Barbell Shrugged - 52- Olympic Weightlifting with Zach and Sarah Krych - Barbell Shrugged EPISODE 52

Episode Date: March 20, 2013

On this episode of the Barbell Shrugged podcast, Mike and Chris interview National Level Olympic Weightlifter Zach Krych and his wife Sarah.  We discuss Zach's story, teaching the lifts, the OLY lifts in CrossFit and more! http://www.BarbellShrugged.com

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we sit with Zach Critch, weightlifting champion, and Sarah Critch, exercise physiologist, awesome CrossFit coach, weightlifting coaching extraordinaire. And we learn more about weightlifting. We do. Chaka-bras! Yo, this is CTP and you're listening to the Barbell Shrug Podcast, the number one strength and conditioning podcast for CrossFitter. If you want to check out the video version, which you should,

go to Fitter.TV and watch that because it's way cooler than just listening. And how do you spell Fitter.TV there, Mr. Budso? F-I-T-R.TV. He's a good speller. All right, while you're there, definitely go and sign up for the newsletter. As part of signing up for the newsletter, you'll get a video that Mike made where he shows you the top seven snatch mistakes that you're probably making that are keeping you from hitting that next PR and lifting some big weight. Yeah, look at the seminars, tune into the show,

and get ready to become a more awesomer version of you. We give you the tools you need to succeed. You become a tool. Hey, guys. Mike Bledsoe here with Barbell Shrugged. Got Chris Moore here to co-host as well. I'm always here co-hosting, most of the time. Unless I leave town.

Doug is not with us. Doug is in Colorado having a good time skiing and snowboarding. We have our guests, Zach and Sarah Critch. Weightlifter over here. Sarah's a weightlifter as well. Crossfitter.

Weightlifter, crossfitter. Crossfit coach. Weightlifting, crossfit coach. What's the correct order? She's like, it's not crossfit, weightlifter. It's weightlifter, crossfitter. That's the correct. Weightlifting CrossFit coach. What's the correct order? Yeah. She's like, it's not CrossFit weightlifter. It's weightlifter CrossFitter. It depends on the week. Weightlifting was first. Weightlifter came first.

Who cuts you the biggest check? I think it's CrossFit. Probably CrossFit. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't make any money off of weightlifting when I was a weightlifter. Real quick. We're going to cut to a video right now.

Oh, really? Yes. Cool. A video of Zach. A little bit of history about his weightlifting career. For those of you that are listening on iTunes and you can't see the video, you might want to go to the website and check it out. It's about, how long is it, Chris? Eight, ten minutes?

Yeah. Yeah, and if you get bored, which you won't, you can skip forward and you can catch the rest of the podcast. So enjoy. I'm going to take a break. Hang on. Hang on. All right. Well, that was good.

So this is a little edit point. You're going to... Yeah. Okay. Holy shit, that was amazing. So everyone, replay the movie in your mind. We'll give a clap, right? Just what you guys did?

Or the one I... James. Yeah. Okay. So your video is the last section of it, basically. That video's been seen a bunch, right? That's pretty awesome. You want to do a three, two, one?

Three, two, one. All right, we're back. I hope you enjoyed that. The magic of editing. That's right. None of us watched that. We probably should have. It would have had a much better effect on us.

I have no idea what happened. We saw it yesterday. That's the end of the story. How many times have you seen that video, Zach? Oh, man. I don't know. 30? 30?

Yeah. And now, I mean, the first couple times, the injury was like, ugh, don't want to watch. I might say that this is now, I don't want to say notorious, but well-known story. Like, I was perusing the Googles,

and I came across just last week this little interview at some i don't know her name some online blogger fitness enthusiast you know she was doing an interview with john bros you may i don't know you know and she goes jen sinclair you're you're you're you came up i don't remember the context but i don't think she's like oh yeah i went to the seminar pretty good this that and the other and she goes hey do you know that guy john's like, oh, yeah, I went to a seminar. Pretty good. This, that, and the other. And she goes, hey, do you know that guy? And John's like, oh, do you mean like wrist fracture guy? Yeah.

Broken wrist guy. Probably Mr. Broken Wrist. Double wrist broken. Mr. Broken Wrist. We've met several times. I mean, he knows. Yeah, he knows. But apparently that's what he calls me now.

That's cool. That's what my mom calls me. I mean, really. Yeah, I think it was all John. I think John. Yeah. John's a good guy. Oh, yeah.

So for those that didn't get to watch the video that are just listening, just give us a history on your weightlifting career, how you got into weightlifting, and maybe talk shortly about your wrist injury. Yeah. Well, I started when I was 16. I was a junior in high school, and it was crazy. We actually had an Olympic weightlifting team in my high school where we

had about 50 guys and 50 girls training yeah we had a strength coach who loved the lifts you could take a strength and conditioning class and he would teach you the snatch and clean and jerk and then we would have the only guy in the country doing it yeah pretty much it needs to be more widespread but yeah and so i would go in there on my lunch break. I would go in there after school and we'd have state championships and it was tons of fun. I got to go out

to the Olympic Training Center. This was all in Minnesota. I got to move out. I got to visit the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, watch a bunch of girls outlift me

and it was just like, oh, this is where I want to be. This is motivating. It's a big moment in all of our lives. I definitely want to be outlifted by women on a regular basis.

