ANSWER:

Although your diet and/or overtraining could be a factor, let’s examine the workout itself. Selecting exercises targeting certain muscles is great, but we cannot lay out the plot without rhyme or reason.

As a rule of thumb, always order your exercises from greatest technical difficulty to least technical difficulty.

Challenge the nervous system first, since less complicated exercises can still be performed as this system fatigues.

After that, select exercises which involve large muscles masses prior to exercises which require lesser volumes of muscle to perform.

Consider the exercise relationships logically — compound exercises usually will not affect so-called "isolation" movements; however, the latter will often have a debilitating effect on the former.

The power snatch requires intense and coordinated use of more muscles than any other exercise in this workout. It does not target a specific muscle like a bicep curl does. Also, the power snatch places great demand on the body’s ability to transfer force from one muscle to another against an external resistance.

For these reasons, the snatch is clearly the most technically complicated lift in your workout and certainly should be performed first.

Nothing else in this workout has a particularly high skill element; therefore, we now have to consider which remaining lift will present the greatest intensity.

The bench press is a logical choice for the second exercise for two reasons.

First, it will require more high threshold muscle fibers than anything left to be performed, and second, nose crushers prior to benching would effect the triceps ability to contribute as a synergist to the pectorals in the bench press.

Performing nose crushers after benching gives the triceps a bout of direct stress that they did not receive during the bench presses. Although the bench press requires significant use of the triceps in the assistance of the pectorals, their role as a synergist should not be so taxing that they will perform at all short of maximum ability.

Finally, I would save the ball crunches for last.

Although the addition of the ball would seem to elevate the skill element of the exercise, we don’t want to fatigue and effect the abdominals adversely in their crucial role as stabilizers for all the exercises performed up to this point.

There is a realistic chance that rearranging this routine could solve your problem.

I would actually be surprised if there were days you ever felt good snatching after nose crushers and bench presses! These changes are not subtle — you may have the best snatch and bench workouts you have ever had if this exercise order has always been your habit.

 

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