ITCHING FOR A COMPETITION TO WATCH…
You see, there’s a slight problem with my relatively
newfound love of watching top level weightlifting competitions… there isn’t a regular
season comprised of 162 game or 82 or even 16.
In the calendar year in which we are nearing the midway point, there
will be 2,430 Major League Baseball games and that’s not including the best baseball
of all; the playoffs. There will also be
256 regular season and 11 playoff NFL games (random sidenote; I am incredibly
excited to watch LeBron James and – I gather there are other living breathing
members of the Cavaliers – take on the Warriors).
Depending on your definition of “top level”, there will be
somewhere between 7 and 38 weightlifting events this year. Everyone has their own preferences when it
comes to the types of events they like to watch. Personally, I don’t really care how much a
fifteen year-old can lift. Yes, it’s
amazing and yes, many of them can outlift me…
I’m sorry, I don’t really care. I
like watching the senior level lifters and more specifically, I like watching
the higher weight classes. That’s most
of where the range above comes from; there are 38 events on the IWF’s calendar
for 2015 but of those, I’d say 7 are higher level… think continental
championships (European Championships, Asian Games, Pan-American Games and do
on and so forth). Of those, there are
two that really, really matter this year.
From September 21st to 23rd in Fuzhou,
China, the IWF will be hosting a Grand Prix which doubles as a qualifying event
for the 2016 Olympics in Rio. This will
be an intriguing event given the fact that only ten (out of 15) weight classes
will be represented, with no female 75 or 75+ kg lifters and no male 94, 105,
or 105+ kg lifters being invited. However, given that it is a qualifying event
for the Olympics, the competition could be truly fierce.
Secondly, from November 20th through 29th,
the World Championships will be occurring in Houston. I have talked about the potential for truly epic
competitions in the men’s 105 kg and 105+ kg weight classes previously so I won’t
rehash those thoughts here. It’s also
possible that 2012 gold medalist Lulu Zhou of China will compete this year in
the World Championships, meaning that Tatiana Kashirina might have some
competition this year. All of that will
help compensate for the fact that Dmitry Klokov announced his retirement at the
end of May in the traditional way.
All of that is to say that after the high point of the World
Championships last November, it’s been more than a little difficult to come
down from it. I’m not saying that I want
a top level competition with the likes of Ilya Ilyin, Ruslan Albegov, Aleksei Lovchev, and Tatiana Kashirina every day… but would every week really be so
much of a burden?
Yes, yes, I know it would… However, there’s still been some
good lifting with some good names a tier below those mentioned above.
Winning Clean & Jerks from the European Championships (women)
Winning Snatches from the European Championships (men)
Winning Clean & Jerks from the Europeans Championships (men)
...and before I go any further, I have to say that there's something oddly satisfying about listening to weightlifting commentators speaking Russian (or what I'd assume is Russian)...
OUTLAW BARBELL PROGRAM
So how have I been keeping busy between competitions of my
own? Well, lifting heavy things and then
putting them back down (it’s kinda what I do).
My coach recently found a program for me that comes from
theoutlawway.com and after three days, I’ve decided that I’m going to love and
hate this program and I’ve also decided that I am going to talk about it here. I’ll probably include some video of me
lifting from time to time because, frankly, it’s kinda fun.
This program, so far, is very heavy in volume compared to
the types of programs I’ve done before and while it’s going to be difficult, I’m
so far very excited about it. For
instance, today’s program looked like this:
- Snatch from the knee
a.
1 set of 6 @ 50% (of your one rep maximum)
b.
1x6 @ 55%
c.
1x6 @ 60%
d.
2x6 @ 65%
- Jerk balance (one of the odder movements I’ve
ever done but once I got the hang of it, I did feel like it was really
hammering home the proper positioning).
a.
1x6 @ 50%
b.
1x6 @ 55%
c.
1x6 @ 60%
d.
2x6 @ 65%
- Clean grip shrugs from the power position
a.
1x6 @ 50%
b.
1x6 @ 55%
c.
1x6 @ 60%
d.
2x6 @ 65%
- Back Squat
a.
1x6 @ 50%
b.
1x6 @ 55%
c.
1x6 @ 60%
d.
2x6 @ 65%
That was day one and I can tell you that day two and three
were similar in difficulty and identical in number of reps. However, for the relative level of
difficulty, I think this is going to be a very good program based on what I’ve
seen so far (the first several weeks of this program have been posted and it’s
supposed to continue until the national championships in August).
It focuses greatly on what I would refer to as “partial”
lifts to emphasize proper positioning throughout the snatch and the clean and
jerk, something that I would say I’m good at but could be much, much
better. What’s even better, there’s
still some good old fashioned squatting thrown into the program as well and
considering how long it’s been since I’ve squatted, this felt pretty good.
That’s all for today but I’ll be back periodically with more
about this program. It’s a long program
(16 weeks) but if the timing is like last year, it’ll be perfectly timed to
prep me for a competition of my own this fall.
The NBA Finals start tonight and while I’m sure many of you
couldn’t care less, I’m looking forward to watching all of the games. To be completely honest, I’d be happy with
either team winning but right now, I just can’t bring myself to bet against the
Warriors and Curry.
...still 169 days until the World Championships start...
No comments:
Post a Comment