Mike Burgener has said, “I don’t believe in over training, just under recovery.”  And he is not alone.  We Olympic lifting coaches have all said similar things over the years (myself included).  But, these types of statements are highly misleading and tend to give off the wrong impression.  A better statement would be,

“Train as hard as you can, as often as you can, and spend the rest of your time working your ass off on recovery.”

Managing your fatigue is the key to your success in this sport.  Generally, your ability to come in as often as possible to practice the snatch, the clean, and the jerk will determine your success. 

Terminology

I’ve talked about this before, but I think it’s valuable to go over it again.  In strength and conditioning circles, we use a couple of variables to manage the fatigue of our athletes.  The most important of which are Volume, Intensity, and Frequency.

Volume is simply the number you get when you multiply sets times reps when you’re doing an exercise, in a workout, or even in a week, etc.  So, if you are doing snatches for 5 sets of 3 reps, your volume on the snatch today is … 5 x 3 = 15. (See, that math degree counts for something!). NOTE that we use the “times” symbol, “x”, to denote sets “times” reps when we write up our programs for a reason.

Now, if you want to have a total squat volume of 30 for the day, you can do 10 sets of 3 (10 x 3), or 3 x 10.  As you can see, while volume is important to keep in mind, it doesn’t tell you the whole story.  We need to know something about how hard things are for you.

Intensity is the amount of “work” you are putting in.  If you can do 20 chin ups as a max, but only do 10 in a set, that is NOT intense.  If you do 17, 18, more … then it is.  It is a subjective variable.  And it is good to keep it that way. 

There is another term, Load, that describes the Volume x weight used.  Load was designed to be more “accurate” at describing the intensity of workouts.  But, I find it problematic.  For instance, some athletes with a lot of slow twitch muscle fibers in their legs will find doing 8 reps at 90% of maximum in the squat taxing as hell, but doable.  Other, more fast-twitch, athletes will barely be able to do 3 reps at 90% without nearly falling over.  If they have the same 1 rep max, then the LOAD will appear different for both, in fact, higher for the first athlete, even though they found it relatively the same in terms of intensity.

NOTE:  If I’m a “Bulgarian” in any way, it’s in my belief that we should always go off of how an athlete feels for the day, not what we think the numbers are telling us.  (For this reason, I avoid percentages in the routines I write as much as I can.  If I write 5 sets of 2 reps, I mean hard and heavy for 2 reps on each set – I don’t know if that’s 80% of your 1 rep max, more, less … just lift hard)

Frequency is what it sounds like.  It’s the number of times you come in to do something.  So, if athlete #1 does 20 snatches all in one workout, but athlete #2 does 20 snatches spread out over 2 workouts in the same day, then #2 has a higher frequency, even though they are both doing the same volume for the day.  The bonus of a higher frequency – when volume is held constant – is that you can usually work harder in each session than you could have if you did it all at once. 

3 Easy Steps

As promised (and after my standard round-about way of getting here), these are the 3 easy steps you can take to start training like an Olympic weightlifter today!  (This is NOT for beginners.  You must have a decent level of technical proficiency and overall athletic capacity before this makes any sense.  And it helps greatly to have a coach or good training partner to watch you and keep you from overdoing it.)

1. Keep your Frequency and your Intensity HIGH, and your Volume LOW.  This can be accomplished in a myriad of ways.  One of my favorites is a classic “Bulgarian” variation.  Like to hear it?  Here it go:  Do 1 to 3 heavy workouts per week (depending on age, recovery capacity, etc) and as many light workouts as you can.  Stick with singles ONLY on the classic lifts; and singles, doubles, and the occasional triple on squats.  On your heavy days, go to a true max for the day on all three lifts (snatch, clean and jerk, and front squat), and do some back off sets (1 to 4) at 85% or even 90% of that max if you can handle it.  The light days, do technique work with nothing heavier than 80% of the previous days max, do some prehab stuff, chins/push ups/dips, etc.  Keep it mellow.  It’s about practice.  Do the Oly lifts at least 5 days a week, if you can. 
2. Stick with the classical lifts and their variations to avoid eccentrics and nervous system burnout.  The eccentric portion of the lift is the “down” part.  It’s the part that tends to cause the most fatigue and soreness.  If you only do the “up” part, and then drop the weight (as is done with snatches and clean and jerks) then you avoid a whole lot of soreness and CNS fatique, and are able to train more often.  I like 70%+ of your work to be on the Olympic lifts themselves (or very close variations like power snatches, hang cleans, etc).  Now, obviously you can’t avoid the “down” portion of a front squat!  But, by sticking to low reps, you will keep yourself fresher.
3. Avoid the power lifts most of the time.  Deadlifts and back squats are great.  But, they become quite problematic for the Oly lifter.  Squats done in the method of the powerlifter – wide stance, bent over – are very taxing on the low back which is a prime stabilizer in the oly lifts.  Deadlifts are just brutal!  They take so much out of you that you can end up spending an entire week trying to recover.  This is BAD.  I strongly believe that you need to be lifting singles on the Olympic lifts in the 80%+ range OFTEN if you are going to be able to lift at 100% in a contest.  It’s as much psychological as physiological, but either way, if you can’t keep in the groove of lifting heavy snatches and jerks because you are too zonked from your deadlift workout, you are not doing yourself a favor. Technical proficiency and confidence with heavy weights are far more important than your brute strength in this sport. 

