Barbell Shrugged - 90- Talking Snatches, Cleans, and Jerks w/ Diane Fu of Fu Barbell

Episode Date: November 13, 2013

Fu Barbell coach and founder Diane Fu joins us to discuss weightlifting!

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview Diane Fu of Fu Barbell. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. Mike Bledsoe here with Chris Moore, Doug Larson. We're hanging out at San Francisco CrossFit. Hanging out with Diane Fu, weightlifting coach in CrossFit as well. Hello. Hi. Thank you for having me on the show. Thanks for joining us. Before we get started, I just want to remind you guys to head to barbellshrug.com and sign up for the newsletter.

If you want to learn what you're probably doing wrong with your snatch, you can put your email there, and then we'll tell you. We're going to talk about that right now. But we're going to cover some of that today, most likely. Let's do it. Let's do it. I'm in. Diane's going to talk about her snatch, how to fix your snatch. That's all we're going to talk about, people's snatches.

People's snatching. So when I wanted to learn more about you, I did a search and I found Food Barbell. And I found your bio here at San Francisco CrossFit as well. And so Food Barbell, does that exist just inside of San Francisco CrossFit? Or were you at one time separate? So Food Barbell is a concept that came up maybe last year sometime. Food Barbell is an idea.

It's also my barbell club. It does operate out of San Francisco CrossFit here as its own entity. So just think of it, if you wanted to join a club and you're in our area or association, you can look me up in the USAW registry and you'll find us and you can come live with us. Food Barbell also happens to be this concept that I came up with last year where I was like, look, we have a very large population of athletes that are interested in weightlifting, but they're not just interested in weightlifting. They're interested in weightlifting because they want to become better strength athletes, better CrossFitters, uh, you know, better people in the world, right? That's right. And what I often found was speaking with a lot of the purest weightlifting coaches

or just listening to what they have to say, a lot of them are like, look, if you want to weightlift or if you want to be a good weightlifter, you have to go in. You have to compete. You have to dedicate your life to the sport. And I'm like, well, there's a little disconnect there because I feel it ends up turning off a really large population of people that could potentially be interested and become involved. Waylifting coaches are not known for their ability to market.

Yeah, it's because it's all or nothing. It's my way or no way, my way or the highway. Sucks, just do this. Yeah, exactly. And so I'm like, look, there has to be a bridge. There has to be a middle ground. We have to be a little more inclusive. And it doesn't have to be a bridge. There has to be a middle ground. We have to be a little more inclusive. It doesn't have to be that serious.

That's kind of how Foo Barbell came about. We love weightlifting. It is a lifestyle. There's a philosophy that we put behind it. Really, at the end of the day, we want to be better people. We want to be better athletes. We just kind of want to have fun. This is one of the better names I can think of.

I fucking love that name. Thank you. Foo Barbell. Thank you. That's fucking awesome. If I want to use my last name and one of the better club names I can think of. I fucking love that name. Thank you. It's Foo Barbell. Thank you. That's fucking awesome. If I wanted to use my last name and

put Barbell next to it, it would fucking sound terrible. Let's go Barbell. Get the fuck out of here, you stupid club

name. The first time I saw it before I really knew who you were, I thought it was F-U Barbell. I was like,

that's kind of clever, I guess. If you don't like barbells. Foo Barbell. There's just so many ways to spin it. It really is really perfect. I like that. No. There's just so many ways to spin it.

It really is really perfect. I like that. I'm pretty proud. I'm pretty proud. How did you get into weightlifting? Did you find CrossFit and then weightlifting or how did that work? She's going to tell you. Yes.

I will tell you it all. I can't keep my mouth shut. All right. I discovered weightlifting through CrossFit and I discovered CrossFit through Adrian Bosman. So if you guys know Adrian, he's the head judge of HQ. Him and I have a long history. We actually started off together in the fitness industry before, you know, we even both knew what CrossFit was about. So he was my first introduction to CrossFit and like every, you know, good CrossFitter, when I first got my first exposure to it, I was like, whatever this

is, I'm in, I'm sold. So I feel like I felt it. Can I tell the story? Is it okay if I tell the story of how this happened? Absolutely. It's going to go on record. It's going to be on podcast forever. So Adrian likes to tell this joke or he likes to put out there, hey, Diane Fu was my first

boss, right? And it's true because I've been in the fitness industry for a really long time. 99, I think is when I started my career. And for a good five to six years of that length of time, I did something called fitness management. So I basically, you know. Sounds sexy. Yeah, it is. It's really sexy.

