Saturday Ka-Pow! training and Monday Gym

Last week, this week and next week I have holiday booked from work. As such:
- last week I only cycled three days, went to the gym on Tuesday and went to Ka-Pow! training.
- this week I will only be cycling 2 days, I went to the gym today and will be playing UKU London Regionals on Saturday,
- next week I will be cycling 2 days and going to the gym on Tuesday.

Saturday went pretty well. Once again we had a good turnout and were able to put together a really useful session, looking again at our offensive systems. We did a lot of sideline reset drills and end zone drills. For regular readers, it may seem we just can't get this right, however I think it's encouraging that our regular offense has gotten to a point where we can have such a big focus on two critical parts where the pressure from the defense is at it's highest.
The sideline drills also had us focussing on sideline defense as well as offense, and we finished with some games.

Today's gym session again featured some adaptations to my regular routine in order to continue building to what I want my gym routine to look like in the final weeks building up to Nationals and Euros.

Warm up:

1 * 15 Internal Shoulder rotations (7kg) - per arm
1 * 15 External Shoulder rotations (7kg) - per arm
2 * 15 Single leg raised Glute Bridge - per leg
1 * 12 Press up holds (3 seconds)
1 * 12 Body weight squats
Foam rolling

Main routine:

Back Squats (5 @ 60 kg, 4 @ 70kg, 3 @ 80kg, 2 @ 90kg, 1 @ 100kg, 1 @ 110kg, 1 @ 120kg) *increase*

Split squats (5 @ 55kg, 4 @ 65kg, 3 @ 75kg, 2 @ 85kg, 1 @ 95kg) - per leg

{3 * 8 Frog Squat Jumps (12.5 kg *increase*)
3 * 8 Kettlebell Single Leg Deadlifts (12kg) - per leg}

3 * Max Wide arm Pull ups (8, 6, 6)

Dead lifts (5 @ 48kg, 4 @ 58 kg, 3 @ 68kg, 2 @ 88kg)

3 * 5 Hang Clean to Front Squats (18 kg *new exercise*)

Warm down:

Hip abductor stretching
Hamstring stretching
Hip flexors stretching
Foam rolling

Since I haven't done front squats before, or any sort of Olympic lifting I was looking to really perfect the technique on the Hang Clean to Front Squats. I will be aiming to up the weight in the coming sessions and refine the sets/reps of some exercises further to really get this routine right. Already felt the benefit though with my 120 kg back squat!

This week I will put up my Regionals preview again! It was one of my favourite posts to do last year and it should be an interesting weekend with many regions being wide open and the allure of Mixed qualification to Euros over Open.