NOTE:  I’m experimenting with ways to incorporate deads into a Bulgarian-like program more aggressively, because deads ARE so good at making you brute-strong.  I’d like to be able to do them more often (they’re fun! Check me out doing 17 reps in 1 minute with 315 pounds at a local strongman show).  But, I’m not in a position to make any conclusions yet.  Stay tuned!

Disclaimer! 

The fact is, this is only ONE way to approach training like a weightlifter.  There are plenty of high volume approaches out there (the Russians and Chinese national teams are famous for such craziness).  But, when the volume goes up, something else has to come down, or you are heading toward burn-out street!  These high volume programs tend to keep intensity low to medium – they run like gymnastics programs. 

Gymnasts aren’t doing 1 rep maxes on the pummel horse!  They instead do a ton of attempts all throughout the day (high volume, high frequency).  But, any single attempt isn’t all that taxing. (For them, of course. It would kill most of us!)

I personally have found it easier to manage athletes fatigue with the above lower volume approach (especially when heading into contests).  But, there are plenty of highly successful systems that use lots and lots and lots of volume.  Just keep in mind the idea of balance, and that you can’t have your cake and eat it too.

It’s sad how much mudslinging goes on on the interwebs.  No matter how nice you try to be, there will always be some douche bag who starts acting-a-fool on you.  I have very little tolerance for rude behavior.  And even less when it isn’t done in person.  Sadly, much of what passes for “discussion” on the web (forums, blogs, etc) is really just a bunch of cock-grabbing, egotistical, macho crap.  In the Strength and Conditioning community, it’s often worse.

Bret’s got a post on the topic here.

However, this blog isn’t about facing and handling opposition; it’s about how we conduct ourselves as professionals in the industry. Now, I’ve never been the type to swim with the current. I don’t “swim upstream” for the sake of creating controversy; I like to think that I think of shit that other people don’t. Furthermore, I’ve never been very “professional” in some regards. I have an eyebrow piercing, sometimes I rock a fohawk, I tatooed my initials on my arm, I’m certainly not the best-dressed trainer in town, I swear quite often and post pictures of scantily-clad women in my blogs, and I train out of my garage for Pete’s sake. Come to think of it…by some standards I’m one of the most “unprofessional” trainers in the industry.

However, I still have some strong ethical standards. There are simply some lines that I don’t cross. There are two movie quotes that come to mind.

First one is from From Dusk til Dawn, George Clooney’s character: “I may be a bastard, but I’m not a fucking bastard.”

On my blog, I automatically delete comments if they are blatantly rude.  I have a zero tolerance policy.  I practice Zen meditation for god’s sake.  I’m not interested in a pissing fight with some dude I don’t even know.

But, honest debate is very important.  Being able to discuss a topic, disagree, and hash out the details with a person who lives nowhere near you is one of the BEST things about the web.  However, just like with road rage, when you don’t see the person face-to-face it is far too easy to get “all worked up” and take things too far.

Some Cases

1. Some of you may remember the stupidness of Lyle and Ripp’s online battle about the bodyfat percentages of one of Ripp’s clients (simply Google “Lyle vs. Rippetoe’”).  Yes, that was the argument.  Ripp claimed that his guy Zach was a lower bodyfat percentage than Lyle thought he was.  Ripp was simply proud of a kid who went from skinny and weak, to bigger and stronger.  He certainly fudged the percentages a bit, but what ever.  Lyle flew off the handle and canceled a podcast interview he was going to do with him, blah, blah …

2. Before this, Lyle and Glenn Pendlay had it out over a video Glenn put up of a lifter of his doing front squats.  The kids knees buckled in on every rep. Lyle flipped out and basically said that Glenn was a horrible coach, how could he allow this to happen, monkeys were falling from the sky, and hell was freezing over.  Glenn’s response was that he’d been working with this kid on it for a while, the knees were actually better than they’d been, etc.  Lyle – who clearly doesn’t coach people enough in the real world – couldn’t take it and it ended their relationship.

I’m not saying there isn’t something funny about watching grown men and women act like little bitches in public.  But, come on!  (Lyle has a LONG history of burning bridges – sadly.)  These guys could have simply disagreed, moved on, and still had a solid (and productive) working relationship.  Instead, they are no longer speaking to one another.  Stupid.

[Granted, using Lyle McDonald as a case study is rather biased.  He’s infamous for being a little … over the top.  But, it makes the point that this stuff happens.]