Not really. Not really at all. So I worked for major commercial health brands. I basically overran their fitness department. So if you went up to the front desk and you're like, hey, I want to potentially hire a trainer, you know, I would come marching up with a name tag on that said fitness director. That was my role. So I was grand opening a club down in South San Francisco at the time, and I was recruiting a staff of trainers to groom and, you know, make big this and make big this department down in South

City. Adrian comes in at the time, young kid, clean cut, doesn't have quite all the hair he has right now. And he sits down in front of me. He's like, hey, look, you know, I currently train up at the Circus Center in San Francisco. I work with a group of my friends and they said I might be good at this and I should become a trainer. And so here I am interviewed him, guy, super intelligent, looks the part well-spoken. And I was like, you're in. So about like, you know, a year goes by, I, uh, become friends with Adrian and I see him one day in the corner, kind of doing this thing up on the pull-up bar. It looks like he's having a seizure on the pull-up bar. Right. So he seizes a little bit, jumps down, throws my dumbbells around a little bit goes sprinting out the front door comes back in and uh he jumps back up with a pull bar has another seizure picks up the dumbbell

does his thing again and i'm just like dude what is this kid doing so i go over there i'm like i'm like what are you doing and i'm like so he tells me he's like look hey i discovered this little website called crossfit and they post up this workout every day and you do these movements and it's a great workout. And I'm like, okay, whatever. Let's try this. So I try it and I do some pull-ups. Not really. They weren't really pull-ups. They were on the Gravitron machine with some

counterbalance weights. Man, I love the Gravitron. Do you remember those things? I do. It's great for fat people. Not for me, of course. I've never had to use it. I use it every day of my childhood, my early days training. Yeah, they're pretty amazing. But I used it, did some dumbbell thrusters. About 20 minutes later, I'm laying on the floor in a puddle of my own sweat, dying.

I think you know how you can kind of taste blood sometimes in your throat? Oh, yeah. Yeah, so that was me. Every morning for me. This is awesome. Whatever this is, I'm is uh you know I'm all in so that's kind of when I converted into CrossFit anyways a year later down the line you know I think every CrossFitter goes through this journey where you know CrossFit just ends up

really saturating them there's so much to learn you got to be like a gymnast you got to be a powerlifter you got to be an Olympic weightlifter you've got to be you know good at you know running everything figure out how to tie it together in some useful way. It's overwhelming unless you have a coach helping you put it together. You're super saturated. You're learning all these skills, but I find about a year, year and a half into your journey, you suddenly realize

you become a little more insaturated. You're like, hey look, if I want to become better at this sport of CrossFit, I have to start getting better at these individual skills. A little bit of focus here and there. A little more focus, a little more planning, a little bit more concerted effort in different directions, right? And then pulling it back when you want to start generalizing again.

Right. So that was when I decided to kind of get into the venture of weightlifting because we have in the Bay Area so many great weightlifting coaches. I found a place down in South San Francisco, basically down the street from the commercial club I was working at at the area, so many great weightlifting coaches. I found a place down in South San Francisco, basically down the street from the commercial club I was working at at the time. It's called the Sports Palace. It's run by my first coach, Jim Schmitz, who actually coincidentally now goes around and does the CrossFit, some of the CrossFit seminars for Mike Bergener in the area. Oh, cool.

Yeah. So he's now in the circuit too. And so I ended up, you know, heading over there and, uh, you know, walking into his gym. And back then, I'm going to say this. I really thought I was the shit. Am I allowed to say that on a podcast? Yeah. I can't believe you said that. You can say shit however many fucking times you want. Oh, excellent. I was like, I really thought I was, you know, something kind of special. Cause when the pool's really small, you can tend to be a big fish pretty easily. Oh, yeah. And it goes with the youth. It goes with the youth. Yeah, absolutely. We live in Memphis, Tennessee.

It's a very small pond. Pond's pretty small, yeah. So I walk in. I am, at this point, at San Francisco CrossFit, the top CrossFitter, or one of the top CrossFitting females at the time, thinking my snatch don't stink, my clean and jerk snatch don't stink. Couldn't have worded that more perfectly.

My clean and jerk's not so bad either. So I thought I was going to go in and just get some, you know, technique cleanups and I was going to really wow some people. Basically, I walk into this gym and not only do I not wow anybody, I have women that are basically half my size, you know, clean and snatching doubles what I can clean and jerk, you know. And so, you know, it's really humbling, really fast. And what ended up happening is I spent some time there. I wasn't really quite improving at the rate that I wanted to. And my gym, being the good coach that he is, he's like, look, if you really want to get good at this sport, A, your time is limited,

and B, and this is a trick, guys, he's like, look, when you're strong enough, when you're skilled enough, when you feel like you've done enough, you can always go back to CrossFit. And I was like, oh, all right, that makes sense. Give it like six months and I'll go back to CrossFit. It's been like six, seven years almost.

Fell in love. Yeah. The first time you get that perfect snatch, there's no perfect snatch, right? The first time when you really feel what it's supposed to feel like. That's what they say. Yeah. No such thing as 10.