That are in lighter weight classes. Yeah yeah it was just awesome to watch the technique and the speed and everything so uh about senior in high school and a year after graduating actually i became good enough to move out to the olympic training center they said they'd move me out for four months i was out there for about nine years and i was training full time um but parted away through that in 2008 i gave an old lady a double high five and she was really strong and snapped both my wrists except it was 2009 2009 you're right that was a fit no i was doing cleans from below the knee for triples so you lift up the weight and then you clean it, but then lower it down to below the knee. You don't let it touch the ground, obviously.

You just reverse it? Yep, yep. You do it. And you do it three times. But I'm lowering it down. I'm not able to hang on to the bar. Usually it falls out. Because he was doing triples with 352 pounds, which makes it difficult.

At a very light body weight. Yeah. It makes it hard to hang on to it. Pretty impressive, of course. Yeah. So I caught my third one. It was a personal record attempt with that kind of exercise. I caught my third one as deep as I possibly could have caught it,

all the way back to my heels. And the momentum was just going to push me backwards. Because I was strapped in, so I would recommend not strapping in on cleans. Now, in hindsight, this is obvious. In hindsight, yeah. At the time, it seemed like the thing to do. Yeah. If I want to do this exercise. And I've still seen a lot of people.

Okay, well, I was falling back. I couldn't dump the weight because of the straps. I then panicked, which are not the straps' fault, and I put my elbows back to kind of brace me. Because I remember as i was falling i was thinking this bar is gonna land in my mouth guillotine yeah well it's on your neck at that point so i mean if as you're falling back the thought is it's gonna crush my neck it's gonna crush my teeth yeah i thought i was gonna knock all my teeth out and i mean obviously i have

perfect teeth and it won't do that, I guess, because it's going to clear your head if you just relax. Because the weights are large enough. It's easy to say, just relax and let the bar, a 350-pound bar pass over your face when it hasn't happened before.

It's like, relax. It's just a fist fight. Until you get punched like 100 times, you can't relax at the idea of getting punched. Well, and I've fallen backwards before and kept my elbows up and been cool with it. So you can clean with straps, fall backwards, and be

totally safe keeping your elbows up. I'm not going to blame this. Why did you do it that time if you'd done it before? It's a mistake. I was wedged so deep. Unacceptable. I want an answer. I messed up. I made John North cry on this show. You're next.

Poor John. I know he didn't cry. I just keep saying that. It'll stick. I was going to say, most of the time I'm talking to John, he's crying. So it's not a bad thing. It's tears of joy, though. Just a happy guy.

I don't know why I panicked that time and stuff. I was like, well, it'd be cool to have a cool comeback story. Maybe I'll just let myself get hurt. I do remember. Every great athlete needs a comeback. But it's hard to be the best weightlifter because there's lots of awesome weightlifters. But if you can be the guy who totally fucked himself

and you come back and you get really good, then you've set yourself apart. It's a very good strategy. It's very marketable. Yeah, that's what happened. So take that advice and you guys should try it. Fracture yourself, Mike. Devastating injury.

I just saw a hammer. Let me hammer your face. It can't be like a blown ACL. I mean, it has to be like really. It has to be novel to catch people's attention. Who snaps both wrists at the same time? You're like the only guy I know. Yeah, it's not.

Yeah, I don't know of anybody else. Yeah, and I will say the big problem was they were dislocated, which tore the ligaments. I did break the bones, but it's easier just to say broke the wrists. You just ripped your hands apart. And the cartilage was sheared off and stuff. But I was going to say something. I just forgot what that was.

So what was the question you had? All right, well, I'm going to ask something. I just forgot what that was. So what was the question you had? All right. Well, I'm going to ask you. You remember? Well, you didn't finish how the injury happened. You fell back with the weight in your wrist. The weight stayed in my hands. My elbows hit the ground.

So my arms were wedged between the weight and the ground, and it snapped both the wrists back. I fell back into this floor press position where there's just no escape from the bone. It's just axially loaded rapidly, and it's going to be problematic. That's what I was going to say. I yelled ouch when it happened. As the bar was snapping, I was like, ouch! And the bar rolled off. Oh, geez, that's

bad. Shucks. And I remember him telling me later that at the time he was thinking, I'm not going to be able to shake this off because you do things that are uncomfortable or they hurt pretty frequently when you're lifting. But the mindset there is, I think I'm done lifting for today. That's the end of my workout at this point.

Reminds me of the old discussion with the high school football coaches. Are you injured or are you hurt? This is an injury. This is not shaking this off. I shaking this off i'm done i'm done yeah it didn't hurt for about 20 minutes afterwards until about 20 minutes afterwards oh yeah did you get up and you're like okay something's weird here but uh actually the first well i remember one of the things i thought as i was struggling on the ground was like it was crazy it was like okay god what am i to do now like how do you want me to act in this situation? And then the next thought was, save that video that recorded.

Yeah. Save that clip. Yeah. And then we walked down to the sports medicine place at the Olympic Training Center. They took x-rays. And I remember cracking jokes and stuff like that and really being, it's all good. It'll be fine. Then some guy behind the screen gasps.

Oh, God. Actually, a shoulder specialist saw the x-rays and was like, something's wrong here. And he called a wrist specialist who was driving by the Olympic Training Center at the time. So he was there within minutes of the injury. It was awesome. He was meant to be.

