Barbell Shrugged - 78- The Most Common Olympic Weightlifting Mistakes We See and How To Fix Them

Episode Date: August 28, 2013

On this episode of Barbell Shrugged we are joined by 6-month muscle gain coach Alex Maclin to discuss the most common olympic weightlifting mistakes we see and how to fix them.

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we talk about the weightlifting flaws that you might be making and how to fix them. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson and Chris Moore. Hello. We brought on Alex Macklin as our guest. What's up? What's up? Alex Macklin.

Hey, Mack. You may know him if you're in the six-month muscle gain challenge. If you're not, you may not know him. He's been on a couple of episodes, though. And today we're going to be talking about common mistakes that we see, things we see in the gym and things we see in the six-month muscle gain when we're looking at weightlifting. Alex is a fantastic weightlifter, and he coaches our Weightlifting 101 class at Faction. And he also monitors the Facebook forums that people are in for the six-month muscle gain.

So he's constantly seeing common problems and helping guys out via video and pictures and stuff like that. To add some perspective to that, for people that aren't in that program, basically the way it works is all the guys in that six-month program get a workout sent to them every single day, along with some videos that show them what to do. And then they are all part of a Facebook group. And in that group, they can submit videos of them doing their lifts and then us as the coaches will go in there and tell them what they're doing wrong you know keep your heels down better posture better first pull and we'll go in there and coach the guys through the videos that they submit and alex is one of the coaches that goes in there and helps with the weightlifting specifically so

just to add some context so everyone knows kind of what we're talking about here what are we trying to figure out let out make sure it's recorded is it recording chris moore is over here making hand signals i couldn't no i couldn't see it it was like uh what i did with my hands no man like he had a big question on his face no man let me use my hippie voice to explain to you what's going on man it was all stretched in i couldn't see the little waveforms we're not even stretched in it was everything stretched in? Yeah. Okay. So in the room, we also have Mr. Dave Ferguson in the background. He is here as my beard bodyguard. Anyone touches the beard, Dave takes them out.

That's right. Farm bar. The beard's coming off. The beard is coming off soon. We're going to 100 shares on the video. Some people are a little more aggressive about it than I am. Are you going to do it for real? Yeah, I'm going to shave this off.

I mean, I said I would. I have to. Can I recommend something you said did you define what shave meant? no no okay

okay well that could be I recommend you could do you could do a goatee it's a little 90s you could trim it down to do like a little sculptured low profile thing

I'm just going to shave it and go back to I figured we were going to go through phases I'm going to go through zero I'm going to go to zero and then bring it back to a level I don't think you should I thought you were going to go through phases I'm going to go through zero I'm going to go to zero and then bring it back to a level

I don't think you should I thought you were going to go like big goatee and pork chops and then down to the mustache and then down to nothing

I could do a goatee and chops for a day and then I could do chops and mustache for a day and then I just don't think you should go

I don't think you should just go down the perfectly baby face skin man that's going to be quite I won't be able to look at you for two weeks probably two three weeks I just don't think you should go down the perfectly baby-faced skin, man. I won't be able to look at you for two weeks, probably. Two, three weeks, yeah. It's tough to look. You change.

You're like a child, man. All right, let's get on topic. Yeah, so today we're talking about common weightlifting mistakes. And why do we want to fix these problems, Alex? Why would anyone want to work on their weightlifting it's the biggest education socially troubling phenomenon in our society today I mean well obvious well obviously I mean you want to be a better you want to be a better way lifting you do if you do weightlifting you want to be a better weightlifter. If you do weightlifting, you want to be as good as you can.

You want to reach your maximum potential. You want to be able to do your maximum loads. Safety reasons. You don't want to hurt your back. You want to look cool in front of attractive ladies, too. Better technique. Better technique is injury prevention. Exactly.

You have better techniques you have better leverage so you can lift heavier heavier weight and so you're going to be able to pr right just by improving your technique alone independent of getting stronger right and i mean if you're uh if you're a serious or even just you know just occasional crossfit competitive athlete you know if you have better technique you will be better at doing these wads i mean almost every wad in the games or any kind of CrossFit competition involves you doing some kind of barbell movement with, you know, cleaning jerks or snatches. So if you are able to move that bar more efficiently, have better technique, you're going to move faster. You're going to get through the wad faster and you're going to have better time. You're probably going to end up on the podium.

Yeah, better technique means more efficient and more efficient means you're spending less energy per rep, which means you can do more reps faster. That's the whole point of the sport of CrossFit, more work and less time. And better technique makes it where you spend less energy per rep so you can go faster. Absolutely. I would probably say, everybody keep in mind,

there's a balancing thing because somebody's like, oh yeah, then how come Kendrick did three minute blah, blah, blah on the thing. Technique plus you being fit already will equal you being less tired right yeah you still have to be in really good condition for that for that specific event and kennedy is not training for three reps of 135 in three minutes which is still impressive for every rep looked like to every other rep which is pretty fantastic right if kennedy dedicated some training time to that specific event, he could cut his time down by like a third. What I wanted to do was try to do like a minute 10 with two months training.

I think in a month he could get down to a minute. I don't think that'd be crazy. Well, snipping at red wires to the trolls, that's one less bomb for the trolls to throw into YouTube comments. Oh, yeah? Oh, yeah, dude? Techniques are important. How come blah, blah, blah? Go away. One less thing to talk about oh geez all right so we have we have all these different mobility

mistakes which we haven't really mentioned yet but mobility mistakes excuse me that's the first thing that we're going to use to fix it we have all these weightlifting technique mistakes um and there's a million ways to um why you might have a mobility I keep getting focused on mobility I'm the mobility guy I think I think one problem we see is people end up not knowing that they're as bad off as they are because say they're the best in their gym right or they're the best or they're as bad off as they are. Because say they're the best in their gym, or they're the best in their garage, which is maybe just by themselves.

Or they work out by themselves. Population one, they're the best. They don't know. But they don't realize all the things they're doing wrong. They feel like they're doing better. A lot of times they think, oh, I just need to get stronger. I need to get a bigger front squat so I can clean more. And I see most often people come into the six-month muscle gain and we go, oh, you should try this.

