How Did You Start?

Posted on March 3, 2010 by Justin

“Ah, a boy. I don’t work with the males, because I used to be one.”

Everybody has a point in which they started lifting weights or training (keep in mind that lifting weights does not necessarily mean that you are training). Back when I was a wee lad, I had the inspiration of wanting to have larger muscles after watching wrestling on TV. I look back now and consider it a bit weird that my mom was okay with my brother and I watching a show where men ran around oiled up in their underwear hugging each other — but hey, I turned out all right.

In any case, that was my original inspiration — to be big like the guys on TV. I started messing around with a dumbbell in 6th or 7th grade, mainly doing copious amounts of curls. I had stopped playing baseball at around ten years old and primarily played basketball…badly. I was pretty good at boxing people out, and that is about it. In eighth grade I was more or less recruited to play football, and we would go lift at the high school a few times a week, and this is where I knew I belonged. In my years of high school I loved getting stronger, and I always did. Every time we would max out I would put at least 30 or 40 pounds on my squat (high bar) and increase my favorite lift, the power clean– it was a glorious feeling.

And this is how I got into learning how to lift and learning how to teach people to lift. By the time I was a junior, I was teaching my teammates and continued to help out others in the weight room. I would go on to play a year of football at a very, very small college, and then after I quit that I had a few years of feeling lost in the gym. For a while I worked out in the same way I did in high school, then it shifted into more of a bodybuilding approach (with squatting — I never stopped squatting). After getting very bored and very annoyed with this, I messed around with CrossFit for half a year and got good at that…meaning I was just faster than other people at exercising.

I bought Rip’s books and combed through them multiple times and immediately started implementing it and teaching it to friends (I was a personal trainer, and then co-owned a small CrossFit). Then, in January of 2009, I ended up here in Wichita Falls and started training more seriously. I went through a linear progression, got into intermediate programming, and then took a likening to the Olympic lifts.

Blah, blah, blah, that is how I got into training properly and effectively. Other than intramurals I didn’t have any competitive events in my life, and none that my training revolved around. It is better this way for reasons that we have previously discussed. Whether you are old or young, new or experienced, why don’t you share how you got into training?

This is a picture of AC and I about two years ago. He is probably 180 and I am 195...

Here is another picture of me before I started seriously training.

Submissions

Posted on March 2, 2010 by Justin

I mentioned that people have sent in stuff to be posted, so I decided to throw some together. First is Brent S. out of Amarillo and trains with a pretty good coach and lifter named Ryan who was at the Starting Strength Seminar this past weekend. Brent or Ryan are welcome to talk about Brent’s progress in the comments.

Last set of 410x5x3 from Brent Story on Vimeo.

Ian from CrossFit Centurion sent in this video of who they call The Scott who gained a good bit of strength. You will see him do some singles on the high bar squat, bench press, deadlift, and press. Note the attire.

This is Sean and his brother displaying their milk collection and showing their enthusiasm for 70’s Big. Sean attended the seminar this past weekend, and will turn into a good lifter.

Brother’s face is the best.

Monday

Posted on March 1, 2010 by Justin

“Quotes”

We just had a Starting Strength Seminar at the WFAC this past weekend. There were some 70’s Big readers there, so if they want to talk about how the weekend went, they can do so in the comments or send an e-mail that I can post. They all lifted well and there should be some good pictures…eventually.

In the mean time, here is a sweet video of AC squatting 495 for a triple — but the good part is at the very end. Oh, and if you assholes start sending videos or pictures, then I don’t have to keep posting videos of us (some of you have, and they are in line.

495×3 from A.C. on Vimeo.

Getting Into Weightlifting — Part 3

Posted on February 26, 2010 by Justin

But I am a lady, I do not have testiclÈs!

Note: It is PR Friday — post weights gained, lifted, consumed, etc.

A novice can train heavy on a regular basis because they are not lifting a significant percentage of their genetic potential to disrupt homeostasis more than a couple days. Read that sentence again, because there is a lot of shit going on. A novice, defined as someone who adapts to stress on a daily basis (as opposed to a weekly (intermediate) or monthly (advanced) basis), will program things differently than an intermediate. Once intermediate status is achieved, things will get individualized…i.e. more complicated.

An intermediate will have particular recovery limitations that others may not have, and this must be accounted for. As of right now, I do not think there is any good way to efficiently increase strength while getting adequate practice in the Olympic lifts. Increasing the back squat, press, bench press, and deadlift are going to help the Olympic lifts go up, but those “slower lifts” will not increase as fast if the Olympic lifts are practiced adequately during the week (adequate probably means at least twice a week). In comparison, when the focus is to increase those “slower lifts”, you cannot adequately put enough time into getting that “adequate practice” in the snatch and clean & jerk since recovery is a finite thing. This means that you either have to cycle the emphasis on a regular basis or strength train until x weeks out from the meet.

