A short comment on a few months of weightlifting

[paddy]

I know this issue can be a little controversial (which I'm not trying to start again), but I thought I would give a quick observation from a sample of size one. I do my strength work for my sport, I don't (at the moment) compete as a strength athlete. I had weights amnesia for ages, but after buying and reading SS3 started cashing in the gains of just straight linear progression. After a couple months I moved to upping my weights every fortnight, I guess I was no longer an absolute beginner. Got my main lifts to 200kg DL and 180kg Squat at 84kg BW. A good base to work from for getting some real strength I think. Then for some reason decided I wanted to improve my weightlifting technique, so joined a weightlifting club. 4xper week training, snatched 2x week, c+j 2xper week. we squatted and did pulls etc, but always after long sessions of snatch/c+j. I lose the SS3 focus on pushing the weights on the big strength lifts up as regularly as possible. And I am tired by the time I squat (and every one HBBS not LBBS), and we only pull and not DL. Then 8 weeks later one day at training I take a 1RM DL (with straps - pulls always done with straps) and fail at 150kgs. So over 8 weeks I lost 50kgs on my DL? Then next session I fail on a squat at 155kgs. Well I stopped going there, and now train back at my old gym - 4 weeks later I have pushed my weights back to were they where. Thank god. The big aim for me now is the 500lbs DL, which is 28kgs away...

[OCG]

Eh, I think what you were experiencing was more likely fatigue from all the Oly lifting. 50kg in 4 weeks sounds less like progression and more like recovery.

[paddy]

OCG - thanks for your thoughts. You know I don't think it was so much fatigue, I wasn't training harder while oly lifting that I was before it. Actually probably easier, especially because my training load out of the gym was quite low at the time. This sounds vague, but it was as if I had lost the 'feel' of heavy weights (heavy for me). For example my 1RM for c+j is 105kgs, so I was doing my pulls at around 120kgs, which is only 60% of my DL 1RM. Do you think that effect is 'real' - i.e. for someone who is not advanced you can relatively quickly loose the 'feel' of grinding out 1RM efforts on the 'slow' lifts if you don't venture near your maxes for an extended period of time?

[OCG]

Yep, that'll happen. You gotta learn to push hard and "grind" heavy weights. Keeping tight and in position under a heavy weight can be as much psychological as physical. Happens to me sometimes. Luckily it comes back quick, at least after you've stopped being a complete newbie and actually learned to push hard in the first place.

I'm not really sure of a better or more technical way to put it. The way I would usually put it would simply be that I'm "not ready" to lift a certain weight, even if I know I'm strong enough to do it. I suspect there is also some minor physiological adaptations that need to take place as well, getting used to the pressure of heavy lifting and also having the, not quite endurance, but being able to hold really tight throughout a set and hold your breath for long enough.

[hbriem]

The same thing to me when I tried becoming a weightlifter for about a year. My Oly lifts even went down a fair bit despite devoting most of my time to them.

The workouts were easy, I mostly used lighter weights for the technical work in the snatch, clean and jerk. I managed a few quick sets of strength work in between.

I only train 3 times a week and that was not enough for weightlifting. What I would have needed was 5-6 workouts with 2-3 dedicated mostly to strength work.

On its own for 2-3 sessions a week, Olympic weightlifting is not enough to build or maintain a strength base.