Squats, the universe, and everything

Herein being a rambling discourse on the good and bad points of the last few months' training, and where it might be possible to improve upon it, prompted by recent meltdown...

Snatch
Snatch is disappointing at the moment. Did a huge amount of training on it in the last 4 months, mostly highish volume stuff January until late March. Added between 3-5kg to most of my snatch training sessions during that time, so went for example from December last year snatching 41kg for 6 singles and doing hang power snatch triples with about 36kg to snatching 46kg for 5 singles and HPS triples with 40kg. That was great. I did feel that technique was getting more consistent at this stage as well.

Sadly, I've only managed to add 2kg to my actual snatch 1RM so far (although I was close to a snatch 3kg better but dropped it behind). Why? I don't think I'm really at the limit of my leg strength on this one. I'm simply not getting enough speed on the bar on max attempts.

Have I not been doing enough max attempts to keep the skill at it? There really weren't many from the middle of December to the end of February, so might be a factor. Lots since, but for many of those I've been reasonably fatigued and maybe not realistically in a position to get the best out of myself snatching heavy.

Maybe future volume training plans should factor in more frequent snatch max attempts on days when it's realistically possible to hit a good heavy snatch, and perhaps more focus on snatch singles rather than doubles, triples etc. I think the problem with doing lots of lighter snatches is it seems to encourage me to just get faster under the bar rather than actually get more power in the second pull. Speed under the bar is great but a shortened second pull isn't.

I've a feeling occasional stints of heavy powersnatching helps with the extension problem - I noticed this late February after doing more than the usual amout of powersnatching. Doesn't seem to be working now though so a definite limit to the usefulness.

I also wonder if I have some weak link somewhere specific to the snatch, or the fact that I simply haven't regularly been pulling anything with a snatch grip heavier than my best snatch means I'm not used to the weight and it throws me off (has definitely happened on some attempts). Heavy snatches do feel heavy coming off the floor, which I don't think they really should. Plus, I do remember having sore muscles in a good few places after doing snatch pulls those couple of times in February.

Maybe it'd all have been fine if competition phase had gone better. These last 3 weeks and the week coming up should really have been about getting the best out of my snatch, being the lagging lift, but it's not been possible due to excessive fatigue during most of the phase so far apart from the first few days. I'm still hoping to get another 2 kilos at least onto the snatch at some stage in the near future though so all isn't lost. Having knowledgeable eyes watching me snatch again should help a lot too.

C+J
C+J is up 3kg from 64kg last November to 67kg now, and rack jerk up 4kg to 68, which I've done on two occasions. Technique is much improved on the jerk - drive is better controlled and receiving in a more stable position most of the time. I'm pretty happy with these. Advice I got from Harry on form and a good amount of jerking (including adding jerks from behind the neck) did the trick.

Cleans - they're getting the job done but not necessarily the prettiest technically all the time, there is a pronounced tendency to jump back on heavy ones and I don't really know why. On the other hand, I'm pretty confident I can clean whatever I need to in order to jerk for now, so that's good. We haven't been doing a particularly high amount of cleaning (for a while it was once a week and one session powercleaning, then C+J once a week and clean doubles once a week) and it doesn't seem to be necessary to progress.

I think the key now to continued progress on these is
1) acquire stronger legs
2) fix the problem with the cleans
3) maybe also train pressing a bit more, although a distant third to the other 2 issues
4) acquire stronger legs

Squats
Well, I've put a fantastic 2kg on my front squat since the start of last October, so that's completely crap. Not sure about the back squat because I test it a lot less but probably about the same increase. Squats have been pretty haphazard and not really a major focus through this period. This is fair enough as sorting the classic lifts was the priority but this lack of attention has now left me in a position where I think my C+J is limited by leg strength or close to it and snatch will be soon too. It seems like a poor idea to have spent so much time and effort just spinning wheels here when I could have improved my leg strength much more.

One limiting factor was that quadricep injury which did mess things up in February even though it disappeared quickly. Was unfortunate because the period before and after that break when I was doing sessions of 6 heavyish triples on the back squat a couple of times a week was when I think most of the progress happened. So, I reckon triples = winner for squats, (80-83% or so seems good) and a decent volume is needed. No surprises here really.

Heavy singles seems to be counterproductive in the back squat, they really take it out of me and don't seem to get me stronger. Heavy singles in the front squat seem like a more useful thing, in terms of preparation for difficult clean recoveries at least, even if they don't help with gaining strength. I'm not sure a lot of them are required though.

Squats and cleans need to be combined very very cautiously, also, I've wiped myself out a few times now doing those together and it's not pretty.

Stress days
Having had a look back and a think about these, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that apart from offering the opportunity to max out on snatches/C+Js/rack jerks in an environment conducive to it these don't do that much. I've hit several one or two PRs on stress days but haven't particularly noticed any benefit afterwards other than that, and those PRs were on their way at some stage anyway. If adding in loads of volume and squat max attempts makes one knackered for the rest of the week's training is there really any point? Maybe for developing work capacity but that's about all I can think of.