get over there and compete ASAP! He explained to me that I could get fired up for indoor, compete hard, get my USA mark and some good experience in Europe, and then not have to worry about jumping outdoors until June. I think it sounds like a good plan, and Jake is totally behind it, so I'll have to talk to Wil, my strength coach, and formulate a plan to make it work. We'll see!

In other news, I have been training hard in the weight room and am feeling pretty strong down there! This week is going to be pretty tough, and then next week we back down the volume and hit a couple maxes for reps to get an idea where I am. Stay tuned!

Jeff