Hoisting Heavy Gear Up Over your Head pt. 1

I have recently gotten into strength training, and i am loving it. I became a certified Olympic Weightlifting coach in December last year and this spurred me on to wanting to become better at the sport myself. 

Olympic Weightlifting consists of the following two lifts:

1)    The Snatch

2)    The Clean and Jerk

In basic terms, the 'Snatch' uses a wide (or snatch) grip, and maintains straight arms in powering the bar up over the head before standing up in this overhead press position.  The 'Clean and Jerk' uses a narrower (or clean grip) to power the weight from the floor up onto the chest where it's is then pressed (or jerked) up overhead. The snatch is one movement, the clean and jerk is two.

Both lifts are quite complex, and can be broken down further into smaller less complex lifts. Training for the sport involves practising the two lifts progressively and refining technique, while training an array of other strength lifts in order to improve the smaller parts that make up the two core lifts.

Here is me working the Snatch@45kg. There are many things wrong with my technique - most notably over-extension of the shoulder joint, and insufficient flattening of the spine. Rest assured i am slowly weeding these technique inefficiencies OUT!

To many people (myself included at some point), the sport seems kind of strange, primitive, perhaps a little too simple. In some ways it is, although i now find that to be the coolest thing about it. 'Propel the heaviest weight possible up from the floor and hoist it over your head' - beautifully simplistic though infinitely challenging. Application-wise, there is nothing simple about it - have you ever tried to do 'a snatch'?!

The primary focus of Olympic lifting is power production. It has applications for numerous other sports and has been used to produce power in other athletes outside of weightlifting for a long time. High level weightlifters are some of the most, if not the most, powerful athletes going around. 

It's a beautiful thing when you feel the ease with which the bar flies up from the floor and lands crisply in the correct location (the chest or overhead). The beauty of this is directly offset by the disappointment that comes from 'missing' the lift. I dabble with golf every now and again and i find similarities between the two disciplines. That wonderful feeling when you hit the ball sweet, sending it far and straight down the fairway, in contrast to mishitting, and jagging the ball hard to the side, onto the wrong fairway.

To put it in perspective, here are some 58kg div. women Snatching like legends with heaps of weight.

I've been lifting twice a week now for about 4 weeks. Its going well, though my technique has a long way to come. I've broken it down into two workouts - A & B - which I do once per week minimum. Each workout consists of two 'skill lifts' and two 'strength lifts'. 

The skill lifts are either of the two complete lifts, or a majority of the whole (ie. clean and press proper, or power hang clean) and the strength lifts are smaller components of the two complete lifts, designed to build strength for the specific movements within the skill lifts (ie. front squat, jerk from rack, deadlift)

The skill lifts require much concentration and energy which makes them hard to do a lot of. As such, they are trained first leaving the strength lifts 'til last. I am in the process of building my program now based on Medveyev's Periodisation Model. I will throw this up for your reference shortly. 

        

Enjoy.