In a workout more formally known as Workout 4, the South Korean-born athlete notched a 249-pound clean, a 184-pound bench press, and a 233.7-pound overhead squat. Achieved in 28 minutes and 36 seconds, the 667-pound total helped give Choi the first-place finish in the Individual Asian Quarterfinals. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[Related: Guilherme Malheiros Totals 1,101 Pounds In Event 4 Of The 2022 CrossFit Quarterfinals]

Between the now-concluded Open and Individual Quarterfinals, it’s been a superb start to the 2022 CrossFit Games season for Choi. Her performance stands out in particular in the Asia region, where she captured a third-place finish during the Open and a first-place result during the Individual Quarterfinals, respectively. It’s early but Choi seems to be on a great track as the CrossFit Games season unfolds. 

Plugging Away

In 2018, Choi competed in the Women’s division during her first CrossFit Open. She finished that initial campaign 4,822nd globally, 64th in the Asia region, and 13th in South Korea. A few years later, during the 2021 CrossFit Open, after training and gaining experience, Choi took first overall in Asia and South Korea for the first time. Later, she finished 34th overall in the CrossFit Games.

Choi might be at the launch pad of a promising career. Here are the results of her CrossFit career to date:

Seungyeon Choi — CrossFit Season Results

• 2018 CrossFit Open, Women: 4,822nd place worldwide; 64th place, Asia; 13th place, South Korea
• 2019 CrossFit Open, Women: 1,284th place worldwide; 8th place, South Korea
• 2020 CrossFit Open, Women: 740th place worldwide; 4th place, South Korea
• 2021 CrossFit Open, Women: 44th place worldwide; 1st place, Asia; 1st place, South Korea
• 2021 CrossFit Games, Women: 34th place worldwide 
• 2022 CrossFit Individual Quarterfinals, Women: 45th place worldwide; 1st place, Asia

At the age of 22, Choi still has plenty to accomplish. 

For instance, while it’s a lofty comparison, five-time reigning Fittest Woman on Earth®, Tia-Clair Toomey, won her first CrossFit Games when she was 23-years-old. Before she reached the pinnacle of the sport, Toomey spent a few years honing her craft in the competition. She didn’t win the CrossFit Games until her third berth in 2017. 

If Choi manages to make it all the way through this year’s CrossFit Games journey, it will only be her second time competing for the overall crown. In that event, it appears Choi is in line with one of the sport’s current greats. 

There will assuredly be a lot of obstacles to come for Choi. Provided she continues to make measured progress, there might not be any limits on what she can accomplish. Time will only tell what’s next on the horizon for the young woman as the 2022 CrossFit Quarterfinals continue. The Quarterfinals will wrap up on Sunday, April 24, 2022.

Featured image: @crossfitgames on Instagram

The post Watch South Korean CrossFitter Seungyeon Choi Lift a 667-Pound “The Other Total” During 2022 CrossFit Quarterfinals appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

When I was first introduced to kettlebells, I considered them a conditioning tool, to be used for fat loss and high intensity interval training. While they fit that bill well, they unquestionably have a variety of other uses, including increasing strength and size. Today I want to shed some light on how the kettlebell can get that done.

Time Under Tension

Time under tension, or TUT, is the total time spent under load. In the back squat, that time would be from when you un-rack the bar, step back, squat down, stand up, repeat, and re-rack the bar. A set of 6 might take anywhere from 14-16 seconds.

Time under tension is what makes a set of 3:2:1 “hurt so good.” With our 6-rep example, performing that same set of 6 with the tempo above gives you a TUT of 38-40 seconds. That’s more than twice as much as the previous set.

It’s no secret that increased TUT can build size. This study used two test groups and determined that slower speed has a positive influence on muscle hypertrophy. This brings a whole new meaning to the phase “take your time.” A slower rep equals an increased time under tension.

Strength is a skill that can be taught and learned. Varying time under tension is a skill that should be used after you gain a baseline of strength. Once you have, time under tension is a skill that can increase your strength. How can you use it to your advantage?

Moving Target Practice

The “moving target” hits your big movers and cranks up the TUT. The task requires you clean, press, and squat either 1 or 2 kettlebells. Common rep schemes are 2-3-5, 3-5-7, and 5-7-9. Here’s how it works:

You start with one of the three lifts as your target; let’s say the press. Perform 1 lift of whichever lifts aren’t the target. So if your target is the press, your first set will be:

• 1-2-1: 1 clean, 2 presses, 1 squat

Put the bells down, shake it out, and get ready for your next set:

• 1-3-1: 1 clean, 3 presses, 1 squat

Your final set would be:

• 1-5-1: 1 clean, 5 presses, 1 squat

After you’ve finished one target, move to the next target, the clean, and perform the reps the same way you did for the press. The end result is a high-TUT complex that smokes your shoulders, chest, arms, back, and legs.

