CrossFit has grown from a little grassroots fitness club into a massive phenomenon complete with it’s own sectional, regional, and national championships. Last year they put on a joint CrossFit/USAW competition that was larger than any American national weightlifting meet (save for the Arnold). And now, we can add a huge sponsorship with Reebok to the list of their accomplishments. What does that mean for you? There’s a $1 million dollar pot waiting for the winners of this years CrossFit games! It’s official, CrossFit is a sport. It’s time to start training for it.
OK, now we can talk about your snatch …
Ever noticed that the best athletes at the Games don’t leave anything to chance? They are conditioned, they are strong, and they have spent the time required acquiring the proper technique in the complex lifts/events. If your snatch (and/or equivalently, your clean and jerk) sucks … you are gonna suck. It would be like not being able to do a kipping pull up.
Did you watch the CrossFit/USAW competition? The best CrossFit athletes had impressive form on the Olympic lifts, and consequently, they lifted big weights. Even top Olympic lifters like Kendrick Ferris and Natalie Burgener were very impressed with these folks abilities. Guess what? These are the types of folks you’ll be competing against.
Take Chris Spealler for example. At the Crossfit/USAW meet he posted a 200k total in the 62k class, which was enough to qualify him for the American Open Olympic Weightlifting competition. He’s competed in all four of the CrossFit games and won third place at the last one. Check out his immaculate bottom position in the clean in the photo above! This guys knows that if you are serious, then you put in the time to get it right.
Learning the Olympic lifts is a high-skill endeavor. But, don’t get me wrong. You don’t need to focus on becoming the greatest Oly lifter since Naim. Just a few months of dedicated work will change your life. (That’s not Hyperbole.)
While weightlifting isn’t exactly like riding a bike, the fact is, once you’ve put in those first 3 to 6 months of technical work, you will be able to lift MUCH heavier loads than you would have been able to without it. Consequently, you’ll get stronger faster, you’ll become far more explosive, and all of the other events you do in CrossFit will become easier. There is reason that nearly every top athlete in the world, in nearly every sport, does hard work on the Olympic lifts: They work!
Right around now you may be asking, “Dude, I ain’t got a chance against Chris Spealler! I’ll never see that money, so why do I care?”
There are two reasons. First, it’s not about the money, it’s about your body. You got into this kind of craziness because you love to push yourself to higher and higher levels. You wanted to see how far you could take yourself. Learning the Olympic lifts is the next step in your evolution as a serious athlete.
Second, even if it WAS about the money, you have to take the long view. CrossFit ain’t gonna shrivel up and die tomorrow. It’s only going to get bigger. This means that the sponsorships will keep coming, and the prize money at each level of competition will get bigger and bigger.
In the near future, there will be good money to be had at even the more local Sectional competitions. When that time comes, are you going to be ready? It may take 2 to 5 years, but it’s coming. Imagine how much better an athlete you will be if you dedicate the next 2 to 5 years to improving yourself! You could be in the top of your class. (BTW, speaking of classes, they lowered the masters class down to 40 years old. This is means more opportunities for more people.)
Your Solution:
My advice is to make sure you contact the best Olympic lifting coach in your area and get started learning how to snatch and clean and jerk right away. If you aren’t sure who that person is, then simply leave a comment below and I’ll find out for you.
If you’re here in the Portland area, then you can come see me! I run classes every night, and I’m even planning on running a Monday/Friday morning class at CrossFit X-Factor soon. No excuses.
This is the year to make it happen. Wherever you are, whatever level you are at, one year from now you will either be a better athlete than you are now, the same, or even worse. It’s your choice.
Zen Quote of the Week:
“Cutting off physical exercise–the very activity most likely to promote cognitive performance–to do better on a test score is like trying to gain weight by starving yourself.” – John Medina, Author of Brain Rules
This week in the world of weightlifting:
Doctor Hartman interviews Lon Gilgore about his new book, Anatomy without a Scalpel.
Riley Charlish, of PDX Weightlifting, gets written up again in the local papers for his basketball prowess. This time he hits six 3-pointers in one game!