Well, then he went to the hospital. That made all the difference was the immediate care. If it had been the next day, he probably never would have lifted the wrist specialist is like my medical training tells me these bones are supposed to be touching yeah and i'm out yeah so uh can you tell us a little bit about your weightlifting career um on the platform and i mean it's a comeback story yeah but uh what were your best I mean you've been in Olympic trials and stuff like that what what's your most notable um achievements well before my injury it was being a resident at the Olympic Training Center and winning some competitions

but afterwards I was able to win my first national championship. I've won the World University Championships. That was before the injury. That was the year before. I've been on the World Championship team. I've been on the Pan Am team. You got best lifter at the American Open after your injury. She knows your history better than you. Yeah.

Yeah, you do it for 13 years. a lot of stuff kind of runs together. It starts to run together. But I would say my best lifts were 152-kilogram snatch, about 335. And then my best – I was the strongest in 2012 to make this last Olympic team. That was my best shot. It was also the worst – the amount of olympians we've ever sent on the men's team ever which was one sucks yeah in 96 we said in 1996 we sent 10 athletes but that's not possible anymore right and then 2006 and then 2004 three going down and

then 2008 two and then 2012 one out of all the weight classes yeah for those of you that are not familiar with the rules with sending Olympic athletes and Olympic weightlifters, it gets kind of funky. I can't explain exactly how it works. I know it has to do with how well you do at the Worlds and stuff like that, and how many lifters you're going to be allowed. But then how you qualify also gets kind of funky too. Yeah, as a country, it's hard to qualify. The nice thing about this sport is, I mean, we can rank the heaviest guy

in the heaviest weight class against the lightest guy just kind of through because it's all a numbers thing, how much are they lifting compared to their body weight or compared to what a gold medal would have been. So it's pretty fair. There's not any subjective judging like in gymnastics so i'd like it's very clear cut right this girl's got a better face for the camera she's going on tv yeah that's definitely not how they're picking them wow was that like a shot at like that was how good looking weightlifters are internationally. Sarah, tell us a little bit about your your history and where you're you coach at a CrossFit gym and you've done some weightlifting and whatnot.

Yeah, I kind of came into this very much on an accident. When I met Zach, I didn't even know what Olympic weightlifting was. I had moved out to the Olympic Training Center in 2004 to do an internship in the sport physiology lab. I was finishing up my master's degree in exercise physiology. We share the same background. There you go. There you go. It's a great field. Only now I use my education to tell dick jokes on the radio.

Oh, well. It's earning a living. Whatever gets you by. There you go. They actually moved me into the dorms next door to Zach when I got there for my internship. And then I ended up, while I was there, we were doing a ton of work with the weightlifting team. We did body fat analysis and vertical jump and hydration analysis and isometric pulls. And so I ended up being in the weight room with them three of the days a week, at least, for like two, three hours at a time.

And the first time I ever saw somebody doing a snatch, it was like Natalie Bergner doing snatches. And, you know, first time ever seeing clean and jerks, it was Pete Kelly doing clean and jerks. These phenomenal lifters. Moving at speeds that are just foreign to you. It was crazy. Just absolutely graceful lifting. It's like what you said last week. You don't really understand whale things.

You've seen somebody at a high level just do it in front of your eyes. Exactly. Damn. Like you think you're moving fast until you see a weightlifter move. And you're like, whoa, I was moving in slow motion. It's just a totally different movement. So that kind of got me interested. And then over the course of the next year, I went ahead and got my USA weightlifting cert, got through that weekend. I was like,

that was awesome. I still have no idea what I'm doing, even though now I'm certified to coach it. So I was like, I need to actually train in this if I'm going to be able to help anybody else. So I actually worked with the national coach at the Olympic Training Center for the next year and a half. Paul Fleschler, who was also coaching the weightlifting team, trained five days a week with him for the next year and a half. And then working 60 hours a week started to interfere with that training schedule. But I continued lifting on my own, and I was always better at doing kind of the repetitions

as opposed to the single lifts. I was like, I can do my best snatch for a set of five, but I can't do a kilo more than my best snatch. Like, what the heck? So then I started learning about CrossFit. I was like, this is perfect. Yeah, it is. This is a great mix.

I already know the lifting. I've got a good strength base, and now I can use it kind of more toward my gifts and abilities. And I've learned that, you probably have a lot to say about this, but I've learned to sort of give up the, I wouldn't call it dogma, but the strict, you don't do reps on those lifts.

That's sacred ground, you son of a bitch. You don't do 10 reps in the snatch. You go, you know what? And I would have probably agreed a couple years ago, but now I'm to the point where I'm seeing like, guys like Rich and Asia and some of the girls girls when they're doing like a snatch ladder clean ladder or like a bunch of reps in a snatch of clean they're doing it really well now it's hard to say like and they're doing loads of work and they're getting fabulous physiological adaptations

from i'm like you know what if you can do it that well i got nothing else to say about it i probably wouldn't recommend a pure Olympic weightlifter doing that. No. It completely depends on the goal. And Olympic weightlifting is so specific. If you're going to get to that maximal load, you're going to rest for three minutes and then you're going to do it once. But for CrossFit, I mean, yeah, you can keep that form. That's why you do the 300 for 30 for time, which is pretty dope.