Tommy Suggs used to do the latter, according to an old article written by Bill Starr. He would get strong in training, and then six weeks out from a competition he would get back into doing the lifts and refining his technique. The method seemed to have been useful for him.

Not everyone is an intermediate though, and very few people get there legitimately. Lets say you are a novice, or you train novices. Well, I may have an outline you can try. It has worked for us at the WFAC. It is assumed that the lifts have already been taught.

Monday
Clean and Jerk heavy
Snatch for sets across

Tuesday
Squat
Press
Chin-ups

Wednesday
Off

Thursday
Snatch heavy
Clean and jerk singles across

Friday
Squat
Bench
Deadlift

The lifter will be fresh on Monday to clean and jerk heavy after the two days of rest. A novice will be able to squat the day after doing the Olympic lifting, and deadlifting is done at the end of the week because if it was done any earlier, it may interfere with the other pulling. The sets across for snatch or C&J should/could be timed — on the minute for a snatch (between 10 and 15) and every two minutes for C&J (for 10 reps). Doing it in this manner accomplishes a few things (not in any particular order); A) it uses medium weights so that completed reps build confidence, B) the higher reps are technique practice, and C) it gets the lifter used to lifting on a clock, which will be important in competition. The heavy snatch or C&J days can be five singles across, or just working up to a heavy single (ideally increasing that single week to week). Remember that any increase is still an increase, so it may be 2.5 or 1 kg per week in the later stages — the point is to drive the weight up and PR.

This program can be followed for quite some time — it is what quite a few of the lifters here in the gym did, and got pretty strong. One of my lifters named Bryan, who was mentioned in Rip’s article, The Novice Effect, squatted over 500 for three sets of five and clean and jerked 155 kg in the gym using this program. A novice can recover from this work load because they are a novice. In fact, I used a variation of it at one time while I added 5 kg on my clean and jerk every week all the way up to 165 kg in the gym (I was an intermediate though, and it didn’t last long). The point is that it still includes two strength days while working on the lifts twice a week. More strength will improve your total — remember that.

From Brent:
This is Dmitry Klokov, born in 1983, was the 2005 World Champion and 2008 Silver Medalist in the Beijing Olympics. His best competition total is 423, and in this video he snatches 193 and clean and jerks 230:

Getting Into Weightlifting – Part 2

Posted on February 25, 2010 by Justin

Whether or not you have an “every day coach”, you will have to figure out how you are going to program the Olympic lifts. There are plenty of programs you can find that include, but are obviously not limited to international teams (Bulgaria, Greece, China, etc.), the US Olympic Training Center, or standard stuff you can find in Milo or online resources. I caution any of you to get very interested in advanced programs designed for successful national teams. Typically these are advanced lifters who have been in a system for 10+ years and they require the kind of volume and intensity that is present in their program in order to undergo an adaptive stress.

The rest of us are not so fortunate, whether we are talking genetics or childhood exposure. Since the Olympic lifts are an expression of strength (as opposed to primary strength movements), a strength emphasis should be inherent in the training program. For some reason the previous statement is borderline blasphemy in some weightlifting circles, yet it is the same message that has been touted by Tommy Suggs and Bill Starr since their competitive days. Starr recently wrote an article that touches on the matter for the Starting Strength website called, Keeping the Strength in the Strength Program (any article by Starr is a good read — it has been said he has forgotten more stuff about strength training than we will ever know).

In any case, the thing that is going to help a beginning weightlifter get better at the snatch, clean, and jerk is getting stronger, thus strength training is incorporated into the program. Now, depending on your relationship with your coach, this may be contradictory to what they teach. The coach may want you solely on their program. It may be a situation where you see them less frequently which means programming is up to you. Maybe you cannot even perform the lifts unless you are at the coach’s gym because of equipment limitations. Whatever your circumstances may be, improving your strength is vital to increasing your lifts, and this is should always be the heart of your program.

Tomorrow I will leave the fuzzy conceptual strength stuff and give some vague outlines that a beginning weightlifter could try. In the mean time, discuss the topic, and if any of you are experienced weightlifters or coaches, you can share what has worked for you or your athletes.

Here is Olympian Kendrick Farris, a really fucking strong 85 kg lifter. In this video he deadlifts 280 kg (616) — he attempts a double.

Here he smokes the piss out of a 170 kg power clean and jerk: