When people talk weightlifting it is inevitable that some bit of ego comes up. It is the nature of us to compare and try and best those who we consider our peers. I believe that as long as you maintain a bit of stoicism this is one of the greatest things in the world. You see without pressure there is no progress. Without someone or something nipping at your heals most of use fall victim to our own comforts and self "pats on the back." Without the fire that competition breeds within us there is no steam to drive the wheels there is only mediocrity. I doubt that anyone wants to be remembered for mediocrity.
The problem that arises is that we as weightlifters get consumed by it fairly easily. Because the feedback loop between our training and our performance is so fast we often fall victim to the, "I want it now because I deserve it now" mentality. A brief example to illustrate my point that I think every single one of us has been in. The program calls for say 85% you feel good and end up working at 92% for the whole set. Then the next exercise comes up on your program for the day and you aren't able to come within 15% of the prescribed numbers. But you were feeling so good, what happened? In my mind this is like reading the first chapter of a good book and then skipping to the last chapter and expecting to know the story. Granted that may work with something like Twilight or Pride and Prejudice. Not so much with real works of art like the Odyssey, or anything written by Emerson or Thoreau. The reason being is that the real flesh of what we do is not the beginning or the end but the work as a whole. Yes the big attempts and PR's are an end result but they are none existent without the intricate web of support that is gradually woven every single day you walk into the gym and decide to put your shoes on.
I suppose that weightlifting isn't skin deep but when all you do is chase training PR's that is what you make it. That is when you lose your vision and start playing the short game. This is akin to the genius that wins the lottery and is bankrupt the next year. I mean seriously how do you spend like 130 million in a year without being stoned for that whole year? So the question is do you seek the thrill of the moment or a lifetime?
I vote the thrill of a lifetime! When you are patient and trust the process your coach is putting you through, (assuming your coach is worth the air they are breathing and the money you're paying them) you are setting yourself up to have so much more than a skin deep experience with weightlifting. Your are setting yourself up to be one of he few with bones of iron and an indomitable spirit. Why? Because you are being "fleshed out" (pun intended) just like those great works of literary art that endure the test time. You earn your substance, and your confidence. You give everything and get much more in return. So next time you decide to try and throw up a new PR ask yourself, "Have I built a house to support this?." I pray that when you do ask the answer is a resounding YES for if it is there is nothing that can stop your success.
Monday, August 3, 2015
Saturday, August 1, 2015
The weightlifting paradox.
I seem to get a lot of my inspiration from one liners. Ironically most of those one liners come from crappy movies. Case in point is the new Hercules movie with a line from the fortune teller dude. "The gods are generous on hints and cheap on specifics." I think that is a pretty profound insight to quite a few things in life. There are so many hints as to what we should do in life. Wether it is a small spark of divine inspiration, or when you just know what you need to do there are always hints but rarely specifics. Weightlifting is the opposite it's all specifics and no hints. Time for an example, on the snatch you have a nasty habit of slamming your hips into the bar so forcefully and in such a way that it leaves you with an attractive bruise the size of a grapefruit square on the center of your pubic bone. Your coach is watching you and notices that your shoulders are getting behind the bar far too quickly, turning your hips into a bullet train slamming into a wall instead of a smooth easy slingshot. What does your coach say? Here I'll fill in the blank, "Keep your shoulders over the bar_____(insert insult, or encouraging follow up depending on your coach____)."Weightlifting being the precision sport that it is doesn't allow for much more than succinct straight forward directions.
The problem is that we humanoids are feelers. We are used to having to use the hints to get to the specifics instead of the other way around. Therefore the way that we get around the roadblocks that so inevitably come in weightlifting is to teach/learn by feeling. For example I had a lifter who was having a hard time getting consistent hip contact on the snatch. Sometimes is was there and sometimes it was like there was supposed to be some sort of teleportation device that sent the bar from thigh level to over head. So I gave her the usual cues that I often give my lifters with this problem but to no avail. What we did instead was I stood a couple of feet in front of her with a band wrapped around an empty bar. She then got down into her snatch position and pulled. What happened was as the bar rose the band tightened as it approached her hips. This caused her to have to engage the lats and set the shoulders correctly. Thus causing her to sweep the bar into the hips out of necessity.
Guess what the next rep with weight on the bar....Boom, money... nearly perfect hip contact. Why? She felt the way that it was supposed to feel. If you're wondering, no her hip contact isn't always perfect. But now since she knows how it feels so she can have a bearing to work from when cues are given. Although helpful as an example this is from a coaching perspective and as it is most of the people who read this are not coaches. So lets approach a similar problem from the lifters point of view.
Let's say that I am working on my cleans and I've been lifting for about a year. I can move a decent amount of weight in my opinion and I'm just chomping at the bit to go heavier and heavier whenever my coach isn't looking, problem is my receiving position is terrible as weights get high. I catch the bar low on my shoulders, causing my back to round, and if I don't drop it my weight shifts 100% to my toes. One day coach sees me trying to PR when I'm supposed to be working at 80%...CRAP. After getting chewed out he says, "You aren't following all the way through with your pull. You don't stand all the way up so the bar doesn't reach it's maximum speed." He shows you the covertly taken video he took of the last rep and sure enough the hips are still partially closed, and you try to ignore the stifled laughter on the video." He tells you to drop back to 70% and fix it and goes back to helping a teammate.
How can fix what you didn't know you were doing in the first place? The answer is almost always to feel it out. Why are you at 70% now instead of 80%? So that you don't have to think about any of the other things that are going on. At 70% everything can basically be on auto pilot and you can focus on the feeling of perfect hip extension and the added power that you receive from it. You can feel how long it takes for you to stand up fully. You can feel the bar location and speed. Because you felt you can now know.
I believe it takes a special kind of person (or robot) to be able to just do exactly what they are told without a corresponding physical experience. Truth is I'm not one and none of the people that coach are because most of us just aren't wired that way. So next time you plateau or you have something that you just can't seem to dial in. Step back and FEEL it out.
The problem is that we humanoids are feelers. We are used to having to use the hints to get to the specifics instead of the other way around. Therefore the way that we get around the roadblocks that so inevitably come in weightlifting is to teach/learn by feeling. For example I had a lifter who was having a hard time getting consistent hip contact on the snatch. Sometimes is was there and sometimes it was like there was supposed to be some sort of teleportation device that sent the bar from thigh level to over head. So I gave her the usual cues that I often give my lifters with this problem but to no avail. What we did instead was I stood a couple of feet in front of her with a band wrapped around an empty bar. She then got down into her snatch position and pulled. What happened was as the bar rose the band tightened as it approached her hips. This caused her to have to engage the lats and set the shoulders correctly. Thus causing her to sweep the bar into the hips out of necessity.
Guess what the next rep with weight on the bar....Boom, money... nearly perfect hip contact. Why? She felt the way that it was supposed to feel. If you're wondering, no her hip contact isn't always perfect. But now since she knows how it feels so she can have a bearing to work from when cues are given. Although helpful as an example this is from a coaching perspective and as it is most of the people who read this are not coaches. So lets approach a similar problem from the lifters point of view.
Let's say that I am working on my cleans and I've been lifting for about a year. I can move a decent amount of weight in my opinion and I'm just chomping at the bit to go heavier and heavier whenever my coach isn't looking, problem is my receiving position is terrible as weights get high. I catch the bar low on my shoulders, causing my back to round, and if I don't drop it my weight shifts 100% to my toes. One day coach sees me trying to PR when I'm supposed to be working at 80%...CRAP. After getting chewed out he says, "You aren't following all the way through with your pull. You don't stand all the way up so the bar doesn't reach it's maximum speed." He shows you the covertly taken video he took of the last rep and sure enough the hips are still partially closed, and you try to ignore the stifled laughter on the video." He tells you to drop back to 70% and fix it and goes back to helping a teammate.