How to Use Moving Targets in Your Program

Should you choose to hop on a moving target program, I like one that uses two or three different bell sizes. Of course, you’ll want to make sure you properly own each of the skills involved before throwing volume and intensity into the equation.

Train three days a week, and alternate between 1-2-3, 2-3-5,5-7-9. Essentially this would translate into 1 light day (2-3-5), one heavy day (1-2-3), and one medium day (5-7-9). Make sure you choose a load that’s appropriate for the given rep scheme. 

For example, if your max press is five reps with two 24kg bells, step down to double 20kg bells for your 2-3-5. The light days should be easy-ish. You could likely use 24kg or 28kg bells for your 1-2-3 (heavy) day, and aim to go back to the 20kg’s for your medium day of 5-7-9. The program would look like this:

• Monday: 2-3-5 20kgs
• Wednesday: 1-2-3 24/28kgs
• Friday: 5-7-9 20kgs

Warm up with 2-3 get ups beforehand and you’ve got a great, high-TUT training session designed to help build strength and size.

As you build strength, you can start to swap out bells and possibly increase reps or weight. My recommendation would be to stick to 4 weeks of the plan outlined above, take a week off, and see how you feel the following week.

Use Constant Evaluation for Maximum Progress

Something you can apply to every training session—moving target or not—is constant feedback and evaluation. After every set ask yourself, “What felt good about that set?” and also “What’s one thing I could focus on to make the next set better?” This not only helps you maintain focus, but chances are you’ll improve your technique along the way.

More creative use of the kettlebell:

Windmills: Jacked of All Trades

The post A Kettlebell Complex to Build Mass appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

The Muscle Clean: A Better Option Than the SDHP

But I understand why CrossFit Headquarters included the SDHP in the Nine Basic Movements of CrossFit. They needed an exercise progression that would prepare new athletes for the barbell clean. The deadlift teaches a strong setup and straight bar path. The medicine ball clean teaches how to retreat under a load and receive it in a squat.

What was needed was a second stage, a movement that utilized an explosive extension of the hip and a strong arm pull to elevate the load, a movement that could be taught in a seminar setting, with PVC pipe. The SDHP fit the bill.

The sumo deadlift high pull.

But in CrossFit, where the sumo deadlift is a rara avis and the upright row non-existent, the SDHP really has no transference to any other exercise commonly practiced. There’s a better option to teach explode-and-pull, an unjustly overlooked exercise that does not put the shoulder into compromised positions, affords cleaner execution at high intensity, and has direct carryover to the full clean.

The muscle clean. The muscle clean has the same first and second pull as the power and squat clean, but after the extension of the hips, the athlete remains standing tall, pulling the bar chest high before rotating the elbows in a flash from above and behind the bar (at the apex of the pull) to in front of and parallel to the bar (in the rack position). So there’s your hip extension followed by arm pull, same as the SDHP. Only now the motor patterns truly do help the athlete progress towards more complex movements.

The Muscle Clean Is the Best Way to Introduce the Clean

Pedagogically, the muscle clean is simply the best way to introduce the clean. If a trainee hasn’t mastered the front squat, is dropping under the bar to catch it going to end well? (Short answer: no.) Make it easy on your new athlete, and let him concentrate on the mechanics of the first, second, and third pulls before adding complexification.

Concurrently, he’ll be improving his front squats, and eventually can begin receiving the bar lower and lower (the height of the catch being a function of the load relative to his power), in efficient, aesthetically pleasing positions. This may fly in the face of traditional weightlifting pedagogy, but that’s okay. Our goal is not to create weightlifters, but CrossFitters who can clean and snatch competently.

In terms of metcons, the muscle clean is superior to the SDHP both practically and philosophically. As mentioned earlier, at high reps performance of the SDHP breaks down – knees and hips fail to fully straighten and thoracic spines turn kyphoid – because all that matters is that the bar somehow make it up under the chin.

The muscle clean, on the other hand, ends only one way: knees and hips extended, elbows high. There’s no judgment call to make. The fact that the cycle time of the muscle clean is more or less the same as that of the SDHP makes it a better choice for a workout like Fight Gone Bad. At the same prescribed weight (75/55lbs), scores will be nearly identical.

