(Source: Bev Childress) Weightlifting talent is not rare. When I first started to coach weightlifting, back when I still had plenty of hair on my head and none on my back, I thought physically ... Continue Reading
Love to Lift Challenge – Day 7 of 100
Day 7 of 100 Power Snatch: (X/2)4 Power Clean & Power Jerk: (X/2+2)4 Clean Halting Deadlift to Power Position: (X/3)4 Good Morning: (X/4)4 ... Continue Reading
Love to Lift Challenge – Day 6 of 100
Day 6 of 100 Snatch High Pull & Snatch: (X/2+1)4 Clean High Pull & Clean (X/2+1)4 Back Squat: (X/3)4 Press: (X/4)3 Vertical Jump: (0/4)4 ... Continue Reading
Love to Lift Challenge – Day 5 of 100
Day 5 of 100 Sn HP means Snatch High Pull C HP means Clean High Pull Sn HP & Sn: (X/3+1)4 C HP & C: (X/3+1)4 Push Press: (X/3)4 B Sq: (X/2)4 ... Continue Reading
Love to Lift Challenge – Day 4 of 100
Day 4 of 100 You're a veteran now - it's been 4 days - time to get used to workout abbreviations for movements. As we go along and we add more variety to your rep and set schemes, it'll be easier on the ... Continue Reading
Love to Lift Challenge – Day 3 of 100
Day 3 of 100 You can easily build the Love to Lift Challenge into supplementing your existing training programming or make it the center of your training every day. Snatch: (X/2)4 Clean: ... Continue Reading
Love to Lift Challenge – Day 2 of 100
Day 2 of 100 You can easily build the Love to Lift Challenge into supplementing your existing training programming or make it the center of your training every day. Power Snatch: (X/2)4 Power Clean ... Continue Reading
Love to Lift Challenge – Day 1 of 100
Day 1 of 100 You can easily build the Love to Lift Challenge into supplementing your existing training programming or make it the center of your training every day. Hang Snatch: (X/3)4 Hang Clean: ... Continue Reading
Starting Olympic Weightlifting at 65+
Deborah Robinson started to run and fly from the day she was in kindergarten. A self-confessed GI brat, in and out of various cities, she didn’t stop running for a long time. She couldn't take ... Continue Reading
Do You Really Need Weightlifting?
I was the crazy one. Training with Olympic lifts in a commercial gym circa 2000 gave you the instant label of “dangerous.” It was not unusual to hear about other trainers following my clients into the ... Continue Reading
Are You a Barbell Generalist?
In my last article, I explored the issue of whether one should be a generalist or specialist with regard to sport training. Since then, I have been made aware of other aspects of the question that bear ... Continue Reading
The Quick Start Guide for Beginning Weightlifting
My background is as a founder of a CrossFit gym so, obviously I look at weightlifting with a slightly different perspective than someone preparing to compete in an Olympic weightlifting competition. These ... Continue Reading
Developing My Athletes’ Competitive Fervor
Part of my job as a coach is to prepare my athletes’ psyches for competition. All of my athletes are competitive, stubborn, and inclined to derive satisfaction from concluding whatever they start. It is my ... Continue Reading
Growth on the Platform: Female Olympic Talent
As the first week of the Games of the XXX Olympiad wrap up in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, all weightlifting creatures are indeed stirring. The controversies leading up to the Games, including the country’s ... Continue Reading
A Female Weightlifting Pioneer: Diana Fuhrman
When Breaking Muscle announced that August would focus on women’s training I became fascinated with the idea of relating my journey through the early days of women’s weightlifting in the United States. ... Continue Reading
The Olympic Weightlifting Primer
The last 5-10 years have seen a rekindled interest in and passion for Olympic weightlifting. Often confused with powerlifting, and sometimes even bodybuilding, Olympic weightlifting is one of the best ways ... Continue Reading
Talent Doesn’t Lift Weights, You Do: Ignite Your Motivation
In the first installment of this series, we learned about myelin, the neural insulator critical to the development of skill, and examined how to stimulate its growth with deep practice in your ... Continue Reading
Talent Doesn’t Lift Weights, You Do: Own Your Practice
When the Olympics came to London in 2012, not only did it provide the British public with an enthusiasm extravaganza rarely seen in a long and chronically reserved history, it brought one of the most ... Continue Reading
Advice for the Newbie Weightlifter
Your awkward reverse-curl-clean and slow press-jerk are dead giveaways. The skin on the inside of your thumbs is still smooth, and you don't have any calluses. You're a newbie Olympic weightlifter, and you ... Continue Reading
A Roadmap and Game Plan for Your Next Weightlifting Meet
The sport of weightlifting is growing. With many CrossFit athletes and fitness enthusiasts of all stripes experimenting with Olympic weightlifting, it is natural that more and more athletes are taking on ... Continue Reading
5 Stretches to Unlock Your Weightlifting Potential
Most athletes below the professional level lack the flexibility to reach their full potential, or even make consistently successful lifts. Here are five flexibility exercises to perform before and after ... Continue Reading
Rises and Falls: Weightlifting in the Post-Soviet Era
The 2015 International Weightlifting Federation World Championships are now history. Those who were there saw some fantastic performances that seem otherworldly to us garage gym rats struggling to make our ... Continue Reading
Why You Keep Missing Your Jerks
I was fortunate to recently witness the IWF Senior World Championships in Houston, Texas with colleagues. As lifting nerds, this was a perfect opportunity to compare notes on technique and training. You ... Continue Reading
CrossFitters: 5 Steps to Immediately Improve Your Weightlifting
You know the drill all too well. You go in and warm up with an empty bar. You hit your warm up, you load your plates on your bar on your platform. Same as always. 55lbs feels alright, as usual. Then ... Continue Reading
