I am decent at the Olympic lifts especially since I am not a competitive O-lifter and I don’t specialize in them. I have a pretty good grasp on how to perform them and a strong grasp on how to teach them. I figure I could correct mistakes in some elite class weightlifters but I am better at taking beginners and intermediate lifters and making them competent in both the clean & jerk and the snatch as well as their variations. I love the O-lifts and their derivatives and their application to sport and human function. I would not want to specialize in them as that is just not my cup of tea. I would rather be able to do them whenever I please or as they pertain to my overall fitness levels and that is about it. Now that is not to say that I would not love to compete in an Olympic weightlifting tournament as I would and I have in the past. In this case I would spend the majority of my training doing CrossFit and the last third of my training practicing just the lifts. This would be for the technique aspect and some dedication to high load/low volume repititions. CrossFit has proven to be a valuable asset to many a strength training programs and it would be ignorant to ignore its many benefits to making one a stud of an athlete no matter the sport. It’s strengths lie in it’s ability to develop elite work capacity and it’s design to make learning the basics of human movement, no matter how fundamental and boring to some, okay and somewhat cool again if that makes any sense. We have too many athletes and strength/sport performance coaches who look to advance their knowledge of strength and conditioning of sport without a strong knowledge of basic materials, thus producing an abundance of joint injuries in athletes across all domains. We, myself included, have skipped past these fundamental movements as well as the demand of their perfect execution in search of bigger and better ways to train athletes. If you are in the training of pre-pubescent, high school, college, or even professional athletes I say you look at your training of these sportsmen. Are you looking for the latest, greatest training method out there or do you realize the greatest methods are those that rely less on structured periodization and more on perfect execution of complex multi-joint movements that are based upon fundamental, universal motor patterns such as squatting, pressing, jumping, throwing, pulling, and running? If you chose the latter are you really demanding perfect execution or are you allowing them to get away with less than perfect execution? Forget about squatting for 5×5 at 85% and worry more about just squatting alone and it perfect execution in the hopes of keeping your athletes joints and sport career safe and intact. Let their execution of the movement relay the message of how much weight and how many reps they should be doing. Develop an unheard of level of general and general-specific work capacity, an unheard of level of perfect technique, an unheard of level of psychological and physical tolerance to intensity, and an a unheard of level of strength in spite of not practicing and developing strength exclusively. Then allow their sport coaches to bring up their sport-specific capacity to endure the sport. This would be the path I would choose in order to compete in any sport especially the O-lifts. Some weightlifters spend too much time practicing the O-lifts (this is needed to some extent) and less time on actual strength and general-specific work capacity. At least they could really dedicate time to the lifts and then spend some dedicated time to not doing the lifts to see drastic improvements. There are many ways to skin a cat and I am only suggesting one way. We have to understand that some weightlifters are genetically gifted with an ability to develop strength just doing the lifts and some squatting at the end of the workout and therefore use percentages and just try to improve technique and can get away with it. On the other hand you will have some weightlifting coaches who will say the young ones need extra attention with technique and nothing but in order to perfect their movements but I say introduce them to as many movements as possible (squatting, throwing, jumping, running, etc) including their first go at the O-lifts (very basic) and from there mix and match the movements in as many ways possible in order to allow the young ones to practice and master the movements but only on a random basis. No dedicated time to one movement. All this with a metabolic aspect as well to address work capacity (very important at this age). This method keeps kids intrigued and wanting to learn more all while hopefully keeping injury away (specialization tends to cause overuse). This is the same for any kind of athlete. Take a look at powerlifters. A lot of them do everything but the actual lifts. I mean they do variations of squatting and bench pressing and may do the actual lifts with bands and chains but most of their actual development of strength do not utilize the actual squat and bench. And they almost hardly ever deadlift in training due to neural overload. Strong as hell powerlifters all around the world have been training like this for years. It’s just a school of thought that I have developed over the years of training all levels of athletes and my dis-like of structured periodization and advanced methods of training. As long as you develop a keen sense of being able to read your athletes and what they are trying to tell you on a daily basis you can develop them year round very easily. Pay attention to when they are starting to break down during the competitive season but keep intensity high in the weightroom and never stop coaching and teaching movements. Always max out no matter what time of year it is, especially during the competitive season as this is when the most lean muscle mass is lost change their training schedule regularly to keep adaptation present. Comment if you would like.
Onto my workout. I did Elizabeth today and it was awesome and about killed me in the same workout. I pr’d by 42 seconds. I don’t have someone to compete against except the clock so what I did, since my last time on Elizabeth was 7 min. and 20 seconds, was set the clock to 7 minutes so that I would have to race against time. Pretty bold move on my part but how else do I expect to get better. High rep Olympic lifting is really shitty and like I mentioned above, about killed me. My legs were litterally jelly and I almost didn’t come up from some of the deep squats. Holy shit was this workout hard. I broke up the dips only twice, once at rep 10 of 15 reps and the other at rep 7 of 9 reps. The full cleans on the other hand, broke them up a lot. I am just not good at high rep Olympic lifting. I don’t care to either as I want my single rep to reach 300 in the near future. I have gotten fairly good at high rep squats and my single rep has really suffered because of it. Well, I did puke a little (I went as hard as I could) and was dizzy and out of it for quite some afterwards but I was happy with my time, for now. Man, I was on the floor and I felt like I had to puke but couldn’t, and I had trouble even walking as my legs were so wobbly. This workout was horrible but as you probably know I loved every minute of it.
WOD
“Elizabeth”
21-15-9 reps for time
Full Clean (135lbs)
Ring Dips
Finished in 6:38 (pr by 42 seconds)
Thank you very much for your article.