The Tao Of Snatch: Smile, It’s Supposed To Suck

Posted by Nick Horton | 0 comments

QUOTE from a lifter of ours:

“Dear sweet wonderful coaches o mine… am I supposed to be this broken after starting the programming?”

MY ANSWER:

The answer is Yes

This is meant to be a “kick the living crap out of you” type of program that eventually REQUIRES that you take a deload week periodically so that your body can bounce back.

The goal is ALWAYS to work as hard as you can for as long as you can – intentionally creating such massive systemic fatigue that your lifts in the gym go DOWN. That is good.

Embrace it as a sign of success. Because that is what it is. You are doing everything right.

The bigger the dip, the bigger the gains after we taper you.

This type of training is NOT for beginners or weak-minded people, it is for people like you have progressed into a much more advanced place.

The greater the stress, the greater the adaptation. The ability to drive through the tough periods is THE difference between those who see big gains fast, and those that mire in mediocrity forever.

I know it’s frustrating, but I like to use that as a lesson in how to harness your ability to accept things as they come.

I have NO number goals for you in any workout. That is, I don’t care what weights you hit.

That is meaningless to me. On some days an empty bar is more than enough.

My ONLY goal is for you to lift huge weights in a contest… not in the gym.

In the gym, you will go through phases when you feel strong and lift heavy, other phases when you feel like shit and can’t lift anything. That is GOOD.

If you only have good days, that means you are wimping out in your workouts, and your results will reflect that. If you have more good days than bad days, I’m suspect: either you are wimping out or on steroids.

Most days should be in the middle. But don’t freak about bad days. You WANT them.

When you feel totally overwhelmed by the shear work you have been putting in, feel crazy tired, sore, can barely move, can’t snatch the bar without wanting to take a nap… be PROUD of yourself. That means you are on track and great things are going to happen.

It’s a massive mindset change that many lifters who are past the easy beginners phase are never able to embrace. Those are the people who’s booties you are going to kick.

Now go lift something heavy,

Nick Horton

PS. If you haven’t signed up for our FREE “How To Snatch” course, you gotta check it out.

The Tao Of Snatch, Lesson 1: Top 20 Bruce Lee Quotes On Weightlifting

Posted by Nick Horton | 12 comments

Olympic weightlifting is an art form.

It is closer to the martial arts than it is to other strength sports. And once you finally let this fact sink in, your progress will soar.

In the spirit of that I’m starting a new series here called, “The Tao Of Snatch” which is my way of focusing more on the art of weightlifting (ala, Zen Mind, Big Snatch) rather than the science of weightlifting which I do a lot of (ala, my squat nemesis program). Don’t worry, I’ll keep doing the other stuff. But I thought this could be a fun series and allow us to dive deeper into more of the mental and Zen-like elements that play a big role in your progress once you get past that early-rank-beginner hyper-focus on basic technique phase (If you ARE still in that phase, go here and we can help you.)

While these quotes by Bruce Lee aren’t intentionally about Olympic weightlifting, they all apply to your training directly.  Take these seriously. Don’t simply read them and say, “Ya, Bruce Lee was awesome!”… then go right back to living a life that is the opposite of everything he just said.

Your goal is to always improve yourself. Be better today than you were yesterday. Discard those things from your past that are always dragging you down.

Become who you have always wanted to be.

(Hat Tip: Optimal Experience)

Here are Bruce Lee’s top 10 quotes for an Olympic Weightlifter: 

