Barbell Shrugged - How To Increase Your Snatch, Clean, and Jerk with National Weightlifting Competitor and Coach - Episode 34

Episode Date: November 15, 2012

http://www.FITR.tv  How to increase your Snatch, Clean, and Jerk with National Weightlifting Competitor and Coach Justin Thacker from the Lab Gym in St. Louis, MO.  This is easily our best episode about Olympic Weightlifting.  Included in the episode are two new Technique WOD's where Justin Thacker introduces us to the snatch progression he uses for his members at the Lab Gym.  Do not miss this episode of The Barbell Shrugged crossfit podcast!  For more episodes of the podcast visit http://www.BarbellShrugged.com Watch this episode on our website at http://fitr.tv/blogs/barbell-shrugged/6891691-how-to-increase-your-snatch-clean-and-jerk-with-national-weightlifting-competitor-and-coach-episode-34

This week on Barbell Shrug, we interview Justin Thacker, national weightlifting competitor and coach. What's up guys, this is CTP and you're listening to Barbell Shrug. Make sure you check out our video versions of all these podcasts on our website, fitter.tv. In all of our video versions, we include Technique WOD, which is our series of technique instruction videos for CrossFitters. Free previews of some of the seminars we put out. And then sometimes come out of the studio and have special video segments such as cooking in the kitchen with Brandy that one time and out in the pool with Lucas and who knows what the next thing we'll do is.

So make sure you check out our website, fitter.tv, and watch the videos as well. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged, travel edition. This week we're in St. Louis visiting The Lab. I've got Doug with me, CTP, our cameraman. We've got Corey Lona's back. What up? From a couple weeks ago, if you remember. He actually lives here.

And Justin Thacker, competitive weightlifter, national level, and owner, operator of The Lab. So you've competed in a lot of national competitions yep yeah um olympic trials you've been to those can you run through a little bit of your lifts and uh how you've done at those different meets yeah i started competing in about 1997 and uh got involved with say the junior olympics and junior nationals around that time and um won the junior olympics and then around that time and won the Junior Olympics and then Junior Nationals, won the gold there, and then eventually went on to the senior level to compete at national championships, the American Open, and then some collegiate national championships.

I've been doing that for the most part all the way from 2000 to even now. My best finishes, I've had several second third place medals throughout the years at all those national meets and probably a handful of about 20 plus national medals in that time so mostly as a lifter now I've been coaching a little bit the last couple years in terms of team lab coming together so through the years though but my proudest moment I would say is probably making the Olympic trials in 2004 I was eligible in 2008 but that's when the gym started and things were just too busy to go compete and then now with 2012 we didn't even have a trial so uh kendra got those honors of course

but um best lifts are uh in training 142.5 kilos snatch i'm still back in the days where we used the 0.5 fractions yeah still not used to those one kilo increments, but, uh, then 180 kilo clean and jerk. And that was at, uh, is a, a heavy 85 or light 94. And, uh,

but I've really been more of an 85 kilo lifter my whole life. So, so for the people in the audience that don't do kilos, what are, what are those weights in pounds? Pounds? I'm gonna have to guess honestly. So I'd say about three 15 or so,

uh, in pounds for the snatch and then clean and jerk, uh, around three6. Yep, yep. Yep, so. As an 85-kilo lifter, which is how much? That's 187.

That's 187, which are good numbers. They're all right. Yeah, they're so-so. I've been living in the shadows of, early in my career was always Oscar Chaplin, so there would always be Oscar with like a 350 total, and then I'd be there with around a 300 kilo total at second place. And everyone else behind us around 270 to 290.

And then that happened forever. And I'm like, I can't wait for this guy to retire so I can actually get some glory days here. And then Kendrick Ferris shows up and starts replacing the same kind of lifts and set new national records and everything. So I just can't beat it. So we'll see how coaching goes. I haven't seen any of his videos since like high school. oscar chaplin oh yeah i used to watch those with mark back in high school yeah he's outstanding so it was great to be able to lift with those guys and you know just kind of catch some of their fame from the background but uh you know it's just

fun to see them lift you know and be part of that competition at least how much longer do you think you're going to lift competitively my plan now uh is to compete until the 2016 trials i'd like to be able to go through four uh olympic cycles and at least compete through there and be at the top and and i you know if i'm still setting prs and lifting up my best i'm gonna go on to 2016 and try to make the trials and go as far as i can see if i can make any uh international teams uh on the way through there and set some lifetime PRs. I feel great and things have been good and I've had a lot of my best lifts in the last year or so. So as long as business is steady and stress is low, I'm going to go for it. Very cool.

How long have you been coaching weightlifting? I started coaching and training in 2000 and so about 12 to 13 years now. But really specifically for competitive lifters and say a team based approach, really just the last two years. But I've really worked more one on one people over the years, which is a nice intro to that. So I could really fine tune a lot of particulars and then get into where we can handle 10, 15 people at once and taking on that kind of dynamic. So lots of different styles and abilities from so youth sports to youth weightlifting uh we now coach lift for life gym here and then um to just national level lifters early uh or late teens early 20s and then even masters level lifters and uh this year we actually uh worked with diana

davidson who took fifth at the masters at the crossfit games so worked out with some high level crossfitters there and then uh now even i wrote the off-season strength training cycle for Fernando Rios, who's the Pan Am champion from Brazil and Olympian for Brazil. So that was a really cool opportunity because, you know, I didn't expect him to come ask for some advice. Yeah, very cool. So he set a recent PR back squat of 300 kilos for two reps. So that might be my proudest moment, honestly.

300 kilos? 300 kilos for two. 660 for a double what's that guy weighing yeah he's probably man i don't know he's probably at least around 140 kilos at least he holds it pretty well 300 pounds yeah he's you know he's been growing into his weight a lot the last couple years growing into his weight he's you know into the into his weight. He's into his weight class, so he's... Oh, okay. He's slowly growing to be as heavy as he is. Yeah.

Okay. So he was about just over the 105s when he first moved to St. Louis, but he's just exploded in the last few years. Damn.

So his lifts have gone up quite a bit. He went from 230 to over 300? Yeah. That's insane. Was that a GoMad diet? What's that? GoMad? Going to milk a day? Oh day oh right yeah yeah i'm not sure what he's eating i think small babies

or big babies wash it down small babies gotta go big all right um we got some questions uh that we pulled off of our survey. So those of you that actually go and fill it out, thank you. So first question is about, like, mechanics, consistency, and intensity. You've coached some CrossFitters. I don't know how familiar you are with, you know, kind of at the level one certification they talk about. You know, you want mechanics and consistency and intensity. And all the coaches are told, you know, you want mechanics and consistency than intensity.

And everyone's, all the coaches are told, you know, you need to get mechanics, then that, then intensity. We got a guy that wants to know, like, at what point, like he wants like a number. Like at what point for say a weightlifter and or a CrossFitter, would you say to scale back the weight the reps or just to take a break from from uh the lifts all together maybe you know take a few breaths like how do you feel about um maybe both i guess you could answer first for weightlifters and then and then for crossfitters

or if it's the same for you and what do you think that uh is very uh non-black and white world unfortunately so a number you know is hard to give and and white world, unfortunately. So a number, you know, is hard to give. And that's really where the coaching relationship and the athlete's relationship has really got to bloom. You know, so you can really understand what makes that lifter tick and when they're going to get under a weight or take an attempt they shouldn't take. That's really the only way I can answer that. You know, I could never say, seven, there's your number, you know,

and don't go above that or that's where you draw the line. But honestly, getting the lifter to know when this is a matter of safety, you know, are they going to hurt themselves with say a max attempt or doing chronic repetitive lifts over and over with bad positions, what's going to break them down. But, but in terms of the lifter, you know, we tend to work up to a relative daily max quite a bit. And my main goal is if someone's a little bit newer to not get them hurt. So, the same time not make them you know give them some courage to where they're gonna to to step up to a weight and not hesitate and can actually stop being so analytical and actually attack the weight with everything they have that's a hard process to develop

especially when i'm saying technique technique technique then i need to ask them to be a bulldog at the same time doesn't right doesn't jive too well. So when we're warming up, part of our drills and warm-ups are actually all based to work out their problem areas. So it's the work on mechanics, mobility, positions, timing, speed, all at the same rate almost as if they're lifting their maximum weight. So we do some specific drills so they can be in the same positions for their warm-up at the bar as they would with, say, their maximum attempt. So from there, hopefully each lift looks the same, and so there's no breakdown. So as soon as they feel a physical breakdown and they're thinking more about the weight and they're hesitating for Olympic lift, that's when, okay, we're approaching our relative daily maximum right now.