Mighty Kat interviews Chip Conrad. Quote:
In other words, there is now a frightening vacuum of creativity in the modern physical culture movement as there is in the corporate gym world. Hyperbole seems alive and well in both camps, whether it’s a million member gym chain, or a lump of metal on the ground called a kettlebell or an eating program fit for a caveman, the sheep are flocking around and the brains are being left at home.
Mighty Kat writes an open letter to her warm-up!
She’s also put together a cool calendar for Olympic weightlifters for 2011:
Cedric Unholz posts part 2 of his interview with Donny Shankle. Quote:
12. If you had to choose one thing that you think people should be including in their training, what would that be?
A hobby you are just as passionate about as weightlifting. A recurring worry by many weightlifters is whether or not they are recovering properly or enough. Finding another activity you place great value in whether that’s being a good cook, a loving father, or collecting stamps it doesn’t matter. Ardent focus on something else you enjoy will distract your mind from any immediate aches and pains you think you may be feeling and have to find some special means to recover from.
Cedric Unholz rants about fascia … who doesn’t? He makes an interesting point here:
Science is important. Being able to measure, assess and quantify training is vital. But its equally crucial to remember that the human body is complex and intricate, and as we progress we also develop more sophisticated questions that might not currently be answerable through means other than observation, “feeling” and common sense. This does not devalue any of the practices but does mean that people have to think and evaluate things for themselves. That may mean lazy individuals get left behind, I’m cool with that.
This reminds me of the arguments “for and against” a “Bulgarian” approach to training for Olympic weightlifting. There haven’t been enough studies (or of the right type) to make conclusive statements one way or the other. We are stuck with anecdotal and circumstantial evidence. It isn’t ideal. But, what IS ideal is that coaches and athletes have been unwittingly (or in some cases wittingly) doing “micro-experiments” that have lead to the development of new hypothesis about what the best ways to train are. These in turn may help guide future researchers who are setting up more large-scale and comprehensive experiments.
(Of course, it is unlikely that experiments of the kind that we want – on high level athletes, long term, large population – will be done often or ever. But, we can hope.)
Shoutout: Bret Contreras is going to be going to grad school soon to get his PhD in Exercise Science. He’s exactly the type of guy who would be likely to understand our dilemma (above), and be in a position to do something about it.
Geoff of Waxman’s Gym pulls a 2.5 times his bodyweight Deadlift (below). Looking at his frame you may think that it was impossible. Lot’s of people whine and cry about their genetics (too lanky, too short, too tall, too big boned), few work hard enough to surprise themselves.
Glenn Pendlay relays his wisdom. It’s a giant forum post on Stronglifts.com which consists of a bunch of stuff Glenn has written over the years, compiled by someone else. Lot’s of good stuff. But, one of the major gems is this:
i got shot at close range in the stomach when i was a freshman in high school during a family disagreement. bullet basically exploded on impact, had a couple of holes in my aeorta, 30+ holes in both large and small intestine, liver damage, spleen damage, and other things. a fragment of the bullet also nicked my spinal cord and became lodged in my spinal column and was not able to be surgically removed.
becasue of the spinal cord damage, i was left with numbness in my left leg, mostly the lower leg and the buttocks. also the neural innervation to one head of my hamstring muscle was destroyed, allowing 1/3 of my left hamstring to basically whither away and never return. the innervation to the lower leg muscles which pronate and flex the ankle were also affected, though not as much… but they still dont work completely right.
You think YOU have excuses not to train? Get real. Pendlay ended up squatting over 800 pounds, deadlifting over 700, clean and jerking over 400 pounds, and snatching over 350! Try doing that after being shot by a family member.
Caleb Ward tells us how much he hates the clean and jerk:
My aversion for the Clean and Jerk reached its apex in 2007 when I came upon this conclusion: If I trained the Snatch, and the snatch ONLY, I would eventually increase my ability in the Snatch by great proportions to that if I had trained both lifts. And thus, I felt I could reach my goals by Snatching so much more than everyone else and still get by with a subpar Clean and Jerk (Since everyone knows you can ALWAYS Clean and Jerk at the very least what you can snatch). When I presented this idea to my coach, he simply laughed and probably assigned me more Clean and Jerk doubles. (Hey, this isn’t CrossFit, people… One rep is enough.) But since I choose to participate in this sport, here is my outlook on the Clean and Jerk- The Clean and Jerk is a lift based much more on strength than technique. Although its technique is just as important as the Snatch’s, I feel like one can push through a Clean and Jerk with technique flaws and still prevail. This is the best, and probably the only redeeming, quality the lift holds for me.