Yeah, 300-pound grace. That had to feel pretty interesting. That was cool. It was really tough. And the entire time I was doing it, there was, we were at a 24-hour fitness

and there was a glass window. People were like, what in the shit is this guy doing? With people sitting in the hot tub. Old people sitting in the hot tub

facing me and one guy about three reps in walks up. You had bumpers at a 24-hour fitness? Yeah, they had a platform. This was in Colorado Springs, so they had donated,

because they were a sponsor for the Olympic team. That's great, because then you can go get in the hot tub after. With the old guys. That's what I wanted to do. This big old guy walked up, and he basically was facing me, just looking at me pressed up against the glass the whole 15 minutes, just staring at me. And afterwards, he's like, what were you doing?

How many reps did you do? Putting 300 pounds overhead 30 times in a row. That that was 30 times that was a huge amount of work yeah like if you calculated out the work of that is just how long did it take you to do with 300 pounds for 30 reps it was right at 1803 1803 i think that's what it was beat that at that body weight yeah Yeah At that body weight Yeah That's another thing Because then like Spencer did it

I saw him Yeah Spencer did it He did it faster But he's a super right Yeah and he's And the guy's a freak athlete And he's huge and fat I mean but

Do it at that body weight I think I But the guy I think I leaned up Zach's was prettier How about that Spencer was like Pretty much 300 pounds

Right I think he's leaned up now though He's lighter now What Not at the time Not at the time now, though. He's lighter now. Not at the time. Not at the time. He's big.

Yeah. It was. Yeah, that video was crazy. You need to go on YouTube and search. It was funny because I'll be doing a couple reps in, and I get tired and I'd sit on my weights in the middle of grace. Yeah. Most crossfitters are trying to, like, they're standing up. Weightlifters, when we rest, like, we sit down.

Yeah. I'd have to yell at my athletes, like, sit down. I've kind of drug him into CrossFit a little bit. Once he retired, I was like, yes, we can finally work out together as opposed to me going and working out for a couple hours and him going and working out for a couple hours in separate locations. I remember one of the first workouts we did together involved wall balls, and it was a lot of wall balls, and I hate wall balls.

That fucked you up for a week. But he's doing wall balls, and I look over, and he's sitting on his medicine ball. I'm like, what are you doing? You got like 40 yards. I'm recovering. I did 10. I'm taking a break.

I'm like, you can't sit in the middle of a CrossFit one. But now I coach CrossFitters on Olympic weight. I got the same story as you because that day McGordick started yelling at me 10 reps into the 150 wall ball shots. I go, I'm tired tired and you're screaming at me come on only 140 to go yeah i'm just retarded wait there's only 140 oh sweet yeah i didn't walk i didn't walk straight for a week after yeah then i do the opposite with the crossfitters because they come to the olympic weightlifting class that i'm coaching and they want to take 10 reps before

they put their bar down i'm like put, put the bar down. Sit down. 20 seconds later, they're back at their bar. I'm like, no. You're at 90% of your max. Sit down. Quit trying to work so hard. I'm like, this is not our time. This is not touch and go. Just sit. I love the passion

and the eagerness that we see there. They're such hard workers. It's awesome. Most CrossFitters try to sit in the bottom of a squat for longer than 10 seconds. That can be challenging. That's usually mobility, though. Yeah. Or just not used to sitting at the bottom of a squat. You take a weightlifter and they'll sit there for five minutes.

Yeah. They'll sit and roast marshmallows like that. Yeah. That's a segue towards, know i guess a common discussion of what crosswords may do wrong what can be improved yeah i mean actually you know what i gotta bring this up though because i should have brought up the very very beginning is you guys are here on spring break yes well technically spring i got the tickets for the wrong week so he's getting an extra long spring break that's awesome yeah you're a good it all works out there you go so but just the other day we uh got together and the two of you

are how how often do you guys do it i mean i'm gonna get back to what we were talking about. We were talking about, I was wanting to talk about seminars, weightlifting seminars. And they put on, I actually think it's really cool they do the weightlifting seminars together. You all make a good team when you're kind of approaching it in tandem, go back and forth. I've been to a lot of weightlifting seminars and i thought that was really cool so you guys do that pretty regularly and you came in this week and we actually filmed yes uh a seminar we we actually did a seminar for video for the barbell shrug uh audience we did and it was awesome that wasn't that't a question, so I don't know. How often do you guys do these seminars?

We started doing them in Colorado. We only got probably three or four of them, maybe four in Colorado. And then when we moved to Minneapolis, we did – we've done three in the last three months, and we've got another one next month. So about once a month or once every six weeks is kind of what we're looking at right now yeah they've all they've all sold out and i mean they've been had great feedback and they've gone extremely well uh we don't want to it's not our main job obviously doing this we want to kind of keep it every six weeks is pretty pretty good for us but we don't have the ability to be flying around we don't really want to be going across

the country well we should probably say that one of the main reasons for that is because Zach's in veterinary school now. He doesn't have the flexibility. You mentioned being on spring break. We can't travel like we did when he was in weightlifting because he's in school Monday through Friday from 8 to 5. You probably have homework. I have. Oh, my goodness. All kinds of animal homework.