And they're like, oh, I didn't know I was supposed to do that. And then all of a sudden things get faster and easier. It's like, oh, you know, life just got better. And all I had to do was practice this thing for a week. And now the bar's moving faster. I hit this big PR. And it wasn't exactly a strength thing. It was, you know, you just cleaned up your technique,

and all of a sudden things got faster and easier. So in the six-month muscle gain challenge or the weightlifting course that you teach at Faction, what's probably the number one thing that comes to mind as far as bad technique? What are you constantly fixing over and over and over again? Definitely not finishing the pull. Now, that's kind of vague and broad, but basically not standing all the way up and getting the hips underneath the bar to get in that jumping

position where you can explode upward. A lot of people will tend to try to rush that pull, and so they'll try to get the hips really forward really quickly and they don't finish their pull. And so the bar is out in front and they often miss in front or it feels very heavy coming up and it should feel very light and fast. The bar should feel very light and fast coming up. So that's probably the main thing I see and I'm correcting the most is people not completely finishing that pull, getting the bar into the hips. Confidence to hold the line and be patient.

What causes people to not finish the pull? What are some things that they do? One, and this goes along with another common mistake, is not staying back on the heels throughout the lift from the ground. So what people tend to do is that if they'll rush their hips forward, they'll end up becoming toe heavy. And so the bar is going to be lower on their thighs. It's not going to be in an ideal position.

If they have a bad start position, then the bar is going to be out in front a little bit. Just basically not staying back on the heels and not keeping the bar close to the body. I think a lot of people think about jumping too much. Jumping too much, yeah. And this is where I'm not really a big fan of Bergner warm-up. Yeah. Just because it's teaching you to move your body up and not really the bar too much.

I mean, I think a lot of people, and I don't think, it's people's interpretation of the warm-up. Right. The Bergner warm-up, I think, is messed up. And what ends up happening is And I don't think it's people's interpretation of the warmup. Right. The Bergner warmup, I think, is messed up. And what ends up happening is they get past their knees and then they want to move the weight to their toes. Yeah.

Because that's how you jump, right? But that's not exactly how you snatch or clean. Right. Because you actually want to finish with your hips with the weight still on your heels. Yeah. Weightlifting is all about position. So if you're not in the right position you're gonna it's everything's gonna be off so you have to make sure that you're able to be in that proper

position and so you're gonna have to basically practice a lot of those drills like doing a lot of those the the thacker warm-up and and things like that so you can learn that position and do things like do things like rdls to practice getting your back strong enough. Being strong in those positions, absolutely. Most people just aren't strong enough to hold it long enough to get it where it needs to go. That's why you need to do things like RDLs and snatch pulls with holds. Like, okay, here's what this position feels like.

Observe. I'm on my heel. That's what it feels like. Build the strength it requires to be there. I guess that's all the first pull is. To get to where it needs to go. Then you go. The whole point of the first pull is to have a good setup for your second pull.

It doesn't matter what else happens at all on the lift if your first pull is messed up because you're already out of position. You're not going to get that position back. You're not going to have a bad first pull and then have a good second pull. It's not going to happen. That happens. A bad first pull and then have a good second pull it's not going to happen and that happens

and you know a bad first pull can be the cause of either you know and this I see this a lot people will have like you'll have your

your hips come up you know faster than than the rest than your knees and so when it's happening is that if your if your butt's all in there guess where the weights

the weight is the weight's on the stripper's nest yeah the weight's on your toes now. So you're doomed from the get-go because the weight's already out in front. You're already toe-heavy. I'll correct you, bro.

Let me correct you. You're doomed unless you're Russian. You need to snatch that shit. You just snatch four pounds off your head with your heels touching and your ass in the air. It doesn't matter. Hey, nobody listen to Chris Moore right now. He's confusing you.

Mike tells me all the time I'm not Chinese enough to lift like a Chinese lifter. I saw these Chinese guys online doing this. I want to try that. I see Alex trying something in the corner. I'm like, what are you doing? He goes, well, I saw this on a YouTube video. I'm like, you're not Chinese enough for that, bro.

Hashtag not Chinese enough. Complaints to follow. I want to go back to a little bit of what Chris was, or you said it, Alex. It was being strong in positions. Yeah. I think a lot of times what you'll see with CrossFit is the coach or any weightlifting coach maybe that hasn't been doing this very long will say, okay, we're going to practice the movement with a PVC pipe or an empty barbell. All right, now we're going to work up to one rep max.

And that's like the exposure that a lot of people get to weightlifting. It's like, okay, PVC pipe. All right, we'll just work up to a heavy snatch. And then never go through position deadlifts. Let's practice pulling a heavy weight to the knees with proper technique. All right, let's work on moving up to mid-thigh. And then you can try to slow it down. You don't have to.

Yeah, you break it down to segments and you get strong in positions. And maybe you don't worry about being fast yet because speed will come with good positions. Right. One of the things that helped me get better better weightlifting the fastest was doing technique reps doing singles with like 50 or 60 percent where it was heavy enough to feel but i could still move fast enough to do it perfect every time so i start my workouts my workouts out doing like a set a set of 10 with like 30 seconds or maybe maybe a minute in between those reps where i wasn't getting fatigued but i was doing perfect reps every single time And then I'd start to build up and go heavier after I did all my technique work with kind of a moderate weight, like 50 or 60%. Yeah. I actually like to do, um, you know,

50, 60% like moderate rep, a lot of reps at moderate weights where you're not going to screw it up. But then when you get heavy, do segment it with weight. And then, you know, months and months and months down the road, you piece it all together and all of a sudden you can be in decent positions with heavy weight. And that's how you're going to make progress. And that's the thing. I mean, it's not going to be overnight. Like you guys are saying, you have to practice all the time. It's not something that, you know, you have to do a thousand reps before you can learn, you know, the proper way. And if you've been doing it wrong or not the best way, then it's going to take 1,000 more reps to unlearn it and do it a better way.

I'd rather have an athlete that hasn't tried doing it before than to have someone who's been doing it wrong for two years. Yeah, I've had some people in that weight 101 class, one of the guys, he never had touched a barbell before. And I think that that's the best because if you learn the right way to do it, you'll be much better off down the line. There's no unlearning. Unlearning is always harder than learning. Especially if you have a little bit of athletic background, we can move really well with that blank slate, then you're doing it.