The funny thing is that the very reasons he cites as to why he doesn’t like the clean and jerk are the precise reasons others cite for preferring it! Everyone tends to feel more comfortable with one of the three lifts, and can often rank them in order of difficulty. For myself, it’s (from easiest to hardest): Jerk, Snatch, and then Clean. The jerk is almost never hard. No matter how hard the clean is, I can nearly always get it over my head. But, the clean is by far my worst lift. It’s something I’m always struggling to bring up to speed. This means that if I want a hard jerk workout, I have to do them out of the rack.
Others are very different, ranking them Snatch, Clean, Jerk; or Clean, Snatch, Jerk. There are, after all, 6 total permutations of the 3 objects {snatch, clean, jerk}. [If you’re a math-geek, you’ll know that’s because the standard permutation of “n” objects is “n!” (i.e., “n factorial”, or n(n-1)(n-2)…1). In this case, 3x2x1 = 6.] So, you can split up the entire weightlifting community into 6 different groups. Each group would share the same ranking of the lifts from easiest to most difficult. Now that I think about it, one could likely propose slightly different training programs to each group designed to bring up their weaknesses … just thinking out loud here.
Bodybuilding, yes, I said it! Ever wanted to combine Olympic weightlifting with bodybuilding? It used to be as common as pie. The great Tommy Kono himself was a Mr. Universe as well as an Olympic champion. Here’s 3 articles on the topic: number 1 (an interview with Tommy Kono), number 2 (by Achilles Kallos), and number 3 (by Jim Halliday). (By the way, Jon Pall Sigmarsson, the Icelandic strongman who dominated in the 80’s also did bodybuilding shows, dieting down from his strongman weight of about 140kilos to 105k.)
California Strength has a new guy who’s snatching some big numbers already:
Finally, here’s Kotooshu doin’ his Sumo thang – very close call!
BTW, if you look really close, you’ll notice that the photo at the top of the post of this Byodo-in Temple in Hawaii is the location for Sun’s fathers house in Lost.
When we use the word conditioning, in normal parlance, we tend to mean it as a synonym for cardiovascular endurance training. That isn’t to say that we mean it simply to be long-distance running. It could be interval training, CrossFit, or boxing. But, in any case, it’s meant as a form of training that gets your heart healthy. This is a mistake, and quite misleading.
In fact, conditioning does not mean cardio. It doesn’t even mean muscular endurance. It is your bodies ability to handle the specific demands of the training for your sport. It just so happens, that for a lot of sports, conditioning involves what looks like cardio work.
The word conditioning, obviously, comes from the word condition. Are you in the right condition to handle the training demands placed on you? If the answer is “no”, then the next step is to determine what specific kind of training will bring you “up to speed” so that you are in condition.
Not All Conditioning is Created Equal
Strongman competitors require massive amounts of pure strength, combined with a higher level of muscular endurance than Olympic Weightlifters and Powerlifters (or Throwers, for that matter) do. Their sport requires that you do exercises that look like pure strength exercises … but you them for a longer period of time or for reps.
For instance, the deadlift. A Powerlifter only has to lift it one time, and the goal is to get the highest weight possible. A strongman will have to lift a fixed weight for as many reps as he possibly can. The requirements for each sport are very different. Strongmen must incorporate into their training work that will condition their body for doing heavy lifting for a solid couple of minutes straight, rather than for only a couple of seconds.
Powerlifters may never lift anything for more than 3 reps, ever. Strongmen will go above that more often.
One might say, “Hey, CrossFit does deadlifts for reps. Maybe that would be a good conditioning for a Strongman.”
Wrong.
In CrossFit, one does moderate to light loads for high (sometimes VERY high reps). Rep ranges of 10, 20, 50, or more are not uncommon. This means the type of conditioning work they are doing is geared toward maximum muscular endurance and cardiovascular strength.
