Malvern Prep students competed in their first ever Olympic Weightlifting competition at the East Coast Gold Classic in Moorestown, NJ. Conner Burns, Harry Mauk and Adam Pinos all had fantastic performances. Harry and Conner qualified for Youth Nationals! Additionally, Conner finished first in his weight class and Adam took home second. A special thanks goes out to Mike McKenna for his expert guidance!
From l to r in height order, Conner Burns, Mp ' 13, Harry Mauk, Mp '13, Adam Pinos, Mp '13, and Coach
Today we say good by to our three exchange students from Panama, David, Eddy, and Carlos. They have been taking part in the 6th period Olympic Weightlifting class and we sent them off with a tough workout on "CrossFit Friday". Every Friday we take a break from the skills and drills of weightlifting and do some conditioning. The three boys were an absolute pleasure to have around and they made some serious gains not only in strength but also body weight (which isn't too hard to do in America!). We wish them luck on their flight back to Panama City.
From front to back, Carlos, Harry, Eddy, Adam, Melvin, and David.
The weight room will be open over break!
December 19th-30th
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday - 10am - 12 noon
Graeme Weaver, Mp '12, showing a solid waiters walk in recent lacrosse training.
Our final day of training in Advanced Fitness class is an upper body rotation that again packs in a lot of work in a little bit of time. The rotation is done every minute on the minute for 10 minutes. We start with an exercise for the upper back and more specifically the rhomboids, (a muscle that helps to pull your shoulder blades closer to your mid line). It is a static hold for 10 seconds. Most guys are using 25-35 pounds. The idea is to keep pulling your elbows to the sky.
Harry Mauk, Mp '13, demonstrating the bat wing
The second part of the drill is 3 reps of bench press with 70-80% of the one rep training max. Athletes move up 5 pounds in weight when they are able to get 3 reps on all 10 sets.
Conner Burns, Mp '13, had made every rep of every lift done in class this semester
The final part of the rotation is 2 reps of clapping push-ups. It is the icing on the cake of this day. Lots of power is demonstrated on our high volume rotation days that mixes well with the max effort work done earlier in the week.
Mike Manta, Mp '13, shows an explosive clap push-up
An important point to note is that we slowly built up to this amount of volume. We started with just squats and benches every minute on the minute. After a couple of weeks we added box jumps after squats and bat wing before the bench. After a couple more weeks we added L-sits to the squat rotation and clap push-ups to the bench rotation. The first week with all three exercises crammed into one minute was hard. But now we are acclimated to the work and it's almost time to change exercises or the rotations completely before the results stop coming.
The final part of the Advanced Fitness class that we have left to cover is the daily deadlifting. Of all our lifts I am most excited to see what kind of results we end up with for this lift.
On Thursday's we perform a rotation of three exercises, every minute on the minute, for 10 min. The current selections include: L-sit, 10 sec / Back Squat, 70%x2 / Box Jump, 4 reps. This allows us to get in a high volume of work in a short amount of time and a variety of stimulus. A static hold, strength practice, and an explosive finish. It also allows for recipricol muscle actions; hip flexion to hip extension, then explosive hip extension on the jump and dynamic hip flexion on the landing. It gets the heart beating and the sweat pouring fast. We are only a few weeks into doing this rotation and the results seem promising. We will have to continue with it for a few more weeks and see how our strength levels pan out before we can decide if this set up is a keeper. Next week we will highlight the upper body rotation.
Connor Burns, Mp '13, can do all 10 sets of 10 sec. L-sits with the legs extended!
Today we will cover the Max Effort (ME) portion of the program. Please be aware that "Max Effort" is a relative term. After we cover proper movement during the first couple of weeks of class we set baseline numbers in our ME lifts. These initial lifts are conservative and it is not necessary to go to absolute levels when starting a strength program. Starting at an absolute max will set you up for disaster in only a couple of weeks of training. Our goal is to continue to improve strength levels for the whole first semester (Sept. - Dec.).
Our ME lifts are Squat, Front Squat, and Box Squat for the lower body. Bench, Incline Bench, and Press for the upper body. We rotate these lifts over 3 week and ONLY go up 5 pounds per lift, per session. Following this plan, the one rep squat and bench goes up 5 pounds every three weeks (we do 3's and 5's for the other lifts, only the SQ and BP get the 1 rep treatment).
After using a progressive warm up we attempt the 1RM. After we get it, the load is dropped to 90% and 3-5 more sets are done using the same reps number as the ME attempt. For example, if you do 200lbs x 3 for the Max Effort set, you would do 180 x 3 for 3-5 sets to complete the ME work for that day.
We do some accessory work as well. Before lower body ME days we start with Reverse Hypers and GHD Sit-Ups and after upper body ME work we finish with Pull-ups and Dips. We record these number and attempt to gradually improve them during the weeks. For pull-ups, once you can do 3 sets with double digit reps you add weight, ~20 lbs. Once you can do 3 x double digits with 20 lbs you go up to 25lbs, and so on, and so on. For dips, once you can do 3 x double digits you go to ring dips. Nobody is past 3 x double digits on the rings yet!
Later in the week we will go over the high volume work we perform on Thursday and Friday and talk about our Daily Deadlift.
John Bradford, Mp '12, puts up his heavy single for the day.
This year the Advanced Fitness class is experiencing tremendous results in strength without working too hard. The key is consistancy and sticking to the plan. We train 4 days per week for no more than 40 minutes and the improvements keep coming. Over the next few weeks we will cover the program and all of its complicated simplicity.
Gus Carlin, Mp 12, front squats in a recent training session
Strength - Bench Press 3-3-3
Backover med ball throws - 15 throws
5 rounds for time
Run 200m
95 pound thruster, 9 reps
James Connelly, Mp '09, doing some weighted chin-ups with chains.
