Learning Olympic lifting?

[Kregna]

aka weightlifting

I wanted to learn the 2 lifts for fun to add into my regular training. There's a trainer at my gym who's just done the UK weightlifting certification so she's probably my best bet, locally. Unfortunately she doesn't start coaching until September and so I've been doing bits on my own until then with some tips from her when I've seen her in the gym.

I've mostly been doing some overhead squats and practising the power snatch, using the Rippetoe's video. She saw me doing some power snatches and has issues with (a) me physically jumping (b) my start position on the power clean (hips too high). I don't like her logic for the start position (so probably will argue to keep my position even during coaching) but am willing to work on triple extension without the jump.

My questions:

1. Are the Oly lifts bad for the shoulders? I'm a fairly flexible person and can get into the bottom of the overhead squat with some weight (60kg ish), but it feels a lot like the behind the neck pressing position, which we avoid for shoulder safety. Even with a light 5kg barbell, I find I have shoulder discomfort doing the overhead squat. This has persisted (lightly) on rest days, also. I wanted to pick these lifts up for fun, but if it turns out it's a fair chance of hurting my shoulders I will probably give it a miss

2. Good sources to go over the basics until the lady is coaching? She recommended not looking to Americans on youtube (she's Polish) but instead looking to Russians. Unfortunately the best teaching videos I've found are Glenn Pendlay's, which are obviously American. He also teaches the jump in the snatch from what I've seen. I've seen Dan John has a DVD but don't know if it's any good?

Many thanks

[Kregna]

How far do you want to go with this?

I'm sure this woman is competent, but if you're just wanting to do WL as a training variant without risk of injury, it's a different beast (to a degree) than becoming a competitive lifter.

That being said Klokov has a ton of videos out with him doing the lifts and supplemental lifts. It's not step by step instructions, but you could be like Bill Starr and learn the lifts by analysis, although he did it from photographs.

Cheers, I really just want to add it into the training and see how it goes. If I like it I might give it more focus, if not, I might stop. The focus is on the core strength stuff, though, and I don't want to hurt my shoulders doing it as it is just for fun. I remember seeing some injury rates in SSBBT which showed weightlifting as very low, so maybe the shoulders get used to the training?

I will check out Klokov. Maybe I'm just being lazy looking for instructional videos rather than learning by watching... The coach at the gym went to a seminar hosted by Kloklov and told me she discarded some of the UK taught things in favour of Russian technique.

edit: I will say, if I do add the 2 lifts, it would be with the goal of progressing them to decent levels (e.g. 110kg snatch) rather than just do them light

[IlPrincipeBrutto]

Hi Kregna,

1. Are the Oly lifts bad for the shoulders? I'm a fairly flexible person and can get into the bottom of the overhead squat with some weight (60kg ish), but it feels a lot like the behind the neck pressing position, which we avoid for shoulder safety.

from the outside it looks like that, but in a well executed snatch there is a crucial difference; you are not pressing the weight in the lockout position, you are extending your arms under a bar that is almost weightless.
Of course, once the arms are locked you still have to keep the bar in place, and sometimes that might require a lot of effort. But it's an action that is mostly isometric, you are not swaying that bar that much, you are holding it in a given position relative to the rest of your body.

I would actually add that knowing when to let go of an unrecoverable lockout could be a very useful skill to learn; you could hurt yourself pretty bad trying to save an unsaveable lift.

Last but not least: if you are determined to be coached, I think it would be better to wait the month out and start afresh, with no bad habits ingrained. One month is neither here nor there in terms of learning the lifts, especially if you have a coach.
Keep doing OHS, and maybe front squats, and push pressed too; and get stronger, that always helps.

Hope this helps,

IPB

[Chebass88]

As I understand it, using the jump in the Rippetoe methods is a concise way to teach the hip extension to beginners / novices. The key is that you have to get the bar to move up, such that you can catch it at some given height (power version is a partial squat, full version is caught in a full squat).