You know, I went all in, and I haven't gotten back out. It fulfills everything that I need in terms of, you know, entertainment, enjoyment, like meditation, like fitness. It's a complete, it's a complete, it's a complete set. I feel like in the CrossFit world, it happens with weightlifting only. Nobody does CrossFit and then like gets into powerlifting. They're like, I'm not going back. They don't get into gymnastics.

I'm not going back. It happens. They go into weightlifting and they go, I'm just going to be a weightlifter. That's true. That's way, way more than any true. That's a really good point. You know, I never kind of put the two and two together,

but it's true. People will get into weightlifting and stay in weightlifting. But you know what? Yeah, I do love CrossFit. I think CrossFit is the perfect, the perfect strength and conditioning model

for the majority of athletes when it comes to creating a foundation, when it comes to preparing general fitness. Like it is, you know, I don't think there's anything better than CrossFit and I might just be super biased about it, but anytime I've personally ever done CrossFit, I get so mad. You get mad when you do CrossFit? I don't expect you to say. Really? I know. I thought you were going to say, I guess in such good shape.

Well, you get in such great shape, but for some reason, my hormonal response of CrossFit exercise is I'm actually like, once I'm done, I get really like, oh, I'm just so mad. Too much testosterone. That must be it, right? That really must be it. But then once that anger goes away, then I'm just like, oh, you're all euphoric. It's the quickest way to your runner's high. And everyone feels good and wants to powwow.

There's somehow between that euphoric feeling and the part where you start where I go through this transition period of like ooh, it makes me so mad, but I don't get that with weightlifting. Weightlifting is just like a nice even balance the entire time. There's more craft and art to it. It's not just ego and showing everybody else how fucking strong you are. It's continual refinement

and quiet and solitude. It's different than other kinds of lifting. Do you do any, do you do any, speaking of like CrossFit being a good foundation, I found a couple years ago that doing like ring handstand pushups made my jerk go up. Yeah, yeah. Like considerably.

It was like, I was doing like Turkish get-ups and things that weightlifters don't typically do. I mean, if you have an injured shoulder, you might end up doing with Turkish get-ups as a weightlifter. But yeah, no weightlifters don't typically do. I mean, if you have an injured shoulder, you might end up doing Turkish get-ups as a weightlifter. But, you know, no weightlifter is getting upside down in their training, you know, unless they're Cloacob. The Chinese are. Yeah, the Chinese are.

You're right. You look at the best, and they are doing handstand push-ups. They're doing handstands. They do handstand holds. They'll bodybuild once a week. Yeah. And at the end of the week, they'll sit there, and you'll just see them kind of holding a handstand for, you know, two, three, four minutes once a week. Yeah. And at the, at the end of the week, they'll sit there and they'll just like, you know,

you'll just see them kind of holding a handstand for, you know, two, three, four minutes at a time. Just like, so if you're, I'm not adding that to my repertoire too.

He did. He added, I fucking did a handstand for the first time today. Oh, did you really? I never had my ass above my head. It was a fucking handstand. Carl talked him into it.

He said, he said he never even done it in the bedroom before. I was shocked. I'm versatile in all aspects Wink wink But that was fucking exhilarating I go I can see how this helps your press I've never seen

I've seen Chris I've seen Chris that happy Only a few times And I've known him for What seven years now Or something like that I'm alive finally Yeah

Now I am You're a complete man He made a big step I think if you're a weightlifter And you can't get into a handstand comfortably or a handstand push-up. There's a problem. Yeah, I had one of my weightlifters, he had a lot of core stability issues. And I had him just do handstand holds for a little bit. And he walked in the gym the next day and was wrecked.

Like his core was wrecked. And I was like, whoa. That's a problem. Yeah, and so we did more that's a problem. Yeah. And so we did more of those. Yeah. So I definitely feel like, you know, if I was eight years old and I got recruited into the sport real young, it doesn't even have to be some kind of sports camp, right? It just has to be, Hey, mom and dad thinks it's a good idea for me to come weightlift. And I started at eight and I went through all the time and spent the volume and was you know

easy with the progression learn the rhythm whatever you know I can probably redevelop over time as I age the requisite strength to be able to support a lot of these positions and neurologically I would grow as I grew as an athlete so the maturity would kind of the maturity level of the of the athlete would grow as their age grew and as their training age grew. So the problem I see with a lot of the adults coming into the sport is their training age is very young. We're like eight-year-olds. Like my, I am no better than maybe, you know, a 10, 11-year-old, you know, training right now. And I'm actually, people think I'm pretty good.

And I'm always like, thanks for thinking I'm pretty good, but I'm just okay. And that's really the truth of it. You know, if we want to really get down to the truth of it all. So, you know, as adults, we need a lot more stuff that we're not getting because we didn't start out so young. So having a little, a day of maybe just bodybuilding at the end of the week where you do extra accessory work, like handstands, handstand pushups. Oh my God, some dumbbell rows. It's not like it's fucking poor. People are like, oh, I can't do that.