Cycle rate of the muscle clean versus sumo deadlift high pull.

A Good Muscle Clean Beats a Bad Power Clean

Let us make an assertion. It’s always better to have athletes perform a simpler movement well than a more complex movement poorly. Take a workout like this one:

“The Chief”

Five cycles of

• AMRAP 3: 3 power cleans (135/95lbs), 6 push-ups, 9 squats
• Rest one minute

Strong athletes often pull that 135/95lbs from the floor straight up to their shoulders, with perhaps a perfunctory knee rebend before standing to completion. See the video below for an example. No foot slide from pulling to receiving position, no retreat of the hip, no drop. Is that really a power clean?

No, it’s not a power clean. Not that those athletes can’t perform competent power cleans. The problem is a drop and reset would interfere with the goal of maximizing repetitions during the work interval.

But why do a half-assed power clean when you could do a technically sweet muscle clean and achieve your same goal? Ground-to-shoulder-anyhow shouldn’t and doesn’t cut it. If virtuosity is really what we’re chasing in our gyms, then athletes should discipline themselves to perform a simpler movement – the muscle clean – and display mastery.

This is not to say strong athletes shouldn’t start to power clean as they fatigue or that slightly less strong athletes shouldn’t power clean the load from the start. By all means they should. But by God, make them good power cleans. Don’t be a hack. Not if you can help it. Excellence is its own reward.

Teaching the Muscle Clean to a Large Group

Here’s a cool way to teach the muscle clean to a large group. Note: unlike the SDHP, the muscle clean should not be taught with PVC pipe. Few people can front rack PVC, and as the plastic is virtually weightless, it’s hard to get any sense of how forceful hip extension affects the perceived weight. Each athlete should have her/his own light (15lbs and/or 15kg) barbell for drills.

In the By the Numbers (BTN) system, the muscle clean is broken down into seven positions that are taught one at a time and then drilled in small sets. Only once all positions and drills have been mastered are the pieces joined and smoothed into the complete movement. BTN requires athletes to master the muscle clean before learning the power clean, and then mastering the power clean before attempting the full clean.

One caveat: If you have an athlete who was struggling with the front squat rack position due to mobility issues, don’t teach him the barbell clean. You’re just setting him up for injury. Instead teach the clean variations with dumbbells or kettlebells, and assign a whole mess of mobility work to help the athlete develop a decent front rack.

How to Teach the Muscle Clean By the Numbers

Let’s start by reviewing front rack position, because that’s where you’re going to catch the bar at the end of the muscle clean.

Take a clean-width grip on the bar (about thumb’s length from the edge where the gnurling meets the smooth central section of the bar) and curl it up onto your shoulders. Elevate your shoulders and lift your elbows until they are pointing straight ahead. Let your fists relax and the bar to roll back on your fingertips. Ideally, the elbows and wrists should be in line. Remember, the bar should be resting on your shoulders, not in your hands.

Rack position

Following our principals of best leverage and best efficiency, in the muscle clean the barbell travels in a straight line up the torso before coming to rest on the shoulders. We’re going to rehearse that bar path.

Lower the bar to waist height.

At this point let’s establish what we’ll call “reset” position: feet under the hips (six to eight inches apart), midline braced, shoulders back, arms internally rotated so that the elbows point outward, and wrists curled under. When “reset” is called, return to this position.

Reset position. Feet hip width, midline braced, shoulders externally rotated, arms internally rotated, wrists flexed.

Shrug your shoulders up and back, elevating the bar but keeping it close to the body. This is Muscle Clean Position 5, also known as “finish.”

Muscle Clean 5. Weight in heels, knees and hips fully extended, shoulders shrugged up and back, arms straight.

Now lift the bar by pulling your elbows to parallel and slightly behind the shoulders. The bar should remain within an inch of the chest. This is Muscle Clean 6, also known as “scarecrow.”

Muscle Clean 6. Elbows high and back, pulling bar to sternum.

Finally, spin your elbows around the bar to park it on your shoulders in front rack position. This is Muscle Clean 7, “rack.”

Muscle Clean 7. Full stand, bar racked up on shoulders with elbows high and in front.

Muscle Clean positional drill “Reset! Go!”

