Learning Weightlifting is like Having a Haircut.

As of late, I have been making sure that I regularly visit my barber to keep my look fresh. So this got me thinking as I watch Tom from Uncle Rocco’s work his magic and turn me from a mess to looking sharp.

1. Every lifter is different like every head shape is unique.

There may be certain stereotypes of head shaped such as round, oval, flat, high forehead etc. The barber is experienced enough to understand how to match the hairstyle you want to fit the head shape you have.

Lifting technique is no different. With the body, as you hear from many coaches and many times in my articles, everyone has different lever lengths. You may fall in a certain category of body types but knowing how to specifically tailor to your body type is key to learning the technique which will not only make your lifts look smooth but also sexy.

2. It’s about the finer details.

Apart from getting the general look right, the barber also puts the effort into the smaller details such as making sure your hairline is well-kept (i.e. No baby hairs sticking out, keeping the cut even on both sides etc). You can also see him making sure that after styling, another check is done so that nothing is left out to make the look as sharp as it can be.

Again, learning your lifts is no different when it comes to keeping the finer details in check. Small points like how you are holding your hookgrip, or how much your feet should be turned out, where you look etc, all play a part to make sure that you get that smooth lift you are aiming for.

3. It doesn’t matter what style you keep.

Everytime I get to sit down on the barber’s chair, Tom will ask “What can I do for you today?”. The choice is mine to make on what hairstyle I want to have. But at the same time, I also trust him to have a better picture of what suits me.

This goes hand in hand with technique. I always get questions about what technique or style is the best. My answer is always “the one what makes you comfortable and the one that you can keep consistent”. Like a new hairstyle, it may feel foreign at the beginning but the look is something you can get used to if you keep to it. Like lifting technique, some of the changes you make may feel foreign but once you keep them consistent, you will see yourself gradually and naturally moving better with it.

4. Visiting the barber regularly is good for your hair. 

Having a haircut is what will help keep your hairstyle in check. Allowing it to grow out is fine but too long and it will be too much to handle. Things like knots or split ends (and trust me I have experience with this) can easily get out of hand.

Like your lifts, having that constant feedback is key to allowing you to keep your lifts in check. Because of the reasons above, sometimes assessing yourself may not be the greatest idea and it can be good to have a different perspective. Doing so will ensure that you get to maintain the correct habits and movement patterns for smooth and easy lifts.
More importantly, being able to keep you hairstyle sharp and fresh will keep those around you happy as you can see. Like your lifts, it makes everyone including yourself and your coach happy for you to hit an effortless lift.

P.S. If you need a recommendation for a haircut, you won’t go wrong with Uncle Rocco’s in South Melbourne.

Uncle Rocco’s Barber Shop

1 Fennell Street, Port Melbourne, Victoria

Stop Making These Lifting Mistakes This New Year.

A New Year, A New You.

Many of you have New Year’s resolutions which you want to keep this year and some of them may be lifting related. Save yourself the disappointment of not being able to achieve them by preventing yourself from making these simple mistakes as you look towards the new year of training and practising your lifts.

Stop Ripping and Start Slowing Things Down.

The weightlifting movements are always perceived as movements of explosiveness and speed. Many people think that you need to be as powerful as your human potential allows you to in order for you to perform the lifts well. This leads to many making the rookie mistake of trying to “grip and rip”. Especially when you are in a setting that requires you to perform these lifts faster in order for you to “get a good time”.

He sure doesn’t pull the bar off the ground aggressively even though he gets quite aggressive in his set up. Image Credit: Hookgrip

According to Fitt’s Law, movement speed is inversely proportional to movement accuracy. This also means that if you are going to try to move the barbell fast off the ground, it means that you would have some form of compromise getting into the positions you NEED to get into in order to properly execute the correct movements in the lifts. Instead of thinking of trying to hit it hard and fast from the gecko, you may want to try to generate enough speed to overcome ertia and GRADUALLY increase momentum to the point of extension where you then move with the intent of speed.

Hip Hinge Less, Leg Drive More.

