041 : 027 Complexus XV
Session 15
‘Over Your Head, Into Your Head’
Breathing ramp up
Warm-up
Then...
In a 15 minute window build to the maximum weight possible for the following complex:
1 x power snatch
2 x hang power clean
3 x shoulder-to-overhead 15sec overhead hold
*eliminate movements from complex the round after you fail to hit prescribed reps Then...
At the heaviest weight you could perform the full complex with accumulate:
-3 minute overhead hold
Whenever you have to drop the bar perform:
10 x push-ups on dumbbells 10 x hammer curls
10cal ski/bike/row (of choice)
For every minute over 3.00 this piece takes, triple this number and perform as high burpee box overs/ vaults.
The Ramp Up
3 rounds of-
5 x Triangle breathing 7:7:7:0 20 x Power breathing 1:0:1:0 1 x Full inhale
1 x Max hold
1 x Full exhale
1 x Max hold
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, your ability to create and sustain an attentive connection to your breath will come in very handy in this workout. Begin to cultivate that here.
Inhale, focus on filling from the bottom up; use your nose an breathe deep into the bottom of your trunk and lower back, before working your way up into your chest and then your upper back. Your rib cage should expand in all directions. For power breathing execute a quick but full and powerful inhale through your nose, then simply open your mouth wide and ‘dump’ the air out on the exhale. Get into a quick rhythm. After 20 reps perform 1 final full inhale through the nose, filling your trunk, and then hold. Pay attention to air hunger cues— little tremors, swallowing, fidgeting. Before they get too strong, perform a long exhale under control through your nose, completely emptying the tank, then hold until you feel strong air hunger. Return to triangle breathing and repeat for 3 rounds
The Complex
I’m not personally a huge fan of weightlifting. Maybe it’s because I’m objectively bad at it, maybe it’s because I know people who spend so much time focussing on it (despite ostensibly attempting to be well rounded ‘functional’ athletes) that they fail to properly cultivate many other useful skills. It’s almost certainly the first one. However, I have always believed that the more accessible, more ‘basic’ versions of the snatch and clean can still be fantastic lifts for raw, grunt- work style strength, and even hypertrophy, if done wrong enough.
Take a wide, wide grip and get your bar overhead— there are better ways to do this, but no wrong way here. We’re eliminating movements from the complex as we build and fail to hit them, so your low-res snatch skills are not going to become a barrier to entry. That being said, as ever, build slowly and judiciously, you really do want to find the heaviest snatch you can manage as part of the complex here; not just simply overload it to get it out of the way. Control the eccentric of the bar as if it were the eccentric of a press, once the bar is in the front rack re-grip for your clean and lower the bar to your hips (you can re-grip at the hips if this is you preference). In your initial sets, treat the hang cleans as muscle cleans, as you build, get a bit more slick with your technique to keep the weight going up. Finally, finish with three shoulder-to-overhead anyhow, once the bar is overhead after the final press, hold it locked out for 15 seconds— this is not an additional to the complex, this is part of the complex, so don’t ignore it.
Steadily build over 15 minutes, eliminating each movement once you can no longer hit the prescribed reps and finishing with a 3rm STOH with a 15 second hold. Ensure you get plenty of exposure to all three movements by building steadily and not making huge weight jumps.
The Hold
Strip the bar to the final weight you could handle for a full complex with all movements. Set yourself up with a timer that you can quickly stop/start but also make a mental note of your actual start time so that you’ll know how long this piece takes complete even though you’ll be pausing the clock throughout, hit start and lock your bar out above your head. Your goal is to accumulate three total minutes in this fully locked out position. Each time you drop the bar or your form is compromised, perform the push-up/ curl/ calories circuit.
Your incentive to not simply rest for long enough to fully recover each time you drop the bar, is that for each minute over 3:00 you take to complete this piece, you will incur a penalty. So keep this in mind when the mental bargaining and subtle discomfort avoidance tactics begin.
If you’ve used any of the workouts/ enquiries from ‘progressive attention’ bring them to mind here. If not simply acknowledge the discomfort as it arises, acknowledge that it should be of no surprise, and throughout keep in mind— every moment that you think ‘I can’t bear this for a second longer’, is in fact another second that has passed, with you bearing it. And the next one, and the next. Begin to see this as substantial body of evidence that the voice in your head is far less in touch with what you’re capable of than you might think, and stop listening to it.
Each minute over 3:00 this piece takes, triple that number and perform this amount of high burpee box overs (ie. If you take 12 minutes, perform 27 reps). If you can lash two boxes together to make this more of a climb/clamber/vault, or use a yoke or barbell in a rack to climb over, do this. Your goal is obviously to accrue as few of these ‘penalty reps’ as possible, but these are fun.
