Takano Athletics

09 March 2010

Power Snatch: 77 lbs.:35 kg/4 reps: (87:39/4)4 sets

Power Clean: 99:45/4, (109:49/4)3

Back Squat: 99:45/2, 143:65/2, (163:74/2)4

Press: (77:35/4)5

68 reps

08 March 2010

The first week of this cycle which started on February 15 was composed of 543 reps.  Week 2 had 416 reps and Aileen was somewhat fatigued.  Week 3 was lighter at 279 reps.  This is the start of Week 4 and the reps are going up again.

Back Squat: 99 lbs.:45 kg/4 reps, 124:56/4, 143:65/4, 163:74/4, (173:78/4)3*sets (*=personal record)

Snatch: 77:35/4, 92:42/22, 102:46/22, 102/4, 102/31

Clean & Jerk: 99:45/4+1, (119:54/4+1)4 * PR for 4 sets

Snatch Extension: (114:52/4)4

Push Press: 99:45/4, 109:49/4, 109:49/2, (104:49/31)2

107 reps

Sunny day with blue skies and fluffy, white clouds.  A little cold and breezy.  We probably should have spent the day outdoors, but we had a photo shoot scheduled at the Iron Man studio in Gardena.  Iron Man publisher John Balik is interested in helping us promote Olympic lifting and part of that is a series of six articles I’m in the process of writing.

Good articles need good photos and John wants the best so he set us up to have some lifts shot at his studio.  Taking the photos was Mike Neveux, ace lensman for the magazine.  The dark studio was set up with expert, pro quality lighting.  We were impressed.  The lifters I’d gotten to pose for the shots were two of my best ever–Leslie Musser, former national champion and World University Games silver medalist and Nghiep Dinh, several times national runner up.

It turns out that Mike had been a competitive lifter in his early days and so he was familiar with the snatch and clean and jerk.  This was tremendously helpful, as it only took a brief conversation between us for him to determine which positions needed to be emphasized in his photos.

Leslie Musser prepares to snatch in one of my "unprofessional" photos.

Most lifting photos are shot during competitions, but these would be performed specifically for the purposes of photography.  We managed to wrap the whole thing in a couple of hours with neither of my lifters having to hold uncomfortable poses for any length of time.

Mike knew where all the speed changes came in the lifts and did a great job of catching all the pertinent points with just a minimum of re-takes.

Nghiep Dinh in another of my unprofessional photos

Unquestionably these photos will greatly enhance the articles that should be appearing across several issues of Iron Man magazine.  As soon as I get the release dates I’ll post them on the website and through this blog.

Thanks so much to John, Mike, Nghiep and Leslie for the photos.

Well, it’s been over two months that the re-vamped PHAT Elvis weightlifting club has been up and running at Team Crossfit in Woodland Hills, California.  At our latest workout I noticed how the best behaviors are beginning to develop.

I return to a term that was presented to me by a former colleague on the teaching staff at Van Nuys High School.   Mike Turre was a fellow teacher in the Math/Science Magnet, and an excellent Advanced Placement Statistics instructor.  That was Mike’s day job.  During nights and on weekends, Mike pursued his true passion–playing saxophone in some of the top Latin Jazz groups in the world.  He was a member of Tito Puente’s touring band and did all the sax work for the soundtrack of the film Mambo Kings.   He understood passion and its pursuit.  One day during a teacher’s strike he commented to me about the school police officer, “He was born to be a cop like I was born to play the sax and you were born to coach weightlifting!”

Anyway Mike would periodically stop by and visit my weightlifting gym in room 605 because he could smell the passion (among other odors (fragrances?) there), and he understood the Eye of the Tiger stuff and how environment was key to sustaining the passion.  He talked about how in every major city in the U.S., there was one Latin Jazz club that the true believers could always seek out and find a jam to sit in on.  I told him that that was how 605 was, and how every weightlifter that ever passed through Los Angeles always found a way to get a workout there.

One day Mike mused to me that the really important thing was the psychic ambiance that was maintained in the oases of Latin Jazz, and Weightlifting as well.  I agreed.  605 was not pretty.  It was appropriately, but not lavishly, equipped.  What made it a hotbed of weightlifting activity was the attitudes of the participants and hence the resulting psychic ambiance.  The lifters were passionate, serious and extremely focused on doing the training that would result in great performances.    Without individuals with those characteristics you just have a social club where people lift weights in between conversations.

The other day as I looked over the group that was training, I noticed the behavioral buds of the psychic ambiance developing.  Everyone there was intent upon learning the Olympic lifts or to making progress in their performance.  Everyone had bought into the idea that only hard training could enable them to reach their goals.  People were encouraging each other to put forth more effort.  Each effort was respected.  Everyone’s improvement was appreciated by everyone.    It’s not that I give pep talks or spend much time explaining these things.  It is because I encourage these behaviors and don’t tolerate anything else.  Down the road this location will have the psychic ambiance in full bloom, and some great performances will come out of it.

To the new coach starting up a program I know that there is a lot to learn in coaching a team of athletes, but one of the things that you can effectively do to help your athletes is to pay some attention to the psychic ambiance.   Develop your own coaching work habits so that you are always there, always on time, organizing appropriately and staying focused on the goal of your program.  Require that everyone encourage each other.  All personal records should be acknowledged.   All support should be acknowledged.  All effort should be appreciated by everyone involved.  This is a big part of the role of the coach–cultural leadership.  The payoff will be there in the future.