I guess that's a good time to make that point. I guess rule number one to getting good at weightlifting is to be easy on yourself and give yourself a chance to get familiar with it. People try to learn it for two, three, four weeks a month, two months, they go, this is not coming for me. Yeah, I mean, you're going to be very frustrated. It's incredibly hard to move really efficiently

and sharply in perfect position under a heavy load. This is a very complex thing. This is way more complex than anything else you're doing in your life probably yeah probably the hardest thing you're going to do so you're not going to master this in a month so that takes somebody else 10 years to master all right all the people that don't don't do weightlifting are like the dude's full of shit and all the weightlifters like yeah i know all the powders are listening like fuck you dude wait look there's they want to get better they need to deadlift more and i will tell you you don't know what the fuck you're talking about you don't know what you're talking about you don't i could have a guy who deadlifts fucking a thousand pounds go here

clean jerk 400 pounds and fuck i could do that and then they deadlift the fastest shit and then nothing happens because this is hard it's much harder than all that silly shit. Give yourself a break. Well, what do you say, Chris, about someone who takes somebody and makes their deadlift higher and then their power clean all of a sudden goes up? We've heard this story before.

Yeah, I've seen it before. And it's true. If you get stronger when you're, like if I take a young college football player who can deadlift 400 pounds, 18-year-old kid or something, and he's fit and strong and fast. He doesn't really know the lifts at all yet because what football player does know the lifts really well. It's kind of a rare thing. But if you take that guy who knows rudimentary movement and you make him deadlift 500.

Yeah, the bar just feels that much, and it works for a while. The problem is, if you try to then use that approach to make the former 200-pound power clean go from 300 to now 400, that's when that shit doesn't work anymore without the mechanics. It just doesn't work. It can't be done. Every power out there and every strongman's like,

all you need to do is do what I do, then the American way of things will be fixed. It's just not true. It's like me saying, all I need to do is implement my problems I'll fix all of government that shit ain't true these are some things just ain't true and that's one of them homie Mike when Mike teaches his weightlifting seminars he basically talks about the triad which is the combination of strength mobility and

technique and you you gotta have a balance between those three things and where people fall short is that they focus on one piece of that three-part series, and they don't focus on the other two. So powerlifters might focus too much on strength and not on technique and mobility as much. Some people knock American weightlifters for only focusing on technique and not for focusing on strength enough, whether that's true or not is debatable. But having a balance between all three of those things is what will ultimately make you have the ability to be a good weightlifter.

If you know what weightlifting means, I don't think everyone's focused on technique that much. Yeah, those are assumptions people are making. I'm saying you should be. Some people are not. If we're focusing on technique, man, we're doing a terrible job at it. I guess people watch it.

I'm not saying we all have bad technique. Somebody sits down in the crowd and sees them moving well and they go well how come they're just not lifting as much it will just get stronger i guess that's just the high level view people see of american weightlifting oh just move get stronger then you'll just lift as much as those guys in in siberia yeah and i hate talking about this because this is like the easy scapegoat like claim is like like, why don't Americans lift as much as somebody else or another country? It's like, well, we do regularly drug test everybody. Yeah, drugs have a lot to do with that. I mean, you take our best lifter and you give him a gram of test a week for a couple months,

he'll probably... He'll win everything. I think the research was saying that he could increase his strength by 10%. His clean and jerk would go up. You increase Kendrick Ferris' lifts by 10%. He's a monster now. He now has world records. That's the point I'll make. People like Jared Fleming and Kendrick and Donovan at the training center.

I've watched these guys squat and lift. They're strong. They're strong as shit. They're strong as anybody. And that's the thing. They're strong as anybody. They just can't practice as much because they're not on dope.

Some people may be fooling around with some things. I'm not going to be the guy who's like, troll comment number two. Somebody's like, you're going to tell me there's no U.S.

You're a fool, Chris Moore. I'm saying that if you compare us to other countries, what they administer, it's almost like you would get laughed at if you're not on heavy amounts.

Like, what do you mean you're not taking your supplemental regime? Are you an idiot? I mean, I always figured all of our potential Olympians were all fullbacks in the NFL. And I mean, still, our top lifters have great technique. There are guys in the NFL right now who will wake up in the morning and eat Cheetos for breakfast and then go for eight hours, run to other genetic freaks and get paid $10 million for it, and then dominate American football

with no effort into what they're doing. If you put them into a similar situation that like Kolkov is in, you'd have monsters. You'd have human monsters just snatching anything. All right, let's get back to cleaning jerk and snatching technique flaws. I know one of the things that you bring up a lot is people have a lot of trouble pulling under the bar.

Yeah. A lot of people will only be able to power clean or power snatch, and it'll take them another six or eight months to be able to catch in a rock-bottom position with good technique. Right. Well, a lot of that has to go into that. One of the big things is definitely mobility. If you lack the shoulder mobility or the hip mobility to get deep into the squat, especially with the snatch, that's the biggest thing, the snatch.

So if you don't have that mobility, it's going to be a lot more difficult. You're not going to feel as comfortable in that bottom position. Yeah, catching really low in an overhead squat is an interesting thing because you can have a mobility restriction almost anywhere and it can prevent you from doing that. Whether it's hip, ankle, or shoulders, it can screw you up. 14. The bar has to be in the right place and if the bar is not in that right place, it is done.

15. Got this old pinky toe injury that really holds up my snatch. It's just brutal, coach. 16. It's just brutal, coach. The second thing that people tend to not do really is keeping a lot of tension on the bar and really think about pulling the bar and pulling your body under the bar. People think that, oh, if I pull the bar high, the bar is just going to land where it's supposed to go, but that's not true at all. You need to put that bar where it needs to go, so you have to aggressively pull your

body underneath the bar. That's one thing people think, oh, there's first pull, second pull, third pull. It's one continuous pull until you're underneath the barbell. Do you think that leads to a lot of inconsistency as well? Because if I go to pull, I go, all right, straight arms, back, everything where it needs to go. I pull, I go, and I explode alright straight arms back everything written is good and I go and I explode and I just quit

using my arms I guess the bar could just venture start venturing wherever it wants to go right it's floating and you're trying but that's what

exactly that's what happened it's floating you don't want to explode yeah you don't want you want to explode and then use your arms to guide yourself

right in the pocket you want to you absolutely want to continue pulling on the bar as hard as hard as possible until you are underneath the bar. Yeah, I think the whole make your arms ropes.