3. Another case is when Mike Boyle called an end to all squatting.  He believes that traditional back and front squats on two legs are overrated for most athletes, and are too prone to causing injury.  I disagree with him (well, I agree about back squats), many coaches do.  But, that wasn’t enough.  He started getting hate email, he was “called out” in horribly non-professional ways, he was accused of being an idiot, accused of saying it just to sell his books, etc.

In other words, instead of getting into substantive arguments about the merits of what he was saying, he was attacked personally.  Stupid.  Mike used to be a Powerlifter for heaven’s sake.  He certainly knows a thing or two about squatting.  It’s one thing to disagree on the points of an argument.  It’s another to be a punk ass.

This kind of behavior is so common it causes a lot of coaches to be rather hesitant to express their real views.  It isn’t for a lack of conviction in the views themselves but rather a lack of wiliness to get involved in childish behavior.  Who can blame them?

The internet brings out the worst in people in more ways than we’d like.  But, it can also be a great tool for communication and information dissemination.  We just have to mitigate the darker sides of our nature.

Keeping it real, in my book, means keeping it civil.

7 Of My Own Controversial Views

So, on that note, and just for fun, here are a few of my own potentially controversial views.

1. The Bench Press is bad for you (or at least for most people).  Unless you are a powerlifter, you probably don’t need to ever do it.  My rule is, if you can’t do 20 beautiful clapping push ups, you have no business getting near a bench press.
2. Anyone can learn to do the FULL Olympic lifts – and athletes should do them.  None of this cutting it short crap that most coaches do (relying only on hang and/or power-versions) – to me, that’s like doing quarter squats.  Doing them from only the hang position causes bad learning habits that translate to a poor transfer of the skills you’re using them for in the first place.  Doing the full lifts is where (I believe) most of the “magical” qualities Oly lifters have come from – the same qualities people are after when incorporating Oly lifting into their routines: vertical jump, quickness, explosive power, transferable strength, etc.
3. Any athlete can learn to do a “passable” FULL Snatch and Clean and Jerk in about 1 to 3 months.  Look … these lifts are hard, but they ain’t THAT hard.  Sure, the general-fat-public might be totally incapable of even doing bodyweight squat.  But, I have never seen an athlete – defined here as someone with a history of serious physical activity – who can’t learn to do a snatch and clean and jerk in short order, and without it taking up all their time.  NOTE: By “passable” I mean legal in a sanctioned USAW contest, and safe for the athlete.
4. Most Coaches are sooo God-awful at teaching the Olympic lifts that point #2 should probably be ignored!  eg. Stop humping the bar!!!  You should NEVER smack the bar with your hips to get more force on the bar. It is not only artificial, it throws the bar forward, and prevents you from doing a true vertical jump – it is also dangerous!  Bad, bad, bad.
5. Most Strength Coaches are too hard on CrossFit.  Yes, CrossFit has its problems – not the least of which is the creator Greg Glassman.  For instance, it often gets rank beginners to do tough exercises with too much intensity long before they are ready, which dramatically increases their risk of injury.  They are fond of high rep Oly lifts (though not as much as is made out), and that is just insane.  But, in the end, it is something that is physically demanding, extremely good conditioning work for folks who are physically able to keep up, people love it, and it has made Olympic lifting FAR FAR more popular than it ever would have been without it.  Adults should be allowed to engage in activities that are higher risk.  That is their right.  And if they get hurt, well, too bad.  They chose to do it.  We should get off of CrossFit’s back.  (I’d rather complain about Yoga … but that might get me killed.)
6. Olympic Weightlifters need to do (a lot) more upper body work.  Olympic weightlifters avoid doing anything at all that might be construed as bodybuilding.  They tend to hate bodybuilding and the entire culture that goes with it.  This is a childish stance that has to go.  While the top elite (Bulgarian, usually) lifters rarely if ever do dedicated upper body work (though the Chinese do a lot of it), never forget that they are YOUNG and on DRUGS.  It’s been said before, and I think it is true, that generally lower body injuries are caused by something you did, and upper body injuries are caused by something you DIDN’T do.  The biggest injury complaints among lifters in our sport are wrist, elbow, and shoulder.  If Oly lifters simply added in a bunch of chin ups at the end of their workouts, their joint pain would drop down dramatically … don’t hold your breath, though.
7. The sport of Olympic weightlifting is elitist and is largely run by people who are driving it into the ground.  If they don’t find ways to open it up to a wide recreational public, the sport will die in the US.  I’m on a mission to make our sport truly accessible to the crowd out there of people who are adults looking for a cool recreation sport to get involved with that makes them feel strong and athletic.  This crowd is HUGE.  It is untapped largely in Olympic weightlifting.  And it needs to be exploited.  We can literally quadruple our numbers if we simply get rid of the BS elitism crap, stop focusing only on young people (we do this because they are the only ones who have a chance at winning nationals or getting to the Olympics), and actively market to people over the age of 25 – you know, people with jobs and money who can afford a coach and a membership to USA Weightlifting!  If you get the numbers up of people having fun … the young ones will follow.

