Takano Athletics

Combining 2 or more exercises in the same set

Sometimes it becomes necessary to combine exercises in order to achieve a certain desired effect or to correct technical errors.  Those of you who have been following this series of workouts may have noticed that during the last few weeks I’ve been combining the snatch high pull for two reps with one rep of the classical snatch in a set.  This is being done because Aileen, like many lifters, has very good technique in the snatch high pull, but not quite as good in the performance of the snatch.  Therefore I’ve combined the two exercises into a set and try to employ weights of at least 80% of maximum.  The weight is sufficiently heavy to develop some speed/strength characteristics and requires the proper dynamics of the classical snatch.  Today I changed the movements so that they are performed from the hang position above the knee, and this has had a favorable effect on the completion of the snatch, Aileen’s technical weakpoint.

The goal is to have this pattern transfer over to the classical snatch.

I have not had to employ a clean high pull/clean combination in the clean as Aileen has achieved technical mastery of the clean much faster than the snatch.

I’ve also added more snatch extensions (snatch pulls without bending the arms) to reinforce the action of the legs and hips during the snatch pull, and then I’ve added the Halting Snatch Deadlift.  In this movement the weight of at least 90% is deadlifted to the power position and held for a four second delay.  On occasion I have Aileen perform this movement with the eyes closed in order to develop the proper proprioception for this movement.  Several sets of properly weighted reps of this movement will make the weight feel light off the floor when the actual snatch is performed.  It also strengthens the latissimus dorsi which are actively involved in maintaining the proper angle between the arms and the torso during the early phases of the pull.

When including these variations in the training session it is always critical to consider the placement of the exercise within the sequence of exercises prescribed for the training.  Localized fatigue and the effect of the previous workouts are factors that will determine the sequence.  When the athlete has yet to master technique, the fatigue of the nervous system must always be taken into consideration.  Exercises prescribed to improve the technique of the classical movements should be performed early in the workout before the nervous system and the appropriate supportive musculature is fatigued.

Because we are moving the P.H.A.T. Elvis operation into the Teamcrossfit facility in Woodland Hills, Aileen will be training four or five days per week instead of the usual 3.

Training routine 31 (Tuesday, Dec. 29)

Back Squat: 77 lbs.:35 kg/3 reps, 99:45/3, 121:55/3, 141:64.0/3, (151:68.6/3)3 reps,

Power Snatch: (77:35/4)4

Power Clean & Jerk: (99:45/3+1)2, (109:49.5/3+1)2, (114:51.8/21)2

Snatch Extension: (99:45/4)4

Push Press: 77:35/4, 87:39.5/4, (97:44/4)2

Training Routine 32 (Wednesday, Dec. 30)

Hang Snatch High Pull and Snatch: 77/2+1, 77/2+1, 77/2+1, 77/2+1, 82/2+1, (82/2+1)2, 87/2+1*, 87/2+1, (87/2+1)2

Halting Snatch Deadlift (4 seconds at Power Position) (97:44/4)5

Front Squat: 99:45/3, 121:55/3, (136:61.7/3)3*

* = personal record

Since I retired from my career in education in June of this year, I’ve gradually begun to do more and more weightlifting coaching.  My involvement with the Crossfit Olympic Lifting Certifications with coach Mike Burgener has exposed me to a lot more people interested in learning the proper performance of the lifts and then getting into competition.  Consequently more people have begun to inquire about my availability to coach weightlifters and I’ve finally decided to make a move and set up a program and the re-emergence of the P.H.A.T. Elvis Weightlifting Club.

Beginning this week I will be coaching weightlifters each afternoon from Monday through Friday, at the Team Crossfit facility in Woodland Hills, California.  I met the owner, James Lee, last year when he asked me to coach him in learning the O lifts.  He got interested enough to sponsor a USAW Club Coach course at his facility last September, and subsequently expressed an interest in having a weightlifting program at his facility.  In light of the increasing interest in my coaching and James’ offer of a facility, we are starting a weightlifting program with every intention of producing national level and eventually international level competitors.  I also want to develop a coaching education program as an adjunct to the actual competitive program.