And it depends on the athlete when I'm watching them. If they're getting a little too much early arm pull, then I'll be like, just treat your arms like ropes and your hands like hooks. But I think what's happening is people take that too far. They're like, oh, my arms are rips the whole time. Until it gets overhead. Right. So what they do is they pop it off their hips. And then they go, I hope I didn't catch this.

And that's rope arms, coach. And that's why, like, why do so many lifters make 50% of their lifts at 90%? It's because you're getting lucky half the time. Right. And you probably have pretty good aim, but it could be a lot better. at 90%. It's because you're getting lucky half the time. And you probably have pretty good aim, but it could be a lot better. So one of the things that I think really helps is first, engaging your shoulders, really using your lats when you pass your knees, and help use your shoulders to keep that bar

close to your body as you come up. And that engagement of the shoulder on the way up is going to help it stay engaged when you're supposed to be pulling under. The other thing is after the bar touches your hips, man, way up is going to help it stay engaged when you're supposed to be pulling under. The other thing is after the bar touches your hips, your biceps should be ripping your body underneath that bar. It should be just as much of a pull under as it was a pull up for your legs. When you see a guy, a big-time weightlifter, even though I've looking at this for like two decades I still every YouTube video I see of a guy I can watch one yes this Russian lifter going for a snatch double at 190 kilos and we in like 225 I know I mixed my 100 kilo body weight I mix I mix the kilos of pounds in one example up to computer but

it's not they're not exploding up with hips with loose arms and also just catching 440 pounds or 420 that's not how it's happening you got to have that whole complex tight the whole time if you want to have that stable when it hits you because catching a huge weight overhead with loose arms and shoulders you're going to immediately drop that yeah absolutely i mean you have to be extremely aggressive and extremely tight throughout the entire lift and that's that's one thing I see a lot of people do is that you know they'll they won't be tight from the start you know if you're not tight from the start you're

not aggressive your chances of you making a heavy lift or a very slim and you can be heavy I mean you can be aggressive without ripping the bar off the floor right exactly right yeah that's another thing to see. Being really fast off the floor. Be fast. Slow down. Be loose. If you're fast off the floor, pulling off the floor, ripping it off the floor, you're probably not in a good position.

But to Chris's point from earlier, he does pick it up fast, but he does it perfect every time. He does, but how many years of experience has he lifted? That's impressive to watch, too. We say not to go too fast off the floor. We really mean don't go so fast that you change your technique.

You're supposed to go as fast as possible with good technique, but some people, when they try to pull extra fast, their butt shoots up, they get so heavy, everything gets out in front of them, and then they're missing the lift forward. You can go too slow, because we see that. Unless you've been lifting for five years, you're probably going too fast off the floor and you can probably go slower and get more benefit out of that once you've been listening lifting for five years then you can start trying

to speed it up off the floor i mean going back to that uh getting on the bar and a lot of times the last thing i'm i'm seeing is confidence you know a lot of people because they're not used to getting under the bar um they'll be afraid and this is this is also my problem this is my problem too like before i you know start fixing this but you're not a perfect i'm not but uh not being confident to get down in that position so i mean if you're always if you're always catching it high if you're always power clean or power snatch, ride it down. Get in that bottom of the squat, sit in that squat. Yeah, you got to see what it's like because if you don't get that feel every time, then

you're just not going to know. It's not a good example to get compared with, but the same kind of phenomenon happens at powerlifting where guys will get so uptight about the weight they're moving, they'll start doing things like we talked about deadlifts last week, rack pulls. The problem is you get so strong in one place right power clean seems to be the same kind of thing happening right i'm so good at power clean how come i try to squat clean i can't squat clean because you don't move the range much like if you never yeah things off the ground how can you be strong right down there if you never touch your chest all the way when

you bench press because you like doing partials because you look stronger well how can you lower something then i guess same thing with squat clean if you've never down there, how do you know how to navigate that situation? How are you going to stand up? A lot of people can't stand up. You don't know, player. All right, guys. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to talk about how you can fix these problems.

Forever. Perfection. I don't want to know that stuff, man. Get that shit out of here. I want a certain level of privacy in my life. And you think you have that. I'm going to do my best. stuff man get that shit out of here i want a certain level of privacy in my life so and you think you have that i'm gonna do my best and we're back for the weightlifting technique flaws episode oh yeah that's we were talking about weightlifting technique flaws that you might have and now we're

gonna talk about how you might be able to fix those we talked about all the problems talk you know what i just realized is, we did not do, I didn't do the intro right today. You sure didn't. I'm a terrible, terrible person. Why don't you do it now? Make sure you go to barbellshrug.com and sign up for the newsletter.

We're doing new stuff all the time, and that's the best way to keep up with what we're doing, because we're obviously not good at mentioning things on the podcast that are important. It's hard. I forgive you. I forgive you. Chris forgives you. So, I mean, we're going to be doing like a live thing with Brian McKenzie here soon.

We got the barbell shrugged weightlifting meet coming up. But these are things that we don't normally talk about on the podcast because we just don't, I don't know. Scatterbrain. Scatterbrain, man. It's the weekend. So, I mean. Maybe once you cut that beard off some of the energy

that goes to growing that will go to your brain again it could be it's like a plant if you trim off some of the leaves it starts putting out more fruit that could be your situation it all makes sense now it makes total sense oh yeah scratches his beard deep thought moment i don't think it'll help all right so if your weight lifting isn't as good as you'd like it to be, what are a couple ways that you could go about fixing all of your technique flaws that you may not even know that you have? Well, what I've seen help a lot of people in my class

is definitely doing the Thacker warmup. The Thacker warmup, I don't know if you're familiar with that, but. Yeah, explain what that is. Yeah, so that's basically a warm-up that was coined by Justin Thacker. He's a coach out in St. Louis. I like it so far. Episode 60?

Episode 60? Yeah. 6-0, episode 60. Good memory on that boy. I know. And 34. And 34. Wow.

Are you just naming numbers? Is that true, what you're saying? Is that just numbers? He doesn't know. He doesn't know. It's 34. Check out episodes 1 through 77 and you'll find it. Alright, so Justin Thacker has a

series of warmups that he does and we use those in the weightlifting class and in the muscle gain program. It's basically just to get your body primed to move the barbell efficiently with that perfect bar path. There's three main parts, A, B, and C, gradually progressing.

