Goose's Olympic/Powerlifting log

[GooseHinson]

I signed up for a course offered at my school titled "Introductory workshop to the sport of olympic and power lifting". We meet twice a week for 90 minutes (monday/wednesday nights) and I'm going to log progress and what they teach here. If possible I'll take videos of instructor teaching the technical aspects of various lifts and post them. Hopefully everyone can benefit from my 150$ investment [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

Goals:
I'm hoping to learn the full clean and full snatch (I currently only do the power variations) as well as work on my squat form and develop an arch for my bench. I'd like to add 10% to all my big lifts through improvement on technique, though I don't know if this is possible.

There will be a total of 20 sessions, here are my stats as of today (first meet is tomorrow).


6'2"
197lbs (off creatine for the moment)
Bodyfat 8-9%

Bench: 275
Deadlift: 485
Back Squat: 335 ATG
Front Squat: 275
Power Clean: 270 (Jerk 225)
Power Snatch: 195


Hopefully you will all find this informative and we can all learn something.

[SmileyEH]

Wow. I see a 400back squat, 350 front, and a 300 squat clean and jerk coming pretty quick. Your squats are lagging way behind your deadlift right now (which is huge).

PS I hate you because you can actually go to a class like this.

[shemp]

I bet you can practically taste that fifth wheel.

Have fun. I'm looking forward to hearing more.

[GooseHinson]

I got the 5th wheel for a double on a low rack pull, if I tried to pull it right now I probably could, it's just been a few weeks since I last had a ME back day. I'll write a TR tomorrow night when I get back.

[Thremp]

Where do you put the bar for low rack pulls? Like 4-5 inches off ground?

[dzh90]

Hey we have almost identical numbers for deadlift and squat. I hate short people who make squatting look easy. Your power clean is pretty high vs your squats. I can only power clean 235 on a good day. BTW how are you going to do a full clean with 270+ if your max front squat is 275?

[GooseHinson]

[ QUOTE ]
Where do you put the bar for low rack pulls? Like 4-5 inches off ground?

[/ QUOTE ]

Well the bar is already like 5-6in off the ground because of the weights, but I guess you meant the plates 4-5in off the ground. They are on the first pin in my power cage (I'd assume this is about 12-14in that the BAR is off the ground). The ground isn't really my sticking point, it's about midway, when trying to push the hips through.

[ QUOTE ]
Hey we have almost identical numbers for deadlift and squat. I hate short people who make squatting look easy. Your power clean is pretty high vs your squats. I can only power clean 235 on a good day. BTW how are you going to do a full clean with 270+ if your max front squat is 275?

[/ QUOTE ]

Really I just want to be able to do full cleans, I think because of balance and technique I can't even do more then 135 or so right now, and prob about 115 for a full snatch. I just always fall over when I try to land in a squat. Ideally by the end of this I'll be able to clean/front squat 315, but that's probably out of reach.

[GooseHinson]

First class is over, didn't really learn anything. It was an "assessment" of our skills, how much we could lift, how long we've been lifting for etc.

Trainer seemed pretty competent. Although his lifts weren't terribly impressive, he seemed to know what he was talking about and made minor corrections to my squat and deadlift form. We also started to work on developping arches for the bench, not too much success there for me yet.

Here's a breakdown of the program (2 sessions per week)

Week 1: Assessment and introduction to the big 3 powerlifting lifts.

Week 2: Beginner powerlifting training

Week 3: Advanced powerlifting training

Week 4: Introduction to weightlifting (clean and jerk/snatch). Focus will be on the different components of the lifts.

Week 5: Training all the components learned in week 4.

Week 6: Training full lifts

Week 7: Begin training for a competition held in week 10 (how a real athlete would prepare)

Week 8: Second phase of competition training

Week 9: Getting body optimally conditioned for for lifting at full potential in competition.

Week 10: Mock competition


So far there are 5 people signed up for the class, which is a pretty good number in terms of hands-on time with the trainer. I feel I should be able to improve quite a bit, though I'm still skeptical. There probably won't be any videos until he starts showing us the proper form for full olympic lifts (week 4-5).

[dzh90]

I tried some squat cleans today. It feels counter-intuitive to really throw myself underneath a heavy ass barbell. I got a few decent full cleans with 205. When I did 225 I kept smashing my throat against the bar when i was trying to get under it. At least I was pulling them high enough...

[mperich]

this program looks awesome, wish there was something like that around here

-Mike