In contrast, Strongman shows, especially those at the national level and above, require one to lift in excess of 500 pounds or more on the deadlift for reps. But, the reps aren’t that high. Guys often top out around 5 or 10. Training with light weights in high rep ranges will never prepare you for lifting weights this heavy. In fact, it will hinder you. The body can only be good at so many things concomitantly.
Similarly, a CrossFit athlete would not benefit from dumping all their CrossFit workouts in favor of pure Strongman training. In Strongman the emphasis is still max strength, with enough muscular endurance to handle the demands of competition. In CrossFit the requirement is like that of a long distance runner. Events that last as long as 30 minutes require a build up of substantial endurance in the musculature which must be trained specifically. Having a 700 pound deadlift won’t save you on a workout that requires you to do 5 rounds each of 20 pull ups, 20 burpees, and a 400 meter run!
Team sport athletes often get more than enough cardiovascular and muscular endurance work during their “sport” training. A basketball player, for instance, when practicing the skills of their sport, will also be running up and down and up and down the court, sometimes for hours! They don’t need any more it. There’s a good case to be made, in fact, that they get too much of this type of training and it is causing them to be slower and less explosive because of it. (But, since Basketball is a high-skill sport, they really have no choice but to practice the skills as often as possible).
But, there are other qualities one must condition themselves for if they are a basketball player. People often don’t realize just how much of a contact sport basketball is. If you’re in the paint, you’re getting hit – hard. If you aren’t strong and stable enough to stand your ground, and make plays in the face of some serious abuse, you aren’t going to make it. Basketball players who don’t have the luxury of being as giant as Shaq, have to train to get strong enough to repel the big guys. (Shaq, of course, added to his genetics by training hard as hell and lifting some serious weight.)
Conditioning for the Olympic Weightlifter
It would be easy to say that Olympic Weightlifters don’t do ANY conditioning. But, that would require the synonomy “conditioning=cardio” to hold true. It doesn’t. Weightlifters don’t do cardio, as a rule … ever! But, they are highly conditioned for the demands of their sport.
It takes training to be able to do frequent maximal (or near maximal) lifts on the snatch, clean and jerk, and squats. I don’t mean that you have to get strong first. I mean that your body will feel “broken down” after just one session of this if you aren’t adapted to it, regardless of how strong you are.
When a new lifter comes in, they are lucky if they can lift maximally once a week. Even that is a bit much. Eventually, a top weightlifter is capable of doing maximal lifts (heaviest lift you can make for the day, not necessarily lifetime best) every day, 6 days a week, sometimes twice a day. Extra cardiovascular endurance or muscular endurance won’t help you to do this. Those are the wrong kinds of conditioning. Only practice on heavy lifting as often as possible will condition your body to this type of training.
Bottom Line
Conditioning is about adaptations to the specific demands of your sport. Find out what those are, and the best methods to train for them. Don’t just blindly assume that what you need is more time running on a treadmill. That kind of thing only helps long distance runners. If that is your sport, then yes, “conditioning = cardio”. But, for the rest of us, it’s much more complicated than that.
Now, if you’re really smart, you’ll hire a coach, so that you don’t have to think about these things.
If you keep saying that you want a big squat, but every time you get serious about it, you begin to develop either back pain or the symptoms of sciatica, then I may have a solution for you. This used to happen to me, too, before I realized the importance of stretchin’ that butt! Now, I squat AT LEAST 5 times a week most of the year, sometimes up to 9 times a week.
Don’t be stupid! If you have back pain, you’re best off seeing a doctor and finding out what it is. It may be that you have a real issue that needs addressing that a blog-article just can’t help you with.
But, if you’re like me (and like most serious lifters) one of your problems might be your uber-tight periformis muscles in your glutes.
Peri-what?!
The periformis is a small muscle in your buttocks. And unfortunately for you, it butts up (wink!) right against your sciatic nerve. So every time it gets inflamed and swollen (like after you squat), it puts pressure on the nerve and makes you feel like something is wrong with your back.
There are a couple things you can do to deal with this problem. The first is simply to “roll” it out.
Take a tennis ball (or if you’re hardcore, a lacrosse ball) and mimic what the woman in the pic above is doing (If you’re doing it right, you won’t be smiling like she is … it hurts, people). Another way to do it is to take the tennis ball, while standing, and place it between a doorjam and your glutes. Press. Hard. I do this in the morning when I wake up, and at night before I go to bed.