It's a gradual progression. What it's supposed to do is just get you to hammer those positions down so you get that muscle memory, that mental memory of the positions that you need to be in because like we said before positioning is probably one of the most important things of it actually is the most important thing that weightlifting technique is position okay so so specifically what positions do you need to to kind of stretch in what are the position stretches uh well the first position stretch is you know you're just in the bottom of a squat so you get you get loose in the bottom of the squat get used to being in

that squat position um you have the bar you know sitting on the quads so you can sit in that you can sit in that squat position for you know quite a long time and then you know if you're doing the snatch you either have the bar raised overhead in that snatch position, so you get that feeling of pushing up on that barbell, really getting the active shoulders. And then you do an overhead squat. So it's that gradual progression to get you primed to move some weight. And so then the next part is the position progression. So you start from, you pause at each position. So you're going to pause at the floor.

So you get in that good start position. So you always are in that tight, solid, rigid position at the bottom. Sounds great so far. Yeah. And then the second position is at the knees. So you're practicing that first pull. And then the third position is higher up the thighs and the pockets. So you're getting to that.

Tucking it right in there. Oh, yeah. Getting getting cozy so you're getting it right keeping the bar close and that's that's important so and then and then you do you know your power snatches your power cleans and your or your uh full cleans or full snatches and so you're constantly just adding that progression and so you can get that drilled in so all this is done with an empty barbell it's a lot of repetitions in perfect positions. That way when you go to start adding weight to the bar, you've already done a bunch of very light, unloaded repetitions. And so you've been in every position that you're going to be in for the workout.

You should be warm through all the appropriate ranges of motion. Probably okay if guys use just a pipe to begin, right? Because it's probably a lot of work. For some of you, that's probably like a training session. I've seen that before. It's very challenging. I mean, you can put weight on it. In fact, for the other parts of the warm-up,

particularly the second and third parts, you do typically want to put some bumpers on there so you can be in the right starting position. But you definitely want to keep it light because it is challenging. A lot of people complain. Smoke your ass. I don't think there's A lot of people complain. Smoke your ass. I don't think there's a lot of room for empty with a pipe.

I think empty barbell is fine. Some guys might want to go with a training bar. Yeah. 35 pound women's bar might work really well too. I'm not a big fan of PVC pipe with a Thacker method. You definitely want to use the bar just because just get used to using the bar. Suck it up. It's really hard.

I guess if your warm-up is really, really tough, that's just a sign that you should be doing a lot more things. Yeah, no big deal. If you get tired, put the weight down and rest for a second. Shake it out. You'll get in shape. If you want to really see what the hell we're talking about, this might be hard to visualize if you've never done it before. We have a four-part video series that we did with justin thacker that's part of the technique quad um part of our technique quad video so just google justin thacker technique quad and he has that four-part

series so you can watch the whole thing that was an interesting idea when it brought me back to the example of kendrick in that wad people call yeah he's out of shape and that but to be this kind of weightlifter your shape quote unquote people can't see me making quote signs your shape is actually your work capacity these motions these positions is astronomical yeah that's like to jerk with good form like 400 for five is a really fit thing to do yeah so using we're using that term I get in shape kind of specifically here like in these positions and these ways of moving it could be very foreign you even if you have been doing cross but if you're tired don't think like oh shit why is this so hard why am i out of shape it's just a different kind of thing you're developing it's

very specific yeah i mean being in shape just means you're able to do what you want to do yeah this is a specific thing if you don't want to do 30 snatches for time then that's not the kind of shape you're going to be in yeah you're going to be in great shape in another way. Another thing I like about the Thacker Method is you're simultaneously working on mobility. So not the way a lot of times people think about mobility. Usually people think about mobility and they think bands and holding stretches. Gnashing your chode out. Yeah, lacrosse balls and all that kind of stuff, which is good, which I think you should do as well. holding stretches. Mashing your chode out. Yeah.

Lacrosse balls and all that kind of stuff, which is good, which I think you should do as well. But with the Thacker method, it kind of, it's more specific. As you're going through like the position stretches before the ABCs, the ABCs is like you are working through positions, but before that you're going to do the positional stretches. Right. And, you know, that's where you're holding the bar on your knees and you're working that ankle mobility in your hips you're getting your hips nice and low um and then you're going to get overhead if you're doing a snatch we're going to get in the rack position with the clean and you're going to really stretch

those shoulders out and get those shoulders in the position you want to have heavy weight overhead with and then you're going to get to the bottom of the squat with an overhead squat or a front squat, and then you're going to work. That's going to be shoulders, hips, and ankles. And you're going to hold those positions like you would any stretch, but it's going to be with a barbell. It's going to be extremely weightlifting specific. You can be pretty weightlifting mobile, I guess you could say,

and not have great mobility in some other areas where people traditionally think being very flexible like you're not gonna be a yogi if all you do is bar stretches but that's good because I want to be a yogi if you combine if you combine that if you combine those yoga stretches with some good weightlifting specific stretches, then you'll be in a nice healthy spot. Yeah. In an ideal world, it would be good to have a, you know, a high level weightlifting coach that can be there to watch you and critique you and give you like immediate feedback.

But that's a little bit too much of an idealism for most people. Most people don't have a high level weightlifting coach. There's not too many gyms that have a high-level weightlifting coach. Not everybody has you walking around, Alex. Jesus. So if that's the case, what can people do to still get some great coaching and still improve their lifts? If they don't live in Memphis, you can't hire Alex Macklin.

What should they do? They shouldn't watch Chinese weightlifting videos and copy, right? They shouldn't do that shit. Well, I mean, yeah. It's cool. It looks great. Remember, you're not Chinese. Step first. Whoa.

One of the things that definitely you can do is, you know, tape your own lifts. You know, review your own lifts. You know how Tom is not taping? I thought we went over this. Why do you not watch the show? What is going on? Not all the time. It's not taping.

Recording? It's not 1991. Watch theording? It's not in 1991. Watch the beard video. I'm not trying to communicate with your grandmother here. You son of a grass yourself fucking recording. So you can record your own list. Thank you. Watch them or send them in. People forget how you got a phone in your pocket right now that'll take HD video of you.