So we've kind of hit our limit. We may take a few shots there. If they're reasonable shots and I really feel like they have a good fighting chance with the weight, we'll take another attempt, but we usually stop at three misses, and then whatever was breaking down that day for technique will tend to focus on a drill that's going to clean that up. So that way we can reinforce proper positions there. We'll test that out and take that to the heaviest weight possible

for that technique limitation, and then the next workout, hopefully those things have been maintained and we can take it a step further. That's how I approach an Olympic lifter. Crossfit, honestly, that's such a broad range where am I working with a general CrossFitter who's doing this for health and fitness or am I working with a competitor who's trying to win the games? And that's where most of my experience, I would say, has been, unfortunately. Not unfortunate, but that's what influences my opinion on that. Whereas if it's me, I'll risk breaking my spine to win the CrossFit games.

But that's not the answer I want to give to my athlete. So that's some gray area there. So it depends on, you know, at the Games this year, they did the one rep max clean ladder, you know, and so I would kind of consider at that point, you know, we're going to win the game here, but those guys at that point, they need to be trained at the same skill level as, say, a competitive weightlifter. You know, they're getting damn good.

So in order to hit those numbers, it's no joke. Yeah, the weightlifting that happened at the Games this year was phenomenal. I wouldn't say it caught me by surprise because I've kind of watched the progression. But if you had told me, like, when I first discovered CrossFit, I was like, I mean, these guys are, not that I was the best, but I was thinking, these guys are terrible at weightlifting. They need to, i was like i mean these guys are not that i was the best but i was thinking these guys are terrible at weightlifting they need to i was i was actually posting pretty good scores on the boards just because i was i knew what i was doing yeah but uh it's if you would have told me it's gotten these guys are lifting the weights they're lifting at the at the weights

they are yeah i wouldn't have believed it but after seeing it this year and like rich froning snatching i think close to 300 pounds yeah wearing like rebach nanos that's it's insane it's pretty crazy i'm extremely impressed and uh you know i understand the technique's gonna break down and i'm not one of those that are just gonna sit there and slam crossfit for those reasons it's uh you can only put so much time into it and as a competitor that i've been i snatched six days a week and half for over a decade it takes that much practice and it's uh you can only put so much time into it and as a competitor that i've been i snatched six days a week and half for over a decade it takes that much practice and it's a good 45 minutes at least a day of practice and i still feel the next day like i've never snatched a day in my life so i go through those same things i can imagine stepping up in an arena like that and if you have to spend so much time so many other elements how can you actually pull that

together so uh they've done remarkable and especially in that clean ladder they're doing nationally competitive weights so when you add that on top of the fact that they just did a triathlon and all those other crazy things in front of that, I don't know how I could even squat my body at that point. So at that level, yeah, there's two things. I would train them as an elite-level lifter and be training each day with some of those lifts and the same approaches I kind of described there.

But at the same time, to work some of the high rep time kind of things different ball games so i don't know how you coach that honestly and and have perfect positions over time like that i mean unless you're really not focused on the clock yeah i would say i'm saying our facility there's probably three people who can do like touchand-go snatches or cleans with a decent amount of weight and maintain good form. They can touch-and-go, and they still drop into a decent starting position. But most people who try to do that, and they drop the weight of the floor, their hips are way up here, and their shoulders are down there. Different movement, different lift altogether. It actually gets scary sometimes.

You're like, oh, you should probably not do that. Yeah, right. You know, you're training right now. You know, if you were in the middle of a meet, you know, go for it. You know, break your back trying to win. But, you know, if you're just in the gym training another day, probably not the time for that. Right.

I feel like there's two different types of technique breakdown. Like on a snatch or a clean your technique could break down where you're treating it more like a deadlift than a true first pull yeah you know i mean where you but you still have a neutral spine you're in your heels are still down your knees are still over your toes and like you're still doing the fundamentals right you're not going to get hurt but the technique isn't correct you know i mean you don't have the best leverage you could have and then there's your back is totally round and bowed, and your knees are clicking together. You're just in a terrible position, and you're going to hurt yourself.

In CrossFit, if you're doing a high rep Olympic weightlifting movement in a Metcon, if your technique slips a little bit where you're falling into deadlifting more than doing perfect cleans, that's one thing. You can battle through that, and that's just fine. But if you look terrible, like the scared cat, look like you're just going to slip a disc right then and there, then that's a bad thing. You've got to stay away from that for sure. Absolutely.

I was at regionals this past year. I was at Central East regionals and just watching those guys compete. And the guys and girls that finished top three, they didn't have very much technique breakdown. They looked good on everything the whole time. And it was funny because there was a lot of people behind them that had more gas in the tank or they may have had stronger strict lifts and stuff like that.

But what separated the top three from the rest of the top ten was probably technique, not the motor. So I think a lot of people, if they're going to want to take it real far, they're going to have to focus a lot more on technique than they had two, two, three years ago. I think the next couple of years you'll see very competitive numbers in terms of snatch and clean and jerk in the games and yeah that's uh you know now you know the american open this year they've got the outlaw event yeah yeah you know a bunch of guys qualifying for the biggest second biggest national meet of the year so you're

gonna be out there yeah yeah we've got uh five people going now i'm set to lift now i've got some uh shoulder ding that i'm dealing with now but i plan to lift but we've got four other athletes there and we have uh one who's lifting in the outlaw competition and one who could have but she's actually spent so much time with me focusing on the olympic lifts that she's kind of shifting gears a little bit and she's kind of out of her crossfit zone right now so um she would do fantastic at it so we'll see maybe next year very cool i need to i want to go out there i'm going out there next week for the masters okay So she would do fantastic at it. So we'll see. Maybe next year. Very cool. I want to go out there. I'm going out there next week for the Masters.

Okay. I'm not competing. I'm not Masters yet. Four more years, I'll be old enough. That's what I'm waiting for. Yeah, I'm holding out. You'll be Masters National Champion. That's right.

Yeah, Corey and I have both given up on our senior dreams. We're now waiting for the Masters to hit. That's all right. Late bloomers. Yeah, if I was living with masters i could crush it i can't even qualify for nationals at this point for the seniors um what uh let's move on next question most common weightlifting technique mistakes so let's start off with the snatch what what do you see is uh i guess the most common so so more of a broad answer first first would be that just mobility is not there to get in the proper start position for either lift.

And that's the biggest thing I see. So you're basically setting up to throw a weighted object over your head or to your shoulders in a suboptimal position. You're not in at least neutral spine. And your center of gravity is God knows where on your feet. So where are you going to land? So there that's where I see a lot. You know, speed plus poor positions equals injury you know so right so

they're starting off in such a poor state that's just like this ain't gonna go well so i understand teaching from the hang and things like that but but let's say the snatch itself what i typically will see is the hips coming up too fast that's the biggest thing i tend to focus on because i swear i see over and over the hips are coming up faster than say the knees and the chest together at least at the same rate they're going to miss that lift every single time it's very hard unless they can turn it around to the second pull or the finish of that extension very nice and upright or slightly back there's no way they can really it's very hard to fix that so they have to have a really dominant finish to pull it off so I would say falling hips shooting up and that's going to send them more into the ball their foot and their toe too

prematurely there so that's why I tend to see in the snatch too much early on uh then from there more crossfit and really the rest of the world i guess is uh not really getting in the bar correctly so they're they're power snatching it then maybe overhead squatting it so they're really they're in between those two worlds and when they could think of learn to get under correctly they'd realize how much more fun it is to squat snatch how much better it is and how much less effort it takes. And the clean, turning it into a deadlift, back soft, arm bend, one pull kind of heaves to the shoulder. And again, it's a power clean, not a squat clean.