That's not honorable. I did see a few minutes ago, maybe a half hour ago, I saw a guy doing barbell curls over here. Yes. I was like, man, you do not see that very often. No. I tell- It's great for shortening the elbows and stuff like that.

Well, bicep curls are great if you got kind of junky elbows. It just pumps blood to the area. Yeah. Right? So we do bicep curls. We'll do dips. We'll do extent. We do all sorts of work here that, you know, maybe gets poo-pooed around the area, but look, it works because we're adults and we need some extra stuff. I actually did have an elbow extension issue at one point and I did some barbell. I finally figured out to do barbell curls somehow. This was back in college. This was before I was such a genius. Here we go.

And it did fix it. Yeah, it does. It does. And the thing is, there's nothing wrong, and it only helps. It's not that the thing is wrong. It's just that you use it in the right proportion. You don't have to make it everything you do. It's just a little dash of it.

It's like salt on top of the omelet. Fuck, it gives a little flavor. That's what I say is everything, if used properly or if used intentionally or with purpose as a tool right there's no there's no good movement bad movement you know i i put a lot of stuff out there a little plug for myself who barbell diane foo on instagram i put a lot of information out you do a great job on there by the way thank you thank you i work really hard at it but um i'll put information out and i will get private messages sometimes from, you know, seasoned coaches, you know, in our community. I won't put any names out there, but they'll be like, Diane, you can't teach that.

I'm like, why not? And they're like, well, because it's going to teach an athlete to do, you know, such and such and such and such. Like it'll form some bad movement habits. Right. And of course, there's not specific to the snatch. Yeah. Can't do it. Can't do it. can't do it or

you know other coach would be like yeah great job that's such a great exercise on the very same movement right yeah so if you found a point of contention like who's right here yeah but then that's the thing is there is no right or wrong there's to say that there's bad movement unless it's intentionally hurtful or harmful or potentially harmful in terms of injury there's no right or wrong there's's just a tool, right? And everything, if used properly, can fix anybody. And that's really the point of it all. And that's kind of where Food Barbell comes in.

And we're trying not to be dogmatic and we're trying to take a look at everything. You'll see that if I stand in a group of athletes weightlifting, I won't go correct anyone, at least not for a while. I'll just sit there and I like to observe. I like to see what everyone's doing. And my line of thought is like, if you're doing something that's different than what I want to see in my mind, based on my framework, I'm not going to go over

there and be like, Hey, look, you got to do this. Cause you know, this is not right. I want to watch you move a, I want to see if it's a habit of yours, if it was just a one-time occurrence and then be a more likely, I want to see, I want to be like, want to be like why is he doing that is there a reason why he's doing that and i and if there's a reason why chances are because of my experience in the sport i can be able to flesh that out based on what you're expressing in terms of movement oh he's doing that because you know maybe his legs are a little bit weak so he's trying to recruit a little bit more of his back or oh maybe maybe he's doing this because you know this is this is his uh conception of what the power position actually looks like.

You know, and if it works for you and it looks efficient and it looks fluid, then I don't say anything. But if the movement looks a little punchy or it looks a little inefficient or something looks a little off or you're just not racking it well and right, then I'll come over and we'll start a conversation. You know, and that's typically my approach. I've been in some gyms where I'm warming up, I'm at 50% of my 1RM. Somebody wants to come fix you. And then someone comes over to fix me. And I jump backwards four inches.

But it's 50% of my 1RM max. So, yeah, that's what I do when I warm up sometimes. It's not intentional. No, I'm usually very nice. I accept it and i go okay cool say thank you and then 50 kilos later they go oh okay yeah yeah actually probably my one of my biggest pet peeves in the coaching world is when people over coach every single rep you do you get six pieces of feedback and then after the next rep you get six more pieces of feedback and it's just it's too overwhelming like it sounds like you have a very simplified approach to it where you're not over there just like hounding them on every single rep about every everything they're

doing you can talk to some of my lifters in my club if you're a new lifter coming to my club chances are i won't talk to you for the first time they think they think i don't like them it's not that it's not that severe but really it's it's more like i just want to let them do their thing you know beginners once they get framework, they need to have the framework. You lay that foundation with them. They understand, hey, what the first pull is, second pull is, whatever. How to catch, how to be upright, what the shoulder. Once they've got that basic foundation, you've just got to let them move.

And it's not going to look perfect. And that's the truth of the matter. It's not going to look perfect. They're going to learn to feel it for themselves, right? Yes. The words only go so far. And the thing is, as a coach, it's super intuitive. If you just trust...

Our sound's going crazy here. Way crazy. Take a break. Yeah, let's go ahead and take a break real quick. When we come back, we'll talk about intuitive lifting and how old Diane actually is. Top secret. Wise beyond her years. And we're back. Top secret. Wise beyond her years. And we're back.

Technical difficulties. There's magnets under the city. That's what's causing all of our problems. We're good. It did start to do it. We're back at San Francisco CrossFit here with Dan Fu. We left off abruptly talking about intuitive lifting and coaching. Yes, yes, we did.