How can fix what you didn't know you were doing in the first place? The answer is almost always to feel it out. Why are you at 70% now instead of 80%? So that you don't have to think about any of the other things that are going on. At 70% everything can basically be on auto pilot and you can focus on the feeling of perfect hip extension and the added power that you receive from it. You can feel how long it takes for you to stand up fully. You can feel the bar location and speed. Because you felt you can now know.
I believe it takes a special kind of person (or robot) to be able to just do exactly what they are told without a corresponding physical experience. Truth is I'm not one and none of the people that coach are because most of us just aren't wired that way. So next time you plateau or you have something that you just can't seem to dial in. Step back and FEEL it out.
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Which Dialogue is Guiding the Conversation, Inner or Outer?
I was introduced to the concept of an inner and outer dialogue by some comments that were made about the personal journals of Henry David Thoreau. To be honest I can't remember anything about what was said but I do remember the idea of a dialogue between the inner and the outer.
This is a great way to conceptualize facing any challenge. Because there is this inner self that almost all of us have that is courageous, and strong, and fearless. Basically we all have a yolk and it's the only part of us that is "tasty." Then there is the outer self. This is the self that has become acquainted with the "real" world. This is the part of us that we also all possess who is constantly telling us that we can't do what we know we have the ability to accomplish. Yes that means that we all have a "white" the bland uninteresting adventure hating portion of ourselves.
There is no true struggle with outside forces in our lives, not really. Yes there are things that we cannot control. Yes there are people that inflict evil and terrible things on others in the world. The reason being is because we always have the ability to answer back to any and every opposition that may come present itself. When you get hit do you get up or do you stay down? When you fail miserably and publicly on the platform, do you come back and try again or do you slink away into the shadows? When you fall down when you're pushed down, when you are broken down is that where and how you stay?
Like it or not this opposing dialogue is always going on. Unfortunately because the "white" of our egg selves is a bit more in tune with the sophistries of our current environment the "white" always has a better spokesman. It is like the "white" portion of this ridiculous analogy hired the devil and slapped an attorney's suit on him and gave hime the keys to the kingdom. You know what that sucks, but it makes it oh so sweet when you take control.
Since the conversation is always going on then there is no reason not to give the reigns to the inner self that still knows how to dream and see beyond the horizon. You see a funny thing happens when you do this. Just like in nature when the egg is fertilized the yolk kicks in to over drive and eventually "CONSUMES" the white for energy! You hear that Satan you get devoured by and egg yolk in this weird weightlifting analogy. The funny thing is the developing life in the yolk can't survive without the white to be its' sustenance. That means without the naysaying inner self side of us there would not be enough fuel to unleash the power of the yolk! Ok I can't take this egg imagery anymore.
Suffice it to say that everyone of us is insulated by what seems to be the worst of us but without that we would run out of gas and stop developing. So next time you stand up a clean PR remember you might as well jerk it because you are now in charge of the conversation.
This is a great way to conceptualize facing any challenge. Because there is this inner self that almost all of us have that is courageous, and strong, and fearless. Basically we all have a yolk and it's the only part of us that is "tasty." Then there is the outer self. This is the self that has become acquainted with the "real" world. This is the part of us that we also all possess who is constantly telling us that we can't do what we know we have the ability to accomplish. Yes that means that we all have a "white" the bland uninteresting adventure hating portion of ourselves.
There is no true struggle with outside forces in our lives, not really. Yes there are things that we cannot control. Yes there are people that inflict evil and terrible things on others in the world. The reason being is because we always have the ability to answer back to any and every opposition that may come present itself. When you get hit do you get up or do you stay down? When you fail miserably and publicly on the platform, do you come back and try again or do you slink away into the shadows? When you fall down when you're pushed down, when you are broken down is that where and how you stay?
Like it or not this opposing dialogue is always going on. Unfortunately because the "white" of our egg selves is a bit more in tune with the sophistries of our current environment the "white" always has a better spokesman. It is like the "white" portion of this ridiculous analogy hired the devil and slapped an attorney's suit on him and gave hime the keys to the kingdom. You know what that sucks, but it makes it oh so sweet when you take control.