Here’s a link (pdf file) of a great interview Glenn Pendlay did on Strength training for sports.

For me, as a strength coach, this was the key quote:

If you really want to know how to get people stronger, train yourself like a madman, learn all you can from that, seek out people who know more than you do and learn from them. Learn all you can about track and field training and Olympic lifting and powerlifting. Learn from the people in those sports that are actually producing athletes, and not the ones who are simply famous. Compete in those sports yourself even if you suck. Bookmark Medline and read all the research you can. Develop an affinity for the local university library where you can photocopy the full articles you saw on Medline. Call foreign coaches and talk to them. Read all the books available on training. Never assume that any one person has all the answers or get so carried away on one thing that you never learn or adapt your ideas again. Train or assist in the training of any athlete you can lay hands on, and then repeat each of the above steps consistently for somewhere between 10 and 20 years and you’ll probably be there. I’m currently involved in this very program that I am recommending, I figure I have about 5 more years to go and ill actually know something useful.

I, myself, have been on that program for about 5 years.  I did personal training before that, and was training myself hard, but only got serious about training athletes 5 years ago.  In that time I can’t tell you the radical shifts my own philosophy has taken. 

I figure if you aren’t changing something major every year, you aren’t continuing to learn.  In each year, I have to evaluate what worked in the previous year (and keep that), and what didn’t.  But, even more important, figure out what I need to replace what didn’t work and how to fit that into the stuff I’m keeping around that did. 

With every new athlete I train, I learn something new.  Each person responds to different things and learns in different ways.  And, on the flip side, there are constants that seem to be similar in nearly every athlete, and finding what those things are is just as important as highlighting the differences. 

Here are just 5 things I’ve learned in the last 5 years that I wasn’t as solid about previously:

1.  Keep it Simple Stupid (K.I.S.S.).  It’s easy to get caught up with all the fancy-pantsy methods of training because those are fun, exciting, and new-age.  But, the fact is, most of what works turns out to be the same old stuff that has worked for years: heavy, hard lifting on basic movements like cleans, snatches, squats, and deadlifts.

2. Teaching Beginners the Olympic Lifts isn’t THAT Hard.  Becoming a world-class Olympic weightlifter IS hard. But, having decent technique that will make you more explosive, stronger, and powerful and to do so in a way that is safe is not at all as hard as its made out to be.  I can take ANY athlete and have them doing solid power snatches, power cleans, jerks, front squats, etc in less than 2 months – easy.  If they have talent and drive, even faster.

3.  More Upper Body Work.  I’m an Olympic weightlifter.  I became one after first being a powerlifter.  So, I don’t come from a Brotastic arm-day loving background.  When I first started coaching I spent so much time on squats and cleans, that I ran into some joint problems with some of my lifters in their upper bodies.  Mike Boyle is right, lower body injuries are often because of something you DID.  Upper body injuries are usually from something you DIDN’T do.  Adding in chins, push ups, and rows will make a huge difference in keeping people off the injured list.

4. LESS Core Work.  This might sound outright insane, but most athletes spend too much time on their “core” and not enough time getting truly strong.  By core work I mean crunches, side bends, leg lifts, etc.  Stabilization is a good thing, but much of that will come naturally through heavy work on overhead squats, push ups, weighted chin ups, etc.  All of my lifters can do planks for days … and they never do planks except in the very early stages of development.

5. The Olympic Lifts are Strength Lifts.  Most strength coaches (outside of Oly lifting) approach the olympic lifts primarily as something to increase speed and power.  The lifts do this, of course, but they are more than that.  If I could do only one lift, I’d do heavy clean and jerks.  Learning how to do these lifts efficiently allows you to use massive weights you could never get up without proper form.  In turn, you develop even greater strength.  I’ve found that one of the fastest ways to increase someones squat and deadlift is to teach them to clean and snatch heavy weights.  A bigger clean = stronger body.

If you’d like to find out more about what my athletes are doing, make sure to check out our website:  www.PDXWeightlifting.com

Check out this ESPN article on the rise and the development of the Strength Coach’s role in sports.  Click here.

“It used to be that it almost was a boutique thing if you had a
strength coach, a luxury,” Kelly said. “It’s now become a leadership
position. The strength and conditioning coordinator is on parallel with
the offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator.

This goes for Sports performance coaches, personal trainers, and anybody in the profession.  Even just 10 years ago, most people were relatively unaware of the level to which their performance would suffer if they didn’t have a rock-solid strength and conditioning program.  And consequently, there were few private sports performance coaches out there (like me). 

Now there is a real market of hungry athletes who know damned well that if they don’t get themselves under a bar with some weight on it, they’re at a far greater risk of injury, and they’ll never reach their full potential. 

The times they are a changin’ …

In Bob Takano’s recent newsletter mailing he has a piece about the fact that he’s been seeing a lot of WOD (workout of the day) designed for weightlifters.  He’s worried that the structure of these are often not going to get weightlifters where they want to go, that is, it ain’t specific enough to the weightlifter.

