Changing Ingrained Motor Patterns

[jillingworth]

There are actually two interrelated parts to this question. My wife is a retired professional ballerina who, though no longer performing, still teaches and practices to maintain her skills in that field. She has also been lifting weights for some time now and is really interested in the Olympic lifts. As her more than inadequate coach, I'm having a hard time figuring out what to do with her foot placement at the end of the split in both the Jerk and in the Split Snatch (the Squat Snatch doesn't seem to be feasbile due to some injury and wear/tear issues). She's always been trained in ballet to have her feet pointed out which is the opposite of everything I'm familiar with when it comes to the split in the Jerk and Snatch. So the questions are:
1. Is some kind of injury from rolling over the ankle very likely in these split movements?
2. Having no doubt dealt with people with nearly 40 years of muscle memory from a particular sport/activity, do you think it's worth the battle to change this?

Thanks,

Jeff.

[Mark Rippetoe]

A person of any athletic talent at all should be able to learn a new movement pattern, especially since the context of the new one is so thoroughly different than the embedded pathway. I would expect problems if the movements were quite similar, not if they are completely distinct in all their details, as these two are.

In other words, your wife's problem is her coach, not her previously embedded motor pathway.

[Dastardly]

Is learning the olympic lifts when approaching 50 a sensible idea? You already mention your wife has some wear & tear/injury issues preventing squat snatching. I am betting she probably still could squat snatch (and maybe better than many given her active background) but it rings alarm bells. Unless she is the unusually robust type, then Id stick to the powerlifts & pressing. For something more dynamic, push pressing.

[jillingworth]

I suspected the coach was at fault (or her disinclination to listen to said coach). We'll work on it.

As far as the sensibility, it may not be but it's something she wants to do. I doubt she'll ever move anything close to heavy weight with them, but with just the little messing around so far, she claims she feels "stronger" in her jumps. That could also be attributed to her deadlift, though, too. For the most part, I think she wants to do them for two reasons: 1) pride and 2) she wants to be to show them to the kids she coaches in ballet as she's already got most of them doing the power lifts.

Thanks!

[Mark E. Hurling]

Deeply engrained motor patterns can be tough to overcome. I struggle with two of them.

The first is in the MA I currently practice. It's a fusion of throwing, strinking, choking, and joint locks just similar enough to the karate I practiced in high school the judo I competed in while attending college along with some other striking arts I took up later along the way. But different in the subtleties of performance. Different and more effective in the latter. I am constantly trying consciously overcome my earlier programming and/or getting reminded that I fail to do successfully in all instances. Hence the similarity gumming things up.

The other instance are somewhat finer hand motor skills used to open combination locks. I have had to learn over my career five different methodologies of opening five types of mechanical combination locks. All of which opoerate a little differently, but which share what seems like a basic dialing skill just like your old fashioned high school locker padlock. Yet the newer electro-mechanical combination locks have a logic chip in them that interprets the short choppy dialing movements I make as attempts to manipulate the lock. Then it auto-locks and denies all access for a few minutes. Very frustrating to deal with.

As for age and the Olympic lifts, I don't power clean well in my 60's because of inflexibility in my shoulders and particularly in my wrists. But I can snatch thanks of Rip and Steve Hill, albeit not with terribly great distinction. I also decided late last year that I may not have a good rack position in the power clean but I can manage a clean and jerk (sort of). So I'm not ready to die just yet.