Ok I'm gonna do a lengthy post here, and I need to do it now or else by tomorrow I feel like I will have forgotten everything I learned today!
Sunday, July 22, 2007
Burgener Olympic Weightlifting Seminar (a.k.a. the best spent $95 dollars of my life)
wow what a day. Let me start by saying my entire goal of the day was to fly under the radar. I've seen enough Burgener clinic videos to know he loves to call people out. goal shattered.
clinic was 9am-4pm with one hour lunch break, got there early signed in and chatted with fellow crossfitters. he gets everyone attention and we are asked to form lines standing side by side. I ended up 2nd rown in the center, great view, but also meant easy to get called upon!
he started off with a breif description of how he runs these things. he is just like he is in his videos
http://media.crossfit.com/cf-video/C...earnSnatch.mov if he asks us something we answer with 'YES COACH!'...loudly. anytime he says the word burpees, we yell YEA BURPEES! then he does another thing when he's happy, some sort of hooorahhhh. we have to yell that when he yells it. There was a lot of him yelling 'Is that clear' us, YES COACH! lol you can tell this dude was a marine. if are aren't yelling loud enough its burpee time. for about 2 min i stood there thinking why the hell did i sign up for this? this is like the military, i don't want to yell, i dont want to mess up and have to be yelled at like that. then I realised this was all just a show and he wouldn't be one to berate people.
we started off working on the pulling stance, then receiving stance. then jumping from pulling to receiving. we worked on grip. then he comes and stands by me and asks me to put the pvc overhead (im thinking oh **** don't mess up!). without thinking i lifted itup keeping it right next to my body, and he said excellent. apperently when he asks people to do that they swing it out infront of them because they can. then he taught us the Burgner WU. We went through it part by part, then into skill transfers for the snatch: OHS, pressing snatch balance, heaving snatch balance, and finally the snatch balance. I have done all of these before, but it was nice to get critiquite from the master himself! so we just learn the movements, haven't even put them together and he calls me up to the front of the group. he had me go through the entire burgener WU part by part ( i was so nervous but he kept saying, great or excellent, then he asked if he could adopt me lol he said that to a few others too) then straight into the skill transfers. I was so nervous that i screwed up the heaving snatch balance and was just doing snatch balances but he said it was ok. i was so freckin terrified of messing up infront of everyone. when we finally moved on to snatches one girl (he picked on her a lot) wasn't jumping, and he made us do burpees. the entire first 1/2 of the day was exhausing. after everydrill you hold the position until he says relax. we were bascially holding OHS's for most of the morning.
after lunch he came up to me and said 'dave told me i can't steal you from him'. what he said next shocked the hell outta me. he told me i have a lot of potential and could be really good and should think about getting into oly lifting (he mentioned this place that teaches gymnastics and oly lifting he is buddies with the head coach). i thought he was kidding but he said he was serious. next 1/2 i got called on some more, but it got easier, and i wasn't so scared.
the last 4 hours were spent on the clean and jerk. we started with front squats then apperently there is a burgener WU for the clean, i had no idea. we went over that, then did some cleans. then skill transfers for the jerk. lots of behind the neck push presses, push jerks, sotts presses then we worked on split jerks. I've pretty much read every CFJ article Burgener has written on the
push jerk and
split jerk so a lot of this was review for me. we ended the day with stretching and Q&A. then a few plyo drill demos. After class i went to say thanks and he came again with the you really should get into
olympic lifting, reminding me he was serious. lol overall it was a great day, but i am exhaused. who would have thought one could get so sore/tired from only using a PCV?!
i'm exhaused, and should sleep well tonight. I wish i could have taped the seminar so I don't forget anything, im glad i can come back and re-read this when i need a refresher. there was so much info it is impossible to retain it all. no food tracking. i treated myself to a veggie egg roll tonight.
. LOL
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