Jerry's B-day workout!!

So Wednesday was Jerry's Birthday! Since he turned 43 this is the WOD:

2 Power Cleans every minute on the minute for 43 minutes, choose a weight that will be very heavy for you.

Now my 1 rep max is at 195, and when I was warming up I could feel the rust in my form making things difficult, so I chose what I thought was a heavy weight: 165. Just in case it turned out to be too easy, I had two 5# plates to make it 175. After the first 5 or so sets, the rust really began to wear off, and I started to really work on my form. I worked on keeping my core tight and making sure my back was in the right position. I knew that it wouldn't be my quads or traps that would fail me first, I knew that it would be tightness in my lower back, tightness that always feels like it's about to do something really, really bad.

As the minutes and reps pass by, I started to realize that when I suck in a breath to keep core tension I might actually be relaxing one group of my ab muscles. It's difficult to describe. I suck in my breath and keep tension, but it feels like I'm relaxing one of my core muscles to allow my diaphragm to open up. If I keep all of my muscles tight, then it pushes the air up into my chest a little bit, and I know that's not suppose to happen. I talked to Danny about it, but he wasn't sure which was correct either. I'm going to try to keep core tension while keeping my abs engaged because perhaps there is an imbalance going on that causes that discomfort/tightness in my lower back.

Back to the wod, I didn't fail on any attempt, and over time I didn't feel like my form degraded. I decided to put on the extra 10 pounds for the last 10 reps, and I really didn't have any problem with that either (although my back was starting to tighten up). Looking at the pictures, seeing Jerry work is pretty impressive, you can see the intensity in his face. ...When I saw this picture I instantly thought he looked like one of those Kibuki Maskes, you be the judge.

When I look at pics of myself, I see how... calm I am? I think that's the proper word. I really try to focus on only the muscles needed for the lift, but maybe I need to figure out a way to psych my self up, I don't know.