So really thinking about, I think it's more of a neural problem or a cognitive problem where they're thinking about pulling the bar and ripping the bar with their arms and humping their back, and legs are not involved at all off the ground. So they're not really pushing the bar off the ground, say, with their quads necessarily, and center of gravity gets all off, and it's where everything falls apart. So they're thinking of it like I came from a piloting background from about age 10 to 17, so I thought of it as a deadlift,

rip the crap out of it and try to catch it. And that was very hard to break, and I actually remember watching like Chad Vaughn and Michael Martin a lot. They just had amazing technique to me, and they were just so smooth off the ground, it looked like they weren't even trying and pulling off these huge weights, and that really helped me to watch the way they were setting up to the bar and standing up at the bar with proper positions and posture and just swiveling right under that sucker and making it look easy,

where I was getting psyched up and getting pneumonia and freaking out, trying to lift this weight, and it wasn't even close. So it took a while to break that pattern. We had pneumonia sniffer in our gym once. Hi, Steve Trippi. He's competing at Strongman Nationals this weekend, and we're out of town for it. Yeah, Strongman Nationals is like 45 minutes from my house.

I competed there last year actually Mississippi Tunica oh really yeah we were there so did I yeah

200 pound class really I was in the 175 you're kidding yeah that's maybe where you saw me yeah so I did

I've done some stints over kind of off season if you will in Strongman the last few years oh okay so been to about three nationals now

it was a lot of fun yeah it was a blast huge carry over from will, in Strongman the last few years. Oh, okay. So I've been to about three nationals now. It was a lot of fun. Yeah, it was a blast. Huge carryover from Olympic lifts to Strongman for sure. And that sport suits me personally, to my personality better, but I'm just so addicted to Olympic lifting, I can't break away. But good retirement sport. Strongman's good retirement sport. Just to finally finish your body off.

Right, right. Whatever's not broken, we'll break it now. That's right. My favorite thing with a strongman has to be the stone. I just like lifting the heaviest stone I can. I feel like there's no better posterior chain activation than that. The amount of nervous system activation that gets going on and posterior chain activation, when you get done,

I just feel like my whole body and brain is on fire. The next day after that, too, I just feel like an ogre. Not real big at all, but you just feel everything so sore and tight from it. It's like doing a heavy deadlift. You just feel everything pull together. But that's a lot of fun sport. From tire flipping to the log,'s uh a lot of fun sport i mean from tire flipping the the log you know it's there's a lot of transfer i see you know pulling off the ground with the tire flip and

first year nationals one first there's the first event i ever did i was blown away i was just so nervous and yeah just worked out for me and then took really well to uh the log lift i'm a poor presser of a very poor natural pressing strength but i was able to beat most of the people in the lot of it poor microphone user but that subtle subtle good uh but but the log turned out to transfer pretty well but uh not everything yeah i i uh i have a hard time pressing the log i'm kind of saying but but my pulling is much better than my pressing. Have you done an axle clean? Yeah.

I'm sure you have. Were you able to – I totally ditched the continental clean, and I just do an over-under. Right, right. So in Reno, they did a 250 cleaning press with an axle, and my grip was so poor, double overhand grip, I finally started doing a clean with an over-under grip and just flipping around at the top and split jerking,

and it worked out pretty well, unfortunately. Did you blow some guys away with that? They were like, brain melts? Like, I can't believe that dude's doing that. When they saw me warming up, they're like, this guy must be an Olympic lifter. And I saw some eyes open, but the problem was we did the deadlift, I think it was the day before, and I was smoked from that still.

Oh, yeah. In training, I was doing really well, and then I didn't expect the aftermath of the deadlift. I did three reps, and I could barely even pop that bar, so I was smoked from that still. In training, I was doing really well. I didn't expect the aftermath of the deadlift. I did three reps and I could barely even pop that bar, so I was done for. I wish I had trained the continent a little more so I could have pulled some more reps out. My legs were done, so it didn't last too long.

Okay, cool. Let's get back to weightlifting a little bit. There's one thing I wanted to cover. Did you do the jerk? Did you cover the mistakes on the jerk? I'm sorry, no, on the jerk. One thing I want to cover. Did you do the jerk? Did you cover the mistakes on the jerk? So, I'm sorry. No, on the jerk. One thing I want to talk about this first is on, you're talking about the snatch and the clean and the hips coming up too fast. What do you tell people?

Like, when you see someone, when they're doing a snatch and their hips are coming up a little bit, you know, when it's coming up little or more, a lot early, do you give them a verbal cue? Are there any drills that you give them? Kind of what's the fix for that? I got a lot of directions for that. Now, the main drill that I do to teach timing the lift and sort of, we may get to this triple extension concept. And I teach the lift in two levels.

And it's level one, the lift is a jump. And I teach that to get violent extension and velocity in the bar. But level two, once people figure that out, I say the lift is not a jump it's a lift and it's stand up drop right head explode so it's stand up i told you it blew my mind so it's stand up drop or uh jump under pull yourself under the bar kind of concepts but but a drill i used to really hammer that down but also really get mobility and and actually center gravity off the floor correctly is this we call the squatting quad drill and it's we put the bar simply mid quad a lot of people do this as a stretch for the ankles and knees uh and hips a bit but we actually put the bar there and do the lift from there but it's forcing the butt down into more of an upright posture and so your torso is

upright so it's think of that quad stretch you might see with the bar usually but we're actually doing the lift from that position with the bar so it's a phenomenal uh warm-up drill just to get you mobilized and loose but we're actually teaching the bar closer to the midline center of gravity there the bar comes at one with you it feels real nice and how the lift should feel if you had perfect technique so you're not having the problem of lifting around the knees and those sorts of things i'm having a hard time visualizing this so can i get up and show you? Yeah, sure. Am I attached to it? So you're down.

You can take your headphones off if you need to. Alright, nice. You'd be down in the start position here with the bar. I need to warm up, but you'd have the bar stay straight over the quads. So you're getting your ankle, knee, and hip stretched there and driving the quads forward a bit, but you're getting the hips down and it's forcing your torso upright. Your arms are bent. Yeah, the arms are bent and actually it's a good way to teach not pulling with

the arms at first. So when they're coming up, they're coming slow through there. It's all leg drive. Standing up, the arms are coming straight to there, bar meets the hips and then snatch. So it's a slow controlled motion at first. We'll do a muscle snatch through there first just to teach the timing. It's also teaching the bar path to keep it close so they can finally develop that scoop and meet the bar with their hips. Then if that starts going well, we start doing

power snatch to finish all the way through, then power snatch overhead squat, then full squat. So from there, the timing would be real fast all the way through. So it's kind of a, it's the fastest you'll probably ever get under a bar from pull to catch. And so what starts to happen is you get more into this position, and once you drop your arms down to the ground, hips are down. and you're used to that mechanic of driving with the legs versus pulling with the back. Oh, I like that. So the timing, I have a lot of videos I'll set you guys up with from now on.

I've never heard anybody say that. Let's try that tomorrow. Yeah, so it's a, ideally it's, am I good? Am I good there? There you go. It's something that we teach early on and is a warm up drill that they do after a lot of other basics. You know, we do a lot of everything, burgeon burden warmup, you know, top down, bottom up kind of

sequences, but that's something that once they get the general mechanics down is their primary warmup drill. And so that's my global answer to that. But if they're doing it while they're actually lifting, um, I might say, you know, if it's a lightweight, they may be just pulling too fast off the ground and their hips are shooting up right away and slow it down. So from ground to knees, pull a little bit slower. So a nice Berger quote I like is, slow is smooth, smooth is fast. So it's just build speed as you develop speed on the pull

and pull a little smoother off the ground, not like a deadlift, and then as long as you're accelerating and building speed to the final finish of the pull. So that tends to help some people, but we'll do some drills where we will pause at the knee and so we'll uh do the lift slow and tight to the knee and then pause the knee for a second then pull faster there so they they have to force and fight for that position keep the bar close and they they really have to lift correctly off the ground

because they'll feel it right away they feel their hips shoot up right away off the ground yeah so another key pretty much a stop snatch yeah okay yeah so so from there a cue might be push your feet through the floor stay back in the heels perhaps um ease it off the ground or just slow down okay yeah i know when i lifted lifted at memphis my hips coming up early was a problem i used to have and now i feel a lot more upright kind of doing doing this type of stuff that you know squatting quad etc and i don't think typically that's a problem that I have off the ground. I feel a lot more upright, good position to the knee. Might be some other issues that I have,

but I definitely felt like the drills that we've done warming up early in the process have definitely helped with that issue with me because I know that was an issue I used to have, definitely. Do you prefer coaching top-down with new lifters uh not so much i will the main reason i actually only do that is so i can start at the top and from right at the hip and get them to start having that hip finish the pull and how does the bar get overhead ever so we do do a top down i used to do the four part now it's just a three part we do from high hanger hips and then from the knees on the floor but that's just to introduce the general mechanics of the of the pull but i actually like it in reverse better where we do from the ground knees in same positions but