1. “Choose the positive. You have choice, you are master of your attitude, choose the positive, the constructive. Optimism is a faith that leads to success.”
2. “Don’t fear failure. Not failure, but low aim, is the crime. In great attempts it is glorious even to fail.”
3. “Empty your mind; be formless, shapeless – like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
4. “I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.”
5. “To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities.”
6. “When one has reached maturity in the art, one will have a formless form. It is like ice dissolving in water. When one has no form, one can be all forms; when one has no style, he can fit in with any style.”
7. “Art is the way to the absolute and to the essence of human life. The aim of art is not the one-sided promotion of spirit, soul and senses, but the opening of all human capacities – thought, feeling, will – to the life rhythm of the world of nature. So will the voiceless voice be heard and the self be brought into harmony with it.”
8. “If you spend too much time thinking about a thing, you’ll never get it done. Make at least one definite move daily toward your goal.”
9. “A powerful athlete is not a strong athlete, but one who can exert his strength quickly. Since power equals force times speed, if the athlete learns to make faster movements he increases his power, even though the contractile pulling strength of his muscles remains unchanged. Thus, a smaller man who can swing faster may hit as hard or as far as the heavier man who swings slowly.”
10. “Take things as they are. Punch when you have to punch. Kick when you have to kick.”
11. “Knowing is not enough, you must apply; willing is not enough, you must do.”
12. “The knowledge and skills you have achieved are meant to be forgotten so you can float comfortably in emptiness, without obstruction.”
13. “The key to immortality is first living a life worth remembering.”
14. “What you habitually think largely determines what you will ultimately become.”
15. “Do not be tense, just be ready, not thinking but not dreaming, not being set but being flexible. It is being “wholly” and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.”
16. “The biggest adversary in our life is ourselves. We are what we are, in a sense, because of the dominating thoughts we allow to gather in our head. All concepts of self-improvement, all actions and paths we take, relate solely to our abstract image of ourselves. Life is limited only by how we really see ourselves and feel about our being. A great deal of pure self-knowledge and inner understanding allows us to lay an all-important foundation for the structure of our life from which we can perceive and take the right avenues.”
17. “Flow in the living moment. — We are always in a process of becoming and nothing is fixed. Have no rigid system in you, and you’ll be flexible to change with the ever changing. Open yourself and flow, my friend. Flow in the total openness of the living moment. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves. Moving, be like water. Still, be like a mirror. Respond like an echo.”
18. “If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”
19. “All fixed set patterns are incapable of adaptability or pliability. The truth is outside of all fixed patterns.”
20. “I am not teaching you anything. I just help you to explore yourself.”

My favorites are #3, #6, #16, #17, and of course #20… which are your favorites?  How do you see these applying to Weightlifting?

(Also, I totally dig Bruce in the pic above. Sunglasses are always important.)

Your Dream Come True: Add More Weight

Posted by Nick Horton | 2 comments

I’m about to tell you what you want to hear…

But be advised…this is ONLY if you are NOT a rank beginner. I define a rank beginner in Oly lifting to be a person who can’t even lock out the bar correctly, etc.

But if you have gotten past most of that, like through the 1st phase of my Samurai Strength Program, then keep reading…

You’re A Beginner, Not A Beginner

For a rank beginner, adding weight to the bar almost always results in something bad happening.

They have to go through a period of using an empty bar and not much else to make sure they have the true basics DOWN, before being allowed to go up.

But as soon as you “get” this ultra basic technique …things change.

Where it used to be that adding weight made your form worse… Now, adding weight often makes your form BETTER.

Why?

Because of two reasons:

1. You now DO have some understanding of how to do it right now for the first time.
2. Correct form is maximally efficient by design.

It’s that 2nd point that I want to dive into.

Olympic Weightlifting Is Cheating

While you DO now have some understanding of how to do it right…you are NOT consistent yet. It is not second nature. It is not like riding a bike!

• STEP ONE in learning how to snatch (jerk, or clean) is being able to do even ONE rep correctly…ever.
• STEP TWO is making that consistent: something you do more often than not.

Step two is a lot harder than step one, LOL.

Thankfully for you, it turns out that the NATURE of the Olympic lifts will aid you in this process, because the Olympic lifts are “maximally efficient” (so far as we know) by design.

That is…

The Olympic Lifts are the most “cheated” exercises, ever!

When you are trying to do the heaviest barbell curl you have ever done, what will happen? You’ll start cheating.

You will start to swing and use your hips and back and anything else you can just to get that weight up. You will DEFAULT to what would be called good technique for moving that weight from point A to point B.

But with the Olympic lifts, your ONLY goal is to move the weight from point A to point B!

Any other thing that happens as a training effect to your body is SECONDARY to this primary goal of moving as much weight as you possibly can from the ground to overhead.

REMEMBER: Olympic weightlifting is a SPORT, not exercise.

So it has totally different goals…and because of that, the form has been adapted over time to reach that ONE goal: heavy weight lifted overhead at all costs.

This is GREAT news for you!

It means that your desire to add weight to the bar will often help you in learning proper technique!! Wow…when has a coach ever told you THAT before?

Like I said above, this is ONLY true if you are not a “rank” beginner any more. (That is, you can show me that with an empty bar you can do things correctly.)

But once you are past that, by adding weight, you put yourself into a position where the ONLY way to get that bar where you want it…is to do it right.