You can send it anywhere. You can put it on YouTube. You can watch it immediately. That's a huge tool because the bottom line is, I think people forget what you feel like what's happening is probably not what's actually happening.

Oh, I feel like I'm right there. Oh, I feel like I got it right position. Then you watch it. Oh shit, I wasn't even close. Dude, record two things. Record yourself one lift directly from the front, one lift directly from the front, one lift directly from the side, put both videos on Facebook and just write,

what do you think I'm doing wrong? And just see what the world tells you. And there's a lot of people. And all the people that you know don't know what they're talking about, don't listen to them and all do what they do know. Yeah, do what they're talking about, take their advice. Troll comment number three, you're inviting trolls

into your world to do this shit. It's true. Think you look like a fucking bitch? Yeah, I mean, you gotta, you gotta. That's what I think. Do you even lift?

No, you gotta, you gotta filter through the other stuff. Don't ask your friends how your snatch looks. Too light, homo. Put some fucking weight on that bar.

There's a lot of people that, you know, if you post it on Facebook, you know, some people who know what they're talking about, man, you know. Yeah, if you got a lot of CrossFit friends, they will help you out. Yeah, a lot of people that if you post it on Facebook, some people who know what they're talking about may... If you've got a lot of CrossFit friends, they will help you out. They're good people. Just looking at your own lifts

yourself, that's huge because if you haven't gotten to the point where you can feel how it's supposed to be, seeing how if you just watch some videos of some guys and know what they're doing and then watch yourself, it might become extremely apparent what you might be doing right awesome or I'm terrible don't watch Chinese lifters

but actually I mean a good way to see if you're actually doing proper technique is to watch somebody with really good technique so if you you know get on YouTube and watch the Olympics, you know, the recording of the 2012 Olympics, it's watch those guys live. Yeah. Being a very visual learner.

If I watch somebody that, that is really, really, really good. I can be like, Oh, that's what it's supposed to look like. I'm going to go pretend I'm that guy.

And it's so much better. Play that YouTube video and it's open up on your browser or whatever. The video you took of yourself is lamb side by side. video you took yourself. Just lay them side by side. Find a couple examples. Just do your research. Compare. It's not a perfect way to start. It's not ideal for somebody walking you through what is the problem.

You'll be able to see the patterns emerge. Like, wow, I'm not doing what these five guys all seem to do. I need to work on that. Actually, I saw some of the biggest improvements in my weightlifting. I would watch Peter S. Demas. I would watch him lift right before I would lift oh yeah and then I would be like I'm Peter S Demas and that sounds crazy Dougie man said man you look like Peter S Demas you just watch how he slaps his feeling ground he's moving so

fast he watched a guy casually pick up 300 pounds like whoa man he blew my mind or yeah i'm sorry dude i i'm not even aware about every time i train i'll go out and watch a few cloak offs crazy ass videos before i go into the garage like just to see here's what here's the kind of vibe i can take in the gym with me watch this guy just dominate and be intense and it's just it changes everything. We need to start the trend where instead of basketball players, we'll be like, Kobe!

LeBron! Kloakov! Kloakov! He's coming to the States. We've got to try to have vodka shots with that dude. I've got to contact. We're going to try to make that shit.

No, no. I'm going to try to find some way. Dude, if we get Kloakov, we're going to work on that. Man. We're going to fucking work on that shit. Jeez. We need a translator, though. I'm gonna try to find some way to get cloak off your work a man Translator though, I would make some pretty big sacrifices to me. I'm cloak off you asked me a question go ready go Ask me a question go yes, that's anything ask me about my pool

Ask me I'm starstruck yeah I go okay pull 250 kilos lifetime Alex what's your favorite video you have a video that you like you repeatedly go back to your like favorite YouTube video of weightlifting That's right. I'll be at the CTP camp. CTP camp. There you go. Your favorite YouTube video of weightlifting that you just always go back to? If it's max out snatch day or clean, what are you watching, dude? What's the one? I know we're asking a lot because this is a lot of awesome videos. I mean, I've watched a lot. But that Piros Dimas, there's this one Piros Dimas video. It's an Iron Mind video.

The training hall video. That's the best one, man. Training hall videos. He's like just doing power cleans with- The 300-pound power clean that looks like he's just doing a reverse curl with an empty barbell? Beyond. The guy was like, this is a weight beyond what any American lifter is doing.

At the time. Yeah. He's just power cleaning it so fast. He says, so powerful. How many guys are you seeking this casually power clean 100 kilos? I must have watched that video like 50 times. Wait, 170 or 187? He's like 185.

He's 84 kilo, right? Yeah, 185 kilo. He's like Dr. Brian Shillings. 187, yeah. Not a big guy to be doing that much weight. It's like double body weight for a power clean. The speed of his jerks and cleans. Just the motion is just insane.

Those are my favorite videos to watch when guys that are world class are doing like 70% and it may or maybe it's a weight that you might be able to PR on like they're using your max weight but they're just destroying it and they're moving so fast like that's always more impressive to me than watching them watching them hit a one rep max of their own

because one rep max it kind of looks the same like they're moving slow because it's really heavy for them but to really see how fast they are watching them at sub max is really impressive that brings us to a point also is i think too many people practice with just enough speed right to get the weight that they have on the bar overhead all the time so that doesn't mean yeah again i think sometimes you go hey you should be moving fast all time and people go well i need to rip it off the floor then. No. As fast as you possibly can go with good positions.

That's how fast you should be going. I think a lot of times people kind of get that mixed up a little bit. You're never trying to move slow. Right. Exactly. You guys ever watch those Ironman videos of VanEv back when he was in his prime? When he's pulling snatches, he pulls like 70, a hundred kilos, 120,

130. Like he's just like building up like five kilos at a time. And every rep just looks ridiculously fast. That's my favorite video. That's actually what I, why I brought that up. Cause I was thinking about that when you were talking. And then the last Google's lot in VanEv last way to get to fix your problems is to have

patience. Yeah. Oh God. So people, people boggle my fucking mind with their expectations. get to fix your problems is to have patience yeah oh god so people people boggle my fucking mind with their expectations they place on their full poor selves like I've never done anything ever in my life I want to come into the gym I want to snatch what Pierce Dima snatches I want to look like

Camille Liz blank a blank blank I want to have I want to have abs like Rich Froning can I have all this in one month because if not I'll get fucking frustrated and quit and I'll troll your ass on YouTube forever Chris has no patience for people with no patience fuck that the bottom line is

if you're going to get anywhere in this world in this pursuit if you really want to maximize your chances, what you'll do is you'll work as hard as you can, of course, and you'll study and you'll learn, but you won't start grasping too quickly, too hard, for things outside of your reach right now. You can't put all this expectation.