When learning the lifts, as a beginner, you will always hear that you have to bring your hips through in the extension phase of the second pull. This typically results in a more loopy bar path or a swing of the bar around the torso. More importantly, it uses more of the back or torso as a lever instead of the legs as a driving force in the vertical direction. Even when cycling repetitions, it is critical that the intention is to use the legs more than the back. Once the trunk starts fatiguing, things get messy quite quickly.

The image speaks for itself. Knowing to use your legs doesn’t mean just your hips. Image Credit: Karl Buchholtz Photography

Learning this correctly from the start will help in picking efficiency up as you will be learning to use your biggest prime movers in the body to do the work. Learn to spread the work across the glutes, hamstrings and quads (3 main muscle groups) rather than putting the stress on the erectors which are not meant to be movement generators. This will not only help get you through your training more effectively but also reduce the chance of a major injury or compensatory movements subsequently causing over-use injuries.

A Bigger Squat Doesn’t Necessarily Mean Bigger Lifts.

Being able to execute the lifts well requires a good sense of what the body is going through during the movements. This body awareness is something that takes time in training to build up and gaining it will make alot more of your assistance or accessory exercises more transferrable.

This relates alot to squatting because squatting is a major part of a weightlifter’s program. Yes, squatting well and having a big squat will definitely benefit your lifts. IF you are able to transfer that leg strength into your movement. The ability to use your legs in extension is critical and not just being able to push up a certain load. This ability of having awareness in the use of your legs will allow you to properly execute the leg drive needed for most of the propulsive components of the lifts. The mistake is that many novices embark on a squat program without this awareness and put in countless repetitions of squats and end up banging their bodies up but not achieving their eventual goal of improving their lifts.

Don’t Just Learn Technique. Learn YOUR technique.

Like a golf swing, there is no one technique that is identical to another. It is pretty awesome now that there’s so much more coverage on weightlifting and you can easily gain insight to how the top-level athletes are actually moving through media platforms. However, seeing such movements at surface level and not understanding the complexity of their style in relation to other factors such as anthropometry and training history, the rookie mistake made is to imitate and not to apply.

May look like the same point of the movement but all the positions are different. Image Credit: Hookgrip.

Learning the concepts behind movement, the reasoning behind certain positions or cues and subsequently applying it to your own lifting allows you to then make an INFORMED decision (not just a blind decision) on how you should be moving in the snatch or clean and jerk. Knowing the characteristics of your body such as your lever lengths, and even your strengths and weaknesses or physical limitations will help you make a better decision on how to move and give you a smooth path towards improvements in your lifting.

Accessorize to Maximize Your Training.

I completely understand that if you are executing most of your training in a class setting, you are basically following whatever programming is given on that day and it’s completely up to your box’s programming if you are getting what you NEED in terms of developing your movement and even body for lifting. When you first get hooked on the weightlifting movements, you will fall into the trap of just doing the main lifts and thinking that the more you practise them, the better you will get with them.

How do you think they build bodies like that? Probably not just from the full lifts. Image Credit: Hookgrip.

Sadly, you are WRONG! Not really wrong but you are not building yourself up to maximize your success in performing the lifts well. As a beginner, it is critical to understand that you need a variety of exercises related to the lifts to create as much practice and motor development opportunities within your motor control. Think of it like building up that memory bank. This helps develop that awareness for the movements as mentioned earlier. Secondly, even if you are doing some variations of the lifts in your training, you may not be prepping your body up physically to handle the physical demands of the lifts. So not only variety, but also the mundane work like mobility, stability and even hypertrophy. In simple terms and in the words of a famous strength coach with his own training system, if you want to build a massive pyramid, you need to build a big base. If you want a bigger pyramid, the base has to be bigger meaning you have to be covering more exercises first before you can begin specialising in the main lifts for the most part of your program.

Conclusion

It’s great to see that you have understood that the weightlifting movements are pretty awesome and they benefit you in many ways than just explosiveness and power. Done with the right mentality, you will be on a path of discovery, learning about yourself and what your body is capable of. Too many people look for the easy way out only to find that they have hit a dead-end. Set things right from the start and you will see yourself growing easily into the lifts with ease as you work towards your New Year resolution of being great at them this year.

4 Reasons Why You Cant Use Your Legs.

Legs. Legs. Legs. Everyone knows they need to use their legs when trying to create the drive in the second pull or the drive in their overhead movements. “I don’t feel them engage at all.” or “I can’t tell if I am using them”. These are the common reactions when I ask an individual if they know whether they are using their legs.