Reset. Now, squeeze your butt tight, and flare your knees out so that you sit down about two or three inches. Keep your weight back on your heels. This position should be familiar to you. It’s the dip from the push press. Now, though, the bar rests about three-quarters of the way up your thighs, right where the pockets of your jeans would be. This is Muscle Clean 4, or “pockets.”

Muscle Clean 4. Weight in heels, knees flared out, sitting down 2-4”, bar brushing leg at pockets height, torso vertical, arms straight, shoulders behind bar.

Driving through your heels, stand explosively and shrug simultaneously into Muscle Clean 5.

Now 6!

“7! Fast elbows!

Did the bar feel lighter that time? It’s because the powerful extension of your hip put momentum on the bar that effectively makes it lighter, and thus easier to pull up onto your shoulders. This aggressive extension from 4 to 5 is the heart of the clean.

Reset. And here we go again…

4!

Etcetera. Repeat until you feel your athletes are getting the hang of it.

Muscle clean positional drill “4! Go!”

We’re now going to work on pulling from the floor. Understand that each new stage we’ll look at it is only setting you up for that explosion at Position 4.

Ok, reset.

We’ll practice as if we have bumpers on our bar. The bumpers we use have a diameter of eighteen inches. This is standard. An eighteen-inch diameter means the bumpers have a radius of nine inches. Squat down behind the bar until it’s about nine inches off the floor.

Unlike the set-up for the deadlift, when setting up for the clean, allow the bar to travel out from the shin until it’s over the point at which your big toe meets your foot. Usually, about where your laces begin. The weight is evenly distributed across the foot, the knees flared out. Arms straight, shoulders directly over the bar, the spine in “absolute” extension, gaze forward. This is Muscle Clean 1, or “floor.”

Muscle Clean 1. Feet hip width, weight slightly in front of center of foot, bar out over foot, arms straight, shoulders over bar, back in strong extension, gaze directed forward.

Next: driving with the legs, not with the hips, stand until the bar to just touching the bottom of the knee cap. The back angle should be maintained from Muscle Clean 1, flaring the knees out wide as the bar rises, instead of pulling them back, helps. Be patient! This is Muscle Clean 2, “hang below the knees.”

Muscle Clean 2. Bar rises to bottom of knee cap, back angle same as Muscle Clean 1.

From 2, push with the legs while simultaneously sweeping the bar back into the body. Your hips will rise, and your shoulders will come out slightly in front of the bar. The bar will rise several more inches up the thigh. This is Muscle Clean 3. 3 puts tension on the hamstring, which is vital for the explosive hip extension to come.

Muscle Clean 3. Shins vertical, bar swept in and 2-3” above knee, shoulders in front of bar.

As the bar reaches mid-thigh, shift the torso to vertical while simultaneously sitting straight down over the heels. This returns us to Muscle Clean 4.

Now, on my command, execute a muscle clean from the high hang: positions 5, 6, and 7. Go!

Muscle Clean positions 1-2-3-4-5-6-7

Muscle Clean positional drill “1! 2! 3! 4! Go!”

“4! Go!” becomes “3! Go!” becomes “2! Go!” At “1! Go!” your athletes are executing a smooth muscle clean. An explanation should be made that the shift from 1 to 2 is relatively slow and deliberate, 2 to 3 to 4 is an acceleration, and 4 turns into 5 at maximum velocity.

Reinforcing Good Motor Patterns

When they are in a weightlifting training session or using the muscle clean to get the bar up to their shoulders before doing thrusters in a workout, our new trainees are required to perform the muscle clean in this segmented fashion (“1! 2! 3! 4! GO!”) until they can hit each position accurately with unconscious competence. Only then do we have them start pulling from the floor at speed or using it as a conditioning tool.

Up to that point, we substitute kettlebell swings for muscle cleans. After all, what’s the point of having someone do dozens of muscle cleans if they’re going to be performed badly? That only reinforces poor motor patterns and ultimately retards your athletes’ progress in CrossFit.

It helps to think of WODs as a demonstration of capacity, a type of performance. If you were a musician, would you want to walk onstage and attempt a song you can barely play? Heck no. Far better to perform a song you know you can rock.

Think about it. And stop doing sumo deadlift high pulls. The muscle clean rules!

Photo 1 “CrossFit Kandahar” by Kandahar CrossFit ANZAC Day. Attribution-NonCommercial License.

The post The Muscle Clean: The Best Way to Teach the Clean to CrossFitters appeared first on Breaking Muscle.

