Crossfit log for Monday, November 29th

I want to get this down before the feeling fades.

I missed Crossfit this morning because Dex was up at around 3:30am to 4:30am and my alarm had been set for 5:30am. Well, when I got back to bed lets just say the alarm was no longer set, but I digress.

I decided to go tonight, but on Mondays the 7:30pm class (the only one I could go to), wasn't Crossfit, it was Olympic Lifting, with professional weightlifting coach Daniel Robitaille.

"Today we'll be doing the snatch". Crap. I've never done a snatch and I can't even overhead squat, a necessary part of the snatch. Thankfully he asked if there was anyone who had never done a snatch before, and sadly I was the only person to raise their hand.

"Okay, I'll keep a closer eye on you", and I suddenly felt like he was in my corner.

The first thing we did was overhead squats to warm up. I just couldn't do them. Not sure if it's a shoulder mobility issue, or a thoracic spine mobility issue, immediately Dan turns to Francois (our Crossfit coach and Dan's protégé) "You know what he needs? He needs to do a split snatch" then he turns to me and says "They don't do it anymore, but I did it in my day and held the Canadian record doing it".

He seemed almost excited by the prospect, like he'd been waiting for some time for an opportunity to teach someone this technique that had fallen into disuse.

So after a few minutes of instruction and a couple of trial lifts with an empty bar, I was doing snatches like everyone else, but in my own special way.

Then we started putting weight on the bar and working parts of the lift, just the catch, just the landing, driving with the bar across our shoulders instead of from the ground, catch it, then squat (or for me lunge), the putting pieces together until we had a bit more weight on the bar and were doing the full snatch.

It started to gel for me, and more often than not I actually looked like I knew what I was doing. To receive praise from a guy like Dan, who's been there and coached world championship bronze medallists says a lot. He asked me three times "Are you sure you've never done a snatch before".

I pulled one really good one off and from across the room I heard him yell out "Now that was a good split snatch".

It was really gratifying to have someone of his experience giving such positive praise for my effort, telling me I was a strong athlete and had great body control. Granted, he's a coach, it's his job to do that, but it felt wonderful. Really wonderful.