What are such legs for? #legsmuch?

Let’s talk about 4 possible reasons why you cant feel the strongest muscle group in your body and that is not your back.

1. You are “pulling” off the ground.

Yes, it’s indeed called the first and second pulls within a lift. However, many mistake this action as a pulling action and what happens is that the individual begins pulling the bar off the ground. This results in the use of the back or even the arms to create the initial drive off the floor.

Are you using your legs or your back here?

If you are guilty of this, try focusing on feeling your feet as you move the bar off the ground. Feel like you can spread them out and push into the ground. This will help you begin the movement and engagement of the legs right from the beginning. Yes. It becomes a push with your legs off the ground to get the bar moving.

2. You are pushing off the ground too quickly.

Yes. You may be using your legs to overcome inertia and come off the ground. However, you are thinking of hitting it hard right from the ground and realise you don’t really feel the leg drive happening when it comes to the second pull. Try jumping up as high as possible from the bottom of the squat position. In order for you to generate as much force and as much height as possible, you do not do the violent push with the legs till you come up to a certain height. That is where the range of the lower limb joints are at its strongest to create as much joint extension velocity as possible.

If you are guilty of this, try slowing down the initial portion of the lift. It should feel like you have the ability to accelerate once the bar begins reaching mid-thigh level (for the snatch) or above the knees (for the clean). Slowing the first pull of the lift also helps ensure that you are getting into good positions and you are timing the second pull right. When more proficient with this, that’s where you can add more speed to your first pull and still have the acceleration or explosiveness when the second pull begins.

3. You think too much “hips” and too little “knees”.

If you look at the position of the joints within the body, there seems to be a sequence when trying to generate force and transfer that force to an object that you are trying to displace. Take a shot put throw for example. Upon anchoring the support foot onto the ground, the drive is initiated from the legs into the hips and transferred through the torso and shoulders before the arms follow through to drive the shot put into the distance. Very similar to the lifts is this kinematic sequencing of joints. The force is driven into the ground from the feet, through the legs, then the torso and lastly the shoulders to create momentum on the bar. If the sequence is lost in between, that joint can no longer contribute to the summation of force. The contribution of the knees not only help drive more force into the bar but drive the bar in the right direction (i.e. vertical instead of horizontal with just the hips).

If done properly, knees should be fully extended as well as the hips come through.

If you are guilty of this, you should try doing some squat jumps with a very short counter movement but still with the intention of generating as much height as possible. The burning sensation you begin to feel in your quads after a decent amount of reps gives you an idea of you properly using your legs which you should be feeling within your lifts.

4. You are knowingly or unknowingly doing too much with your feet.

I know I mentioned that you need to feel your feet when you initiate movement off the ground. The common error with weight distribution is that the individual needs to feel that the weight gets shifted around within the feet (i.e. from the balls of the feet to the heels, back to the balls of the feet before extension). Imagine that combined centre of mass being physically over the base of support. If it is shifting back and forth as much as I have described, what do you think the muscles and structures in the body are doing to maintain that in the center or from hitting the extreme limits of the base of support? All that effort to keep the balance while moving the weight up can be directed more to actually moving the weight up instead of trying to pull the body back centered.

Gif credit to b-reddy.org

If you are guilty of this, try thinking of your jumping mechanics and feel where you get to put out the most amount of force when going for a vertical jump. Most of the time, it should be on the balls of the feet. How to get this feeling in your regular weightlifting movements? Do the drill that everyone has been on and using to feel your legs. Heels off the edge and do your pulls from there. Nothing new about that.

Conclusion

Learn to engage those springs within your body known as your legs. They are designed to act as hinge joints and in a synergistic manner, easily propel the torso in a vertical direction which is key to force transference to the barbell for the lifts.

Want to learn more? I am running a workshop talking about the second pull and how to transition under the bar at Crossfit 3039 this Saturday at 10.30am (Melbourne Time). At the same time, come down and listen to Anurag from Crossfit 3039 explain and demonstrate how that same transition is applicable to the muscle up.

http://e.mybookingmanager.com/MuscleUp-Snatch-Workshop