I’ve been seeing a lot of WOD’s (Workout of the Day) showing up on the internet and they are intended for weightlifters. They usually have one standard weightlifting movement (snatch, clean & jerk, pull, squat), and then some other bodybuilding exercises or other movements that are not especially beneficial to serious weightlifters.

After many years of designing training, one of my rules of thumb is to include one pulling exercise, one squatting exercise and one overhead movement in every workout. I know this can be bothersome to those who like to break up training into body parts or movement categories and concentrate on only one per session.

I believe there is enough empirical evidence to support the idea of training all three major aspects of weightlifting competition everyday, although not all to exactly the same degree. The load, volume and intensity can be varied in each case to provide sufficient variation.

I think that is good advice.  When I started out, I fell prey to the same problems.  If you hunt for them, you can find old WOD of my own that suffered similarly.  Until I’d been in the trenches for a few years, and coached enough weightlifters, I didn’t realize some fundamental differences that exist in training the weightlifter vs training everyone else (I expound on these below).

Over the years, I’ve been moving closer toward the Bulgarian side of the fence than I did when I started.  Nowadays, for most of the year, my athletes do some form of the snatch AND some form of the clean+jerk (usually the full classic lifts themselves) in every workout then get to the pulls and squats (nearly always front squats). They squat no less then 3 times a week, sometimes more – and heavy. 

That said, I do like to include some upper body “bodybuilding” work in.  There is ample evidence that many shoulder, elbow, and wrist injuries can be avoided if proper attention is paid to exercises like chin ups.  But if your training routine consists of more than 10% to maybe 20% upper body work, you’re not a weightlifter.

The Big Picture

Weightlifters have a problem.  They don’t need to be comprehensively athletic, and so most aren’t.  Sure, there’s a sizable minority of lifters who are good all around athletes.  But, only in a strength sport do you have a super-heavyweight class.  Even NFL lineman are more generally athletic than most supers.  And just because someone is lean, does not mean they have good endurance. 

By “generally athletic” I mean covering all the basics of good fitness:  flexibility and mobility; strength; power; speed; core stability; lateral stability; single-leg stability; cardiovascular endurance; muscular endurance; etc.  These are the qualities a strength coach is trying to build into the majority of athletes.

Most sports require some element of every type of fitness. This is true in baseball, football, tennis, swimming, volleyball, soccer, rugby, roller derby, even dodge ball.  But, not weightlifting.

Weightlifters are great at strength, excellent at power, right up there in flexibility and mobility.  But, they are grossly behind in both types of endurance – especially muscular endurance.  (You should see me trying to go on a hike!)  They are also often deficient in lateral and single-leg stability (not horrible, but not as good as they could be -  the new squat style jerk takes that last remaining split leg movement out of the sport, and makes it totally bilateral).

The reason for this imbalance is that weightlifters are more like marathon runners than they’d like to admit.  Weightlifters are in an extreme sport.  No, not extreme as in dangerous, extreme as in overly specialized.  We move very heavy weights, very fast, from down to up, in a fraction of a second.  We require as much endurance as marathon runners require strength.  Oh, sure, of course there is SOME need for it.  We don’t want to literally drop dead.  But, compared to other athletes, we suck at it. 

We also have relatively wimpy arms.  Relative to other strength athletes of course.  Powerlifters, strongmen, track and field throwers, highland games athletes – they all have bigger and stronger arms than most of us. They’re chests and shoulders and lats are usually bigger too.  Why?  Specialization.

Oly lifters are 80% legs, 20% traps.  OK, that’s an over exaggeration – but not much of one. 

I’m not saying this to disparage we weightlifters, but to make a point.  You WANT a weightlifter to be this way. You need them focused on the task at hand.  They are in an extreme sport that requires extreme training (again, I mean extreme as in highly focused, not dangerous).  They need constant work on the classic lifts themselves, stupid amounts of squatting, some pulling, and if you can fit it in, some upper body work to keep their joints healthy.  

A Slight Regression

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, I do want to mention that during the summer – which for us starts after tomorrows State championships – I intentionally dump all of the above advice.  I spend a few months training my athletes like athletes rather than like weightlifters.  This has a nice psychological effect, as well as a physiological one.  It is hard on your body and your psyche to hammer away for months at a time on low rep Oly lifts and front squats – over and over and over and over  … ad nauseum. 

During the summer we get to do all the fun stuff we normally don’t, like single-leg work and higher reps; we add in more rows, pressing, etc.  It’s good ole’ fashioned training that any athlete would thrive on.  But, after a bit of that, we get back on the horse. 

Weightlifting is a means to an end for other athletes.  It IS the end for us.  The training should reflect that.

[by the way, if you haven’t already, make sure you sign up for Bob’s email newsletter.  It’s the best Oly-lifting focused newsletter around, hands down.  Just click here.]

The following was something posted on the Irish Weightlifting Forum.  But, I thought it was appropriate to repost it here as a precaution (it would be a shame if that site crashed or something, and we lost access to it).