starting at the floor but we do a pausing sequence we'll start with the isometric so most people can't get into the start correctly they rush their self themselves off the ground they pull too fast so i make them do kind of an isometric hold their start so i can also check and make sure i like their mechanics and position there so that's pause one then they lift slowly to the knees and get in the correct position center gravity at the knees that's pause two pause three would be at their power position so whether it's at the hips or mid thigh they would pause there so they're memorizing each position there so it's not a deadlift to that position and so they feel that out each day and it really slowly becomes memorized every single day and they hit that position after pause three it's power snatch or power to overhead squat or full squat from there which also gets you set up nice

and proper for that finish where you're going to catch the bar better so you're not humped over too far you're not in a weird center of gravity and you can transition on the bar real tight so most people are they're really annoyed with it at first because they got to slow things down and lift really light but but they earn their way out of that so the more tight it becomes and the more uh you asked about consistency the more consistent it becomes i start taking pause sequences out and bring speed so it might be rep one will be a three-part pausing power snatch rep two okay look good we're going to pause at the knees only so we're going to go pause at the start position pause at the knees from knees to hips it's full speed now you can get really good power of the hips the third rep might just be full speed from the ground so if those other two reps are

perfect give me a full speed pull from the ground and then put it all together so we slowly take those layers off the more they master that pull a lot of times on that third rep they lose everything from the ground to the knee so that's where the fast pull starts coming and they start shooting their hips up so so i still would say even we'll use the bar and technique plates and i may say uh you know make sure you do a slow smooth pull from the ground and sometimes i'll even count actually from four to knees that pull it's a four three two one snatch so they're pulling four so i'll say ready set and then four three two one and one they're at the knees and one basically means go so from there we start adding weight and do you uh for with new folks do you uh do you start with like the power variation

first or do you go straight into like but what they call in crossfit like a squat snatch or a squat clean right right so uh i actually um i've been stuck just in case you didn't know i was completely surprised when i saw it. Well said. No, I actually will use all of them. I use it mostly when I teach so they understand, but also it's an assessment. So I see, does this guy have a chance in the world at doing a squat snatch, and where are we at in that cycle of things? So with that sequence from the floor up that I explained,

the first set would be all power snatches. Second set would be power to overhead squat. Third would be a full squat. If I find someone who just doesn't have a shot, and they've got a lot of, say, overhead squatting to do or snatch balances, general positional mobility type stuff, then I just save them the misery of it. And it's part of the warm-up still to still put those pieces together. But as we load for that day and add weight, okay, let's just build one piece at a time.

So you just pretty much let them do it PVC or an empty empty bar but you're not going to load them up at all right right okay and after that bar it might just be okay now so the workout today we're going to work power snatches because i don't want them to be still so stuck in the analytical world that they never get aggressive with the barbell right so it might just be a power snatch uh workout for that day but then i might set them up that's where i start programming especially for them where it might be okay we're going to do stuff from the blocks today and start working on that part over at squat transition and making it a full squat but for most people though i can't say i've given up on a full squat lift for anyone ever um there's only one guy now that i'm with

that even does a split version of the lift so so oh yeah i've had one of those. Special cases. Right, right. He wears a helmet, too. This guy needs one. Right, right. Is it Corey? Surprisingly not. Is it he that has the split here? Yeah.

It's Derek. Derek from New York. Oh, really? Yeah. He's our split squat or split squat split snatch split snatch and split clean that's surprising yeah he pulled that out at the uh the crossfit usaw meet out in colorado a couple years ago and the commentators were like whoa interesting yeah but you know we'll put it together as part of their daily drills. And part of that is intended to work some mobility and position,

so the overhead squat practice in there. But I also like that middle piece where we don't just go from power to squat version of the lift. It's power to overhead squat, so they are meeting the bar correctly and firm and not just getting crushed by the weight, trying to get under so it's they decelerate the bar then they ride it down firmly and then slowly we just start getting faster with it and really that's the coach's eye where it's uh how many of these ridiculous sets do we have to do or how many pieces can we take out so they can get to the workout faster early on the excuse me the warm-up drills may take them 30 minutes and that's the whole workout and they they're exhausted. But that's wax on, wax off.

That's their white belt that they're eventually trying to master so they can earn that weight. So it becomes more of a reaction when the weight is there and it's heavy. They can just react, and it's second nature for them. The first day I ran through Justin's entire warm-up, what do you call it, the on-ramp or whatever? We do an on-ramp, yeah. Yeah, so everyone has to do it before you join Team Lab. couldn't walk the next day it's like it was just it was like pvc pipe and

barbell yeah it was like 30 to 45 minutes of just straight i was sweating my ass off and the next day yeah it was tough it's a lot of work but it's good yeah we'll run you through it i won't yeah run me through a version i want to be able to lift tomorrow too so just do a warm-up luckily i guess you don't consider me a level one anymore so i don't have to go through the entire warm-up every day now yeah we call that the abc's actually so there's a few different segments and uh a would be the positional stretches so for each lift it's like that squatting quad position stretch and it's just an isometric hold hold that bottom start for 10 seconds with the bar and it's it's misery at first then it's just the overhead lockout position hold for 10 then overhead squat hold for 10 and we do one to three rounds of that to loosen up but as many rounds as necessary to get loosened up then we go into those uh pausing sequences but the every rep

is with a pause and set one is three-part pausing power snatch set two is three-part pausing sequences, but every rep is with a pause. And set one is three-part pausing power snatch. Set two is three-part pausing power to overhead squat. Set three is three-part pausing squat. It takes them forever to learn the sequence and memorize that. So we finally wrote it down for them. Before, it was always me going through memory. Someone thought to write it down. That's right.

Crazy. So then the next level would be, the C would be going from taking the pauses out each rep towards full speed and that's really like where cory's at now it's just sure he skips over all the pauses and goes right to the squatting quad drill and what uh for the warm-up do you go straight to barbell and pvc for warm-up or do you advocate you know getting on a concept tube rover or going for a jog or jumping rope or do you just kind of jump right into the the barbell movements i'm actually big on just general body weight type uh movements that get someone moving you know some of the crossfitters definitely use the rower and i haven't done that too much myself i think i'd be

exhausted afterwards so uh walking to the squat racks my cardio honestly so but uh beyond that typical weight right right yeah so uh but we do a lot of uh we call it the jtlc it's our kind of body weight warm-up but that's where we might put just some general activation corrective type moves for that person that evolves for each person and once they're done with that it'll start going to just barbell work so we do a general barbell warm-up which is a barbell complex it's just remaining deadlift press and squat and sets of five of each and we just run that through until things start moving correctly then we go to the position stretches and then those drills basically very cool all right um let's go ahead and take a

break real quick and then uh afterwards we'll get back to a few more questions welcome back doug and i are guests of justin thacker and cory lones because we're at the lab in st louis just in case you didn't know all right we're gonna the lab in St. Louis. Just in case you didn't know. All right, we're going to get back talking a little bit about weightlifting. And he's like, this is the weirdest. Corey just gave me an interesting look, too. I'm not very good at this radio podcast thing. The internets are confusing.

Let's get back a little bit of the most common weightlifting technique mistakes. So we kind of covered snatching clean, but what about the jerk? What do you see the biggest problem there? So as I said earlier, I will tend to teach the lift as a jump first. To me, I do believe that the snatch, clean, and jerk are basically a jump, and it's the easiest thing to communicate and to get someone athletic and uh moving so i tend to see the jerk mistakes look like anything it's mostly a push press with a half split is what i'll see a lot and they're kind of they'll dip and they'll fall into the toes and uh who knows where they're gonna be you know they'll dip way too far and the timing is way way off to actually emulate any kind of a jerk so um, um, so the dip in the

down and up portion of the lift, you know, I'm trying to get the same extension on the hips for the snatch couldn't jerk. So if that was well taught from there, then, then it's a little easier to put together, but, um, I'll do a lot of things from behind the neck, behind the neck, split press. So they, can they actually even get into a proper split position, uh, to receive that bar in a split jerk. So, uh, from there, then there, then it's simply can they do a lunge correctly? Can they do a military press, push press? Then we'll teach the power jerk to put vertical momentum into the bar and jump and drop under the bar, and then, God willing, they can land a split.

