Very hard day, this is the last heavy period before Nationals, and the boys are starting to feel it. Really took a lot of willpower for everyone to get through todays two workouts, but even so, Kevin Cornell popped out a PR snatch of 151kg to start the afternoon workout off right.

Power snatches and power cleans today. Some attempts at records, but none successful. Here is a video from yesterday. Kevin was in the lead on squats after last time, 216kg to 215kg for sets of 5. Jon started the day off at 220kg for 5 to take the lead back. Kevin then attempts to retaliate with 222kg…

Pretty good day. Did a live stream of the clean and jerks this afternoon, here it is…

What a weekend. Saturday we all went to Sacramento to Compete at the Midtown Classic and saw some good lifting. Highlights were Rob going 127/153 for a bit PR in the total, Spencer hitting a big 195kg clean and jerk, Kevin Cornell snatching an 8kg PR of 150kg, and best of all Shankle doing a 369kg total, which, if repeated at nationals would make him the #1 qualifyer on the Pan-Am team, narrowly edging Kendrick Farris and Pat Mendes.

Saturday the team and our visiting Irish lifters Barry Kinsella and Sammi Dowling went to the beach to swim in the ocean and get some sun. We ended things up with a scenic drive up the beautiful California coast. I am sunburned, tired, and glad to be home, and most of all, ready for a hard week of training!

What a day! We worked extremely hard today, and had lots of great PR’s and good lifts. Here is a video of our 3rd workout of the day, 20 clean and jerk singles done one lift every 90 seconds. The video starts after everyone has already done about 8-10 lifts, and shows you what happens when Kevin Cornell and Jon North start a little trash talking… the weight starts going up every rep till Jon and Kevin both make 180kg, and Jon cleans 185kg with a missed jerk. Unreal intensity today, great job by everyone.

A lot of good stuff happened today. Spencer jerked 210kg, a 6kg PR and looked like he had more in the tank, and did it right after squatting 255kg for a set of 5 which also was a PR. Kevin Cornell also made a PR set of squats (216kg for 5) and a PR jerk (180kg) and yeah some other good stuff too but all of it pales beside what Donny did… He put up 3 jerks from the blocks with weights of 221kg for a new PR, 227kg to pass the 500lb barrier, then 237kg to tie the current world record in the clean and jerk. Watch for yourself…

I have to apologize for the lack of blog posts and videos this week, my computer fried last Saturday and the only computers available to me to borrow would not work properly for video editing, so, nothing got posted.

We had a good week though, Kevin Cornell and Brian DeGennaro are both visiting and both have had good weeks. We live streamed todays workout, and it was a solid one. Donny Shankle snatched 160 and cleaned 212.5 but missed the jerk. Jon North went 150/180, and Rob Blackwell made a PR clean and jerk of 152kg. Kevin Cornell made a nice PR snatch of 145 with close misses at 147, then cleaned a PR 177 but missed the jerk. Here is the live stream,it is in two parts because we had the stream go down midway through the clean and jerks and had to start it back up.

Video streaming by Ustream

Video streaming by Ustream

Video streaming by Ustream

Pretty good day yesterday for Rob Blackwell. Front squatted a PR 165kg in the morning workout, then in the afternoon workout hit a new PR snatch of 135kg,then later did a new clean and jerk PR of 152kgs. We did a live fee of the afternoon workout, here it is…

Video streaming by Ustream

Rob and Brian went back and forth today, each one trying to get a bigger PR than the other on power snatches, then power cleans, then power snatches a second time and finally power cleans a second time. Brian ended up with a 10kg PR power clean, Rob had to settle for only 5kg!

A bunch of squat PR’s. 5 guys tried for new PR set’s of 5, all made them. 215 for Jon, 170 for Rob and Nate, 171 for Chris, and 245 for Spencer. Good day.