Today at CrossFit, the metcon was an AMRAP with 8 dumbbell thrusters, 8 power cleans and 16 calorie row. RX was 35-pound dumbbells for the thrusters and 135 pounds for the power cleans. I scaled it a bit and used 30 pound dumbbells, but everything else I did RX.
The cleans felt super heavy. Last week I did a workout with sets of 3 with 145, and it was freakin’ hard. Today I decided to push myself and go a bit heavier. The WOD was really hard, and I probably would have been better off scaling the power cleans a bit. However, I’ve been wanting to work on my cleans and I thought going heavier would be beneficial.
After the workout, I decided to put some more weight on and see what my max was for power cleans. I think the most I’d ever done before was around 155 pounds. So I threw some extra weight on and tried 165. It went up surprisingly easy. I had bodyweight C+J goal in mind so I put on 180 pounds and went for it. I know it probably looked like shit, but I got it.
I know I could lift more weight if I could get the movement and timing down to pull myself under the bar. My power clean is pretty much me standing straight up, so I have a lot of potential benefit from going through the full range of motion for a full clean.