The facility is located at 20942 Victory Blvd. in Woodland Hills, California.

Team Crossfit--the New Home of P.H.A.T. Elvis Weightlifting

We have three lifting stations, with adequate bars and bumpers.  More equipment will probably be added from the old P.H.A.T. Elvis stash of weights.  I don’t expect to take more than a few months to have a busy group of top lifters in training.

If you’ve got an interest in becoming an Olympic lifter, and would like to be coached by one of the most experienced coaches in the country, please contact me at info@takanoathletics.com or James at info@teamcrossfit.com.

Those interested in reviewing my credentials can do so at my website, www.takanoathletics.com.  Click on About Us and then Biography.

See you on the platform!

Aileen’s workout of December 28, 2009.  Her legs are tired so we cut back on the squatting load, but not the intensity.

Back Squat: 77 lbs.:35 kg/2 reps, 99:45/2, 121:55/2, 146:66.3/2, 165:75/2, 175:79.5/2 (PR)

Snatch High Pull and Snatch: 77:35/2+1, 77:35/2+1, 87:39.5/2+1, 87:39.5/2+1, (87:39.5/2+1)4 sets

Clean & Jerk: 99:45/1+3, 109:49.5/1+3, 114:51.8/1+21, 114:51.8/1+11, (104:47.2/1+3)2

Good Morning: (77:35/6)4

Front Squat: 99 lbs.:45 kg/4 reps, 110:50/4, 121:55/4 (143:65/4)2 sets, 143:65/1

Power Snatch and Overhead Squat:  77:35/3+3, (82.7:37.5/3+3)4

Power Clean and Jerk: 99:45/3+3, (110:50/3+2)3

Power Jerk: 77:35/3, (88:40/3)4, (99:45/3)2

Clean Deadlift: (121:55/4)4

Training Week 2, Training Day 2

Back Squat: 77 lbs./35 kg/3 reps, 99:45/3, 121:55/3, 146:66.3/3, 156:70.8/3, 166:75.4/3, (157:70.8/3, 176:80/1)2 sets*

Snatch: 77:35/12, 77:35/3, 87:39.5/21, 87:39.5/21, 87:39.5/21, 87/3*

Clean & jerk: 99:45/4+1, (104:47.2/4+1)4*

Behind the neck Power Jerk: 99:45/3, (104:47.2/3)3*

* = personal record.  Some gains are being made.

Protoplasmic engineering

A few blogs back I wrote about a Pasquale character who wanted to become a weightlifting coach, and I gave some very general suggestions about how to get started.  A coach in Oregon named Nick Horton took up where I left off and provided some more concrete suggestions on how to embark on an educational course toward becoming a weightlifting coach.  One of the points that Nick stressed was to become more sophisticated in the math and science fields because these two disciplines develop the thought processes involved in coaching.  Thanks, Nick.  I couldn’t agree more.

I’d like to move ahead a little more in this realm and talk about a term I’ve used to describe myself and that is protoplasmic engineer. I coined the term back in the early 1990’s in a column in the old International Olympic Lifter magazine.  I was trying to describe what I was doing in the training of athletes at a sub-organismic level.

Protoplasm is a term given to living matter or living “stuff”.  The cells are the units of protoplasm and cells are composed of a variety of subcellular structures called organelles.  Each kind of organelle has specific and often unique functions within the cell  By applying appropriate stresses in appropriate amounts to the protoplasm, the cells will respond by changing the numerical proportions and the functional capabilities of the organelles.  In short the protoplasm is engineered to more effectively perform certain functions.

By applying the appropriate stressors (training stimuli such as reps per set or weight) in the appropriate doses (sets, number of training days, etc.), the tissue becomes capable of generating more force, contracting more rapidly, responding more efficiently to the body’s own hormones or any of a number of other functions that are beneficial in the performance of a sport activity.