Any other technique will result in a fail.

When you are in this “phase two” of beginner training, that might be just adding 10 pounds to the empty bar.

But as you become more and more advanced this will be true up to 80 or even 90% of your true max.

Many lifters who are in that (long long long) intermediate phase look the prettiest at about 90% of their max.

Duh!

Don’t misunderstand what I am saying.

There is a breaking point. Not even world champions always have perfect technique at their true maxes (though it’s shockingly close).

That isn’t the point.

The point is that staying TOO light for too long will actually harm your progress. You MUST add weight and put yourself into a “make or break” situation where the only way you can make it is by using proper form. THAT is your ideal training zone most of the time.

Again…that may not ACTUALLY be heavy. It may only be 25 kilos!

But that extra weight now forced you to do it right or not make it at all…

Get Your Binary Learn On

In other words, your situation now became BINARY: Either you make it, or you miss it…nothing in between.

Anytime you can make your learning time (practice time) binary…it’s good.

That way, you KNOW if you did it right or wrong. There is no guess work.

So…

Do what you have been wanting to.

Add weight to the bar.

Lift it over your head.

And when you’re ready to take the next step, and fast-track your progress, join my new coaching group:

Samurai Strength Mastermind

Now go lift something heavy,
Nick Horton

Ooooh … SO Pretty! NEW Weightlifting Academy Facebook Design!

Posted by Nick Horton | 0 comments

Can you do me a favor?

Tamara and I just overhauled our Facebook page for the new Weightlifting Academy …

Look how pretty it is!

If you have a Facebook account, make sure you go and “LIKE” it

We’ll be updating it regularly and having discussions there that we won’t be having anywhere else on training and related topics.

And I want to make sure you are a part of that

Thanks! I really appreciate it!

https://www.facebook.com/weightliftingacademy

Now go lift something heavy,

Nick Horton

Good News, Bad News, Kick-Ass News

Posted by Nick Horton | 1 comment

I told you I had something important to tell you on Monday …

But I decided to wait until today. The reason is that – and this is totally weirdo – I have noticed that more of you read the emails I send on Tuesday than on Monday.

And it is too important to have you miss the boat.

It is about how to best help YOU be a better weightlifter, and what I’m doing RIGHT NOW to make that happen.

(WARNING: This email is a lot longer than most. But it’s worth the read. If you’d rather read it on my blog, click here.)

I’m just going to jump right in…

BAD NEWS FIRST

You know that I started running a 3-month Beta Tester group for a Coaching-based membership site called SAMURAI STRENGTH INSIDER

To be great at anything technical and hard (like the Olympic lifts) you need 3 things:

1. The right plan (program)
2. The right attitude (this is helped greatly by surrounding yourself with like-minded people)
3. The right teacher/coach (to put you on the fast-track and help you avoid spinning your wheels)

The goal of the site was to provide all three.

The site is still going strong, and I have learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t, and am continuing to.

However …

I have CLOSED REGISTRATION to new members.

Nothing has changed for current members at all. But I am not accepting new people to the site … for now.

That’s the bad news.

GOOD NEWS

I will reopen registration for that site in a while when I have kicked it up about 10 notches.

My goal for THAT site is to make it a hardcore, highly personal, all-access PRIVATE coaching site.

The reality is that I will have to DOUBLE the price (at least) to make that happen and add in what I plan to. And that is totally reasonable, considering that it will still be less that 1/4 the price of true one-on-one coaching with me. (Which is going up to $165/hour, starting next week, FYI)

The beauty of a group-based coaching situation is that you can still keep the rates within “shooting range” for most people, while still providing a TON of goodies and service. It’s one of the reasons why I like running a TEAM of athletes all at once, rather than just doing private coaching all the time.

At any rate …

Samurai Strength Insider is going to be reopened eventually in a bigger, badder way based on all the things I learned.

So if what you are looking for is a highly personalized, hands-on coaching group where you have a ridiculous amount of personal access to me, you’re in luck, ’cause that’s what’s coming.

KICK-ASS NEWS

Maybe you don’t actually need me to hold your hand every single second.

But you DO need:

1. Good programs so that you can progress at a faster rate
2. A great community of lifters to keep you motivated
3. Coaching when you need your questions answered, technique on the lifts critiqued, programs tweaked to meet your needs/goals, etc.

