New Olympic Weightlifting Blog: Liftm0re

Well, I figured it was about time to create my own little place to write about my journey into becoming a competitive Olympic Weightlifter.  My new blog is called liftm0re, and will serve as a place where I put insightful/poetic observations and thoughts related to training, PR's, failures, competitions, workouts, and basically anything related to this crazy lifting lifestyle.

It won't be quite as "factual" as The Food Guru, but hey, that might make it more fun to read in the long run anyway.  I'd really appreciate if a few of you checked it out, and if you like it let me know.  The more feedback, the better.

This also means I won't post Oly lifting stuff on The Food Guru anymore, so it's a win win for people who don't want to read about it....hah.

Anyway, I really hope you guys enjoy it, and thank you so much for the continued support.

Here's the link!

http://liftm0re.blogspot.com/

I'll be back with more food related goodness later this afternoon.  I've got a few new cool article ideas, stay tuned!

Training For Gold: Week 10

It's been a while since I've updated you all on as to how I'm progressing through my training.  This post serves only as a short update, as I realize it's really only of interest to a few people.  Though this is a pretty good spot to get my thoughts down, if I don't say so myself.

I'm please to announce that I'm continually feeling stronger than I ever have before in my life.  The workouts are brutally difficult, however I'm constantly surprising myself with hitting double and triple snatches that I didn't think were even close to possible for me.  The strength is there, and Ivan, my coach, clearly knows exactly what he's doing.  I have an unbelievable amount of respect for him.

In terms of injuries, I'm overcoming a shoulder pang that's been nagging me for a couple weeks, however through ice, heat, and lots and lots of massage and stretching it's recovered despite not ceasing my training.  Awesome!  It never effected my numbers either, thank goodness.  I'm also overcoming a bout of patellar tendinitis with a combination of foam rolling, a LOT of fish oil, and even more ice. All three combined are working wonders, and 12 days after I could barely walk, I'm feeling absolutely great.  Another week and I should be up near 100%.

I hit two new max lifts yesterday, which was absolutely remarkable because the workout surrounding the max attempts was designed to drain me of any energy I had left by the time I actually got the lifts themselves.  That means good things, such as LOTS of untapped potential deep within my muscles to lift a good few kilos more in both the clean and jerk and the snatch.  I have no doubt I could hit at least another 2 kilos in the snatch, and maybe as many as 5 more in the clean and jerk.  Regardless, here's my latest video of both lifts:

You can see more at my YouTube account specifically created to document my lifting progress: Liftm0re (yes, that's a zero, NOT an "o").

I'm due to max out in week 12 as well, so we'll see how that goes.  Progress is coming at relative light speed, and I cannot WAIT to see what else I'm capable of lifting.  A 150kg clean and jerk by the end of this year may not be so far fetched after all, especially if the muscle keeps coming on like it has been.  I'm up to 74 kg!

Stay tuned for more progress, cause I'm not quitting any time soon.

Training For Gold: Week 3

My one rest day has come around again, and unlike last week where I did some core and aggressive stretching on my rest day, this week I'm actually resting.  Looking back on this previous week, I'd consider it quite successful.  After tomorrow, I will have had three days where I did double sessions, and three days of single sessions.  That's a pretty decent amount of volume, and I'm definitely proud of myself for adapting to the load.

Eleiko Plates. Oh what I wouldn't do for a nice set of these.

My first session on double days always involves either front squats or back squats, and are usually one hour long.  I'll do between 20-30 total reps, attempting to get within at least 87% of my best ever belted max squat. This means above 275 lbs.  I can pretty regularly hit 290-300 lbs, which I feel is acceptable with my morning fatigue and semi-cold muscles.  

My later afternoon sessions are the ones dictated by my coach, who sends my daily workouts via facebook.  I hit all the numbers in Oly lifts, then squat.  This week I hit an easy 66 kg double snatch, and am feeling stronger than ever with my snatch form in general.  I feel like I could snatch over 80 kg if I maxed out, maybe even closer to 82kg.  I feel stronger in my clean and jerks, but I won't know for sure until I get near maximum weights again, which, judging by my workout schemes, won't happen for a while.  I'm hoping for at least 110kg when I finally do get a chance to lift the heavy stuff again.

Afternoon squats have been going very well, and my morning sessions haven't seemed to fatigue my legs much at all.  I hit 125 kg (275 lbs) for an un-belted triple the other day, AFTER my Oly lifts and AFTER a morning session.  Here's the video.

I was happy with it, and I feel like there's more there.  I REALLY want a 130 kg triple, hopefully this next week.

