Saturday, January 2, 2010
JC- Is anyone currently at MIT?
I just got back today, was wondering if anyone was back at MIT. Looks like I'll be doing powerlifting for awhile, Oly just doesn't seem feasible at the moment.
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I'm flying back in tonight but won't be back to regular training until Tuesday or Thursday (normal schedule).
ReplyDeleteI was going to mention this the next time I saw you, but now works too. Even if your ultimate goal is Oly, powerlifting can still help because just being brutally strong makes a big difference in Oly, and strength takes a longer time to develop than technique. I believe that there have been quite a few successful Olympic lifters who have trained in powerlifting, and vice versa. It won't hurt you to train PL style for a while, then switch to Oly when you finally have the resources to do it.
I kind of disagree with you, Frank, about training PL for oly. I'm pretty sure if you want to do oly, you need to train oly. AFAIK, the only thing in common is squatting.
ReplyDeleteAnd deadlifting. I'm pretty certain that a person who can deadlift 700lbs and squat 600lbs will be able to clean 400lbs much sooner than a person who can only deadlift 400lbs and squat 300lbs, even if he's using PL style. The only thing that doesn't really help is benching. Also, a lot of the old-school (1950s+, I think) strength athletes competed in both sports.
ReplyDeleteI know it's not ideal, but it's something that I had to think about last year when I finally decided to do PL almost exclusively. I'm still interested in Oly, but I had reached the point where to become more proficient, I would have had to spend more time than I was willing to spend on training and finding a coach. On the other hand, I had you guys (and Danny), and I figured that if I couldn't do Oly, PL was the next best thing. This is also one of the main reasons that I doubt I'll ever use gear.
I do agree that past a certain point, you will be specializing in PL, which won't help at all for Oly, but the base of strength you build until then can be shared. I don't think JC is quite at the point where his training will be purely PL-specific. One alternative is to not use some of the techniques that powerlifters use just to increase the weight lifted, i.e. stick to a Starting-Strength style squat and don't do sumo deadlifts.
Just my $0.03 anyway. Maybe your friend Jake has more input?
Here's an interesting article that may be relevant too, especially pages 5+. Bill Starr is the dude behind how many of us train, so I assume he knows what he's talking about.
http://startingstrength.com/articles/keeping_strength_programs_starr.pdf
But the guy who trains cleans will clean 400 and maybe only deadlift 550. The point is, no one fails a clean during the deadlift part (the very bottom). If you do, then you have 0% chance of cleaning it in the first place. The strength in the clean is through the middle of the motion, the speed in the drop, and the squat strength to get it up. I don't think deadlifting is a big part of that.
ReplyDeleteMy friend who does oly can clean 300 lbs and deadlifts only 440 or so. And that is without emphasizing his clean (he is jerk-limited).
I mean, you are right, that building up strength in general will help. But I would suggest he try to train pseudo-oly anyway and get technique advise from us as best he can.
Thanks a bunch guys. I think just doing a mix of PL and pseudo-oly will have to do for the time being.
ReplyDelete@Frank: Awesome article. I need to find a way to still be able to incorporate the classic Oly lifts into my PL workouts. Maybe I should do them at the beginning of each workout? I'm not sure...
We can mix it up a bit. We should probably start doing some light overhead squats for warmup, which will help with the snatch. We also need to work on your front squat. We can do some light technique work for cleans and jerks at the end of the workout. Once those get heavy enough to be challenging, we can start doing them at the beginning, but we should probably still work on basic strength first.
ReplyDeleteOh, and Nate, I do agree with you for the most part, but we've got to work with what we have. It's just a pity that we don't have an Oly coach or an experienced Oly lifter.
ReplyDeleteAlright, sounds like a plan :) See ya Tuesday.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if I'll be in Tuesday, and even if I am, it'll be quick. I'll be back full time for sure on Thursday.
ReplyDeleteHey guys, this is Jake. Nathan invited me to chime in so I'm going to throw in my thoughts on your discussion.