Since the conversation is always going on then there is no reason not to give the reigns to the inner self that still knows how to dream and see beyond the horizon. You see a funny thing happens when you do this. Just like in nature when the egg is fertilized the yolk kicks in to over drive and eventually "CONSUMES" the white for energy! You hear that Satan you get devoured by and egg yolk in this weird weightlifting analogy. The funny thing is the developing life in the yolk can't survive without the white to be its' sustenance. That means without the naysaying inner self side of us there would not be enough fuel to unleash the power of the yolk! Ok I can't take this egg imagery anymore.
Suffice it to say that everyone of us is insulated by what seems to be the worst of us but without that we would run out of gas and stop developing. So next time you stand up a clean PR remember you might as well jerk it because you are now in charge of the conversation.
Friday, July 17, 2015
July 20-Aug 15
Get ready to drop the volume and up the intensity. We have drilled consistency now it is time to dial it in under pressure.
Monday
Monday
20 min
A 3 pos Power snatch
B 3 pos Snatch
15min Snatch (first 7 minutes work to a max with no hook or feet second 7 minutes keep weight above 85% of max but below 97%)
15 min
A 3s Snatch high pull
B 3s Panda pull
15 min 5x3 back squat (week one you will establish 1 RM during this time)
Tuesday
20 min
A 3 pos power clean
B 3 pos clean
15 min Clean (first 7 minutes work to a max with no hook or feet second 7 minutes keep weight above 85% of max but below 97%)
10 min 2s Clean pull w/ 3 second pause just BELOW KNEE (not touching the knee) at 100-120% clean max
15 min
A 8s land mine row (both arms)
B 15 banded toes to bar
Wednesday
15 min 6s 1/4 front squats AS HEAVY AS YOUR SOUL CAN HANDLE
20 min Competition jerk (first ten minutes work to a max with 3 second pause in dip second ten minutes work to max)
15 min 3s push press (keep between 85-90% FOR ALL SETS)
10 min 3x7 good mornings
Friday
15 min 3s narrow grip over head squat work up to max
15min
A 6 bench press
B 3 narrow grip bench
15 min 6s single leg Bulgarian split squats (stay moderate on weight)
A 3x50 sit ups
B 3x8 upright row (grip halfway between clean and snatch)
C 3x80 sec plank
Saturday
Work up to max or near max effort on all lifts.
5x1 snatch
5x1 c&j
4x3, 3x2 front squat
3x3 thruster
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Deload July 13-18
All of the weight this week will be the weight of the bar only. It is for a reason so don't try and be a hero, you will have plenty of weight next week.
Monday
30 Snatch (5 sec pull from floor to power position then explode.)
30 muscle snatch
20 full snatch
40 BTN Snatch press
30 Snatch Balance
100 Sit ups
50 V-ups
25 Hollow Rocks
Tuesday
40 First pull (Clean grip with slow movement and 3 sec pause at the knee. The bar better not be touching the knee!)
30 Pull to full extension with 3 second pause at full extension i.e. shoulders up and on tippy toes
30 Tall clean
30 full clean
3 min Russian baby makers
Wednesday
50 tall jerk
30 Halting jerk (3 sec pause at the bottom of dip)
20 Split jerk or Power Jerk or Squat Jerk (Whichever you plan to use in competition)
40 Shoulder press
30 Push Press (4 sec negative)
Friday
40 3 stop snatch pull (3 sec at each stop)
40 3 stop clean pull (3 sec at each stop)
40 1+1/4 Squat
30 OHS (3 sec pause at bottom)
Saturday
You have a couple options for Saturday. If you're feeling spicy then ask. If you're feeling not spicy (something like the food you would find in the north east) also ask. Basically it is a surprise.