So from that split, though, the dips tend to be a little too long and aggressive, too fast of a down portion of of that which will tip them forward and the bar is going to end up shooting way out into the front they got to chase it um next to that really it's the uh the landing pad is was way off the split you know so they just they're going to land on their toes in the front foot and things like that what uh what's your fix for somebody who has a poor trajectory who shoves that bar forward uh so typically i'll go to i always go to simple verbal cue first so it'd be uh you know just slow smooth dip or stay tall or straight dip those sorts of things um so if they can understand that concept i like a slower smooth dip on the way

down but i want violence on the way up so as much so they absorb that bar energy bending down oscillating over them and then then from there it's a fast uh pop so they absorb that bar energy bending down, oscillating over them, and then from there it's a fast pop, so they can also transition that to them dropping under the bar very quickly into a quick split position. But other fixes, you know, like even with Corey, we had recently worked out pretty nice. We set him up in front of a power rack. It was like 40 kilos on the bar, and I walked up real close to the bar

where the bar, if he would have dipped for it at all, he would have ran right into the rack. So he had to dip straight, and he was doing full-speed jerks there, but if he dipped for it at all, he would have known, basically. So that's good. And simpler things, when someone's actually jerking, I'll put a pipe right in front of their face or my hand right in front of their face, stand right in front of them.

But if you put that PVC pipe, say, right around chest or a few inches in front of their nose, they'll stay straight. So they'll dip straight, they get that cue, and then they're not going to overstep into it and things like that. So it seems to fix pretty quick when they get that cue. It's just that when the weight's really heavy, who knows? Yeah. And you say the landing pad might be a little off.

The split position. Yeah, yeah. So from there, if they have a smoother dip and they're in control of that bar, then they tend to get their feet in a better position. But at first, we'll introduce the jerk with a lot of, say, a warm-up drill we'll do is the behind-the-neck split press, so they can feel that position out where their center of gravity should be. But then I combine that almost as a superset, if you will, of an air jerk, where they're

actually going to start up on their toes, pipe or no weight at all, and they have their hands at eye level. And that's to emulate the dip and drive. And hypothetically, if you can drive the bar to your eyes, you should be able to jerk it. So they're starting at the top of that apex to emulate the dip and drive and hypothetically if you can drive the bar to your eyes you should be able to jerk it so they're starting at the top of that that apex there let's say and then from there they're just going to drop down as fast as possible into that split position so they're snapping their their self into place as fast as possible from that upright i'm going to get up in this position here that's the start position but they're going to

drop violently into that split overhead but it should be lightning and no just snapping in uh there should be no uh unbalanced there they should land perfectly so if i have them doing five in a row they land the same exact spot every single time and they don't wobble and fall over the place so i'd say basically if you miss that one that's a missed jerk so everyone has to land the same way and you have to land sturdy so from there if they can start emulating that with the barbell then they start getting that timing down yeah i actually like introducing that same one i don't do it from the toes um do it from flat footed and then um sometimes maybe even with uh getting them halfway into the jerk and then have them just finish the step out but introduce it from behind the head first and then in front of that yeah even i've seen right on top of the head right on top of

the head just straight up from there yeah so you gave a very concrete cue about how high the bar would need to be for you to be able to jerk it eye height do you have a height like that that you use as a reference for cleans and snatches as well uh typically for a clean about belly button height unless you're chinese or polish depending on your height and your mechanics there it could be lower uh but typically uh the knee sure uh but typically uh for the the clean belly button for the snatch be about nipple level okay so uh it just kind of gives them some awareness you know no hard rules of thumb there but awareness of uh what should be possible so when someone's starting to put it together and they're like you're surprised like, that was a power snatch.

That was great. They're like, that was hard. What are you talking about? You had two extra feet of pull in that bar, so they start getting the idea of we've got to jump down. We've got to pull ourselves in transition under the bar better. What other little things like that? I know I've heard people say if you can front

squat for a triple, you should be able to clean it. Do you have little references like that for a lot of things? Oh man, all sorts of crazy ones. And there's always going to be definitely some slack in those numbers and I play with them a lot. Sure. Depending on their efficiency and their positions. So I like the back squat correlations to your actual lifts have always been fun for me. But for example, I've got a good friend, Ben Overkamp, amazing national level lifter. And i squat a bit more than him but his overall best snatch is way better than mine so he's got me by

like 10 kilos there and that's efficiency in his positions his flexibility and those sorts of things so variables there but but it's about you know the russian uh standard is typically about 127 percent of your uh you should be able to back squat 127 percent of your best clean or so but i usually like to say something long lines of your best front squat triple is a little bit closer and gives you a bit more uh leg reserve if you will the best cleaners i know though can clean their best front squat single and it's something like a legit oh yeah yeah allegedly like dude if i could do that i would be so happy yeah yeah but uh but uh vaughn apparently is really close to those sorts of numbers uh i don't know his

exact front squat but that's apparently about where he is really close to those sorts of numbers. I don't know his exact front squat, but that's apparently about where he was when he hit his national record. But I know Simone Kolecki is someone who's legendary for having a world record clean and jerk. It's like 232, I believe. And apparently they were front squat really over 230 to even do that. So that's a really efficient technique. When you see how they're getting under the bar

and getting that first bounce out of the hole they're getting that stretch reflex and so yeah i definitely don't get that balance it's like a catch and then like a grind up yeah uh we have a friend that can he clean more than he can front squat andy yeah and if he would stand up with it and then the jerk was just a piece of cake he would almost smile if he could stand up with it because he knew he was going to jerk it yeah it was just whether he could stand up with it or not he would like loot he would like fail on a front squat wait a minute and then just clean it up and then right now i'm like this makes no sense whatsoever you should probably just stop front squatting and just clean all the time that's what makes sense to me yeah i don't know um

what uh what do you do with people who have, like, mobility issues? Like, you know, so I guess we could talk about shoulders, hips, and ankles a little bit separately. Yeah, there's a lot of great tangents you could take in to hit each specific area, it seems. You know, there's, of course, ankle, knees, just ability to get the spine in place, shoulders, everything. But really, I tend to use that squatting quad and position stretch drill to be as specific as possible and as timely as possible. So we're basically taking that bar and getting in the most extreme start position, the receiving position, and the overhead receiving position, say, and the snatch, and then the overhead squat and the front squat position. So I'm literally just using the bar and holding tight positions and cuing to them, hey, tighten this up. And to me it's specific because you'll activate the muscles that need to be activated

and you'll inhibit or turn off the muscles that need to be lengthened or relaxed, let's say. So to me it's real specific. It's not always as effective, but it can clean up some basics. Is this an activation issue or do they have some chronic tension that needs to be worked out? If we expose some more chronic issues that has to be explored, then, you know, man, I don't even know where to start on that, honestly. I mean, I really like the next step would be that squatting quad drill because it really is pretty painful at first. But not only my teaching technique and timing and precision with that barbell, but it's really getting your ankles loosened up very nicely. So to me, I think the ankle is probably a big missing link for most people getting into this.

So what variations of lifts do you do while they're working on that issue? Like if they have super tight ankles and you're trying to loosen them up, while they're working on that, do you do variations? Do you have them pull from blocks instead of going from the floor or just do power variations instead of squat variations? Do you mix it up like that? So pretty much we get everyone coming from the floor in some degree it's just whether they're doing the full speed lift from the floor so if they're if they're a little uh off on their start position a little softer i

will make them hold that pause at the start then hold the pause of the knees because they can usually from knees to hips fix it up so i will still give them that benefit of being able to do the full lift but then i'll back after we work up to that relative daily max we'll then still do something from the blocks let's say but then we program after that as their uh strength training lifts might be overhead squats uh would be maybe if it's a snatch problem off the ground might be a snatch grip deadlift and uh we would work on those positions so uh but we're still going to try to work that lift as much as possible but we'll try to break down um the the main problem area with some kind of a strength training component or if it's a specific drill,

I mean, there's, you know, there's so many with Kelly starts a lot out there. There's a million things we can go find, but we need to make a weightlifting specific one now and just get right to those problem areas because there's just so many that, depending on the problem, you know, I've seen a lot of things work. That's why, you know, I tend to like, the thing is that one gripe I do have is that the more specific in am i in the here for you no you're fine you're good let's uh let's take a break real quick sorry all right we're back from ctp's camera battery break i mean i mean technique

wad we did that on purpose break can we show another one yeah we got we put another technique one in there right we got two this time that's right all right so uh where do we leave off so so i was uh venting my frustrations with uh some basic uh so when it comes to some of the mobility issues people see it's kind of an epidemic of people come in and they'll spend uh 45 minutes on their mobility work and then 15 minutes of training. It's like you're exhausted from your mobility training and you've got nothing left to actually do any snatches or cleans or squats or anything.