You can't say, I snatch 100 pounds now. I want to snatch 300. Okay, good, but first things first. Learn how to put the bar where it's supposed to be that's where you'll get your immediate satisfaction and if it takes a month to learn just that it's 100 okay because that's what you need to do yeah i think a lot of people they don't get they they set their expectations way up here and i've done it a million times i mean i still make the mistake of setting my goals too far out um and i find that anytime I do that, I get not very far

into my journey. And then I change goals or something like that. Yeah, exactly. And I find that I'm the most successful at the things where I set extremely attainable goals. And a lot of times, say if it's with weightlifting, it's not about how much weight is on the bar, but just the fact that I got in the train five times this week or, you know what I mean? Yeah. It could be. You did enough to not go backwards. That's progress.

I missed fewer lifts this week than I did last week. Say, you know, week after week, I'm working up to 90%. One way I like to train is I'll do like a wave loading cycle. And three weeks ago, I was hitting 90% for reps. And now, you know, for singles or doubles. And I missed seven out of ten lifts last month. This month, I got nine out of ten. With the same exact weight.

That's okay. You're better. I feel, I mean, that's progress. And that's what you got to be happy with. I can't beat myself up over it. No one but me can now use the word progress. Then copyrighted? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, except for when you open up the book, it says it's not copyrighted. That's what you think. You explicitly write it at the bottom. I'm playing a very Tito legal strategy. I'm just joking, I'm bullshitting. Yeah, I mean, to learn weightlifting, I mean, it takes a lot of time.

You're gonna be really frustrated. And you just have to keep practicing. Yeah, I mean, a great line. I did this on the other. I told that story on the Barbell Buddha Podcast. I'll tell a shorter story now. But I watched a cool video with Josh Homme, the frontman of Queens of Stone Age. And somebody asked him, what do you tell a 10-year-old kid who wants to play guitar?

What do you say? Because playing guitar is fucking hard. And he goes, oh, easy. You play because you love it you do it for yourself no one else no other reason like it's great that i'm a awesome musician i'm paid to do this this is my job there's not a day that goes by i don't love this but i do it because i love it and for no other reason so if you want to get really good you'll do it because for you to get better at this this clean jerk and snatch is what's

important you're not what somebody else is doing no I want to find my path towards getting this number that's reasonable for me for myself and nobody else if you start there then then you're gonna get to a pretty far point but not reaching for the thing not you're not looking at the price first it's not gonna work yeah so let's say your your technique isn't where it should be the big question that I get from people all the time is, well, should I stay light and work on my technique and then only go heavier once my technique is better? Or should I go heavier and get used to pulling heavier weights and try to improve while I'm doing the real thing?

What's the answer? Should you go heavy now or wait and go heavy later well i mean i think i think you definitely want to practice technique you know definitely with lighter weights um but that being said you also don't just want to go light all the time i mean um i think you should try to you know work up to something that is doable you where your technique doesn't break down, and stick with that. So if your 100% looks awful, then maybe you should dial it back down and just practice that with better technique.

90% might be better for you at that point. That's where it's good to have another person watching you. Go, your technique went totally shit. At 85%, let's do more at 80% and then move up later. Like people in the class, I tell them, we're trying to learn good technique. We have a program. We have a workout that we prescribe. And it'll be like, okay, let's do 85% for two reps.

But if you're missing 85% over and over again, there is no point in you practicing bad form, especially if you got bad form. So you don't really want to learn bad form. You want to learn good form. So you need to take it down a little bit and get to a weight where you can keep that good form and nail it.

And then, okay, all right, if it's looking pretty good, maybe work back up. But definitely you don't want to sit there and practice missing a lot. I've got a rule that anytime I'm over 85%, I try to implement this with our weightlifters. Anytime we get over 85% or so and I miss a lift, sometimes if I miss one at 70%, maybe I got a little distracted in my head, something came so and I miss a lift. Sometimes if I miss one at 70%, maybe I got a little distracted in my head. You know, something came up and I... Your beard got itching or some shit. Yeah, I was worried about having to shave my beard.

And then so, you know, I still make that 5% jump, you know, up to 80% from 75% or something like that. But once you get over 85%, like if I miss a lift, I just go back down. Yeah. Not the third time I miss my lift. The first time I miss my lift after I get over 85%, if I miss a lift, I just go back down. Not the third time I miss my lift. The first time I miss my lift after I get to 85% because from day to day, my 85% today may not be my 85% tomorrow. What I do is I just go down five pounds, and then I hit that.

If I hit it, a lot of times I'll just smoke it, and then I'll just go right back up. Then I'll hit that, and then I'll just keep going up. Sometimes I have to keep going down two or three times. I mean, that's, that happens too. And yeah, I get upset with myself, but it's not the end of the world because guess what? I'll train tomorrow and it'll probably be just fine. And it's not, I mean, you're still making progress because you're getting quality reps in.

If you're not, if you're not getting quality reps in, then there's no way that you're going to progress in the sport. This is why I like following percentage-based programs for a lot of people. I think really advanced lifters, sticking to the percentages may not be as important. But if you're a beginner, a lot of times I see people, all right, we're going to work at 85%. And then they go, man, I felt so good, I just went for a PR. I'm like, well, we're going to do that next week. Maybe you would have gotten more benefit out of just hanging out at 85% today, getting more quality reps.

