Getting Started with Olympic Weightlifting
Olympic lifting is a major part of collegiate and professional track and field training.
Various studies have shown a correlation to elite athletic performance and training with Olympic lifts. The explosiveness of these lifts increases an athlete’s speed and power. Throwers, sprinters, and jumpers can all benefit from the muscle activation and force development from performing the lifts.
If you have never done Olympic lifts, but you are looking forward to get started this article is for you. There are three important areas to focus on: safety & pre-requirements, the mechanics, and properly planning your workout.
Safety & Pre-Reqs
Make sure to check with your coaches, trainers, and doctors, as you would for any physical training, before trying Olympic lifting.
Flexibility
Athletes need to have enough flexibility to go through the motions of Olympic lifts. Often times, extra flexibility will be needed in the shoulders, hips, ankles, and hamstrings.
Some stretches to do regularly to increase flexibility are the Twist & Lunge, Cossack Squats, and Shoulder Rotations. As you train, areas that need more improvement will become more apparent.
Focus on flexibility after your muscles have been warmed-up. This means you stretch generally before you focus on flexibility (that’s right, you stretch before you stretch).
When you are trying to become more flexible, do not start by dropping into the splits! To increase your flexibility, attempt small increases and never make any sudden moves.
You can develop flexibility after a warm-up (before you lift) and immediately after lifting is over. At these points, the muscles are warmed-up and respond well to stretching movements. You should not focus on increasing your flexibility while lifting (this goes for any training in general).
Equipment
Wear proper shoes. For beginners, these are clean gym sneakers that provide enough foot support, cover the entire foot, are flexible, and have about a 1” heel. As you progress to higher weights, you may want to invest in weightlifting shoes which have a more defined heel and better grip.
Know your equipment. Check that you are using the correct bar for your training. A standard bar is 20.4 kg (45lbs), but there is also a lighter 15.8 kg (35 lbs) bar. When attaching weights to the bar, make sure they are even and correctly attached. This is extremely important because you will be moving the weights around rapidly.
Missing
When you are first walking through how to do each lift, learn how to properly drop the weights or “miss” if you cannot successfully complete the lift. This is extremely important because as your weight on the bar starts to increase you must be able to make sure you don’t injure yourself.
Spotting
Do not lift alone! Ever! Every time you lift make sure you have a spotter who knows what they are doing to help support you if you miss. They will also be able to point out bad lifting techniques.
Stop Immediately Signs
Never continue to lift if your form is falling apart.
If you feel abnormal pain or sudden hurting, make sure to stop lifting immediately. Do not continue to do reps while you are hurt.
Proper Mechanics
There are a lot of different types of Olympic lifts and even more variations of them. The three major categories are the clean, snatch, and jerk.
In the snatch, the athlete lifts the weight from the floor to above their head in a single motion. In a clean, the weight is moved from the floor to the shoulders. In a jerk, the barbell is moved from the floor to the shoulders, then raised over their heads. All these moves can be performed at immense weights with rapid speed by elite weightlifters.
Split Clean and Jerk at 2018 Summer Youth Olympics
Before your run to the gym and grab a barbell, you must have the proper form. USA Weightlifting Safety Advice notes that most injuries that occur through Olympic lifting are as a result of “improper training, poor technique and/or improper use of, or faulty, equipment.” These are preventable with proper mechanics!
Proper position and form are a must to get the best benefits of Olympic lifts. Important positions to practice are a proper front squat, back (normal squat), deadlift, and weightlifting posture.
Proper weightlifting posture protects the back from extreme stress, exerts force efficiently, and prevents injury. Bad habits picked up in the beginning are very hard to correct later on.
To practice proper form, start by using a stick to go through the proper positions. When moving through the positions, pay attention to grip, foot position, and shoulder placement.
As a track athlete, you should use a stick until you have the basic form. If you want to focus exclusively on weightlifting, you might spend more time using a stick/bar to make sure your form is top notch. After you have established the proper form using a stick, you can progress to the bar. Then, you will start adding weight!
Proper Form Means:
Chest Up
Shoulders Back & Natural Lower Back Arc (Back is not hunched)
Head is upright with Eyes looking straight ahead
Practice this posture by focusing on these key aspects. Practice this posture in different positions by doing it while sitting in a chair, standing, and tilting your torso forward.
Finally, a really important part of proper weightlifting mechanics is proper grip. The Standard grip and the Hook grip are two key grips. In the standard grip, the thumb wraps around the bar in one direction (back to front), while the fingers wrap around the bar in the opposite direction (back to front). In the hook grip, the thumb is hooked around the bar, the index finger wraps around the thumb, and the other three fingers wrap around the bar. When starting off, spend time with your coach, trainer, or partner making sure you have a good grip. This will increase the amount you can lift and will help keep you safe.
Record
Recording your workout is critical to developing your strengths and assessing your weakness as an athlete.
When you do Olympic lifts, diligently record the intensity/percentage of your lifts, the intervals, the reps, and the different types of lifts.
To calculate the percentage your lifted in comparison to your max, use this equation:
Percentage = weight lifted/ max lift
For example, if your max split clean is 140 lbs, and you did 3 X 4 split cleans at 100 lbs, you lifted at 71% of your max.
Athletes competing in different events will want do various lifts at different sets and different intervals. Jumpers may perform more reps at lower percentages than throwers. Some nice variations for jumpers are Hang cleans, Hang clean pulls, and Split Cleans. Sprinters also really benefit from the Power Snatch.
Making sure that you record your lifts diligently will help you translate your work in the gym to faster times and longer distances on the track.
Overall, Olympic lifting is a MUST if you wish to improve you power, strength, and explosiveness as an athlete. When you start out make sure to focus on the Safety & Athletic Pre-requirements, focus on developing proper Mechanics, and Record all your workouts diligently and accurately.