So what I was saying was, you know, if I have a lifter in my club, you know, I usually won't say anything to them, you know, for at least the first month. I mean, this is, of course, you know, guys, they know the framework, you've laid the foundation, they've covered the basics. And really, the reason because is not that I don't want to see them improve. It's because I do want them to improve that I don't say anything. Like a lot of lifters, especially when they're new, they're not going to look good. And that's just a matter of the fact, no matter what you do, they're not going to get the knees back hard enough. They have a really difficult time, you know, navigating to that power position. They're going to be forward in their toes. And you know, what's happening is they're trying to

work out a feeling in their body. They're trying to figure it out in their mind. They're probably oversaturated. The circuits are on fire. And for me to go in there and give them these crazy cues, you know, it's probably going to stunt their process. And so my cue for myself as a coach, and this is just unique for me and it doesn't, it's not my suggestion to anybody else, is, you know, once I see that they have a flow, the rhythm looks good from floor to overhead, that tells me they're no longer super saturated. That tells me they're no longer thinking about step one, step two, step three.

And now that's my cue for myself to come in and be like, okay, now let me insert another thought. Okay, let's tweak one thing at a time. Let's tweak one thing. And I give them that one thing and I let them chew on it. And then once that one thing kind of starts to work itself out, then I'll come in with another thing. And it ends up being a very gradual process for them.

But the improvements show over time, everybody's going to lift better. Everybody is going to continue to PR. And that's kind of the nature of things. I don't like to inundate right away. Yeah. Two things I hate when I'm coaching and weightlifting athletes do this sometimes is, can you watch my lift? Can you watch my lift? Can you watch my lift? Like every lift. I'm like, I'm not going to give you feedback on every lift because you're not going to feel it. Right. Like you're going to be thinking the whole time. Exactly. And then also someone will come up to me. Doug will already be in the room coaching. And they'll go, Doug's been helping me.

What do you think? I was like, I don't think anything. Like, Doug probably already gave you a cue. Right. I'm going to tell you something different because I'm a different person, so I'm going to see a different problem. You know, he may be fixing this other thing. And now I'm going to just confuse you even further. Right.

And every coach has a different approach, and I usually encourage people to go visit different coaches. Can't agree more. Yeah. What I might be trying to get you to do might not be clicking with you. And then you go see this other coach. They may be trying to get you to do the same thing, but they say it in a different way. And it works. Show you a different way.

And all of a sudden, I don't know how many times an athlete's left. Maybe this just says, I'm a sucky coach. They leave, they go to another gym and they're like, oh my God, I know you were trying

to make me do this, Mike, but for some reason this other coach was able to get a deal. Or the other side of it is they go, you never said that to me before. You're like,

I tell you that all the time. And they're like, no, I don't think so. Well, you were mean about it. That's right. Yeah, I'm not known for my niceness. That's for sure.

I'm a negative reinforcement kind of guy. But I think that's because that's where I respond. That sucks. Do it better. That's right. I had it. Whatever. I do remember when I was in college and I first discovered weightlifting.

I discovered weightlifting in 2006 and, um, I met Doug in the weight room and he had been weightlifting since he was like 15. Yeah. Since, since like 95 or something. That's cool.

Yeah. Spoiled. So then, uh, he and a couple other guys who had been weightlifting a really long time. And I had just discovered it that summer. And in that fall, they're like,

they would walk by and they go,, hey why don't you try this? Why don't you try this? And then we had like the coach who was telling me like why don't you try this? One day I like lost my shit. I was like nobody tell me anything. I'm gonna lift. Just leave me the fuck alone. I'm gonna lift. I don't want

anyone to talk to me. I was like, I thought I was gonna explode. Right. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Sometimes you just want to move. You know? Yeah. Sometimes you just want to move. You just want to train. I was like, I thought I was going to explode. Right. Too many cooks in the kitchen. Like sometimes you just want to move, you know? Yeah. Sometimes you just want to move. Just want to train. And sometimes at night,

the coronation might not be there for the day because neurologically you're a little bit tired and you know, you just want to exercise. Sometimes you just want to exercise. I feel you. Yeah.

That's sometimes a question an athlete asks. They'll go, they'll go, what do you think about my lift? My clean is not what it was yesterday. What's wrong with my technique? Why am I a failure now?

They go, what's wrong with my technique? It's different today than it was yesterday. I go, it's probably not your technique. How'd you sleep? What'd you eat? Did you eat enough calories today? Did you get enough sleep last night? Nine times out of ten, they go, oh.

No, I did sleep like shit last night. Or I'm like, oh, fuck, man. Your mic is killing me. My mic's going. All right. One more break. Let's take a break. And we're back again.