Transcript – Abadjiev Training Lecture (Transcribed by Jim Hooper, donating member of Weightlifting Exchange)

Content

First of all I would like to thank the Weightlifting Federation for inviting me here.

This material that I have prepared here for you for today is the same material that I lectured on in front of the Greece Committee last spring.

They specifically asked me to present my material because one of their athletes, Ekatarina Tanou, was using this method of training and has incredible results using this method. She was third in the world for 100 meter sprint, and last year she was one of the best white athletes, and she has been using my methods of training.

If you pay attention to what I am saying and if you think logically about what I am saying then you will see that this method is applicable to almost any sports training. We will be concentrating on weightlifting nonetheless.

Read the rest of this entry

Check out this great interview with Shane Hamman that Mark Rippetoe did (click here).  They cover a bunch of info in about 1 hour including Shane’s early powerlifting career where he dunked 1008 pounds in the squat.  His Olympic career. The state of American Weightlifting.  And what we can do about it.

What I enjoyed the most was their discussion on the importance of strength training for Olympic weightlifters (as opposed to a fanatic focus on technique).  Shane mentioned that the guys who beat him at the 2004 Olympics were much stronger than him (that’s saying something!) and as a consequence could pull things out that he couldn’t. He also mentions that the same was true for the lighter weight classes.  That is, our guys weren’t as strong as their competition.

Why this is relevant is that much of the American “style” is directed at technique work at all cost and speed development.  Both of which are clearly important. But, heavy deadlifts and heavy squats done throughout the year is rare.

One of the things I did differently this year with my athletes that I will certainly do again was a modified version of the Smolov Squat cycle.  They all nearly killed me for making them do it!  But, holy heavens, it did wonders for their overall strength levels which is paying dividends now 5 months later.

I think this type of training (a clear focus on strength development along with power and technique) is particularly useful for older and masters lifters who are always going to be behind the curve in their technique.  The more strength you have, the more you can pull out a not-so-perfect clean or snatch.

Of course, technique is majorly important.  Don’t take this the wrong way.  But, if you let strength levels hover in the background, and don’t pull heavy shit off the ground, then you’re selling yourself short.

Jason Ferruggia has a new post about what kind of coach he is, and what kind of coach he isn’t.  He’s basically helping to define his own niche for anyone who doesn’t know what it is.

The fitness industry is just like any other industry – it’s a field of specialists who know what they are good at and what they aren’t good at, and then everybody else.  If you look for a trainer and they tell you “I do everything: bodybuilding training, fat loss, functional training, strength training, gymnastics, tennis training, yodeling, etc” … find a new trainer.

If you have a specific problem, go to the guy (or girl!) who specializes in fixing that exact problem.   Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m not saying your coach needs to be so tightly defined that he’s only got ONE focus.  But, anything more than 3 (maybe four), and we’ve got a problem.

One of Jason’s major points about himself is that he is not a “motivator”.

Here’s a quote from Jason:

If you want to sit around and eat donuts all day why would that possibly bother me? And why would I want to motivate you? I’m not Jenny Craig or Matt Foley the motivational speaker who lives in a van down by the river. What you do is your choice. Sure I will make fun of you, laugh at you and encourage others to do the same; but it’s your life, not mine.

If you are too stupid to realize that regular exercise and a healthy diet is a necessary part of life I’m not going to waste my time telling you. Get on some prescription drugs, order a sausage pizza and watch another episode of Friends.

OK, he’s WAY more intense than I am.  As you know, I’m a ridiculously mellow dude.  I meditate, I read books about Zen, I love ABBA and Romantic comedies, have seen every episode of Sex and the City (twice), and have a habit of laughing at all of my own jokes.  But, I am also NOT a motivational speaker.

Someone asked me recently what the name of my strength training company was, and I replied, “PDX Weightlifting.”

“Oh,” they said, “I think that would turn off a lot of people.”

I replied, “Yep.  And that’s the point.”

You see, I’m not a yeller.  I’m not like Jillian Michaels from the Biggest Loser.  I’m not here to call you up on the phone, get you off the couch, convince you that it’s time to workout, force you to work hard, and then nitpick you every step of the way.  There are trainers who do that for a living.  They’re great at it.  You need to be DEAD HONEST with yourself.  If you NEED a trainer to be your external motivator, then you need to hire one of these guys (actually, they’re usually girls).

I ain’t that guy.  I’m almost the opposite.  I’m way too relaxed.  In the gym, I’ll make sure you’re doing everything correctly, I’ll watch your lifts, I’ll discuss any and all topics you want to about your goals and progress.  But, I’ll also be cracking (bad) jokes and being very silly.  I do a great job of keeping the atmosphere exciting and fun.  That’s my personality.  And I expect everyone in my programs to stay positive and have fun while they workout, regardless of how hard it is.  NO whining – period. I have no tolerance for whining.   If you start wimping out, that’s you’re own problem.  And I’ll focus my energy of the folks who are working hard with a great attitude.