The next thing you got to do is to stretch out the periformis ALL THE TIME. I do twice a day, at least, every day. If I do, I can squat all the time. If I don’t , I can’t squat at all. It’s that important.
Here’s a vid by K-Star, with the cyclist Levi Leipheimer, showing a good stretch for this pesky muscle (it also gets the old IT band, which is another pain in the arse for heavy squatters):
BTW, if you don’t already do so, check out K-Star’s mobility workouts of the day. Many of these will make your lifting life a lot easier, keep pain away, and allow you to train your butt off (almost literally) every day. Maybe now you can get that triple (or quadruple!) bodyweight squat that your Mamma always wanted you to have.
To quote K Starr:
Take a good look in the mirror and make a better decision. There is always more power to be had.
AMEN, brother.
This week in the world of weightlifting:
Riley Charlish, a talented High School Basketball Player that I’m strength coaching, was mentioned in a couple articles in the local papers here and here, because of his performance with his High School B-ball team, the Roughriders. He also got a shoutout at Oregonlive.com.
The Iron Samurai made the list of the Top 30 Weightlifting Blogs. Makes me feel all warm and gushy inside. There really are some great ones on there that aren’t the normal “fitness” type sites. In other words, if you want to get stronger, for real, these are some of the best blogs to hit up. For instance Weightlifting Epiphanies, Doctor Hartman, Mighty Kat, Sean Waxman, and Bob Takano, to name a few are all Olympic weightlifting focused. Between all of us, you’ll be filling your head with some great usable info that will increase your lifts and help turn you into a super human! (Hyperbole? Maybe, but only slightly …)
Pat Mendez, of Average Broz Gym, hits a 207k snatch in training. This is the heaviest snatch on record of any American lifter, ever! And it is an unofficial Jr. World record (Unofficial because it wasn’t done under contest conditions). This is a fantastic feat of strength and athleticism.
Strength+ Magazine. Don’t forget to sign up for a subscription for the English speaking worlds ONLY serious Olympic weightlifting focused magazine. There are other good mags out there that cover weightlifting (Performance One and MILO come to mind), but this one is centered around it, and edited none other than Rachel Crass, who is stronger than you:
Pretty Strong Blog gives us an interview with the Athlete of the Year: Chioma Amaechi of Hassel Free Barbell.
Alwyn Cosgrove gives us his 5 rules for meeting your New Years Resolutions. The best one is #5: Hire a Coach 
The Iron Samurai gives you his own strategy for meeting them resolutions. (It’s funny writing in the 3rd person)
Naim Suleymanoglu is the focus of this old-school article from Sports Illustrated 1984, when he was only 16, before he became the greatest weightlifter of all time. In the article they still use his “old” name, Suleimanov. He changed it when he defected to Turkey, the country of his ancestry. (BTW, my step dad, who was in the Bulgarian gymnastics sports school, and a friend of Naim as they were growing up, still calls him Suleimanov … I think most Bulgarians took offense when Naim left, my Step Dad being no exception. But really, can you blame the dude. The country was under Soviet rule at the time!)
If you think you can only lift in the gym to heavy metal to be successful, think again:
"U.S.country music is good for training," Spasov explains to a flabbergasted visitor. "The boys are loving Mr. Nelson, and Mr. Cash also." Actually, the visitor would have been more astonished had he not heard, only minutes before in the lobby of the hotel. Muddy Waters moaning over the speaker system about a "jack out with his jennet, waaaaay on over the hill."
And here’s a sample of the training they did on Friday, May 4th, 1984:
10—10:45: Snatch—10 to 12 sets of one or two repetitions, working up in increments to approximately 90% of the lifter’s best competitive lift.
10:45—11:15: Break.
11:15—12: Clean and jerk—10 to 12 sets of one or two repetitions, working up to 90% of best competitive lift.
12—12:15: Break.
12:15—12:45: Eight to 10 sets of front squats with either one or two repetitions, working up to 90% of the lifter’s best training poundage.
12:45—1: Walk to hotel.
1:00—1:30: Lunch.
1:30—3:45: Rest, nap, Mr. Cash,Mr. Nelson.