For some reason, Chris's microphone, he totally blew it out with his voice, with his power. Wisdom. He's got the power belly and it just sends insane amounts of volume right through the microphone. I couldn't handle it anymore. Get the fuck out of here, Doug. Point made. I'm about to box him out like a basketball.

Where did we leave off? I don't even know. I have like ADD, so I have a hard time keeping up with the last five seconds. Talking about something related to weightlifting. Yeah, and then we start talking about stuff and how we don't think we're cuing. Over cuing. Over cuing. Over coaching.

Do not over coach. Don't over coach. And then don't ask your coach to over coach. Yeah, don't ask your coach to over coach. And that's a good point too. Yeah. You know, I do find sometimes beginners, they just want all the information right now. And I always say that you're going to learn what you need to learn at the time you're going to learn it. You know, you can't force yourself to learn something new.

Oh, my God. So when I first started, you know, Jim Schmitz was my first coach. But I also, you know, Coach Bergener deserves good credit because he's a CrossFit. He's the CrossFit SME. I remember spending my early years watching YouTube videos of him coaching Sage in the garage and doing the Bergener warm-up and doing the snatch and listening to everything. I find myself over the years as I become more mature as an athlete and more mature as a coach myself, looking back to things that Coach B said back in those videos that are just like clicking a light bulb like oh that's what he meant you know and it really does it takes time to sink in and nobody's going to learn it you can tell somebody a specific

cue to you know to perform a specific technique and you can yell it till you're blue in the face but that athlete won't take it in until they're ready like they will will, when they're ready, it'll just suddenly like be a light bulb and they'll be like, oh. You know, that's what you mean when you said like chest up. Yeah, yeah. That's what you mean when you, you really want my chest up.

You don't want it like down facing the bar. That's not what you meant. You meant chest, when you said chest up by chest is up, right? It's so crazy because you're like, holy shit, how did you not know that why didn't you tell me chest up i told you chest up yeah i mean i've had the same things as an athlete too you know like uh years and years and years get under the bar i get under the bar and then uh i i visited

two coaches in in a two-week period and then i think i started dropping like another three inches right which allowed my snatch to go up like 10 kilos. Like crazy. Like a 10% increase. Just because I could just. Get under it. Oh, I'm supposed to drive my ass to the floor. Right.

That was like, I was like, oh, I'm pulling under the bar with my arms. But it wasn't until I was like, I'm going to try and put my ass on my ankles that I was like as quickly as possible. And then I was like, oh, this is okay. I'm pulling under the bar now hey guess what it works it's amazing yeah yeah totally and then it felt easier too heavier weights easier I've had situations like that where you're saying something like like you know better posture chest up and then it's not until you say like be tall or go taller or or hips forward or something like that. You got to say like this,

the same thing one slightly different way and then just fixes like that. Right, right, right, right. So the thing you said earlier about having different coaches and traveling around and training with people that are different than your everyday coaches, that's key for kind of getting it in your head in a slightly new way,

which might connect with you. You know, it's really interesting. My athletes here. So, you know, Kristen and Newman, she's one of the coaches, super athlete. She's involved in the sport of Olympic weightlifting. She lifts her full barbell. She does powerlifting. You know,

she's super involved. Fantastic athlete. And, you know, we work out together a lot. We hang out. And we're always just being like, you know, she for a very long time had a problem with her jerk, right? She's had her first coach try to fix her jerk. Didn't work. Her second coach try to fix her jerk. It didn't work. And then like one day, you know, she was having problems. I was walking by her.

I'm like, hey, you should you should really use your legs. And for some reason, just by saying that, she's like, oh, yeah, I should use my legs. And, you know, and it clicked. And she was, you know, clean and jerking over 100 kilos. know clean and jerking over 100 kilos you know or jerking over 100 kilos i mean this woman's strong so you know she she has a strength that's just somehow that idea of hey i should maybe use my legs you know resonated with her where you know for other athletes you'd be like use your legs you're like they're like i have no idea what you're talking about i think i think the jerk is like commonly neglected as well you know because

i think everyone's focuses on the pools. Right. On the snatch and the pools and the clean. And then the jerk is like, well, you just dip drive and you step out. And then there's like, there's so many, again, that's one of those other movements the last few years. I've just like been around some different coaches and they're like, oh, you're doing it wrong. And then now I see videos of other people and I go, oh, shit, everyone's's making that same mistake I feel the jerk is the most undercoached exercise that we have it is the most undercoached it has the least amount of I guess coaching literature I feel available to

the general public if you don't understand it you're probably not going to coach it a lot you know like oh yeah you just do that all right good job you know I don't want to feel like an idiot by not knowing how to coach the jerk. Yeah, I feel like it is the most undercoached movement. Like, there's so much literature. There's so much information on the first pull, the second pull, you know, the snatch, the clean. Everybody wants to get better at the snatch.