Maybe you would have gotten an even bigger PR next week. But now you just sacrificed next week's 10-pound PR with today's 5-pound PR. You blew your load. That's right. I feel like with regards to bad technique, there's two different types of bad technique. There's technique that's not ideal and your leverage isn't as good as it could be, so maybe you won't pull quite as heavy as weight as you might be able to with perfect technique. And then there's technique that's bad enough where you're going to hurt yourself yeah and so if your technique is so bad like your back is brutally round your knees are your feet are out and your knees are diving in and you're twisting your knees like you're gonna tear your ACL then that's the time where you shouldn't go ahead

yeah you don't want to practice doing that you're gonna stay light yeah you're gonna get snatch cancer if you're pulling with that rounded back and you know that you definitely should take the load off the weight of the bar let me ask you this let me ask you this it was a fun part when you see that it's what's like can you give me some tell me what you think about my lift and you go what I want to say is god help me forsaken all that's holy about my thing and you embarrass yourself and you're gonna get injured and bought your back how do you what I just did the worst natural scene how do you break it to me well hey man listen I would say

yeah I mean I do a good you're working hard that's fucking suck but you're gonna get better exactly that's the compliment sandwich you know sometimes sometimes you just gotta you just gotta tell them like look you're gonna hurt yourself you know you know you're pulling with it rounded back you know I've I've actually hurt myself before I've actually hurt my back you know what a snatch so it's not like you know you're good guy we both did the same tune and stuff listen because I like it let me tell you something. Lean in closer. You fucking look so terrible right now.

Let me really act like my balls sucked up into my abdomen when I see you lift. You're embarrassing the shit out of everybody here and your parents. They worked so hard to raise you, and look at you. What in the fuck are you doing? But listen, listen. But all that shit aside, homie, we're going to work this out. We're going to work on our position. That could warm up, homie. It's all going to this out. We're going to work on our position. That could warm up, homie.

It's all going to get good. You're going to be great. Trust me. That's a top-net subway sandwich. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, pretty much just that, except try to be a little nicer. Okay, I'll work on that too with my coaching.

All right, real quick. The compliment sandwich is actually a good coaching tool. Actually, it's a good life tool. I think Doug actually taught it to me. He learned it from, I don't know where. I think Tim Ferriss was the guy who brought that to my attention in the four-hour work week. Years and years ago. Doug, what exactly is the compliment sandwich?

You basically just tell someone they're doing a good job, just like Chris suggested. And then you say, okay, now here's your critical feedback. And then you go, but you're still doing a great job. And you do compliment, then suggestion, and then compliment. So you're sandwiching that suggestion in between positive feedback. It's also a debating technique where if you just answer somebody and say, look, this is why this is wrong. The audience gets tense. The guy is going to automatically start rejecting what you're saying.

So you say, look, I agree with these things for those reasons. That's good stuff. Now let me say what I don't agree. Now let me make a joke that makes us all laugh. And then they accept what you have to say. That's how you actually communicate with people. All right. Now people know how to negotiate better.

Damn it. This is a negotiation. This is supposed to be about weightlifting. It is. Tell somebody how to get better is a negotiation. Communicating with athletes, man. That's what it's all about. Right on, dude. We go on forever. We probably should wrap this up. All right, man. That's what it's all about. Right on, dude.

We can go on forever. We probably should wrap this up. Alright, guys. We are going to stop podcasting now and we are going to plug things. Alex wanted to talk about something. Shameless plug. Do it! Do it! Alright, so we're going to

have the Barbell Shrug Weightlifting Championships October 26th through the 27th at Faction Strength and Conditioning here in Memphis, Tennessee. CTP's providing the title belt for the winner. CTP's got a title belt. Is that true? Is that right? Yeah. We should make something that goes on top that's custom over the plate.

It's going to be epic, guys. Yeah. If you're in the Muscle Game Challenge, you get a free entry. So unless you live halfway around the globe, there's no reason why you shouldn't try to come down here and lift. It's probably going to be a great time. Yeah, we're playing it. We have some big plans in the making, so it's going to be good. And, I mean, it's going to be a USAW-sanctioned meet.

It's right before the American Open. I think the American Open is in December. It's far enough out from the American Open. I think it's about seven weeks, which is going to allow you to qualify for the American Open without it being so close that you're not going to be able to peak again, I guess you could say. If you've never done a weightlifting meet, a good chance to do it is just go to a local place and do one. It's not as tense. Just come and have fun.

Yeah, exactly. We're going to have a good time. It'll be very casual. We're going to try and make this one of the better meets that you could ever go to. We're going to party hard after, too, right? Very true. We're going to have a great time. It's not going to be just competing.

We're going to be doing some hanging out. Festivities. Yeah, if you're just a fan of the show even if you're not gonna compete in the meet and you live close enough to Memphis where you want to make a trip and just come hang out just come on come watch the meet hang out with us and have special friends coming we'll go out drinking no special friends coming we're working on special friends okay guest appearances some notable figures notable figures in the community of ours.

That's what we're going to do. We'll probably be drinking tequila in some form and eating charred meat and bullshit and podcast. I mean, come on, dude. Come on down. We should probably get Bedrock Eats and Sweets to come out and provide the food. Epic. It's already epic. Oh, yeah.

I heard she was sponsoring the meat. Oh. I'm just making that up. I'm going to put it on the spot. We can definitely put a... She'll do it. She'll do it. We can get nourished, you know, get some muffins for breakfast.

You chose muffins, homie. What? They delicious. That's good post-workout right there. Yeah. So, yeah, last weekend in October, y'all come on down. Come on down. All right, guys.

See you next time. Dude, anybody else want to plug shit? No. No. No. You can go sign up for the newsletter piece. Oh, yeah. All right, guys. See you next time. Anybody else want to plug shit? No, no, no, no. Sign up for the newsletter piece. Oh yeah.

All right. So guys, don't forget to sign up for the newsletter. Bye. I'll let, I'll let, I'll let Chris, you can let me plug.

I'm going to let you plug something. I'm so fortunate. A lot of, a lot of trick closes on this episode. Yeah, it's tricky. I'm sorry. Oh, barbell blue.com. Check out the podcast closes on this episode. Yeah, it's a tricky episode. Barbellboot.com.

Check out the podcast. I think you'll really like it. Barbellboot it on your iTunes and be entertained. I think you'll get a kick out of it. And if you're a CrossFit coach, go to barbellbusiness.com. We got our business podcast out now. Oh, yeah. Which has been doing really well.

I forgot about that. It was only like top three in the business category the other day. Whatever. It climbed the ranks really fast ass you might even say that if you're not on all of our bandwagons and you're not observing the growing Empire you're just fucking you gotta get with it we're taking over the whole show everything the whole world we have fucking barbell shopping centers fucking restaurants I don't know shit who's to put limits on this thing

rob's like how do we pay for that exactly all right guys see you next time thanks guys all right