ReplyDeleteI had to split it into two posts because of the character limit.
Frank said:
"I believe that there have been quite a few successful Olympic lifters who have trained in powerlifting, and vice versa. It won't hurt you to train PL style for a while, then switch to Oly when you finally have the resources to do it."
The first sentence is true in America, if you define successful as "successful in America." Shane Hamman converted to from powerlifting and holds all the superheavyweight records in America, but still placed fifth at the Olympics. He is the most successful recent American weightlifter. Bill Kazmier, according to Bud Charniga, clean and jerked 170 at over 300 pounds. That's 66% of what Steiner did at the Olympics and 77% of what Casey Burgener, our best superheavyweight this year, clean and jerked. No one who converts is successful. The (alleged) 1200-pound squatter Paul Anderson clean and jerked a world record 196.5kg in 1955 at a bodyweight of over 300 pounds. The current world record in the 69kg weight class is 197. Bill Star converted from weightlifting to powerlifting and was successful (in America). It only goes one way.
Not to pick on you Frank, but:
"And deadlifting. I'm pretty certain that a person who can deadlift 700lbs and squat 600lbs will be able to clean 400lbs much sooner than a person who can only deadlift 400lbs and squat 300lbs, even if he's using PL style. The only thing that doesn't really help is benching. Also, a lot of the old-school (1950s+, I think) strength athletes competed in both sports."
Obviously a 700# squatter > 300# squatter. But according to the Soviet analysis of their champion's training logs, their athletes back squatted 125%-135% of their clean and jerk. This means that for a 500# clean and jerk, their best athletes squatted around 675. Alexeyev himself claimed to have never squatted over 270, only 20kg better than his best jerk of 250. Shane Hamman squatted 1000 (455kg) and jerked around 230.
Also, our athletes in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s, 2000s, and today ALL got dominated by the guys who trained specifically for weightlifting. I think I can count on two hands the number of medals won by Americans in the last 50 years at the Olympics and World Championships.
The clean and the deadlift are very different. Like Nathan said, I can deadlift 440 and clean only 300. Remember that at the top of your pull the bar still has to travel up, almost completely on its own momentum, another 6-8 inches. Any weight I can make do that will never even be close to my max deadlift. The snatch is even lighter, so extra deadlift training is even more wasted there.
Frank is on the right track in his 3rd to last post. Basically you need to work flexibility to be able to get into the proper positions to catch a snatch and clean (the bottom positions of the overhead and front squat, respectively) with an arched back. You also need to work to get into the proper starting position for the snatch (able to hold the bar at the start with an arched back). You also need to work the lifts themselves to get familiar with them and train dynamic flexibility.
ReplyDeleteFor the first few months you can keep it relatively light and do 4-6 sets of 5, working mostly flexibility and only increasing the weight as you feel yourself hitting the right positions. Once you feel like you're consistently hitting the right positions and gaining flexibility will you need to drop to sets of 3-4 and increase the weight more. If you develop bad habits they will stick with you. With the new heavier weights you should increase as you feel yourself gaining strength in the new range of motion that you've acquired.
None of the above should interfere too much with your powerlifting training. If you do both you'll be fine. The only real problem is that you'll be in the gym for a really long time. Eventually you’ll need to pick one or the other, but you’ll know when that time comes because you’ll be too overtrained to stay awake during the day from training for both.
After that you're pretty much on your own. Keep your work sets to 2 reps for the most part, but mix it up sometimes and do anywhere from 1-6 reps with the appropriate weight.
Here's the final real problem: if you ever want to be good at the jerk, you'll have to minimize your pressing. It's counter-intuitive, but too much upper body strength actually has negative carryover to the jerk. It’s not essential at the beginning I guess, but it will be if you want to get super good.
Thanks for chiming in Jake, and no worries, this is good information. JC should read this.
ReplyDeleteThanks Jake, I just saw this. It's really helpful.
ReplyDelete