I won’t force you to do something you don’t want to.  If you say, “I can’t do it”, I’ll agree with you.  If you say, “it hurts”, I’ll tell you to stop or modify till it doesn’t hurt.  This is because when a truly motivated personal tells me this, it’s probably true! And I’m not going to make you do something that will result in injury.

Unfortunately, unmotivated people say these things as knee-jerk reactions to anything hard and as a result never push themselves hard enough to make any progress.

One of my favorite clients of all time is my client and friend Beth.  She’s been working out with me for a few years now, and in all of that time, I don’t think I have EVER heard her say the phrase “I can’t”.  This woman’s an animal.  She’s more than tripled her strength levels, gone from “skinny fat” to seriously lean, and looks and feels great.  (She regularly tells me about moving couches and other heavy shit up stairs by herself!)  All I do is show her the most efficient path toward her goals.  But, she’s the one who does all the work.  And boy, does she!

When my people tell me “it’s hard” or “what the HELL are you having me do?!”, or “I’m going to kill you for making me do this”,  they’re saying this as a badge of honor.  They do whatever I ask of them, and they work their butts off.  They may be cursing my name in the process … make no mistake!  But, they do it.

If you have no personal motivation, you have no business doing business with me because you WILL NOT get the results you want.  I’m a “lead the horse to water” coach.  You hire me when you want over a decades worth of knowledge, program design skills, solid real-world advice, a fun atmosphere, serious weight-training, and serious results.

Tony Robbins eating Peter Griffin!

If you need more motivation, buy some books by Tony Robbins.  And hey, once you’ve figured out your sh%t and decide you are ready to see the best results of your life and have a blast doing it, contact me and I’ll kick your butt with a big smile on my face.

I found this passage pretty funny from Jason’s post:

People ask me all kinds of questions when they find out what I do for a living.

“How do I lose this?” (grabbing a handful of a 48 inch waist)

“I don’t know.”

“How long should I do the stair climber for?”

“I don’t know.”

“I can’t give up carbs but I want to get lean. What should I do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I only have twenty minutes to train, twice a week. What should I do?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know you’re into all that heavy lifting but I can’t do that. What can I do instead?”

“I don’t know.”

“I’m a girl and I don’t want to get too bulky so how should I lift?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do I get motivated to go to the gym?”

“I don’t know.”

By training, I am a competitive Olympic Weightlifting Coach.  THAT is what I do.  I train athletes and people who seriously want to train with an athletic intensity on weightlifting-based programs.  Every program I create is built through the lens of a weightlifting coach.

If you are someone who wants to be able to answer YES to that question box on your job application that says “can you lift 100 pounds?”, and then laugh that that sounds light, I’m your guy.

This can include lots of different people from lots of different backgrounds who have totally different end goals: obviously, competitive weightlifters; athletes in any “power sport” like baseball, football, golf; and fitness folks who want to be in the best shape of their lives and lose 20, 40, or more pounds of fat.  The commonality is clear.  All my people lift weights – hard.  That’s the glue.

If you come to me wanting to lose 20+ pounds of fat, I’m not going to take it easy on you just because you aren’t in a competitive power-sport.  I’m going to hammer you just like I would anyone else on heavy weightlifting exercises and make you ridiculously strong.  As you’re losing that 20 pounds of fat, you’ll keep all your muscle, you’ll in fact gain muscle, become “toned”, learn a bunch of cool exercises like the clean and snatch, front squats, deadlifts, etc.  And you’ll start being able to perform in a way you never have before in all of your life.

The great physicist Richard Feynman once said that he approached every problem with only 6 tools.  Whenever a problem came up, he looked in his tiny little tool box, and tried all 6 of those tools on it.  If that didn’t work, he switched to a new problem.

I’ve found that there are things that I can coach at a high level given the tools that I have and things I can’t.  These are the ONLY things I do – 1) Competitive weightlifting; 2) power-sport training; 3) extreme fitness training.    3 things.  That’s it.  I’m great at these things.  But, if you want to become the most kick-ass marathon runner of all time … you’ll need to find someone else.  That just isn’t what I do.

This particular quote sounds very much like my own way of approaching coaching (hey, that rhymed!):

Often times people will tell me that they want to train with me and that I if they hire me or come to my gym I really need to push them. No, I don’t. You need to push yourself. You’re hiring me for my program design skills which are based on 16 years of experience. I am not a cheerleader. Any nitwit can yell at someone like a drill sergeant. Just because a workout is hard doesn’t mean it’s effective. Just because a coach yells loudly it doesn’t mean he’s smart.

If you can’t find it within yourself and are not driven to excel, there is nothing I can do for you.

I’ll give hard working, motivated, intelligent people everything I have. But for everyone else I have no time or patience. I know this offends many people. But it’s just me being honest.

I feel very lucky.  I have a great set of people to work with.  They all come in, work hard, joke around, have fun, and get into great shape.  Not a bad job.