3:45—4: Dress and walk to training hall for afternoon sessions.
4—4:45: Clean and jerk—10 to 12 sets of one or two repetitions, working up to approximately 100% of lifter’s previous best.
4:45—5: Break.
5—5:45: 10 to 12 sets of one or two repetitions, working up to 95% of previous best in clean and jerk.
5:45—6:15: Break.
6:15—7: Snatch—10 to 12 sets of one or two repetitions, working up to approximately 100% of previous best.
7—7:15: Break.
7:15—7:45: Regular or back squats—10 to 12 sets of one or two repetitions, working up to 90% or 95% of previous training best.
The article says they’re doing about 7 sessions a day, but I think that’s a bit odd. I’d call this two long sessions a day. One from 10 to noon, and the other from 4 till 8. Each with long rest periods after each lift.
One more quote from the article:
When Suleimanov actually approached the bar and lifted, though, every one of his 152 centimeters and 56 kilos was dead serious. Like wolf. He would tighten his tiny belt, chalk his stubby fingers, which are so short he must let his thumbnails grow so he can take a properly secure "hook" grip on the bar, approach the weight with short steps, bend slowly at the waist and hips to grasp the bar, flatten his relatively long back so it became slightly concave and close his heavily lidded eyes for a moment. Then, with a slight preparatory shudder, he would begin to pull the bar at what seemed at first to be too slow a speed but which became, once the bar reached a position five or six inches above his thighs, a blur of plate-rattling speed as he extended his body fully and then dropped under the bar to fix it either at his chest or at arms’ length overhead.
Caleb Ward first Jerks, then Overhead Squats 190k!
The Daily Telegraph ponders whether Yoga is bad for your knees. I used to do a lot of Yoga, and there’s a case to be made that many Yoga stretches are good to do. But, never forget that Yoga is a system that has come to us via tradition not via science. There’s much dogma to it, and dogma is nearly always bad in my book. Here’s Mike Boyle’s take on the article.
Zach Krych has an inspirational video showing his wrist injury and then his subsequent recovery and return to weightlifting – winning nationals in the process. Two things to be learned here: Never give up and don’t wear straps while doing cleans!
Catalyst Athletics has a great dynamic warmup vid for weightlifters.
Finally, there is something to be said for a squat rack:
The sad fact is, most people fail at accomplishing their new years resolutions. They say they’re gonna lose weight, add 30 kilo’s to their back squat, or go to CrossFit regionals
Why do they fail? Because they only do the first part: come up with the goals! They don’t move on to the next step which is to devise a plan to actually reach those goals.
I’m a big believer in splitting the year into four parts. After all, we’re already conditioned to think this way. Every year has four seasons and the schools we all went to had (or usually had) four quarters. Every season, every 90 days, you should try to reach an intermediate goal that helps you move closer to your yearly goal.
Below I go through a couple examples of ways to do this for Olympic lifters, CrossFit Athletes, and Team Sport Athletes. These just happen to be groups of people I work with a lot, but the principles are universal. Take your yearly goal, split it up into 4 parts, after you’ve accomplished each section, reward yourself, repeat. This simple little strategy will help this be the year that you finally reach those goals!
Olympic Weightlifters
There’s an idea that a new lifter should try to add 30 kilo’s per lift per year. Now, if you’re 17 years old, that is reasonable. If you’re … older than that, then 15 to 20 kilo’s is more realistic. Either way, pick a goal that is on the high end of what is doable for you, and break it up into 4 parts.
Let’s take a 30 year old male lifter, since this a good average age among recreational lifters. This lifter should go for broke and try for a solid 20 kilo jump on both the snatch and clean and jerk this year. That will require a good 5 kilos every 90 days. During each 90 day period don’t think AT ALL about your yearly goal. Just focus hard on reaching your 90 day goal.
Now … there are a lot of schools of thought on HOW weightlifters should set up their training to reach these goals, and I’ll get into some of those in future posts. Personally, I’m a bit of a Bulgarian. Here’s my primer on (realistic) Bulgarian training that you can use as a starting point.
CrossFit Athletes
I plan on writing (soon!) an article on how to specifically combine training for CrossFit AND competitive Olympic Weightlifting. But, what follows here is for people who are not Oly lifters, whose only sport is CrossFit.
