Stuart Elliott
Level 6 Valued Member
A+A lubricates the system, especially snatches.
Do other experienced A+A athletes see this the same? Is the standard A+A way to turn the volume up to 7-8/10, while Q&D (and S&S) are more 9/10?My take is that my A+A snatches were not sharp enough to get me to 40. In A+A, I try to maintain the intensity knob at around 7/10 or 8/10. In Q&D, I tried to go all out each rep and drop the bell very aggressively.
Do other experienced A+A athletes see this the same? Is the standard A+A way to turn the volume up to 7-8/10, while Q&D (and S&S) are more 9/10?
Do other experienced A+A athletes see this the same? Is the standard A+A way to turn the volume up to 7-8/10, while Q&D (and S&S) are more 9/10?
I'm in no way a specialist, and may have done the program " wrong". Also, maybe 7 is a bit too low of an estimation. I don't really think that any A+A rep with the 32 was easy, but they were not complete max effort either, especially in the sessions that got over 150 snatches. In A+A, the pace was a bit slower (small pause at the top) and there was less of an emphasis on hiking the bell hard on the way down. I was basically trying to learn from the excellent posts of @Harald Motz. If you look at his HR traces, they don't spike that much during A+A. However, I remember seeing one for one of his Q&D session, and his HR went way up. His videos of A+A snatching also show a small pause at the top.
Of note, before I did Q&D, I thought that my A+A snatches were 9s. Turns out that if I wanted to, I could go much harder, which I did in Q&D. The past snatches did not change, they just got downgraded retroactively. I could have said that A+A were 9s and that my Q&D were 11s, but that doesn't make much sense, except if you are a Spinal Tap fan.
All that being said, there is no way to snatch 32kg "easily". You really need to snap the hips as you cannot muscle your way through the chest and head portion of the snatch. Try to "row" 32kg overhead slowly without getting under the bell (just lifting it from the top). You will not get very far.
This may all come down to trying to express in words something that I did not quantify. I think @Anna C said it best in her post just above mine. Or I'm just a bit lazy, who knows...
You mean "power turned up to 11"?Tonight, I will try to do Q&D snatches (volume turned up to 11) in sets of 5, but with the rest period of A+A until I am "done". I will compare and get back to the forum with impressions eventually. My take is that I will not get to 130 "easily", but we'll see.
Do other experienced A+A athletes see this the same? Is the standard A+A way to turn the volume up to 7-8/10, while Q&D (and S&S) are more 9/10?
It's a Spinal Tap reference. Yes, it's power, but we often talk about the "knob", when stating how hard we work. This was to make a joke. Somehow, saying "turning the RPE to 11" kind of kills the joke. This reference only shows my age. I doubt many 20 or 30-something have seen the movie.You mean "power turned up to 11"?
Oh yeah sorry, I confused volume with volumeIt's a Spinal Tap reference. Yes, it's power, but we often talk about the "knob", when stating how hard we work. This was to make a joke. Somehow, saying "turning the RPE to 11" kind of kills the joke. This reference only shows my age. I doubt many 20 or 30-something have seen the movie.
Thanks for the comparison!OK, so I did the Q&D snatches in A+A fashion: sets of five snatches, but quick, explosive with a good hike on the way back. A lot of rest between sets. This was a weird feeling after doing these two things separately. After 18 repeats, I started to get less power, while in my "normal" A+A work on Wednesday I was able to do 26 repeats and stopped to be "reasonable" after not doing any session longer than 100 snatches for close to 2 months. I had to take much more rest also between sets to keep maximal effort on each rep. In a way, the effect felt a bit like going up in weight in A+A. That makes sense. The snatches were crisper, faster and requires more strength as I hiked the bell faster. When you go up in weight, there is a point where the weight has trouble going up.