3 tips to add 20kg to your Jerk in just a few months

By Zak Nothling: CrossFit East Tamaki and Renegade Performance Coach
I went from being unable to put weight above my head due to pain, to hitting a 20kg lifetime PR split jerk at 160kg in under 4 months.

How?

Dedicated Olympic lifting cycle?

No..

Spending hours working on my pressing strength?

No..

How about spending a few mins every couple of days working on shoulder stability in a purposeful warm up?

YES.

In May and June, I was experiencing a pain in my shoulder that didn't allow me to support any weight over my head or go through any pressing range of motion. Several visits to various physios didn't lead to a definitive diagnosis. So after sitting down with our think tank at Renegade Performance, Tracey Stewart & Callum Gifford and I came up with our diagnosis.

“Zak has shit shoulders”.

I genuinely thought I had great shoulder stability until this. I've never been great at HSPU, jerks and snatches have been good relative to my strength, but when lifting it has always looked like my arms were about to snap off. We’ve always put this down to me being tall and having long dangly arms like noodles.

Seeing as I didn’t have any comps in the near future, I had time on my side, so we made a plan.

The goal:

- Fix Zaks Shit Shoulders

The plan:

I have done “Strength Cycles” before. During these,  I stopped conditioning all together but as soon as I started to increase my conditioning again the strength numbers I had improved seemed to disappear quickly.

This time we wanted to see strength improvement while maintaining and improving a conditioning base. I understood that the strength growth would most likely take longer than if I was just focusing purely on strength; but in my mind I thought, what was the point if I just lost it all again?

Callum started incorporating the shoulder stability drills that Tracey taught us into our (Renegade Performance) warm-ups, as he knew that everyone would benefit from the injury prevention and stability work. This also meant that they were never skipped at the end of a session like “accessory work” often is.

After only a couple weeks of doing these, I started to notice I could move pain-free again over head. This was exciting and motivating.

We also started adding in a lot of unilateral work single sided DB pressing etc.

This coupled with the current Renegade Performance squat cycle, where we had a major focus on doing everything beltless, meant that I was also drastically improving my leg strength as well as my midline strength.

We never had any specific numbers that we wanted to hit. I hadn't hit a PR jerk for two years so to even get close to it would be nice. A couple weeks ago I hit a 10kg lifetime PR of a 150kg Split-Jerk followed quickly PR’n again by hitting a 160kg Split-jerk yesterday. We weren't even meant to be maxing out - it just felt so good that my ego and excitement made me want to go up.

So we have 3 tips for you to add some big KGs to your jerk.

1.     Technique First

Technique is always the first priority. You have no business throwing heavy weights over your head unless you have sound technique to be able to not only perform the lift well, but also know how to bail out of a lift safely if something goes wrong. Your technique will never reach perfection, but we do want to strive for excellence.

2.    Get stabilising

Start incorporating the stability videos into your warm-ups. If you're not doing them already - you should be. These will help not only your jerks but almost every area of your gymnastics ability. You don't need to be injured in order to start.

3.     Build your base

While you're working on step one and two, get squatting at this point in the season as we like to have our athletes building a big squat base. Aim to have a minimum of 2 dedicated squat sessions per week.

Be patient and don't expect results overnight; but if you persevere with the 3 tips above, I guarantee you will see some epic results.

If you have no idea where to start or are looking for a training programme to follow. Touch base with us as we have various different levels of programmes, ranging from strength and gymnastics templates, right through to personalised programmes.

Callum Gifford: renegadeperformance234@gmail.com

Megan Signal: megansignal@gmail.com