Monday
30 Snatch (5 sec pull from floor to power position then explode.)
30 muscle snatch
20 full snatch
40 BTN Snatch press
30 Snatch Balance
100 Sit ups
50 V-ups
25 Hollow Rocks
Tuesday
40 First pull (Clean grip with slow movement and 3 sec pause at the knee. The bar better not be touching the knee!)
30 Pull to full extension with 3 second pause at full extension i.e. shoulders up and on tippy toes
30 Tall clean
30 full clean
3 min Russian baby makers
Wednesday
50 tall jerk
30 Halting jerk (3 sec pause at the bottom of dip)
20 Split jerk or Power Jerk or Squat Jerk (Whichever you plan to use in competition)
40 Shoulder press
30 Push Press (4 sec negative)
Friday
40 3 stop snatch pull (3 sec at each stop)
40 3 stop clean pull (3 sec at each stop)
40 1+1/4 Squat
30 OHS (3 sec pause at bottom)
Saturday
You have a couple options for Saturday. If you're feeling spicy then ask. If you're feeling not spicy (something like the food you would find in the north east) also ask. Basically it is a surprise.
Monday, June 15, 2015
June 15th-July 11th
This new cycle is very different from our past cycles since there are more assigned percentages and there is more volume in some regards and less in others. The reason for this is that we need to perfect our form, and confidence, that doesn't happen at heavy weights. Don't worry about not maxing out as often, you're not going to loose your strength. Just come in perfect your movement, do the assistance exercises and you will see progress.
The 20 min EMOM on Monday and Tuesday will change as the cycle progresses. The goal is as follows week two 10 min EMOM 2 snatch/clean @75%. Week three 20 min EMOM 1 snatch/c&j @85%. Week four 10 min EMOM 2 snatch/clean @82%.
Also remember to check in on the conditioning WODS on the odd Saturdays.
Remember that the A/B sets are supersets.
Monday
20 min EMOM snatch @75%
15 min 21's Romanian snatch deadlift (go heavy but don't max you're doing real deadlifts tomorrow, this is as much about position as it is about strength)
10 min 4x Max Effort Pull ups (strict)
10 min 5's push press @85%
5 min L sit (Do your best rest as necessary if L sits are just not happening go to flutter kicks)
Tuesday
20 min EMOM clean @75%
30 min (REST AS NECESSARY! These are heavy lifts back to back keep your form perfect! If it's not perfect you're wasting everyone's time.)
A 3's deadlift
B 5's back squat
10 min 5x10 straight bar curl
Wednesday
15 min work up to max push jerk
15 min EMOM split jerk @90% of above max
15 min
A bench 3x7
B sit ups 3x50
10 min
10x150 meter sprints
Friday
15 min
A 5x10 lunges (each leg) AHAP
B 5x15 Box jumps
15 min
A 5x5 Sotts press
B 5x8 Bent over row
15 min
A 5x3 Shoulder press
B 5x10 Rhythm pull (use same weight as shoulder press nothing less than perfection is acceptable.)
10 min
5x10 weighted dips
1 min
Hollow rocks
Saturday
10 @90% snatch
8 @90% clean and jerk
Front squat 5x5 (on 2nd and 4th weeks only)
1st and 3rd weeks we will have a conditioning workout after the snatch and clean and jerk. Those workouts will be posted so check in.
Thursday, May 21, 2015
New Power/Speed Cycle
Move quickly, move precisely, and move some weight.
Monday
2+1 snatch no hook grip + snatch 10 min
2+3+4muscle snatch + hang snatch +snatch balance 15 min
1's Snatch 15 min
A 5x5 BTN snatch grip
B 5x15 squat tuck jumps
Tuesday
3's clean from blocks 10 min
2+2+2 tall clean+front squat+push jerk 15 min
1's clean 15 min
A 5x5 front squat
B 1 min hollow rocks
Wednesday
1+2+1
Power position snatch + hang snatch + power position snatch 15 min
1+2+1
Power position clean + hang clean + power position clean 10 min
2+3 push jerk + split jerk 10 min
5x3 push press 8 min
5x3 BTN split jerk 8 min
4x9 back squat 10 min
Friday
3's push press 10 min
3's push jerk 10 min
2's split jerk 10 min
1's split jerk10 min
6x10 jerk dip and drive 10 min
Saturday
Warm up
5x1 snatch
5x1 c&j
3's drop snatch 12 min
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