This week I added to my diet: 

2 Bananas (For Pre and Post Workout Carbs due to high glucose content)

1/4 cup Fiber One Cereal (Post morning session, just to refill some glycogen before afternoon session)

1 cup milk (Basically I just added to my previous milk amounts in lunch and dinner)

Almonds (100 calories worth, just to round out my afternoon meal to an even 200 calories)

Total Calories...3000?  I'd say about 3 grand, though I'll count more closely when I get a chance.

After this week I'm right up at about 160 lbs, which is a 1-2 lb weight gain.  I'm happy with that, and I'm going to keep my diet steady and see where it takes me.  Once I hit a plateau, I'll bump up the calories again.  The extra carbs are REALLY doing me good, I feel much more powerful under the bar, and have a LOT more energy.  Hurray for bananas.

We'll see how these next workouts go.  Things are getting heavy quickly, and I can't WAIT to start smashing some more PR's.  Here's a video of my Double 66 kg double snatch, with bar path analysis:

If you have any questions, comments, thoughts, or suggestions about training, please comment!  I'd love to hear from fellow Oly lifters, and I'd really love support through this journey of mine.  I'm determined to be a champion.  I have to lift more, I just plain HAVE to.

Training For Gold: After week 1

Working on as straight a pull as possible.  Not bad so far, eh?  

Well, I made it through week one.  It wasn't horrible, but it wasn't easy.  Total, I had 4 double days, in which I squatted heavy in the morning, and ran through that day's weightlifting workout (provided by my coach) in the afternoon.  Overall, the working weights for my second workout have been light, but that doesn't mean the workouts themselves weren't brutal.  The first two days, in fact, were a little more than I bargained for.  Allow me to explain:

Before starting this targeted training, I usually lifted heavy singles in all the lifts for about 6-20 reps per exercise (snatches, clean and jerks, squats).  This would take me about two hours (working at a slow pace), and my total reps weren't too high (though because the weights were always heavy, I always was quite glycogen depleted at the end of each workout.)

My new workouts involve tons and tons and TONS of triples.  That's right, three reps of heavy-ish weight in some of the most fatiguing lifts ever created.  Have you ever tried 5-8 sets of triple heavy clean and jerks?  Let me tell you, after you're done you feel like you've just sprinted two football fields.  It's crazy, but I can feel the strength building up inside me, and I love it.

Diet-wise, this week has been somewhat successful.  I've adapted to the higher caloric intake (and enjoyed it quite thoroughly), though I haven't seen too much budging on the scale.  I was 159 this morning, with clothes on and breakfast in my belly, as well as a lot of water in my muscles from the creatine.  I would say that taking all this into account I haven't really made any progress in terms of weight gain thus far, though I do feel stronger and more capable in the gym.  That could be either the creatine or the extra food talking.  I guess we'll see.

Creatine loading is complete, by the way.  I'm off the 20 grams per day, and have dropped back down to around 7-10 grams.  I'm trying to conserve the product, and see how far into this cycle my half jar of Universal Creatine can take me.  Luckily the stuff is cheap, so if supplies run low another couple 200 g bottles shouldn't cost much at all.

Universal Creatine.  Probably the best strength "bang for your buck" you can find.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

There haven't been any PR's in the classic lifts this week, and judging by the format of the workouts given to me I doubt I'll see any more PR singles for quite a while, just because I'm working so heavily on lots of repititions.  However I did PR on my front squat this week, and hit 104.5 kg (230 lbs) for 3 reps.  And despite it being a PR, it felt pretty darn solid, I might have another 2-3 kilos in me if I really push it, though I think I'll wait on that for just a bit.

For my rest day today, I've been doing nothing but stretching, loading up on protein and complex carbs, and working my core.  I cannot WAIT to get back into the gym bright and early tomorrow morning for my next heavy squat session, and can't wait to see what my coach has in store for this next week.  I have a sinking feeling the weights are going to increase very quickly.

We'll see how it goes, and I'll keep you all posted.  Wish me luck!

A Few Squats

Just thought a few of you might want to see what training involves, day in and day out.  This was my 5th day in a row of squatting.  Needless to say I was pretty tired.  Tomorrow I'm resting, then back heavy again on Saturday.  Yippee.

I plan on uploading a few more training videos in the near future.  Let me know what you guys think, and I could possibly include a few articles about Olympic lifts in general, though I am by no means an expert.

The first three were with 240lbs.  The rest were with 215lbs.  Believe me, after 10 sets or more, it gets pretty heavy.