I need to be studying for an organology exam right now. But I'm doing this. But I think that we talk about the strength of bears on this program. All the time. All the time. And we actually had a discussion on the last podcast about muscle physiology of bears, myofibular density, and possibly... They're beasts. And just the fact they have claws,

and how you probably shouldn't try to do battle with a bear. Bears do have claws. We learned that. It's on the first test. Bears, claws or no? Damn it, I should have remembered this. You're thinking back to your teddy bears. I don't know, my teddy bear didn't have claws. I'm not sure. I go, trick answer, motherfucker. to your teddy bears. Multiple choice. My teddy bear didn't have claws. I'm not sure. I go, trick answer, motherfucker. It was panda bears.

They only have little scratchy claws. Not razor sharp claws. I heard panda bears can be pretty tough, actually. Yeah. Pretty mean. Polar bears are supposed to be the worst ones. Yeah. They're vicious.

Did you see the video? To digress, there's a video on YouTube of a guy in a, what he hoped was a polar bear proof glass case. Glass. It's on. It's like a bulletproof glass case with a chair. He sits in it. And then a ravenous, hungry bear comes to the cube and tries to get in to kill him. And he's got a camera and he videotapes it.

The bear just banging, banging, banging the glass, warping and bending. This thing's sniffing at the corners because he can smell his scent coming out and he's like trying to claw into it.

You gotta watch that. That sounds awesome. That would be terrifying. You gotta watch that. Why would you do that to yourself? I do want to watch that. He's probably got

a million views on YouTube and he's making some money off of that. That's probably true. He should have squeezed all his food through his air holes. But yeah,

it's a fascinating topic how cat muscle physiology, bear muscle physiology differs from ours in implications for performance. Cats are probably the most amazing example. Yeah. Just rapid fire. I saw you post something like a year ago. Maybe it was like six months ago on Facebook about muscle physiology of an animal.

Yeah. Or maybe it was somebody else. I will say there's been two or three times in class. I subscribe to your feed. I want to know what Zach's doing. During lecture, they'll be talking about muscle physiology and I saw Yuri Vardanian pop up

on the slides who's one of the best Olympic weightlifters ever in the history of Olympic weightlifting and they're showing Olympic weightlifting in my school and then there's some other guy doing a split clean. It was a really old picture. Were you like, you know I'm one of the best in the United States, right? I went and talked to the professor and told him,

I know that guy, or I knew his son. Oh, wow. Fascinating stuff. But I might ask about the seminars. Do you guys have a unique, there's lots of people doing seminars. What's your angle? What's your pitch? Is it targeted to Cross to crossfitters common mistakes is it just your novel take on the lifts uh do you keep it kind of standard we keep it targeted to crossfitters and

and their mistakes and common mistakes that's very cool that's different slant one of the things that i'm i'm so happy that sarah's here doing these seminars with me because she brings a lot of the the physiological background that i'm still learning about, especially when it comes to getting into a proper overhead squat and how to fix those problems, which, you know, I knew what people couldn't do it right, but. Well, you had a good coach in high school. You probably just always was able to do it. Cause I got corrected those mistakes early on. And you're just like, what?

Can't everybody just do this? I don't get it. Yeah. That's kind of, that's kind of the mentality in lifting circles. What do you mean you can't squat? Meanwhile, you'd watch me do it and go, Jesus Christ, where do I begin? Why can't you just arch your back? So try. So we start the seminars with a big portion of Sarah.

I mean, you could explain it, what you do in the beginning. Yeah, so one of the things that I've appreciated about CrossFit is their emphasis on range of motion and making sure that people get through the full range of motion. And so for a CrossFitter, range of motion on a squat is the hip crease below the height of the knee, which is twice as far as most people are going down when they're in the standard gyms. It's ass to grass by my old piloting definition.

Yeah, and that's great. That's progress but when you compare a cross-fitting squat with that definition of range of motion compared to an olympic lifting squat the olympic lifters are getting five six inches deeper in that bottom squat position which requires even more mobility it requires even more stability and so you get crossfitters that come in they think they're doing full range of motion squats and they're like i'm at the bottom of my squat and like no you got another five inches down there they're also untrained in that range of motion so exactly terminal hamstring function not not there and not trying so you catch a clean and you start sinking down you wonder why you bail

and you feel like you're exactly or trying to drop into a snatch and you've never even been to the bottom of an overhead squat before despite you just freak thought. And you're like, I can't get down there. You can't get down there fast enough. So even for the people that have the flexibility to get there, a lot of times they don't, they don't feel stable. They don't feel comfortable. You feel like they're going to fall backwards. They're going to fall. Uh, and then for a lot of people, they don't have the flexibility to get down there to begin with. And so they're trying to do snatches and they're trying to get under the bar quickly. But if you're fighting for that range of motion and fighting for every inch on the way down, you can't fight fast enough to get there when you need to get there.

So we spend about the first hour looking at how to actually get in those positions. And it's not one of those, oh, if you don't have that range of motion, just do what you can currently do until you get stronger and more flexible, because that's not helpful to people. They're like, I don't know how to get stronger in that position. I don't know how to get more flexible in that position. So we look a lot at corrective exercises and helping people. I love watching. I mean, people will come in who can barely get the 90 and then Sarah will do a couple exercises, a couple of techniques or tricks and get them into a full squat. I'm a magician.

