cesimpson

This morning, my normal training partner didn’t show. I had a nice tag team style workout planned, but that’s hard to do without a team. On the spur of the moment, I switched it up and tried, for the very first time, the Secret Service Snatch Test @ 16kg.

I went in to the challenge with a strategy - do 10 ea. arm, every minute, for 10 minutes. When I finished my first set of 10 each, and looked down at the stopwatch to see about 8 seconds left in the minute, I knew I had over-reached my strategy. Ooops.

(This is a good time for me to share a secret. I am terrible at trying to keep track of sets - especially in fast moving, controlled rest, interval-type training. At about set 6, without fail, I forget what I’m doing. I simply can’t count reps and sets and focus on the exercise at hand, without losing count or, worse, hurting myself. At some point I dropped a handful of pennies in my bag. Now, when I know I’m going to do x sets of something, I count out that many pennies and lay them on the floor. When I accomplish the set, I move a penny over about 6 inches. When I move the last penny, I’m finished. It’s a cheap, easy system that works for me.)

So, I had just enough time to move my penny and went at it again. 10 each arm.

I revised my strategy, 8 each arm per minute. The next 3 minutes went by with 8 each arm, and about 15 seconds rest, per minute. And I felt good at that pace. So good, when the 5 minute mark rolled around, I thought I’d give that 10/arm/minute thing a try again.

And so I did. Minute 5: 10 each arm. Minute 6: 10 each arm. This time I was prepared for the possibility that 10 each was too much so I backed down to 8 again for the next two minutes.

Of course, the last minute was a sprint. Everything I had left for 30 seconds each arm. Knocked out 13 with my right arm and 10 more with my left.

That’s:

1. 20x (10x ea. arm)
2. 20x (10x ea. arm)
3. 16x (8x ea. arm)
4. 16x (8x ea. arm)
5. 16x (8x ea. arm)
6. 20x (10x ea. arm)
7. 20x (10x ea. arm)
8. 16x (8x ea. arm)
9. 16x (8x ea. arm)
10. 23x (13x/10x)

…for a grand total of 183.

After some water and a bit to catch my breath, I ran a few 400s at 1:1 work/rest ratios. My first one was a new best time @ 1:08. My other three were all in the 1:20s. After those, I was pretty much done. A little water, a walk home, and a cool shower finished my morning.

The SSST was really quite nice. I went into it almost completely blind - not having any benchmark for ‘reasonable’. That pretty much allowed me to set some pretty high goals. I missed - that is, I did not complete the 200 total (2 arms x 10×10), but got close enough to think that it is possible.

I think next time I’m going to try to do (ea. arm/minute) 12/10/10/8/8/12/10/10/8/12, which would get me to the 200 mark. Then, just keep increasing each number until I’m doing 12/arm/minute. After that, improvement become significantly more difficult. 240 (12/arm/minute) is just a matter of decreasing rest time. After that…well, maybe after that it’s time to move to a bigger bell?

A few weeks ago, JB dropped the 100 TGU challenge in my lap. It was my first workout back from a nice vacation, but it went pretty well. I’m glad he did it.

Hopefully, he’ll see this post in a similar light. =)