The snatch gets, like, almost over-talked about to the point of just, like, inundation, you know? But the jerk, if you go out there and you want to try to learn how to jerk, I mean, there's really not a lot of information aside from, like, hey, do a push press and then, you know, but the jerk, if you go out there and you want to try to learn how to jerk, I mean, there's really not a lot of information aside from like, Hey, do a push press. And then, you know, like go for the bar, step your foot out, you know? And I'm like, that is not technical enough for people who really want to understand what the mechanics are of the lift. Yeah. It wasn't for me until, uh, I was hanging out with Zach Critch and, uh, he saw me jerk and he goes,

you're doing it wrong. And I go, well, he may not have said exactly that, but that's what I heard because I'm a very negative person. No, I'm not. But you're not doing this right. And what had happened was he said, I have been doing it wrong for like a decade. And it wasn't until Coach Z came in to the Olympic Training Center, or Zygmunt, he came in to the Olympic Training Center and fixed Zach Crmunt, he came in Olympic Training Center and fixed Zach Critches, who, you know, he's practically a 200 kilo clean and jerker.

And then he fixed his jerk, and he goes, oh. And so he shows up to our facility months after he started working with Coach Zygmunt, and then he showed me this, and then I started putting it together. And it was one of those things where I thought that my jerk technique was perfect. That's a great teaser. You're going to have to teach me what you're doing later. Yeah, we'll get on the platform and I'll show you what he showed me. And I think his explanation was really maybe too in-depth.

And there was just like a few things that I changed. But what's funny is I see people doing it all the time in competitions. And I go, oh, man, I think I learned a secret so who knows I've been passing it on and like even even people who I help can you articulate what this is that he had you do um it was a big process actually because uh he it was over a few different days of him watching me and and making corrections and we drew some lines on the floor, but just, just basics is I was, my knee was traveling too far over my foot on my front foot.

Okay. And then my rear knee was not very soft at all. Right. And so, uh, I'm watching meets where guys are clean jerking, like 140 kilos and they're still doing that. They still get that stiffer back leg,

the kickstand I call it. And yeah. And it was one of those things where like now it's like there's some cues for it. But just let that rear knee be soft and let it come down. And I just see a lot of people, they step out, the knee travels over the foot. And they've got a stiff rear knee. Right. And if they just all of a sudden you're more up and down

you can drop another two or three inches and the weight just just locks right in it's like oh that was it but it's i i feel like that's not it's kind of hard to just make a video about or there's a lot of going back and forth between the athlete and the coach i think with that well i feel with the jerk and i'm just going to put this out there so it's on the podcast, is people have this misconception. I mean, because again, there's no bad way to move, right? There's efficient, there's less efficient, and then there's what's right for the individual. With the jerk, I find people have this idea of they kind of launch the bar off their shoulders and they just go lunging for the weight. And out of all fairness, if you were here with me and we were doing a basics class, that's how I teach it.

I go, you do a push press and you go for the lunch. You know, you just break it down to its most simplest components and you go from there, right? Then we can just start to kind of make it more technical as you get the flow. You have to oversimplify it first. Yeah, oversimplify. And so, you know, but what I see or what I feel people miss is that, you know, the tempo of the jerk, as how I teach it, is actually a one-two tempo. And so both the feet, for many athletes, if you watch them, they land at the same time. And, you know, for people who maybe have a very powerful leg drive, they can get that bar high enough and they can land both feet and be able to step through that bar at the same time. Right? that bar at the same time, right? But for a lot of people, the more efficient way to get through that barbell is really to think about landing that back foot first aggressively and using that foot as an anchor to push the body through the weight. And a lot of athletes don't have that level of

tempo. And a second idea that a lot of people miss on the jerk is that they don't use their shoulders, right? So in the clean, in the snatch, I feel people are really savvy and they go, oh, you know, at the point of extension, you want to shrug your shoulders. Well, why do we want to shrug our shoulders, right? We don't want to lift that bar higher with our shoulders. What we want to do is we want to make that transition from the second to third pull more aggressive. So that shoulder punch or that shrug, I say punch because I feel shrug is a little passive. That shoulder punch is speeding up your transition from second to third pull.

Well, guess what? There's a punch in the jerk as well. So I want to dip, I want to drive. Now I've started to generate energy with my legs. I've got a strong trunk with my frame on transferring the energy. Now I want to follow that impulse through with a punch of my shoulders.

And that's going to rapidly accelerate me away from that bar and underneath the weight into my lockout and so those are the two things that i feel like people are missing out a lot is they don't have a good timing or they don't have what i feel is more efficient timing with the feet and they don't understand that there's actually also a punch to help speed up transition in the jerk as well so there's a punch in the shrug or a punch in the snatch punch in the clean punch in the jerk as well and anytime i've ever taught that to people and had

them practice without those pieces and then practice with those pieces, they're always invariably like, oh my God, I'm just under the bar. It's so much faster. Yeah. I found that a lot of people have a hard time grasping. I had a hard time grasping the speed. Right. Which I needed to lock out my elbows and, you know, punch under the bar on a jerk until I had gone to the American Open for the first time as a spectator. And I went and saw like, you know, national caliber weightlifters jerk. I go, oh, the coach has been telling me to move faster, but I didn't, I didn't know it was supposed to be that fast.