I was watching this on Wednesday when we were filming that and I learned some new tricks. I'm not paying for this seminar either. I thought I knew everything and then Sarah taught me. These were your athletes and all of them came in already very good.

Pretty good. I found our worst athletes. I'm just kidding. And then Sarah taught me. These were your athletes and all of them came in already very, very good. Pretty good. Squatters, pretty good lifters. I found our worst athletes. I'm just kidding. They're all listening to this like, man, Mike's a dick. They embarrassed me, but I let them do it anyway. No, they actually did really well. So that's one of the big things because if we have people come in and they're wanting to learn how to snatch

and they can't get into an overhead squat, they're just going to get really, really frustrated. Especially, I love how Sarah gets the muscles activated to stabilize them through the range of motion versus always people thinking, oh, it's just a flexibility thing. I've got to stretch more. And that was a common myth, I guess, I would see a lot. And that definitely comes into play, but that's not the whole story.

I like the attitude. It's like, first things first. You can't just get frustrated and go, oh, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing. I'm going to try to just get there. No, you got to back off. Just choose the one thing that requires the most focus and then work it until you got it covered. Until you're comfortable.

And it seems slow and frustrating up front. But if you choose the other thing that seems more rewarding immediately, you never, nothing ever changes. You just keep snatching in a shitty way. Exactly. And then we start, then we move on to the snatch because we've now done the overhead squat. We do some overhead squat versions of the snatch balance, drop snatch, some exercises. But then we teach basically how most people teach the snatch, which is starting in kind of reverse order. You don't go from the ground right away.

You go from at the hip and then above the knee and then below the knee to above the knee. You break it out into manageable portions that you can put together into the full lift but we specifically work on in the snatch one of the most common mistakes we see is people not making contact with the bar in the hip like in the right spot when i ask a group of 30 people how many of you make contact in the in in this spot on the same spot, a hundred percent of the time on every single snatch, like raise your hand. If you do usually nobody raises their hand. And we're looking at like 50% of the people being coaches and very good, very good crossfitters.

And they're like, they're not make contact. What? But if I were to ask at national championships when the U S away lifting, who does that? Everybody touch makes contact in the exact same spot. time the snatches it's just obvious or it's it's become so routine and so getting people to do that is it's probably as common as you put the bar in the same spot every time you squat it's probably it gets ingrained exactly that's just where it goes we're talking about it would go somewhere else would you do and there's so many benefits from doing that um from making contact in the right

spot that's where the power really comes from is from that contact you also know when you're done pulling right after you make that contact so then you can go under the bar versus keep pulling keep pulling when do i drop um there's just so many benefits that's the signal to say i should probably start pulling down with my arms instead of trying to pull up. Exactly. Right. Exactly. And it's impossible to pull up on the bar with your arms and pull yourself down under the bar at the same time.

The instant the bar comes off that crease. You're going down. It's not going to, you're not going to add any else to the upward motion. So get your ass underneath. I'm confused. No, all right. Let's take a break real quick.

And when we come back somewhere, John screaming, tell him to fuck the bar. Hit it. Slam it with your pelvis.

The brakes. Is that what he said? Pretty much. Yeah. Well, Superman Archangel. Maybe not that

extreme. Tom Brady on a white horse. All right. He's so funny. Yeah, when we come back, we'll talk more about weightlifting techniques. Cool. Hey, guys.

This is Rich Froning, and you're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to fitter.tv. All right. We're back. And we're back. With Zach and Sarah. Yow. Wow.

Hey, now. 12 p.m. on a Friday. Sunny Friday in Memphis. Beautiful day. Yuck, yuck, yuck. Zach, you were talking about the things you go over in the seminar. What is it that people, what is it you look for for people to be doing when they leave the seminar?

What are some things that if you're not doing these things, then you're probably screwing up big time. Full range of motion in an overhead squat. Hip contact. Hip, yeah, contact with the bar on the hip. We really stress the rack position for the clean, the jerk, the front squat, push press, thrusters. Whenever you're doing a bar here, what a good rack position is

and how to get there. And so if we can have people doing those three things and also proper position when the bar is at the knee is really, really key because people are trying to make contact here, but everything below that has to be, there's some basic things that have to be correct for you to make good contact. There's a lot of ways to lift the bar and to be extremely good at it and efficient. And there's a lot of ways to lift the bar and to be extremely good at it and efficient and there's a lot of variation different lifters have different techniques but they'll all do some basic things the exact same way where you can't lift the bar well without doing this without staying over the bar in the right spot in the right time and um so getting those basic things

down and then proper footwork in the jerk is another another thing we really there's a lot of things we have specific tips and tricks to you practice this and you will understand the right position. A lot of supplemental exercises. And one of the things with Olympic lifting is you have to keep in mind that unlike, say, the bench press or even the squat, which definitely has some technique to it, these two exercises are an Olympic sport. It's not something you're going to go to a seminar or a weekend or no matter how good it is and walk away being really proficient in the movement. So half the battle is actually knowing the difference between this is the right way to do a snatch. This is a less efficient way to do a snatch. What do I need to work on? What is my goal? And what does it feel like when it happens correctly?