And I do find that mobility, if coached well and the drills are put together well, that those things do improve with specific training. But, of course, there's some chronic problems we need to work on. So I just think that really people just fall into a big hole of doing just way too much of it and knowing what's doing what and what specifically is going to help them out. So that's really it. It's just we need to get to the root of the matter and then get that out of the way so we can get to some serious training.

And I've got people that will take – they'll be there for an hour. Class starts at 6, and then they're finally doing their first lifts. And then they go for half an hour, and they're exhausted. I'm like, that would put me to sleep too, you know? Do that shit before you go to bed. Do you ever do mobility work in between sets? I actually, you know, I've had to do a lot this year. I had a knee injury early in the year,

and I've had to just to get my adductor would kind of get aggravated a lot. So I'd have to use techniques to kind of shut it down so it wouldn't get so aggravated. So I would do different things from VMO activation to rolling the adductor itself as work, doing some glute work and things like that. So things of that nature, but I don't get too carried away with it. And I haven't had too many cases. Brittany's done some different VMO kind of things to help.

She's had some knee surgery, so she's done some things to work with tracking and stability in her knees. But, you know, a lot of people do different shoulder-type things to keep their shoulders loose and going throughout the workout. Dislocates or just PVC pipe, kind of a pressing kind of thing. But, you know, one thing I will do a lot of more specifically would be, say, sometimes someone's clean rack position might be a little slow and they're delayed, not getting through there a lot. So we'll just take a barbell and do some uh muscle cleans to get the elbows coming through fast and

get a more complete rack up on the shoulders i've seen that improve uh speed on terms of getting the bar up to the shoulders very cool um what uh i know a lot of weightlifting coaches do and a lot of weight lifting coaches don't and that is uh programmed deadlifts now if every lifter would take to them as well as i'd hope i would for sure actually i'm a big believer in it and for the snatch grip deadlift the classical i call it a clean grip deadlift so we're doing a deadlift that emulates the clean pull but it's just right with the same positions and technique but so wait what what are those differences for people that are newer to weightlifting so the snatch grip deadlift would

just be basically be getting into your snatch grip start position and lifting the weight off the ground and that same rate of action let's say of the the the knees the hips the shoulders chest everything coming up at the same time and coming up so the chest is leading the way you're driving the legs to the ground and you stand up in a proper position uh spine doesn't flex shoulder blades are say retracted those sorts of things are all in place or i'm i'm solidifying those pieces to stay strong and that's what i see people folding on when they are folding at when they're pulling strong and fast let's say and they just they get loose so that's why i like it for the most part um uh even if it was just something as simple as a clean grip deadlift i find that for me for sure if i take out the clean grip deadlift i'll lose 20 kilos

on my cleaning jerk and it's literally in two weeks if I stop doing it. So I do pulls and I do a lot of deadlifts pretty heavy on Saturdays. And I just program it to where it doesn't affect my other training. So it's the last lift of the week on a Saturday. And I pull hard and heavy. For regular deads? Yeah. Or for clean deads?

They're clean grip deadlifts. So actually, I should be clear. I don't do any regular deadlifts, no over-under kind of conventional stance or sumo. I don't do any regular deadlift snow over or under conventional stance or sumo. I don't do any of that with Olympic lifters at all, actually. I've erased that from my vocabulary, I would say. So it's the clean position, heavy pull off the ground. So there's no shrug and extension or anything like that. What percentages are you working with?

So it depends on the lifter. So with me, I actually have a pretty big spread from my max cleaning jerk to deadlift. But the exact answer is as heavy as they can go for the given rep scheme without breaking down. So if I want sets of five, it is five reps at the max weight where your technique is where it should be to emulate the clean. Not one rep will be out of place. Right. That's the goal. That's the goal.

That is the goal. So what are the rep ranges you the goal that is the goal so what are the rep ranges you like to program the highest deadlift the highest to go on that is five but typically threes and twos are pretty common we do a lot of three two one which is something to throw out there a lot to uh i kind of do a lot of sort of a conjugate if you will approach a lot of undulating kind of approaches where we're never really going too far into one direction in terms of the rep scheme and um so it may be just to maintain deadlift strength in positions off the floor so i may throw a three to one out there or um if we're in say

more of an accumulation base phase you know we'll do sets of usually it's no more than three heavy sets though and the deadlifts rdls and deadlifts i don't i don't do more than one to three sets with most lifters you do heavy five by five stuff like that you're broken for a while yeah so so rdls are another one i like to use a lot though as well so uh that i tend to program when i do um you might see a snatch grip deadlift on monday and rdl on a wednesday and a deadlift on saturday but the most taxing ones that would you'd see is the snatch grip deadlift and the clean grip deadlift and so the the deadlift on saturday though would be put last after all your lifts are done and you've got sunday to recover and usually bounce back pretty well by monday so you're not

prescribing a certain percentage it's just not at all you know i actually do next to zero percentage prescription other i let the reps the reps and form dictate the load so when i do use percentages it is we're going to do back offsets to work. We're going to do high hang snatches after our max snatches. So work up to 100 max, whatever it is, for the day. And we might do high hang snatches, triples at roughly 75% to 80%. But if you can do more, do it. So it depends on whether I just want to make sure they're pushing their technique limits for that drill each time for the given rep scheme. Does that make sense?

Are you monitoring most most the lifters when they lift or are they coming in are there are there times where they're lifting without your supervision or is is are most lifters like under your supervision 95 of the lifters 99 of the lifters 95 of the time it's like uh the stuff from anchorman but i'd say 95 of them are so are definitely under supervision and trained under a watch fly there. And I write down all their work sets and things of that nature. So I can keep an eye on that and are they getting better or worse, those sorts of things.

But decisions, definitely a joint decision. Gotcha. So you're helping the athletes as they go along. They're not deciding on their own. Like, oh, I feel like my technique is pretty good. I guess I'll go heavier. Right. That's not happening.

Right. I mean, there's some I want them to, a lot of them get too dependent on me to where they can't ever make a decision to know whether they should go up or not. So if they're in that realm, I'll try to, you tell me. And if you're asking, it's probably heavy. Right. So those kinds of things take place. But we're on the same page usually. Like, you know, we're right on board.'s easy to make uh strategic steps for those next weights

and you guys have a team practice so people aren't just coming up right so they're not filtering in you're like working with people all day long right it's like an hour or two a day yeah so we do right now our structure practices are monday wednesday and saturday for two hours each but they tend to last three hours plus on some nights. And they do do accessory work once they're ready for it on Tuesdays and Thursdays as well. And we've actually just a few weeks ago started our coaching as well on Tuesdays and Thursdays because the demand has been so high for it.

How many lifters do you have right now? So on the list, we've got about 22 or so that show up. But of that list, I would say about 10 to 15 are pretty consistent, and they're there, all the workouts. The others might be a CrossFitter who's trying to get better, and they might show up one day a week. It helps, but one's kind of a bare-bones minimum. I like to see them at least twice a week, really to sharpen their skills there.

But the lifters who are serious about weightlifting, a minimum of three days a week, that's where I'll see junior-level lifters, master's-level lifters, or people who are just about weightlifting, a minimum of three days a week, that's where I'll see junior level lifters, master's level lifters, or people who are just getting started. But I really encourage them to spread their workload over at least five days. Six would be great as well. But we're doing our heaviest workouts are Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, always, regardless of the level. And then Tuesday, Thursday becomes

where I can spread out some of their extra strength training drills that they might have to do. Other technique stuff they may have to do on Tuesday, Thursday where we're working from the hangar of the blocks or just power movements and stuff like that you have everyone are you programming for everybody and then like adding variations depending on the individual or is that is each individual on their own program 100 so how does that work so i break it down into sort of three levels and it's simply beginner intermediate advanced you could think of it as that way but excuse me i may throw someone in level one who's a master level lifters could have been lifting for 15 years but the

similarity is the volume and how much exposure you're getting to each lift in level one versus say level three level three kind of looks bulgarian almost i mean you're seeing a lot of heavy full lifts there and that's something someone has to be earned and graduated to but um but so and say level one you're seeing the lifts twice per week. Typically there's less volume in the squats and pulls and stuff like that, but it allows them that more time to feel out the lifts and really train that lift. So you have snatch only day kind of stuff. So you've snatch only day, clean and jerk only day. And then we do both lifts together on Saturdays, but level two, we're actually getting more specific in, in, uh, limiting certain drills,

but actually adding in more harder, complex drills, but we're doing both lifts each day, Monday, Wednesday, Saturday. And that's a big adjustment. A lot of people can't handle that much volume three days a week. And so they may stay there forever, and that's a very hard phase, and people have gotten very good there. But the next step, high-level, national level, if there is kind of that level three where we get rid of it.