Bob Takano has a new article up at his blog in which he mentions a talk he gave to a bunch of parents of volleyball athletes about the importance of determining whether your son’s or daughter’s strength coach is qualified to do what it is your child needs done.  Good strength coaching is becoming a serious factor for parents who are hoping that their kid will get a sports scholarship when they go off to college. And if your athlete is on the verge you need to take the choice of strength-performance coaches seriously.

Here’s a quote:

I spent some time discussing the range of abilities presented by people calling themselves personal trainers and how widely those abilities and backgrounds could vary.  I told them to ask questions about prior experience working with athletes, the success levels of those athletes, injury rates of their athletes and what factors would be improved besides vertical jump.  I provided them with an arsenal of questions to help them determine the competency of any strength and conditioning coach or personal trainer they might encounter including whether or not they were certified.

The truth is, it isn’t always easy to find a serious strength coach who has the knowledge of the unique demands that a competitive athlete faces.  These include massive time demands (school, work, practice, girl/boy friend, smokin’ weed with their buddies … but you aren’t supposed to know about that one!), serious risks of over-training due to the overload their already getting from their sport-specific coach, and risks of sport-related injury that could kill their chances at a scholarship.

If you walk into any “normal” big-box gym you’ll be hounded by a slew of “trainers” who look about the same age as your kid!  They’re all excited and jovial, no doubt, but they rarely are going to have a clue what they’re doing (certified or not). Not good.  But, where would you find a qualified coach, and what does “qualified” even mean?

To follow Bob’s lead (again … and yet again I’m using the “5 tips” format! … oh, heavens), I’ve got my own small list of things I’d want to know about a potential coach for my kid (assuming I had a kid).

1. Did you find the trainer in one of those large commercial gyms?  If so, we may have a problem. Not only are the trainers at these places usually grossly under experienced, the gyms themselves are understocked with what I would consider necessary equipment:  platforms, bumper plates, chalk, etc.  If the gym you’re taking your young athlete into doesn’t have at least those three things prominently displayed, then you’re unlikely to find the coach you’re kid needs either.  Sports performance training is a completely different animal then so-called bodybuilding training.  The trainer should know the difference.
2. What certifications does the coach have?  If it’s ACE, turn and RUN.  Trust me on this one. I would only be comfortable with one (or both) of the following:  1) USA Weightlifting’s Sports Performance Coach certification (or equivalently, USA Weightlifting’s Olympic Club Coach certification) OR 2) NSCA’s Certified Strength and Conditioning Coach certification.  That is, the coaches business card should have “NAME, USAW” or “NAME, CSCS” on it.  Oh, and a college education wouldn’t hurt.
3. Was the trainer an athlete?  If they weren’t, that isn’t necessarily a deal breaker, but it could be a sign.  There is not much like personal experience to teach someone what NOT to do.  If the trainer feels they could have been a “champion” if only they’d had the right coaching, then maybe they’ve developed some idea of what “the right coaching” is.  The strength coach Mark Rippetoe once said, “The best coaches were mediocre athletes.”  They know what it’s like to struggle, to suffer, and to be defeated.  Combine those things with a positive attitude and an inquisitive mind, and you’ve got yourself a good coach … which lead me to:
4. Make sure the performance coach is a “thinker”.  OK, this can be hard to gauge in a quick meeting.  But, designing programs (not just routines) for an athlete requires taking into account a large number of variables, all of which interact back with one another.
5. Is the strength coach a “yeller”?  I know that we all have memories of our high school coaches yelling and screaming at us. And in the movies it’s certainly more fun to have a guy like Mickey from Rocky – red faced, spit spewing from their mouths, veins popping out off their forehead. But, the reality is that most great strength coaches can get their point across without needing to yell.  This is particularly important if your kid is a daughter.  Girls rarely respond well to aggressive screaming.  You know that line, “you’ll catch more flies with honey …”

I could come up with a lot more, but this will have to do for now.  The underlying point is to keep your eyes open and ask a lot of questions.  Anyone who is worth it will more than happy to answer any questions you have.

Robert Taylor discusses the importance of actually using basketball as a part of a basketball players conditioning.   I know that may sound obvious, but the fact is, we weightlifting coaches are rather weightroom centric. 

Unfortunately, the way sports performance is approached today, strength coaches almost never have any contact with sport coaches.  Be sure to ask your athletes for a detailed description of their sport specific weekly load so that your strength programs are properly in line with that and don’t over train them.

This is one of the great benefits Olympic Weightlifting coaches have when coaching their own guys than when we are coaching other athletes.   With Oly lifters, all conditioning and strength work is done “in house”.  It’s as though the football coach also did all the strength coaching. 

And don’t get me started on how hard it is to design good programs for “recreational” athletes like rec-league softball players, roller derby, rugby, and golf.  At least in school-based team sports environments they are supervised by a coach who keeps their workload in check.  For the recreational athlete, there is no such supervision.    And far too often the athletes don’t know how to stop themselves from overworking.