Olympic Weightlifting for Sport Athletes

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Olympic Weightlifting is a sport that requires mobility, speed, power, strength, and believe it or not coordination. The sport is comprised of the:

Snatch

Clean and Jerk

Many sports performance coaches like to utilize these movements and it’s derivatives in hopes of developing power that will translate to their respective sport. Check out Dimas and his hops!

Pyrros Dimas

Translation to Sport

Olympic Weightlifting movements potentially can have a high translation to sport because of the “Triple Extension” phase of the lifts, which means the portion of the lift where the ankles, knees, and hips are in extension. Similiar to this:

Photo by simononly

To add to this, stereotypically Olympic Weightlifters are VERY powerful and have a pretty good vertical jump without really training for it. And to be honest, I don’t recall ever seen an Olympic Weightlifter who can’t jump, even the big boys…

Technical Aspect

I’m sure if you’re reading this, most of you know that Weightlifting is a technical sport. I don’t care how well versed you are or how long you’ve been Coaching this great sport, it’s technical to a sport athlete that has not been exposed to it. To add to this many sports performance coaches, strength and conditioning coaches, personal trainers or whatever you want to call yourself, don’t know how to perform these movements themselves, yet expect to Coach it to their athletes? Which then becomes movements like this:

The positioning of this lift now becomes more of a lower back movement versus a triple extension which loads the legs a bit more. To add to this, the stress it places on the wrist from a bad rack position, in my opinion, does not out weigh the risk vs. reward.

Olympic Weightlifting vs. Plyometrics

Personally I don’t like to teach the Olympic lifts to our athletes because of:

• Time Constraints: The amount of time it takes me to teach an athlete how to land and jump properly vs. teach them the Weightlifting variations allows me to focus on other aspects of their development. Also, if you have a big group, it allows you to focus on quality control.
• Risk vs. Reward: People do weird shit when it comes to Weightlifting. They’ll catch it in the funniest positions, fall back, feet as wide as the platform goes etc… because of my experience seeing some dumb shit going on instead of dumping the bar…I came to the conclusion that I won’t place my athlete in a position to make such a decision. You’ll need to be very cautious with football players too, as they are prone to shoulder/wrist injuries during the arduous season and unfortunately the snatch and clean and jerk potentially can place undue stress on those areas as well.

These two simple reasons are why here at Fusion Performance Training we don’t utilize the movements with our athletes, despite the fact we have a sanctioned USA-Weightlifting club.

Also keep in mind that most athletes have been taught how to do the basic performance exercises such as:

• Squat
• Deadlift
• Pull Ups
• Bench Press
• Jumps variations (Vertical, broad, bounds, etc…)

So if you have 4-8 weeks with an athlete, will you utilize that time to teach them the Weightlifting variations or will you keep the methods simple but yet effective?

Exceptions

If we have a highly qualified athlete that has a strong knowledge of the lifts and IF the lift is highly translatable, such as the snatch for throwers, then yes we will utilize the movements. The other exception is if the athlete is being tested on the movements, then we’ll take the time to develop their skill set.

Straps and the Clean

You should NEVER EVER where straps with the clean. I don’t care if it’s the power clean or squat clean. In the clean you can potentially receive the bar in a funny position from elbows to knee or even elbows to floor if you’re locked into the bar. Also coaches and personal trainers that use straps need to realize that Olympic Weightlifting straps are generally much more thinner and shorter than a typical strap, this will make it easier to release the bar. With that said, straps are generally utilized in the snatch or pull variations but should NOT be used in the clean.

Whenever you have the responsibility of training an athlete or even a regular client your #1 priority should be focused on time efficiency and safety (risk vs. reward). The risk vs. reward of using straps for the clean to gain a few extra pounds vs. potentially breaking your elbow or wrist is clearly not worth it. Those that do this should ask themselves: how much translation to sport will the extra poundage carry over? Will developing strong grip strength and speed of the bar be just as effective?

Train smart,

Team Fusion