Right. People don't understand. It was like a whole new thing. Yeah. They don't understand the mechanics for the speed of the jerk. And the jerk is the most violent lift of the three lifts. You have to be the fastest because if you're not quick,'re not getting under the bar that's just period definitely yeah the two most novel things that i heard out of this whole podcast was was the thing that you just said about

having your back leg push you through the weight yeah push yourself under the weight like i've never i've never said it like that at all but but i actually am excited to kind of take that back and try with our lifters to see how that connects with them. It's a one, two tempo. If they're not used to moving the feet like that, it's a little weird. And so that's when I introduced the idea of like hiding the volume.

Like you gotta be like waiting for your elevator and like just in your footwork, you gotta be like, you know, in the lunch line practicing it. But yeah, it's, it's, it's kind of a weird tempo at first,

but once you get it, you just, you can literally see the athletes entire frame move through and lock out under the bar and so when now when you're underneath 100 kilos and you're trying to go how am i going to get this thing from the front of my body to the back of my body well that's your answer yeah i think that's not something that people realize in a lot of cases that you are you are getting it from the front of your body to the back of your body going from the front of your shoulders basically to over your scapula because if your arms vertical and it connects your scapula then Because if your arm's vertical and it connects to your scapula, then it's moving from here

to here. It's going, either you're going forward or it's going backward or a combination of the two somehow. Exactly. Yes. All right. The other thing that I thought was very novel and was interesting that you actually kind of put a tangible twist on it was knowing when the athlete was kind of out of the analysis

paralysis phase and they have the smooth pull where they're not overthinking it anymore and that's when you can come in and give them another cue and then something to think about because you know that they're not overwhelmed anymore. Right, right, right. I definitely feel that, you know, flow, I'm always about flow. Flow is a big thing.

You know, I coach my athletes. I really want my athletes to end up being independent. You know, I don't want to necessarily be your coach forever. That is never my goal, right? I don't want to be your coach forever. I'm like, just kidding. You can be. For today you can be. No, I don't want to be, I don't want to be their coach forever. You know, I want them to be able to develop, you know, independency to be able to sit there and be like, Hey, what are my issues

that I, you know, I want, I have to solve, you know, I want them to get in tune with the lift. So they're not always counting on that external feedback. Like, you know, as lifters, we really need to be, it has to be a combination of we need to feel what's going on along with comma, there's a benefit to having an external set of eyes. Right. And so if my lifters can develop this independent feel of like, Hey, I know what's going on in the middle versus I just pulled and blacked out, then now they can start to solve the

problems or I can start to solve problems with them and together we can be more efficient. Doesn't everybody black out when they lift? Yeah, a lot of people do. You'd be surprised. Yeah. Only when you're standing there with a 1RM on your shoulders do you black out and fall straight back.

Right. They'll pull the bar. I'll be like, dude, what happened? They're like, I have no idea. I blacked out. Yeah, it happens. That happens to me on heavy front squats on occasion. Right when I come up and I'm going to go through my sticking

point, it's like, if I can make it through it without getting lightheaded and passing out, then I can get the one RM. But if not, then I have to drop it before I can pass out. So you're talking about a different blackout. You're talking about like a checked out mentally instead of lack of blood flow. They haven't entered

the level yet where they can matrix their lift. How's that? Whoa. Ooh. You like that? Training plus. Well, cool. I'll actually want to train, so let's wrap this up.

Let's do it. Dude, do you have anything you want to plug or any sponsors you want to thank? No, you know what? Any projects you're working on right now you want to mention? Oh, yeah. So, yes. Damn. It took a long time to get there.

Well, I do want to say, you know, Foo Barbell, myself, we're working on some pretty cool projects coming up in 2014. You know, one of them is this idea we are going to be coming out with a book. I can't be putting out too much detail on it, but it's a very novel concept. It's something that has not been done on the market before and you know it's part you know it's part educational it's part entertainment and a lot of it is really just I want people to appreciate the sport for what it is it doesn't

have to be more it could be whatever it is for you and I'm really excited about it and we will be looking for people to support it in 2014 so when you see it out there you know maybe take a peek and if you like it jump on train with us it will come back out and podcast again let's do it there you go promote it promote it all the way let's do it and if you want more information from you they have you have your Instagram you have a website yeah so Instagram you can find me on Diane Fu that's just my name on Facebook you can follow me at Fu Barbell. I do have a personal page.

I'm a little maxed out on friends. Don't worry. I don't post anything interesting on there outside of, you know, where I ate and pictures of my bulldog. So Fu Barbell on Facebook or Diane Fu on Instagram. Excellent.

All right, guys. Very cool. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you, guys.