That's a good point. It's like, here's the things you need to do if you're going to fire an arrow accurately at a target. Exactly. But then people who compete in the Olympics

spend the next 20 years practicing that. Exactly. It just takes a whole lot of... Yeah. I really compare it to a golf swing a lot. There's a lot of different techniques

that elite golfers will do, but they all are doing some basic things generating power from their hips and all. I'm not a professional golfer. I don't know what those basic things are. They're probably not using their biceps to move. Well,

one of the things that we were talking about the other day that I thought was a really good approach for you guys, especially you guys are teaching this as if you're introducing the people who have never had any like high high level weightlifting coaching right and it's and you're talking about you're not kind of introducing your own a lot of times this happens at seminars you have a coach that's introducing their spin on the lifts and what you were talking about is like these are things that you're going to find in common with every single lifter that goes to Nationals or Olympics or anything like this. No matter their variation beyond these things, they are all doing these things.

No one's getting to an elite level without doing these things. These are the things that you're teaching. You're not teaching some crazy variation of the clean. I won't say crazy variation, but a variation of the clean where, I won't say crazy variation, but a variation of the clean that's not applicable to everybody. There's no hack to get around it sooner. That's one thing I've come to understand, even though I'm not

a weightlifter, I understand how you have to master the fundamentals before you try to do anything else. There's all these stupid arguments about ways of doing it and people arguing about, oh, just get really strong and everything else goes up. But I've seen... Not necessarily.

In my mind, I'm thinking about one recent example of a guy who in powerlifting, he's transmission into strongman now too, but a guy can squat with a belt, knee wraps, like 900 pounds, 700 for like sets of 10, can deadlift 800 for like a belt, knee wraps, like 900 pounds, 700 for like sets of 10, can deadlift 800 for like a triple, but did a 100-kilo snatch like it was the heaviest thing in the world. That's pretty good just to pick it up and basically athletically get it over your head.

But he'll never compete with a Chinese teenage girl. Yeah. Because he didn't dedicate yourself to these very specific things that's why i always say that when you hear somebody say just get stronger that's why we still get weight lifting in the states we're not strong enough they go you just don't understand because one you guys have spent your life getting trying to get strong as possible anyway yeah but until you until you move mechanically the way you should a balance as pendley says you got to have both these things in a certain proportion if you don't move the way you should, a balance, as Pendlay says, you've got to have both these things in a certain proportion. If you don't move the way you should, nothing in the world, I don't care if you could deadlift 1,000 pounds, you are not going to snatch 400.

Yes. Because you can't get here with 400 pounds and somehow magically get it over your head. Yes, exactly. Not going to happen. Strength and speed are super, super important, but technique is just as important, if not more important. And throughout my career, I've been really blessed to work with some amazing coaches. Dragomir Srosalan was one of my first ones

who's world champion or medalist from, well, he's just an elite, elite level coach and athlete. Legit. Yeah. Use the L word for that guy. And then Paul Fleschler for four years, an Olympian himself and a fantastic coach. And then the last four years were Zygmunt Szmalcez, who was a 72 Olympic gold medalist.

Poland? Poland, yep. Polish coach for a long time, coached Olympic medalists. And then we are lucky enough to get him over here in America. And I've learned so much from all those guys. It's just so fantastic. And we're pulling away tricks that they use to show us and certain things, but basic things that they all have in common. It's not like this coach did it this way. And so we're only teaching it this way. We're kind of the sort of irreducible elements. Yeah. Irreducible. And that's one thing that when it comes to CrossFitters, you're never going to meet a group of people that are harder working than a group of CrossFitters never going to meet a group of people that are harder working than a

group of crossfitters are more motivated than a group of crossfitters which makes it really fun to work with them but at the same time their introduction to olympic weightlifting for many was doing randy or isabel or grace or something which is not conducive to learning really good movement uh movement patterns so if somebody is doing CrossFit and they really want to get good at CrossFit, like even the first open wad this year, the first one was a snatch ladder. And people are looking at the snatch ladder going 135 is the second

weight. That's a heavy snatch for me. A lot of people's one rep max. And it's not because they're not strong enough. I mean, CrossFitters are a strong group of people. Their strength is very rarely the limiting factor. Yeah.

I mean, they're, they're moving some weight and then they get into a snatch ladder and it all, you know, falls apart. So we would definitely recommend if you're wanting to really excel at CrossFit, even if you've already been doing it for a while, or even if you're, you know, brand new, take some time and really dedicate it to learning the correct movements. And don't worry about the load on the bar. Don't worry about touching and going or going for time. Just learn the movements. We were talking on the way over here.

It's kind of like learning an instrument to a great extent. If you start out playing scales on a piano and you start out trying to go as fast as you can for multiple octaves or something. Because that's cool. It falls apart. But if you can start out slowly and get one and do it well, then all of a sudden you can speed on it and you can transfer that to other things. And you can't just do it one time a week.

You can't do it one time a week, yeah. Thinking that's going to be enough. Three times is really, really important. Two is good, but if you can do it three times a week, even four or five. Just dedicated Olympic sessions where you just get practicing.

And take videos of yourself and look at what you're doing because you're not always aware. Yeah. Awesome. How many nuggets? I couldn't count the nuggets and pearls there. Chicken nuggets.

CTB, could you count all the nuggets? How many nuggets? Like 15 nuggets right there. That's like a 20-piece nugget. That's a 20-piece nugget we just served you, folks. That's a good deal. That'd be $7.49. All right, guys.