I worked on learning the split lifts, on the basis that it was easier to be self-taught in my garage. I also didn't like the idea of trying to catch the bar while also trying to get in the bottom of the squat. I worked my way up to a very non-impressive 185lb snatch and 235lb C&J.

For your strength level (>500lb deadlift), you are strong - which means you will be able to toss some serious weight around. It was very frustrating to me - without the technique knowledge, I couldn't do the lifts fully. There are a shit-ton of drills to be done (your coach will give them to you), and practice makes perfect. They will require light weights. If you want to maintain your deadlift strength, you'll need to insist on continuing to train it, as OLY lifters don't deadlift. Sure, they do them at 110% of their maximum OLY lift, but if you're cleaning 225, 250 is worthless as a deadlift, especially when that is a warmup for you currently.

Greg Everett's book is pretty decent. I would also recommend reading what the old timers wrote on the topic - Hepburn wrote a few articles on the lifts. There are a lot of decent articles on the right tan slacks blog.

Have fun with it!

[hamburgerfan]

If she is going to be your coach, then I would trust her and not argue about hip positions. No reason to pay someone if you think you know more than them.

[Chris McCarthy]

If she is going to be your coach, then I would trust her and not argue about hip positions. No reason to pay someone if you think you know more than them.

Agreed...especially when she's right.

[Skander]

As someone who started mostly teaching himself, I recommend waiting for the coach also. If possible, more sessions per week is better fewer- I improved a lot when I had coach eyes on me 3x week instead of just 1x.

Also, it's probably too early for this to make sense, but I hate the cue to jump. It's not a jump, it's a throw to yourself. You're the bowler, the pins, and the bowling alley itself to some degree.

I think many people would actually do the triple extension correctly if you put a medicine ball between their feet and told them to throw it as high as they could overhead. I doubt they'd jump much.

And yeah, as someone else suggested, it's good to swallow your pride. I saw the junior squat Texas State record holder try to learn the fast lifts and I think he quit because it seemed silly to have so much trouble snatching 135# when he could squat in the 500#s.

[MBasic]

Aleksey TOROKHTIY pretty decent in my mind.
In some ways, is more close to the SS model.
In other ways, it is not.

Teaching: SNATCH / weightlifting & crossFit - YouTube

there's a whole playlist on instruction/technique/etc: Weightlifting TECHNIGUE - YouTube

these video are useful: Weightlifting in SLOW MOTION - YouTube
. . . .straightened out some errors in my own clean

I'm sure shit like THIS would make Rip furious though.
(gonna lead to "arm bending")

__________________________________________________ _______________

Funny your Polish coach says not to use American's for reference, yet many of them teach Soviet methods/techniques.

. . . and then funny about the high hip/low hip commentary/model thing too:
Because (old) Soviet methods teaches the bar starting over the metatarsophalangeal joint, and shoulder over the bar (or very SLIGHTLY in front).
Your hip height with usually be a product of your body type, WHEN the above two conditions are met.
Kinda of the same way a SS LBBS will look different with two different extremes in body types.

[Chris McCarthy]

Torokhti came to my mind as well...if my Cyrillic was any good there's probably a lot more on Youtube I could point towards.

[damufunman]

I was able to teach myself the lifts doing them twice per week. For me (I've heard this can cause problems for some) learning the power versions first helped, as the first and second pulls you can work on with decent weight. I did use the Pendlay teaching progression to make sure I got the movements down, then just worked on getting lower after catching. Having done the power versions first was helpful for me I think because I wasn't learning the first and second pulls concurrently, so maybe start there. Also, did most of the early work from a high hang to limit pulling power which somewhat forced me to get lower to catch it.
As Chebass was saying, you're going to be strong enough to power quite a bit, so when learning to pull under definitely lower the weight a good amount and learn the positions first. I managed to get decent enough at the lifts to start progressing them in about 2 months.