Weightlifting coaches and strength and conditioning coaches and some sport coaches perform these transformations regularly up to a certain level.  Many do it without any great knowledge of how these changes in protoplasmic structure are effected.

Those that have had the appropriate physiological education can more accurately determine when the current training protocol is no longer effective and for what reason.  Furthermore they can determine how to modify the training stressors so that progress can continue to be made.  They can continue to engineer the protoplasm!

Those who are seriously interested in becoming a much better weightlifting coach (You need to be seriously interested because it is not going to happen accidentally) need to be knowledgeable and conversant in sports physiology.  Much of what you might learn in a good sports physiology course may seem too esoteric, or too theoretical, or too irrelevant to your coaching, but if you understand the methodologies by which the research is being conducted you will have a hint of how to begin perceiving the conditional changes in your athletes without doing a lot of actual testing.

When you are a coach you are conducting physiological research without much in the way of appropriate technology and if you are to develop the appropriate instincts you shouldn’t have to rely too much on technology because it will not be available to you in a split second when you are making decisions on the field of play.  If you trained an athlete in a certain manner to improve a certain factor in competition, you cannot accurately evaluate the effectiveness of the training until you are in a competitive environment at which point you will not have the luxury of using technology to make that assessment.

My recommendation is to get as much good education as you can in sports physiology.  Then spend two or three training cycles with a knowledgeable coach with a strong background in the sciences and see if his or her evaluations corroborate with your own observations.  This is a process that will take some repetition in order for it to become effective, but there is simply no way to shorten or abbreviate the process.

Enjoy the holidays!

Week 2

I thought I’d re-do the sequencing of the snatch pull and snatch intensities so I came up with the following one which seemed to work out well.

Back Squat: 77 lbs.:35 kg/4 reps, 99:45/4, 121:55/4, 141:64/4, (156:70.8/3)4 sets

Snatch High Pull and Snatch: 77:35/2+1, 82:37.2/2+1, 87:39.5/2+1, 92:41.8/2+1, 77:35/2+1, 82:37.2/2+1, 87:39.5/2+1, 92:41.8/2+1, 82:37.2/2+1, 87:39.5/2+1, 92:41.8/2+1

Halting clean deadlift (4 second halt at power position): 119:54/3, (143:65/3)4

Push Press: 77:35/4, (92:41.8/4)3

A Updated Perspective on Strength and Conditioning for Volleyball Girls

Yesterday I had a chance to re-hook up with Sha Ali for some coffee and conversation.  Sha is from the other side of the hill from me.  That means he’s located south of the Sepulveda Pass near the beach while I’m in the San Fernando Valley.  His side of the hill is where one of the hotbeds of girls volleyball is located.

Sha is putting together a volleyball training complex that will include extensive strength and conditioning facilities that will eventually provide training for 500 athletes.  We’ve been communicating off and on for about the last year or so and it looks like Sha’s vision of the proper way to prepare volleyball athletes is finally coming into fruition.  He wants me to get involved in the coaching and parent education program for his complex, and of course I’m interested.

One of the points that he made to me was the importance that college programs were beginning to place on the strength and conditioning of their recruits.  I’ve been involved with preparing high school girls for college volleyball for the past 17 years and I’ve seen the whole paradigm change very rapidly during that time.  The girls that I coached in the early 1990’s and received Division 1 scholarships couldn’t even begin to be considered for today’s university teams.  The level of athleticism and volleyball preparedness has upgraded at a very rapid rate.

Just a few years ago the college coaches weren’t too concerned whether an incoming athlete had had much strength work as they didn’t see it as a factor in the successful athletic career.

According to Sha, many of the top programs are now concerned that new recruits don’t have the conditioning to handle a full blown volleyball program with five or more practices a week plus strength and conditioning sessions.  Good athletes with little background in conditioning are coming into programs and not lasting past the freshman year without significant injuries and physical breakdowns.

