PR Nite at Flatirons Weightlifting Club

Sometimes progress in weightlifting is glacial. In fact, the better you get the slower those PRs are in coming. When you are new to the sport, progress tends o be quick as you master technique and become better coordinated. But after that initial flush of progress one has to be consistent and diligent in training.

If you stick with it, though, you will make progress. Last night we enjoyed some fireworks as Phil Locker and Jeff Malpezzi broke into some new territory.

Jeff hit a PR 100kg Clean and Jerk ....twice. The night before he made a PR 77kg snatch. He has also improved his front squat by 15kg in the last two weeks. Phil hit a PR 111kg snatch and then followed up with another record 115kg snatch, which I think is a 5kg improvement. Feeling good, Phil went on to hit a 2kg PR int he clean and jerk (147) and then another PR 152kg for a 7kg improvement on that lift.

Here is video of the top lifts of the evening:

PRs are fun, but you have to put in the work to get them! So get in here and practice. Coach Randy has WL Club hours Monday thru Friday 1 - 5PM and 6:15- 8PM, Saturday and Sunday 1-3.

Finding What Works

Those of you who have worked with me over the last year here in Colorado know that I'm fond of saying "Do What Works." The Olympic lifts are very technical and we spend a lot of time with each lifter correcting and perfecting technique. Strength and speed of course are two other main ingredients in this sport, but in my opinion it is meaningless to separate technique from strength since technique is the means by which strength is expressed. While there are certainly some hard and fast tenets of weightlifting technique (keeping the bar as close to your body as possible for example) there is no "one true way" to snatch and clean and jerk. There are just too many variables in body types from person to person to successfully impose one way of doing things.

Front Squats and Cleans

The front squat is a great stand alone exercise for strengthening the legs and hips. It is generally considered to be an absolutely necessary movement to strengthen the legs for the full clean. I take a slightly different view.

Most successful lifters have front squats well in excess of their best cleans. After all, extra leg strength is not a bad thing. But it is interesting to note that it is not uncommon for lifters to get buried in the bottom of cleans that are significantly less than what they can front squat. Why is this?

The clean is a high skill exercise that involves a pull from the floor, explosive extension and and explosive, mostly unloaded, eccentric squat under which elicits (ideally) a powerful stretch reflex in the quads and posterior chain which helpso the skilled lifter "bound" out of the bottom to the standing position. These movements, reactions and skills are not found in the front squat.

The SAID (Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands) principle suggests that front squats will not make you a better cleaner. Practicing cleans will make you a better cleaner. Practicing front squats will make you a better front squatter. There are diminishing returns to carryover from the squat: the clean is over relatively quickly. If your max front squat takes 4-6 seconds to execute, this strength will not be available to a quick lift like the clean. However, this doesn't mean you shoudn't front squat to improve your clean.

What it means is that the exercises compliment each other: the explosiveness of the cleans will improve the speed strength of your front squats and the quicker front squats will provide a base for stronger stretch reflex responses and reserve strength for the clean. If your top front squat is 20% more than your best clean and jerk, that is about right. This ratio means that front squat training weights can be moved at appropriately brisk tempos.

But you must practice both to get better at both. Clean explosively and front squat quickly.

Weightlifting club member Phil Locker demonstrates in the videos below. He cleans and power jerks 275 with ease and front squats 315 just as easily. Note the tempo of the clean and the tempo of the front squat.

Front squat to clean better and clean to front squat better. Repeat!

 

 

The Shortest Distance Between Two Points is an S Curve

In simplest terms, we always want to keep the bar close to body and over the feet. When the bar is close to the body it is going to be easier to lift than if it is further away from the body. To make use of optimal biomechanics while keeping the bar as close as possible, the bar cannot travel vertically in a straight line. While in most situations a straight line is the most direct path from point A to point B, to accomplish this with the bar in the clean or snatch would put the lifter into some very compromised and weak positions. Here is a good video showing how the bar moves during the course of a properly executed pull and the ramifications of deviations from "ideal".


And here is another video from the 96 Atlanta games of legendary Cuban weightlifter Pablo Lara. Note the bar path and body positions described in the slow motion replays.



Take some time to study these videos and visualize your pulling mechanics and how they measure up to the "ideal". Lots of useful information here.

GPP and SPP: Crossfit as Bricolage

                    "The Bricoleur's Daughter" Painting by Mark Tansey, 1987

Variety and specificity are two variables that must be attended to if you are trying to get better at any exercise. Specificity is handled by practicing the exact movements you want to improve, as well as practicing related or similar movements that have high carryover value. For example, power cleans are not cleans, but they are similar enough to have carryover value to the full movement. You could just do full cleans all the time, but this would get boring and for many people the monotony manifests in less progress on the lift over time. Variety helps keep the mind and the body from getting stale.