It's the most simple phase, though. It's just the highest loading. I don't get tricky with it. It's heavy, clean, snatch, and clean and jerk, where we get the heaviest loadings in our squats and just doing a lot more strength work there um but but yes there's there's an exact level one two and three workout i'll come up with but every single effort that's why i take notes for everybody that shows up and everyone's got something i need to fix so everyone's kind of on the same cycle you don't have people peaking at

different times yeah so unfortunately i do so over the year there is a general uh there's there's mostly two-week switches i do all the time so it's um it's more of an undulating sort of uh accumulation intensification way back and forth all year long and then allows me to get them ready for any competition at any time it also allows me to not have any big lulls where if i do a tens phase in the back squat let's say it may be productive in the long haul but uh depends on the lifespan of the lifter and they might be coming just for say crossfit needs it just doesn't fit in it doesn't make sense and i smoke their legs and they can't do any olympic lifts so it doesn't necessarily fit so i can get more high end lifts year long

with say twos threes and fives and things like that plus i just found it works better for strength in the long run. But from there, there's a lot of individual tangents that might be. It might be level two hybrid sort of things coming out of that. Right. So very specifically for level one, two, and three, after the warmup, what does that day look like? Like exercise sets, reps, you know, from start to finish. So a level one on a Monday would come in and they work to a relative one rep snatch. They do that kind of elaborate warm-up sequence, but that's kind of a workout already. And then from there, let's work up to a technically proficient one rep max that makes sense. And so part of that is it's twofold.

One is so they have to do those drills every day and get better each day with technique. But the second is so they learn to lift weight. And they attack that one rep max each time and they learn to lift weight and they attack that 100 max uh each time and they learn to turn that trigger uh so after that that may take anywhere from 30 minutes to 45 minutes or so um they would do whatever technique drill of the day that might be and so it could be uh there's various phases where we're going uh with a pause at the knee to a full snatch there might be a tall snatch where we pause really at the top at the power position or standing completely upright and they got to just basically pull themselves under um there's phases where we do a lot of

stuff from the blocks from the knees whatever that specific drill might be though we're typically doing a week where there'll be triples basically for that drill the next week we'll intensify it a bit with doubles and sometimes there might be singles if they're if they're showing success early on or consistency at least and then from there um they would do some sort of overhead stability support work so if they're really off track it would be an overhead squat uh if their their pieces are nice and tight in the bottom we'll start doing snatch balances and adding some dynamic action there so they're one step closer to being a good uh squat snatcher and then from there it'd be uh front squat day for uh um on mondays would be front squat so i tend to put

them mondays as opposed to wednesdays because it's just too much work on the front of the rack position because we do cleans and rack jerks on wednesdays as well so uh we do front squats then then after that there might be that's where you would see some of the deadlift type motions there so it'd either be a snatch grip deadlift they will do the three-part pausing sequence deadlifts off the ground on those days just to clean their positions up we'll do hyperextensions at the end of every single workout there just to get the erectors in shape for the lifting. Then Wednesday for level one would be a clean focus day, and we'll do cleans up to a relative 100 max, the clean drills for that specific cycle, rack jerks, then back squats.

Then you might see RDLs or some kind of clean specific deadlift type positions. So there will be clean grip deadlifts there, but they're not usually too heavy. And then reverse hypers or back extensions that day. And then Saturday we put it all together where it's max snatch, max clean and jerk. At level one, they're just going to do back squats. Level two and three, you start seeing front and back squats together there. But level one would be snatch, clean and jerk, back squat, deadlift, and back extensions. That's the funnest day you put it all together.

It's a lot of heavy lifts and go to town. are they pretty much on their own for any upper body stuff they want to do weighted pull-ups or or you know weighted push-ups or any anything like that is that is that on their own are you programming in there too i have a so that's where those tuesdays and thursdays are have been the missing link so they can choose to come and do a three-day program or a five-day program based on that is what i tell them look here's here's why three is inferior to us doing a five-day complete program when we can actually uh put together the other basic missing pieces and that might be tuesday we typically do a bench in a row some kind of horizontal basic strength training so at least can cover those bases and then uh tuesday would be a vertical push pull you might get pull-ups and military

presses you may throw push presses and things like that in there then that's kind of the foot in the door so they can start throwing in more technique drills on those days and i try to get uh power snatch power cleaning jerk on tuesdays thursdays if i can and that really so they start seeing the lifts more often and uh that's a recovery day they don't do the full lift and it's more forgiving but they can go through those sequences more frequently and you see them putting together better quicker lifts faster and shorter time become more consistent and it's it's win-win it's just getting them to do five days you know do you guys do any anterior

core specific type stuff or or rotational uh not rotational specific to weight yeah i mean not much rotational stuff uh making a jerk would might help a little bit but uh but really we'll do like hang leg raises uh decline set up jhd type set up stuff on tuesdays thursdays it's thrown in there as a recommendation to do. So we'll do a lot of extension work on Monday, Wednesday, Saturday, and we'll do some,

uh, the hanging leg raise type stuff on, uh, or, you know, you can even think toes to bar type stuff, say Tuesdays, Thursdays.

So they're kind of getting back and forth, uh, interior to posterior there a little bit. Um, but it's, it's kind of loose, you know, you know,

I, I, I prescribe core or abs, things like that. So I'll let them kind of have fun with it a little bit. So there's definitely places to play with the programming in there and add things. That's where the CrossFitters that are competitive CrossFitter types

will come in, and their WODs would tend to fall on the Tuesdays, Thursdays, but they're not so leg-taxing. Saturday WOD is hell, actually. There's a lot to it, but that's after that exact same workout. It's a high-volume day for them. Yeah, it's a long one. There's CrossFit games every Saturday for them. Tuesday and Thursday might be technique maintenance for, say,

it's lights, it's double-unders, it's swings, things like that. You're working with CrossFit athletes. You're helping them with their weightlifting. Are you handling any CrossFit-style programming? It sounds like you are. Actually, yeah. I am level one certified, at least uh i'm just not a crossfitter that's the biggest difference here and i think of this in terms of as a strength coach and olympic

lifting coach and how i would see those elements coming together so it's um you know i'm programming now like so i look at it as sort of the out of season i'm still building a bigger motor you know lactate threshold type stuff uh working different uh rep schemes i'm still you know i'm getting them better uh you know we're still doing time burpees and things like that but there's more accumulation based tactics to get them strong and say handstand push-ups handstands we're doing a lot of accumulation for kind of a unidimensional approach for that lift let's say but uh i don't really throw it in any insanity necessarily until like saturday and so we start putting that together and so what it does do is definitely increases their strength for each

movement what it doesn't do is the specific element of putting them in that environment of the actual wad so that's where more in specific in-season training will start happening for that for that particular athlete so that's just such a mess it's hard to really get good at one thing, you know, so it is. Yeah. Um, all right. Let's uh, I got a one question that kind of, I feel like it's kind of out of left field for what we've discussed so far, but it still falls into, it's the last one we got on here. So training without Ollie or training Ollie lifts without bumpers. So we've got a,

somebody who listens that that I guess they don't have access to bumpers and they can't drop weights. And what's your advice for someone in that situation? Find a better gym, number one. Move to St. Louis. Yeah, we've got plenty. If you're stuck to that situation and you have no other option, number one, you should end up being very good at technique, actually,

because if you do nothing but lift the bar all day long you have no excuse not to be a master with that barbell so i mean that's one excuse hey i'm working on technique today so you just always go light but but when you actually have to load up i mean i've been in that situation before and it's not easy and uh i don't recommend it actually but if when it comes to the snatch it's so hard to grip the bar. If they'll let you use chalk, that's one thing. But your hands get sweaty. Those bars don't hold real well.

