I woke up this morning and immediately thought "The world is a better place since the invention of the breakfast burrito".  Like seriously.. if I ever meet the mystical being who one day decided that he/she was going to put eggs, bacon, ham, (I add carna asada as well) all inside a warm delicious tortilla, I will get on one knee and propose to her/him.  I guess, to me, it just seems like that would be the only logical thing to do in that exact moment.

Hokay So...second day of the jerk. We only have 3 more things to think about.  So simple, right? 

 If you're feeling stressed, go break off a square of Trader Joe's one pound milk chocolate bar, take a deep breath, and remember.. olympic lifting is just a sport that allows you to have fun, get buff, and work on your multi tasking skills due to the requirement of remembering approx 230984209348 technical things all at once. Oh, and you also become a better person. It's a win-win situation, really. 

So, we already know where the bar should be up on our shoulders, we know that our dip MUST be straight with our weight back on our heels to keep the bar from pulling us forward, and we know that we have to be "Tupac tough" when driving that bar off our shoulders with our legs. Now, the final three things:

4) keep the bar close to the face

5) fast hands fast feet

6) foot position

Let us, yet again, embark on this journey..

Some of you have heard me exclaim that while the majority of society only uses 10% of their brains, I believe that I possess the capability of using at least 87% of mine.  Let me prove that to ya'll today with the following statement: 

**the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.**   BOOM!!! ...(it's physics)

Now that I have your attention, let's use that little piece of information to start us off on point #4.  When we are driving that bar up with our legs, the bar path needs to be going straight up and then finishing slightly back behind the ears.  So, you need to be thinking, "keep that bar close to my face" as it is traveling upwards.  The first automatic concern is: "my mama gave me this chin for reasons other than hitting it with a barbell". Alls I have to say is... your mama will also tell you to move your chin out of the way, so you wont hit it.  

You know when you are trying to give yourself a double chin and your head moves back? That's all you have to do when going to jerk and you wont get hit. And if you do get hit, just consider it a right of passage and move on with your life.  So you knock out a couple teeth.. who cares!? That only means that you get to eat ice cream for the rest of your life.  The main thing to think about is not pushing that bar forward/out in front of you.  Sometimes we get scared and we dont want to commit to getting that bar back so we drive the bar away from us to a place where we can see it because that makes us feel more comfortable.  Being comfortable is not gonna happen when youre dealing with heavy weight.  So get pissed, drive the bar up keeping it as close to you as possible, and commit to it by getting it back behind your ears. 

HOW DO THESE POSTS GET SO LONNGGG???

I am going to try REALLY hard to talk about these next two points with out getting sidetracked and bringing up unnecessary topics such as ice cream(even though I truly believe it to be one of the most necessary topics ever). *sigh* there I go again. Ok serious...

#5) really simple.  You want to think about your arms locking out the same time that your feet hit the ground. I want you to be thinking aggressive leg drive, but don't forget that you have arms.  You get that bar up to a certain height with your legs and then you want to finish by punching up with the arms fast and hard. If you do that, like I said, you will be locking out your arms the same time that your feet are landing. This will make the movement fast and snappy.  Because it will be so fast, it will be easy to loosen up as you receive it.  Remember to tighten up that core IMMEDIATELY so that you can support that heavy heavy weight!

#6) foot position is critical.  If you look at the photo above you will see that hips are facing 12 o'clock and my feet are planted at about one o'clock and 7 o'clock.  This is to make sure I am not moving all over the place while walking the tight rope.  You can also see that I have a pretty long stance.  I HAVE to have that, because I want to have a good base underneath me.  If my feet are too close together (aka short stepping it) I wont be stable.  Get a good base under you.  Dont be afraid to really get that front foot out in front of you.

* A couple things to remember for your front leg: weight back on the heel, knee in line with or slightly behind the ankle.  You do NOT want to have the weight too far forward on the front foot.

* A couple things to remember for your back leg: leg is SLIGHTLY bent and heel is slightly off the ground.  You dont want to have the back leg too bent because when the weight gets heavy, its easier for it to drive you down because too much pressure is on the back quad.  

*Most important thing to remember: all of your weight should be centered on your hips. 

* Always recover half step back with the front foot, full step forward with the back foot.  If you recover with the back foot first, it means that the weight is forward. And if it wasn't forward before you recovered with the back foot first, it will be.  

Sorry these blogs are so long.. Just goes to show how technical these movements are.  They're challenging.  But if they weren't, we wouldn't love em so much.  

keep it sassy