We're going to wrap this up. We're going to go around and plug what we want to plug. I'll let Chris go first. That way you guys can get mentally prepared. Plug what we want to plug. Think about what you want to plug. What am I plugging? Plug something.

I'll help you guys out. Don't worry. Yeah. So, yeah, there's the Chris Moore Moore blog I'm tossing stuff up there some of the stuff you'll see now is sort of hints at what is going to manifest this little book project I'm working on I'm doing a ranting awesome little book

on progress from all angles you'll love it Zach I'll send you a copy you can give me a little blurb to put on it but a lot of the elements are what you're hearing now. Patience, proper perspective, setting small, manageable milestones that accumulate to real changes. And there's plenty of dick jokes in there, too. Don't worry about it.

So go to the chrisweblog.com. And then the Simple Strength Seminar, which is still rocking and rolling up on fitter.tv. Check it out. Plenty of people have checked that out and have really liked it. I got an email this morning from a guy from Australia who said he got it. He had made a bunch of progress, and he was just sending a quick note to say thank you. So that warms my heart. So if you like it, send me a note, and I'll send you an internet hug in exchange.

If somebody buys Simple Strength, it's about, what, three and a half hours of seminar. Yeah, and I think it comes with some bells and whistles, like a little sample programming thing. you created something, a worksheet, programming. And I think CTP,

they bundle some little video clips with it, like me explaining a proper technique for working up to 100 max in a reasonable way without blowing your back out and without wasting a bunch of energy. Yeah, it's a good starting point. I think if you read that, you get a good foundation for then going off and studying these ideas about periodization training

in much more detail later on. But it gives you the roadmap you need. Yeah. Most def. What are you plugging, Bro Hammer? What I do like about the product, too, and just like all of our other products, we keep on improving it.

So every few months, if we do something that's applicable to that product and we really like it, we just insert it in there. And if you already bought it, then you get it. Value added. I think C2P and I got an idea for taking it to the next level later on

in the summertime. What about your gabineer in this piece? We're just going to the next level later on in the summertime. Ooh. Perhaps. We're not going to do this piece. We're just going to keep rocking down, too, and then we take it higher. Exactly right. So you may start seeing references to a simple strength 2.0. Wah, wah, wah. All right.

I'm going to let you go, Sarah. What do you want to promote, plug? Well, as I was sitting here thinking, I was like, well, we've got another seminar coming up April 13th in Minneapolis, if anybody's up in that area. Yeah, better than right now in Minneapolis. All of our seminars will be in Minnesota, so we do have a Facebook page. You can look there for updates. Yeah, Critch Squat and Olympic Weightlifting Seminar. Usually on Saturdays, so if you're coming on through.

What do they need to look up on Facebook to find you guys? Kritsch Olympic Weightlifting Seminar. And Squat Seminar, yeah. If you type in – Yeah, it'll pop up. It'll pop up. Maybe we can give some kind of – Just think about it, and the screen for the Facebook page will go where you want it to go.

Yeah, exactly. What I'm really excited – I'm really excited with this product coming out, this seminar thing that we recorded. And what you were saying about being able to add things to it is I'm so happy that that's the medium that we're using because we're going to be we keep on coaching all the time, learning new things and being able to add new exercises, new drills, new tips, new cues. Yeah. Yeah. To that new. I mean, handouts. And it's the kind of thing that now once it's done,

I'll look at it and see, oh, I can do all these things. I refuse to watch myself give that simple trick. Because like there's twice as much to talk about. That's why you keep changing. I mean, the knowledge train never stops. Yeah. Yeah. Sweet.

And if you live in was it minneapolis where should you be training if you're doing crossfit crossfit minneapolis we've got actually three i guess sister affiliates up there um owned by the same people it's crossfit st paul crossfit minneapolis and we just opened a new facility crossfit st louis park beautiful. We're hosting the open wads every week for people to come in from all over. Phenomenal coaching there. Phenomenal programming. When we were in Colorado Springs moving out here, we were like, we have to find a CrossFit gym. So we basically internet-stocked all the gyms, and we're like, this one looks awesome.

This looks like the best one. This one looks like the best, yeah. And we went there, and the people are fantastic. They have a, CrossFit Minneapolis has a whole Olympic weightlifting room dedicated to Olympic weightlifting that any member can come in and use. And that's what's great about CrossFit, because 10 years ago, good luck finding a weightlifting gym in some strange city. Yes, yes, we go.

You can be buying some shit and putting it in your garage. Pretty much, yeah. It's been nice. All right, guys. If you're interested in the weightlifting product that Zach and Sarah put together, it's going to come out in a couple months. So make sure to go to the barbellshrug.com website and click on the newsletter and sign up for the newsletter.

That way, when it comes out, you'll be the first one to be notified. And then also, if you have a lot of interest in this, go ahead and let us know on Twitter and Facebook and we'll put you down and make sure to remind you. Don't forget to go to iTunes and give us five stars if you enjoyed this episode. What else you got, Chris? Also stay tuned for the CTP cam and watch me almost

get shit on by like a million birds. Alright, so CTP cam has got a lot of birds in it. CTP is going to get shit on Be excited Alright see you next time Alright thanks