AND…

Given that we live in the real world, where you are likely ALREADY paying upwards of $200/month for a CrossFit club or some other place to do your training …

You can’t really afford to spend another $100/month.

Never fear … T-Bone andThe Iron Samurai are here to save the day

(Sit down, I’m about to unleash the awesome and I don’t want you to fall over and hurt yourself)

Tamara Cohen and I have teamed up to create a brand new coaching site where …

• We’ll provide you with the programs
• We’ll create the team-like environment for you
• We’ll be there to coach the shit out of you (that sounded better in my head before I wrote it out …)

The goal is to providing you with a practical way to make rapid progress and have access to the coaching you’ve been needing for a long time.

This is what Tamara and I DO … we are what you might call “Developmental” coaches. Our focus, our life, our motivation is all about coaching BEGINNERS … just like you.

We both take new lifters, people who have never done this stuff EVER, and turn them into contest ready weightlifters almost overnight. We know exactly the kinds of needs you have, because they are the same as the needs of the teams of real people we coach every single day in our gyms.

OF COURSE this matters to us … because it IS us. We started out exactly the same way as you did!

• We both started as adults.
• We both had to learn the hard way what did and didn’t work for people in our situation.
• We tried EVERYTHING. Between the two of us, I’m not sure there is anything in strength training we haven’t given the old college try.

And yet, we stuck with it and now we’ve come farther than most adults even believe is possible.

Tamara, especially.

If you’ve followed my stuff over the last little while, you know Tamara has gone from totally clueless … to competing at the American Open in just 2 years of serious training for this goal. (The AO is one of the most important national-level contests in the country). She will be there next week, and I will be her platform coach. And yes … I WILL be putting up videos for you

But that is just us.

Our athletes have come farther than us, faster than us, because they didn’t have to learn the hard way, like we did.

That’s the best thing about having a coach .. You learn what NOT to do. Honestly, that is even more important than knowing what you SHOULD do.

Tamara and I are here to help you with BOTH.

1. You’ll know exactly what you need to do
2. You’ll know exactly what you need to avoid

And you’ll be helped all along the way.

Now … I know that it sounds like all of this is going to cost you an arm and a leg (maybe even a nose and a liver), to have access to both of us coaching you!

But we’ve figured out how to do all of this for …

Wait for it …

Wait for it a little longer …

Just 19.95/month!

I know how crazy that sounds. But it gets even better.

On Black Friday (… that’s friday, Nov. 23th) … and on Friday ONLY … I’m going to open up Early Bird registration for much less than that!

I know, as usual, I’m causing you to think I’m out of my mind. And maybe I am.

But Tamara and I are here to help you.

(I’m not going to tell you what the price is going to be yet … because I really don’t want you peeing on the platform.)

THAT’S NOT ALL

There are going to be massive bonuses for people who join this group in addition to the primary stuff I talked about.

Joining our new Coaching Group includes:

- FREE copies of ALL of my eBooks, and all of the eBooks I will ever write (I’ve got a TON coming down the line…)

- Members-only VIDEO tutorials that cannot be seen anywhere else.

- STEEP discounts on upcoming Interactive Online Courses and LIVE seminars that Tamara and I will be coaching

- WOM = A new Workout of the Month, each and every month written by Tamara and I based on what actually WORKS with our own lifters in our own real-live gyms

- Every BACK ISSUE of my old Samurai Strength Journal (Chock full of programming advice and real world experiments on my own lifters – these are not sold anywhere)

- The NEW Samurai Strength System (The update to my beginners book on Olympic lifting) which includes all the core training programs that haven’t even been released yet, the ones that have DOUBLED the rate of progress of my lifters since the release of the 1st edition of Samurai Strength!

- MONTLY interactive LIVE CHATS run by Tamara and I where you can get all your questions answered on the spot.

- Your own WORKOUT LOG where you will post what you are doing so that we can monitor your progress and make course-corrections NOW, rather than waiting until it is too late.

- An interactive COMMUNITY of lifters who are all in the same boat as you, who will keep you “honest” and motivated.

- And much more … in fact, if you have ideas on how to make it even more kick-ass, we’ll listen!

The whole point is to help you …And that is what we’re gonna do.

Stay tuned …

Now go lift something heavy,

Nick Horton

PS. Make sure you are on my email list (sign up below) so that you don’t miss this one-day-only offer … also, by signing up, you’ll get a free copy of “The 7 Deadly Sins of Weightlifting”