Olympic Lifting Mastery

Friday, January 13, 2012

Mobility:
Hip Prep

Warm up:
2 Rounds for Quality of:
40 meter Carioca (20 meters each side)
20 One footed hops over an Abmat (10 each side, over and back is 2 reps)
20 meter Handstand Walking OR 30 Shoulder Taps

WOD:
“Kelly”
Five rounds for time of:
Run 400 meters
30 Box jump, 24 inch box
30 Wall ball shots, 20 pound ball

Cool Down:
5 sets Max L-sit for total time

I often refer to Olympic Lifting as “the fun stuff.”  The culmination of strength, power, speed, agility, coordination, balance, accuracy and flexibility.  Limitations in any of these categories will diminish your ability to perform these movements effectively, which may make you feel as though this is “the frustrating stuff.”  That is not just ok, but completely normal!

  Learning these movements is a lifelong process of refinement.  Despite their difficulty, we perform these movements because of their overall benefit to your athleticism.

You may have seen this video posted up on our Facebook Group page a few weeks ago.  This is Pyrros Dimas, a retired Greekweightlifter, considered as one of the greatest of all time, having been four times Olympic champion and six times World Champion.

  I have watched a lot of lifting videos, including videos of Dimas,  but watching this was as though I had never seen an Olympic lift before.  Perhaps it is because I have watched videos with more maximal loads as opposed to sub-maximal training loads, but his speed and execution is mind blowing!  The announcer is discussing the weights, and if you don’t know, 1 kilo is 2.

2 lbs.  Take time to pause the video in different positions: see how he sets up, how he recieves the bar, how he drives the bar off the ground, how high his feet lift off the ground.  Don’t stress if you feel like you suck in comparison, Dimas started the sport when he was 11 years old!  Keep working hard, establish your weaknesses and be patient!