P.S.  One of the things that I learned from my coach, Bob Hise II, was to make everyone around the team feel appreciated.   When our team trained at the old Downtown Los Angeles YMCA one of the Y members who inhabited the weight room was a guy named Efrain Villasenor.  Efrain was too old and not a good enough athlete to be a member of the team, but he loved to be around weightlifters and weightlifting.  Bob was always appreciative of Efrain since he was quite a handyman and loved to build things.  We lifters were all too young and too stupid to realize how valuable Efrain was, but Bob did.  Efrain loved nothing more than to build the platform for the competition.  He would actually build a stage on the YMCA basketball court with a base of used tires to cushion the dropping of the iron weights (no rubber bumpers in those days).  And he would tear it down!

It doesn’t really take a village to raise a weightlifter, but it does help to have some enthusiastic volunteers around to keep a weightlifting program going.   Appreciate those wonderful folks that might help you out when you have to move weights, set up seats, transport lifters too young to drive or keep score.  A bit shout out to all the Efrain’s in the world.

5 March 2010 Day 5 of light microcyle

Snatch: 77 lbs.:35 kg/2, 77:35/2, 87:39/2, 97:44/11, 97:44/2, 97/11, 97/2

Clean & Jerk: 99:45/11, 119:54/2+1, (124:56/2+1)3

Snatch Extension: (109:49/3)4

Back Squat: 109:49/3, 143:65/3, (163:74/3)3

55 reps

4 March 2010 Day Four of the light microcycle

Power Snatch: 77 lbs.: 35 kg/2 reps, (82:37/2)5 sets

Power Clean: 99:45/2, (114:52/2)4

Power Jerk: 99:45/3, (109:49/3)4

Back Squat: 109:49/3, 143:65/3, 163:74/3, 173:78/3

Clean Extension: (129:58/3)4

61 reps

I just posted the Week 22 Training Program for 1991 as written by then resident coach Dragomir Ciroslan.  You can find it in the downloads section of www.takanoathletics.com website.

With all the interest in Olympic lifting right now, I expect some of that interest will eventually spread to training programs.  Right now a great deal of attention is being focused on technical training and beginning level training.  Eventually some of the newcomers are probably going to get themselves involved in the process of writing training programs.

So a few thoughts about training programs.

If you are truly interested in being a weightlifting coach you will have to learn how to write programming.  The overriding principals for programming training are found in the science of periodization.  You need to understand the General Adaptation Syndrome as described by physiologist Hans Selye, and then the principles of periodization as originally proposed by Matveyev.  You must understand how the organism reacts to appropriate amounts of training stress.

You then need to understand the variables you have to work with in inducing stress upon the organism.  They include, but are not limited to, the exercises, the sequence of the exercises, the number of repetitions per set, the absolute intensities and the relative intensities, the volume, the load, the number of sessions, the number of days per week.

Then you need to apply the training and watch for the effects on the athletes in question and determine how they’re responses vary to the training stimuli, and then manipulate the training to suit the individual needs.

One of the best ways to learn how training affects athletes is to take a program that has already been designed by an expert, apply it to your athletes and then look for the responses.

The training programs that you will find posted in the downloads sections of the Takano Athletics website have all been tried and tested.  They all work very well with high level athletes.

If you are really serious about becoming a weightlifting coach, download the programs, apply them to your athletes that are in good enough shape to withstand the training and observe the results.  An athlete who can use these programs already has excellent technique and has the capacity to withstand serious training (approximately 25,000 reps at 60% and above over the course of a year).

Snatch:  (77 lbs.:35 kg/1 rep)2 sets, 87:39/1, 99:45/1, (104:47/1)2, 99:45/1, 104:47/1, 109:49/1* Personal record

C & J: 99:45/1+1, 109:49/1+1, 121:55/1+1, 126:57/1+1, 131:59/1+1, 136:61/1+1, 136:61/1+1 * Personal record

Front Squat: 121:55/2, 126:57/2, 131/59/2, 136:61/2, (143:65/2)3

Aileen finished a two week preparation cycle last week.  Very beat up, I eased the workload down the last two days and then had her max out to see how her nervous system was doing.  She made shakey PR’s in the snatch and clean and jerk.  The rest of the week will be light and then the training will become more demanding next week.

Power Snatch: 77 lbs.:35 kg/2, (82:37/2)4 sets

Power Clean: 99:45/2, (109:49/2)4

Behind the Neck Power Jerk: 99:45/3, (104:47/3)4

Back Squat: 104:47/2, 143:65/2, (163:74/2)4

1 March 2010  Day 1 of a light week (microcycle) 79 reps

Snatch: 77 lbs.:35 kg/21 reps, 87:39/3, 99:45/3, (104:47/111)2 sets, 104:47/3

Clean & Jerk: 99:45/3+1, 109:49/3+1, 119:54/12+1, (119:54/3+1)2

Back Squat: 119:54/3, 143:65/3, (163:74/3)3

Snatch Extension: (109:49/3)4

Press: (77:35/4)4