I use straps every time I'm ever in that situation. So you've got to strap up to hold on to that bar and to actually lower it, or you're going to miss one. It doesn't sound too successful to me. I mean, I wish I knew what kind of bar he was using. But, I mean, a lot of bars in a lot of these places don't turn at all. And then you might be throwing that weight overhead, and the bar's wanting to turn back on you and stuff like that. I mean, the biggest variable here, too, is if you're going to miss a snatch behind you,

there's nothing you can do about it once it goes behind you. I mean, you can wear straps. Yeah, if you're going to lose it behind you, you're going to lose it behind you. And you can't, no matter what you do do you can't keep yourself from doing that i mean yeah and i've literally seen overuse injuries and just dings from people just not wanting to ever drop the bar you know they just carry it down every time you know and over and over and over just just that bar yanking forward on your shoulders and back i can't recommend it sometimes yeah i watch people in the gym dude i'm like just drop it it's

best part made of rubber right and then that one person figures out that and then they like just start slamming everything i'm like no don't do that you've gone too far macho man um and then maybe you have a recommendation for this we don't we don't have any uh anyone we're really attached to but uh who do you buy your equipment from? If someone was looking to buy equipment for their garage, what do you suggest, high-end, low-end? I've got a little bit of everything, honestly. I've got a Maliko set that I absolutely love and recommend that.

It took me probably 15 years of Olympic lifting to ever get that Maliko set. You've got to earn that one. I've got the bar. I've got the Alico bar, and I'm still working towards the Alico plates. One plate at a time. Yeah, one plate at a time, so I get the 10 kilos this month. Next month I get the other 10 kilos. Yeah, so those are great great but i started out uh

with two york bars that i spent student loans on and those bars have lasted forever and they've been awesome they don't spin very well right now but i didn't have not maintained them well enough so they should spin well but the quality has been amazing for those york bars um and then i've had some really uh just general uh i think it was Bumper USA. They're kind of generic, but I don't even think they're around now. But for money, for good economy deals, Penley stuff has been pretty good. I've gotten his economy plates. We've got a lot of lifters here, and we've got a lot of strong people,

a lot of people beating the heck out of those plates, and they have fallen apart a bit. The economy plates, the elite plates have been very good. have held up uh those are the ones with the the steel center yeah those have held up through everything actually i've got you know fernando rios slamming down 200 plus kilos up there and uh so you name it and people just who don't know how to drop weights correctly and dropping weights on top of weights and dropping sideways or was it ghost riding the ball like just dropping it from overhead right right and so those have held up in terms of plates um and but again the economy

plates were a good purchase for the money but the the penley bars have been actually probably my favorite economy deal for a bar yeah i think they're around 300 when i bought those and they've lasted pretty well i I had one break on me. It had to be one bad bar because it broke on like a 70-kilo snatch when we dropped down. And they replaced it, you know, no cost and all that. But the other bars, you know, the legal bars, work sign bars, I love them all. They're all fantastic. They spin the best.

And, you know, if you're going to go lift nationally, then that's the way to go. But, you know, in terms of CrossFitter, we actually did some rogue bars uh for some of our women's bars and they've been great yeah so it depends on what you got the bella bar it's like it's got a black handle yeah i think those might be the bella bars like 200 bucks so uh you can't beat that and for what we're using that for i mean you know if she's getting ready for a national meet or something hey we got to get you on the work sign of the legal bar right and but it's just not always feasible is there a certain company you like to buy from like if you're going to order a bar i will at this point for most of my training purposes now for a high number of bars would be probably penlave or uh the rogue bars okay yeah yeah i was going to say if you want to go my suggestion like on the high end alico of course works on i i think you have to go directly to

those guys to buy it most of the time i can't remember who i don't know who got our alico bar from rogue sells alico now don't they they they might i think they do yeah i know elite fitness does too um and then middle of the road would be kind of like penlay and then and then down from that would be the rogue bars and then if you want to really save some money and go to right rubber and they've got uh they've got bars and bumpers but you know you get what you pay for yeah absolutely i've done uh back and there was a time where our gym closed down i was getting ready for the american open and i was a week out and uh i had my old metal plates and old regular steel barbell

I used for powerlifting and I used metal weights and I cleaned up to like 160 on that bar you know but I I cleaned the bar the bar ended up bending and I had to set it down on the ground you know take it to the thighs and then set it down and never never again that was uh you know it was on a concrete floor I couldn't drop it so it was slippery but uh you know it just depends on what you're gonna do with the weights honestly yeah crossfitting in your gym to competition you know yeah i mean i'd rather just save money buy high-end stuff and it'll last forever yeah actually talking about uh was it you broke one of the was it penlay bars yeah zach critch told me a story about uh he broke an Alico bar.

Wow. Like a Pan Ams. He was warming up. It was out of the box. It was brand new and broke it, warming up. Wow. Snapped it in half, broke it, or the sleeve came off? I'm not sure.

I saw a guy snap a barbell in half one time. No way. Yes. Well, the grooves were cut grooves. It wasn't just a hash. They scored it, and it broke right on the score. He was doing hang cleans, like football hang cleans. They just kind of bounce the weight real hard.

He had three wheels on, 315, and it snapped. He had straps on, too. It snapped and just broke in half, and he broke his wrist. Apparently, in the 70s or 80s, there's a story about a guy, it was like a Russian heavyweight or something, did a jerk, the bar snapped

and went right through his chin there. That's nasty. That scares the hell out of me. Shit, don't tell me that, man. You buy an illegal bar. You're never going to lift

that kind of weight. It's a good thing that I'm not strong that's my excuse i don't ever want to get hurt you know that's why i'm not getting strong that's right focus on your technique that's right we broke one illegal plate which is kind of a fluke it's a 10 kilo plate but i think it's people drop and hell out of it slamming it down yeah but the rest of it held up yeah i was super spoiled. I grew up on a legal place. They were like 25 years old, and they were just fine.

They were super old, but they lifted great. They felt awesome. All right, guys. We're going to wrap this up. Let's go around the room. Everyone gets to plug whatever they want to plug. Doug, what do you got? Like Justin was saying, probably the biggest thing in the weightlifting world starting out is getting into a good start position and the thing that limits most people

is their mobility so if you got tight ankles tight hips you know a kyphotic rounded over upper back from sitting at your office all day or tight shoulders then definitely check out maximum mobility in the fitter shop I can show you exactly how much range of motion you need how to find out how much range of motion you have, and then exactly which stretches to do to fix those limitations. So check out Maximum Mobility in the Fitter Shop. Corey? I'll pass. You can promote the Chris Moore blog for Chris.

There you go. It is very interesting. Read the Chris Moore blog. Lots of phenomenal diagrams I love his diagrams I'm glad he's moved more towards diagrams all his words are hard

I'm at work I want something to take my mind shapes and colors are way easier than words well you heard it here Chris more pictures less words you can just start writing a child's blog just what do you get moving on

i would say uh find a good coach because it's uh it's a lost confusing world and to to get confident with the olympic lifts i had a lot of great coaches in different styles different opinions and uh it's highly influenced who i became as a lifter and as a coach and uh but i would have been lost without some guidance so there's definitely that point of frustration there um so if you're ever in the area lab gym is a great place to get some good coaching uh otherwise these guys in faction for sure um but i highly recommend finding a coach or at least a club you can start getting involved with do i got a website, labgym.com. Simple.

Is it the lab gym or lab gym? Just lab gym. Labgym.com. And you guys have like technique videos on the site, like references they can go look at? Yeah, on our YouTube channel, we've got a whole section. There's at least 70 good technique videos. So a lot of the actual warm-up drills and the ABCs and all that stuff is actually all on there. And you can watch me go through with a empty barbell and the timing and speed that would be nice to do

But you can kind of see what we're looking for with each position So it kind of shows the stretches the timing of all that and there's it's good being updated all the time But plus you can see a lot of great Olympic lifting videos from team lab sessions to competition videos as well. Very cool Like excellent What's that? What's your YouTube? competition videos as well. Very cool. Excellent. What's your YouTube? I think it's just the Lab Gym. Yeah, it is. We've got links on the website.

Our YouTubes don't always match exactly our URLs. I think on our Facebook it's a personal page so it's just the Lab Gym Thacker. If you find that, I put a lot of our videos on there. But otherwise, we do have just thelabgym as a business site. Okay. So we've got two Facebook pages.

Cool. That'll send you there. All right. And everybody should go to fitter.tv. That's F-I-T-R dot TV. Sign up for the newsletter, and we'll alert you when we post awesome podcasts just like this one. Later, guys. Later, go.