Building our battleship

Nick | 07/15/2014 | 5

When we think of pushing strength, most of us think of strong shoulders and arms.  For many of us, however, the ability to apply our pushing strength falls apart in the midline.  Today’s volume training is coupled with some hollow body work.  This will end up making it fairly core intensive.  Whether you are working on push ups, dips or handstand push ups, you should be maintaining a hollow position through your midline throughout the movement.  The hollow body hold shouldn’t be extremely challenging but more of a reminder each round on what your midline engagement should feel like when you get back to your pushing, so choose a version that’s not going to destroy you over 20 minutes.

The point of this, again, is to make sure that the forces we apply outward aren’t being absorbed by a weak foundation.  Whether it be in push ups, power cleans, back squats, kettlebell swings or pretty much everything that we do, a weak midline will sap the power from our movement, no matter how strong the rest of our bodies might be.  As the saying goes, you can’t fire a cannon out of a canoe.  So make it a focus in today’s work and start building helpful habits.

STR:

Push Volume Training
EMOM 20
Superset with 10 second hollow body hold

WOD:

AMRAP 15
10 farmer carry step ups (24/20) alternating lead leg
50′ box push