Chest Up, Knees Out.

“Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.” ~ William James

Belief is a powerful force and when you combine that with thoughts of a life worth living you put into motion all of the pieces for a worthwhile life. Those that hold to the idea that life isn’t worth living will find that it comes true after a while. That’s why it’s so important to hold positive thoughts in your mind long enough until they become a belief. Only then will you be able to overcome all of the negativity that exists in the world. We get to choose our beliefs so make sure you’re believing the right things.

www.brightdrops.com

Athlete/Coach: Jenny Labaw (@jenlabaw)

Back squats are an important tool for weightlifters when it comes to developing strength, position and awareness of the snatch and clean. In my opinion, squatting well trumps squatting heavy if we are looking at helping the athlete develop in a well rounded fashion.

Let’s discuss several ways you can use Back Squats constructively in your training program:

1. We use high-bar squats to build general strength and tolerance to higher volume training. The other is for positional strength in Olympic lifts. Try squatting with your balance on the mid-foot to properly load the legs with an upright-ish torso.

2. For general strength aim for five to eight repetitions for at least four working sets. This will not only build stronger tendons/ligaments on your frame, but also tax both the fast and slow twitch muscles in the legs. It also builds postural muscles to keep us strong when catching deep Snatches and Cleans.

3. Positional strength is simply identifying a phase of the lift that is not smooth. For example, if you find it difficult to recover from heavy Cleans then we need to build positional strength there. In general, stick to two to three repetitions and pause at the weak area.

4. If you get stuck at the bottom of heavy cleans, try using Pause Back Squats squats for three sets of three reps at 100% of your 1RM Clean (pause for 3-seconds too). This can improve first pull and make your recovery much easier. . 📷: @iamjwjw @pushmorecrossfit

Coach Wu teaching the movement of the Fa Li La (aka panda pull). Seats are still available for his seminar in Santa Cruz, CA next weekend @santacruzstrength.

“You can be the most beautiful person in the world and everybody sees light and rainbows when they look at you, but if you yourself don’t know it, all of that doesn’t even matter. Every second that you spend on doubting your worth, every moment that you use to criticize yourself; is a second of your life wasted, is a moment of your life thrown away. It’s not like you have forever, so don’t waste any of your seconds, don’t throw even one of your moments away.” – C. JoyBell C.

Athlete/Coach: Shellie Edington (@shellie_edington)

Photographed by: @paulanthonysmith on behalf of @simplyperfectionphotography

Got bar drive?

Video: @torokhtiyo @putsoff