Want to kick butt at the CrossFit games/regionals/sectionals? Then you have to plan for it. The best athletes at the games know the importance of specialization. The CrossFit WOD’s are great at getting you into shape, but they are too random if you have the specific goal of competing at the games to be done in isolation.
One of the area’s the best CrossFitters specialize in is Olympic weightlifting. If all you ever did was the olympic lifts in the WOD’s, you’ll never get anywhere. These are highly complex lifts, equally as complicated as the pole-vault. The ONLY way to get past the rank-beginner level is to dedicate yourself to the study of technique. That means lots of practice.
If you dedicate 90 days to learning proper technique on the Oly lifts, you’ll end up lifting FAR more weight and get much stronger than you will without it. Make that your first goal in the first season of the year.
Another thing you need to think about is brute strength. You have to do specialized work on squats and deadlifts. Heavy weight and low reps may not sound very CrossFit, but they’ll make you stronger and in turn make you a better CrossFitter. As an example, I did a Strongman show this last year and one of the events was Deadlifts for max reps with 315 pounds. There were a number of CrossFitters competing. But, the top guys in this event (I got second with 17 reps) were all people who have spent a lot of years developing brute strength for its own sake. The top guy did nearly 30 reps!! Why? Because he has a 600 pound max deadlift. 315 is only about 50% for him! Of course he won.
Do 90 days of serious strength work and watch all of your CrossFit “ladies names” workouts improve. I’d do this in the Spring.
Another thing most CrossFitters don’t think about is that Crossfit isn’t quite as random as it makes itself out to be. At the games there are events that keep popping up. Go through the records over the last number of years and try to pick out trends. If an event has happened more than once, practice it! If you know double-unders are going to show up with a high probability, then do them – a lot! Practice really does make perfect.
Team Sport Athletes
Most team sport athletes don’t spend anywhere near enough time working on strength, power, and stability training. This is the year to change that! Find out what the standards of strength and power are among the best in your sport. Kobe Bryant does Olympic lifting, squats, and deadlifts. He knows how important it is to be strong to be the best.
If your goal is to improve your game this year, take the next 90 days and dedicate them to serious strength and power training. Learn how to power clean with GOOD form, how to power snatch, how to do front squats, RDL’s, and push presses. In just 90 days, you can gain a lifetime’s worth of technique that you’ll never lose. It’s an investment in your future as an athlete. You’re young now, take advantage of it. If you’re an adult athlete, there’s no time like the present!
During this Winter, focus on acquiring the best technique you can on the Olympic lifts, and pushing up the weight on squats. During the spring you’ll be ready to get heavy on the Olympic lifts, continuing to increase squat and deadlift numbers. By the summer, you’ll be a powerhouse. Based on the last 6 months of work, you’ll be ready to establish new 90-day goals for yourself.
One year is just too long for our brains to handle. But, 90 days is perfect. It’s just long enough that you can see measurable progress in the gym. But, it’s not so long that you lose track of where you’re going and get bored/lazy/anxious. This year is the year you actually WILL reach your new years resolutions, because this year, you’ve got a plan.
To ring in the new year, here’s a 5 part Documentary video detailing the last 30 years of the Worlds Strongest Man. My favorite has always been Magnus Samuelsson, the dairy farmer.
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The new issue of Strength+ Magazine is up, you can subscribe to it here. They have a free PDF download, but if you spring for the hardcopy, you get extra content. At only $59/year, for 12 issues, I’d say it’s more than worth it.
On the site they have a poll asking if you would ever try and learn to do the squat jerk (or if you’d ever coach it, if you’z a coach). I answered yes. After all, I’m coaching one of my lifters right now on the squat jerk.
In truth, he only needs to power jerk most of the time. But, he can ride down about 85% of his max so far. When he started with me, he split, as everyone does. But, it quickly became apparent that the jerk looked “off”. It was his worst lift.
One day, he says, “Coach, I want to try the squat jerk.” What was I to say? No? It’s turned out to be a blessing. The instant he began doing the power jerk, 50% of his problems vanished. He can drive longer into the bar, and there is no lag time wasted on diving out into the split.
