GH Reflection

My genius hour question was: how much could I increase my maximums in the Olympic lifts of the snatch and clean & jerk?  I was able to increase the snatch 10lbs from 135 lbs to 145 lbs, and I increased the clean & jerk 20 lbs from 165 lbs to 185 lbs. This is a total of 30 lbs between the two lifts which is pretty good for a time frame of approximately 1 month.

Torokthiy's training program had a lot more volume than any of the programs I was using before.  Volume is the overall amount of weight lifted, so per session I was lifting more which obviously worked out for me.  Whereas the both programs used about the same number of exercises per session, Torokthiy's program had more sets and reps per exercise, which is the factor that accounted for the increased volume. The program is actually a 12 week program and I completed the first 4 weeks for the genius hour project.  I'm thinking I will keep going with the program for the full 12 and see how far I can go with it. Given my own increases in this short time, I can see why this guy won gold in 2012. 

What was nice about the genius hour project was that I got to incorporate something I liked into our school program.  Despite the hiccups and stresses of completing the tasks associated with the project, I think the training actually helped to manage the stress.  I think genius hour is a good idea to incorporate into classrooms.  In addition to benefiting student productivity, I think it helps the relationship in general between students and teachers.  It shows that teachers are willing to give on their end of things by allowing students class time, something that is valuable to the teacher, to do something that is important to them and doesn't really have anything to do with the curriculum which the teacher is responsible for. Similar to how, for me, the training was a stress reliever, I can see how incorporating genius hour into the classroom could be a stress reliever for students.  It gives students a break from the demands of the curriculum and as a result can decrease their stress, increase their well being by letting them do something that is important to them and makes them feel good,  and help build confidence since they will be developing whatever skills are associated with their genius hour item.

I had hoped to include the videos of me completing the lifts in this post, but the files on my phone are too big to email myself so I took screen shots of the videos to show the lifts in progressive stages of completion:

185 lbs Clean & Jerk

 

145 lbs Snatch

 

And that's all, folks.