Focusing on the power clean is fine, since many sports do not have the need for such added complexity. While more weight can be lifted, squat cleaning is overkill for those who only want to train the extension of the body with as much force as possible. However some people do like to add this technique-heavy style to their lifting repertoire. They may want to develop the added coordination, or perhaps also take some pride in mastering the athletic skill necessary with this full squat style.

I will not go into a full description of the squat clean here. I am assuming you have some knowledge of the general technique. What I will not assume is knowledge of the finer points of the lift that may not be known to those of you outside of competitive weightlifting. While more trainers are now aware of the Olympic lifts, not all have had access to the more esoteric aspects of the lift. What I do want to discuss is one of the tricks of the trade used by elite competitive lifters that might be of use to those of you cleaning substantial weights in the squat style. This technique is what is called catching the bounce.

In a squat clean you pull the bar to roughly waist high, then you jump underneath the rising barbell, while at the same time turning your shoulders over to rack it. With that the bar is safely in the rack position on your shoulders. You then have the task of rising from this low front squat position. If you have more leg strength than what you can pull, then you can simply squat out of the hole with little thought to technique. That is ideal – if you have the legs. Other athletes, usually younger ones, can pull much more than they can front squat. The problem is obvious and so is its solving. You will just have to hit the squat rack.

In between these extremes you find other athletes who can pull only a little bit more to their shoulders than they can rise out of a front squat with. What can they do? If they have a competition scheduled for next week they need something that will help them right now. There is not time to get stronger in the legs. If this is the scenario, then there is room for the athlete to rely on catching the bounce to rise out of that squat to a fully erect position.

What exactly happens when you catch the bounce on your clean? It turns out there are several things you must depend upon in order to pull this off:

#1: Your Quads

Firstly, as you hit the bottom of your squat, your quadriceps muscles should be under eccentric stretch. They should not be relaxed. When you then begin your rise out of the squat that tension can be used to climb out of the hole to complete the clean. To do this, the quads are quickly flexed concentrically so you get that little bit of extra kick out of the hole.

#2: Your Calves

Secondly, you get a little assistance out of the simple fleshiness of the backs of the thighs rebounding against the calves. This of course works in conjunction with the previous stretch reflex. These muscles are soft tissue but are held under tension, so when they meet they can bounce off of one another adding a little wee bit of extra force at the bottom. This works better on those with more muscular legs.

#3: Your Bar

Thirdly, when the weight gets heavy there is a third and perhaps most important technique – the flexibility or springiness of the barbell itself. Olympic bars will bend downwards considerably when upward force is placed on them. They will also un-bend upwards to a normal straight state when that force is relieved. In the right circumstances the bar will bend and un-bend several times with each cycle, having less bend each iteration until the bar returns to its homeostatic position. Competition-use Olympic bars are quite springy, more so than powerlifting bars or the standard “Made in China specials” found in many gyms.

Different Olympic bars display varying degrees of springiness. Each make is different and within each make the high-end bars will have more spring to them than the lower end training bars. Because of that, elite lifters have to take into consideration the make of the bar when planning lifts in a meet.

In addition to their native springiness, the displayed bend of any bar will be in direct proportion to the amount of weight on its end sleeves. Each make acts a little differently at different weights, so a lifter has to be aware of this factor, as well.

If you are smart you will learn how to utilize the energy available in a springy bar as it hits the rack position at the bottom of the clean. With the sudden stop at the bottom of the clean the ends of a springy bar will keep right on bending a certain amount depending on how much weight is on the bar. Then just as the bar hits its lowest position, you start your rise out of the squat, using the other two techniques mentioned. Just as you’re putting this quadriceps force on the bar the barbell ends will un-bend, moving upwards. When this occurs, the barbell is exerting slightly less downward force against gravity than it did when it was fully bent at the very bottom of the clean. That works to your favor.

It is during this split-second that you can rise up the necessary several inches, enough to make the difference in a heavy clean. Hopefully you will be far enough out of the low position that you need not worry about the second bend of the bar that will inevitably occur soon after. It may bend and un-bend all the way to the top, in fact. But as you are rising from the squat, you are getting into an ever more favorable position as you climb upward. Once your knees are past the 100° mark or so, you should be able to complete the clean.

Learn to catch the bounce, but do your squats as well. Then squat cleans will not be a problem to complete, and remember, you still have the jerk to do!

Next Week – Catching the Bounce, Part 2: The Jerk

Photos courtesy of CrossFit Impulse.

The post Catching the Bounce, Part 1: The Clean appeared first on Breaking Muscle.