Now, I’d not advice most people to do this. It takes remarkable flexibility and shoulder stability to pull it off. But, there is no doubt that it is the wave of the future (at least no doubt to me). There was a time when people thought a squat snatch was just a crazy idea! Now, it’s the norm …
Also, there is an article on the Strength+ website about the life of Kendrick Farris that is a must read. Here’s a quote from Kendrick:
“When I first came in the gym, I never got the feeling he was just a coach. He just kinda took me under his wing. My parents were separating when I got into lifting, and Kyle told me I had the talent to see the world. The attention he showed me was overwhelming. It was like he was my dad, man. He showed me the lifts, and showed me a lot of love. I wanted that from my dad, but Kyle was there for me. My dad has never seen me lift. But, as hard as it is God teaches us to forgive.”
In case you haven’t seen it yet, here he is Clean and Jerking 211 kilos:
This week in the world of weightlifting:
Coach Tom Hirtz is recognized for his work with at-risk youth. He goes into the local jail teaching the sport of weightlifting to kids who have been down the wrong path. We just got back from a meet at which a couple of these kids competed for their first time. He’s clearly having a positive effect, and giving these guys something to work towards and strive for. Tom is helping to change peoples lives, one rep at a time.
Sarah Bertram and Jessica Gee, two of Oregon’s own (coached by Tom Hirtz), competed at the American Open. Sarah hit a 87k Snatch and a 107k Clean+Jerk for a 194 total, and 3rd place. Jessica did a 74k Snatch and a 92k Clean+Jerk for a 166 total that put her in 4th place. I think Jessica’s lifts were both PR’s.
Mike Cook, another Oregon lifter, and winner of the masters nationals in his age/weight class, also competed at the American Open. He was hoping to break the national masters records, but was just a touch under. I think he’ll get them soon! He’s a hell of a lifter and already holds a lot of Oregon records.
Jocelyn Forest posted a video of the 85’s and the 94’s battle at the American Open 2010
Bob Takano interviews Coach Mike Burgener. One of the things they talk about is the influence of CrossFit on American weightlifting. Basically, the children are our future – the children of CrossFitters are ripe for weightlifting success.
Sage Burgener lays down the law … the law of the hips in Olympic lifting:
Our goal is to maintain control of the barbell by keeping it close to our body through the whole entire movement. The only way to accomplish this is by moving the hips straight up and straight down and LIGHTLY brushing the barbell off your hips . . . NOT banging it . . . EVER.
Jessica Gallagher and Sarah Robles start a new Youtube Page. Here’s a vid of Sarah and a friend hitting some snatches … yes, she is stronger than you.
Cedric Unholz interviews Donny Shankle (part I). As usual, Donny gives you a plethora of great quotes to motivate you in the gym! Over the last year, Donny has really made an effort to put himself out there into the “web” community of weightlifters and share his insights. He’s a unique guy, with a unique perspective, and we’re all benefiting. For example, in speaking of his time with the Bulgarian legendary coach, Ivan Abadjiev he says
I learned what it takes to become a master at this sport and through him (Abadjiev) I learned how to attack the bar constantly no matter how many misses or how I felt, fearlessly going after more weight again and again until it is accomplished. I try to relay this dogged pride to anyone who takes up weightlifting but this is something you cannot teach. Rather you must be inspired to lift like this.
Barry Kinsella interviews Rachel Crass:
Chip Conrad of BodyTribe Fitness gives us a history of weightlifting:
The Lost Battalion Weightlifting Club in New York gets a website facelift.
Georgi Gardev vs. Asanidze in the 2000 Europeans … the hair, oh, the hair!
Finally, the secret of hardcore fitness is … Euro Training:
I hadn’t seen these vids (by Sarah Robles) yet from the Pan Am’s. Sarah is a fellow Oregonian (coached by Tom Hirtz) who my team has lifted with for a lot of years now. She and her teammate Jessica Gee are two of Oregon’s greatest lifters. In fact, Sarah is the first Oregonian to ever make the World team.
Here’s the vids of her at the Pan Am’s. Sadly, so far, there isn’t any of her and Jessica at the recent American Open. But, they both kicked butt!!
A BRUTAL clean and missed jerk. Great fight!