Crossfit workouts have a lot of variety from workout to workout. Depending on the "box" you belong to, you may over time, see that the workouts favor some exercises more frequently than others. It would be reasonable to predict that the movements you do most often are the ones you will likely get better at. It is also reasonable to predict that the Crossfit athlete will not get as proficient at any of the movements as an athlete that specializes in a particular movements.

You could also reasonably predict that that an athlete that specializes in one sport will not be able to perform a Crossfit workout as ably as a proficient Crossfit athlete. We observed evidence for this hypothesis repeatedly during the USAW/Crossfit Combo competition this weekend. Weightlifters lifted more than the Crossfitters (as would be expected) and Crossfitters smoked the weightlifters in the Triplet competition (also as expected). It's not that there wasn't some very good weightlifting from the Crossfit contingent, there was. Chris Spealer, a Crossfit legend, dominated the 62kg class in both events and his weightlifting effort qualified him for the American Open.

But, could he have lifted more if he did Crossfit less and practiced weightlifting more?

Doubtless the weightlifters would have performed the triplet  better if they practiced Crossfit a few days a week, but would practicng their sport less and Crossfit more have cut into their weightlifting totals? I think the answer is yes on all accounts.

Fitness stills refers to specific performance ability. "Fit for what? is the question  For most athletes, athletic performance is still be a balancing act between GPP and SPP. For the general population, general fitness, health and well-being is easier to package and practice.

GPP vs SPP
GPP stands for General Physical Preparedness and SPP stands for Specific Physical Preparedness. These are terms strength coaches and exercise physiologists use to describe variety/work capacity training (GPP) vs. sport specific practice (SPP). Generally speaking most sports off season and pre-season have periods of GPP, which are designed to get the body in shape for focused sports work (SPP).

But what if your sport is a sport that is made up of the movements other athletes do for GPP? In other words what if your sport is Crossfit? After all, Crossfit considers itself to be a sport and its practitioners as athletes. So now these two terms get fuzzy. The more variety you have the more general your work capacity becomes which is what Crossfit is after in terms of its sport's specificity. For Crossfit, when your sport is "working out", GPP is actually SPP and SPP (like skills practice for weightlifting) becomes GPP (supporting SPP).

But then, where does Crossfit work for other athletes who have a preferred sport? As GPP, certainly. Most athletes in season need to spend 80-90% of their time focusing on their sport. The other 10-20% of the time can be spent on strength and conditioning and recuperation. So, I don't think Crossfit is an appropriate choice for an athlete in season who has never done Crossfit. On the other hand, an athlete who has done post-season and off-season Crossfit conditioning may do very well on one or two Crossfit workouts a week during the season. Crossfit provides very nearly to the letter what exercise scientists like Tudor Bompa have recommended as pre-season preparation for athletes. Bompa called his circuit training "Anatomical Adaptation" which is part and parcel of what Crossfit accomplishes.

Crossfit is fitness bricolage. It derives its results from a hodge-podge of exercise options or, as it likes to say, "modal domains". There is certainly nothing wrong with this approach. General athleticism and overall fitness are qualities sorely lacking in the American exercise scene, for kids and adults alike. And in this age of exercise ADD, Shake Weights, P-90X , Zumba and Cardio Kick Boxing, choosing the path of a Crossfit bricoleur is probably the best option the average trainee seeking to get fitter and stronger and a better quality of life.

Join the new Flatirons Weighltifting Team

Flatirons Crossift now has an official USA Weightlifting club called, what else? Flatirons Weightlifting Team. If you want to be on the team go to USAW, click on Membership tab and follow the directions from there. You will need to enter the Colorado LWC (Local Weightlifting Committee) number 32 and the name of the Club (Flatirons WL Team) and the club number 3221. You can also specify a primary and secondary coach, so indicate in these spaces who you work with the most, Tim Retzik, Keith Mitchell or myself. When you are finished you can print out your membership card right away.

We recommend you join as an athlete or masters athlete (if you are over 35) Membership entitles you to some nice discounts on companies that sponsor USAW, discounts in the online store and additional liability and accident insurance when you are training with the Flatirons coaches. And even if you only compete in our informal club developmental meets your scores will go in the USAW records where you can check your ranking compared to other lifters in your weight class and age bracket.

Flatirons Crossfit members still get to participate and receive coaching at no additional charge during the weightlifting club practice hours which are Monday -Thursday 6:30PM to 8PM and Friday 1-5:30PM. We have midday hours too, from 1-3:30PM Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, and 1-5PM on Wednesday. Saturday and Sundays 1-3:30.

Coach Randy's Weightlifting Club members who do not belong to Flatirons Crossfit, Flatirons Weightlifting Team needs you too. So if you haven't joinded USAW, please do so and follow the instructions above to affiliate with the team.