Ten years ago girls would return to me from college and give me reports like, “we only hit the weight room a couple of times in a season,” or “the other girls don’t know anything about power cleans,” or “the coaches don’t care if we work out or not.”

Apparently not so anymore.

Now I know what the volleyball crowd is like and so many of the parents are absolutely dead set on their daughters getting that D1 scholarship.  I’ve always tried to sell strength and conditioning on its own merits, how much it would improve performance and how much it would minimize the extent of injuries.  Now it seems that many parents may buy into it because it may be a deciding factor in the recruitment process as far as the coach’s decision is concerned.

This could be good or it could develop some other problems.  I’m sure that some less than experienced strength and conditioning coaches or personal trainers are going to run with the recruitment angle and sell the parents on paying for sub-standard training.  We’ll have legions of volleyball players entering colleges, most of them strength trained, but not all of them trained in an appropriate way.   Perhaps the trickle up effect could come into play so that just as university volleyball coaches are now looking for strength trained athletes, in the future they may be looking for properly strength trained athletes.

Stay tuned!

End of the week and a little downloading necessary

Front Squat: 77 lbs.:35 kg./4, 99:45/4, 119:54/4, (129:58.6/4)3 sets

Snatch high Pull: (77:35/3)3

Snatch High Pull and Snatch: 77:35/2+1, (77:35/2+1)8

Power Clean: 77:35/4, (99:45/4)4, 99:45/3,1

IRANIANS RE-ARRANGING THE WEIGHTLIFTING PIECES

Last week the Iranian Weightlifting Federation decided to withdraw its team from the Asian Youth and Junior Weightlifting championships scheduled to begin on December 16th in the United Arab Emirates.  The explanation given was turmoil within Iran’s weightlifting society whatever that might mean.  More recently it has come to light that the doping positives by Iranian lifters Mohsen Davoudi and Rashid Sharifi combined with the extremely poor showing of the Iranian team at the recent World’s Weightlifting Championships in Goyang City led to the withdrawl decision.

Hossein Rezazadeh, the 2000 and 2004 Olympic superheavyweight gold medalist, has been the coach and manager of the Iranian team since his retirement from competition in July of 2008.  The doping positives under his watch led to the suspension of the team’s participation at the Asian Juniors by Bahram Afsharzadeh, the caretaker of the Iranian Weightlifting Federation.

In a subsequent move, Rezazadeh has been appointed to replace Afsharzadeh as the new caretaker of the federation until a new president is elected.

I don’t know what to make of all of this, but this is probably not the end of this chain of events.  Stay tuned.

Day 2 of the first week

Back Squat: 77 lbs.:35 kg./4 reps, 99:45/4, 121:55/4, 141:64./4, (151:68.5/4)3 sets

Snatch High Pull and Snatch: 77:35/2+1, 77:35/2+1, (82:37.2/2+1)7

Clean & Jerk: 82:37.2/4+1, 99:45/31, 104:47.2/112+1, 104:47.2/3,1, 104:47.2/211+1

Jerk off rack: (99:45/2)2, (104:47.2/2)2, (109:49.5/2)4

The Winter Solstice

This year the winter solstice will occur at 9:47 AM on Monday, December 21 Pacific Coast Standard Time.  Those of us who are training athletes probably need to pay attention to some small degree with the passing of the seasons as they can have an effect on training.  This becomes even more pronounced the further one gets from the equator.

What varies with the seasons is the number of hours of daylight per day or the photoperiod.  As the photoperiod decreases, the animal part of our brains interprets this to be a time of diminished food supply since the food chain waxes and wanes with the changes in biomass of plant life forms.   A common response of the body is to secrete more melatonin, the chemical that is necessary for sleep, but also has the effect of inhibiting metabolic rate so as to not burn too many calories during times of diminished food supplies.  Many animals secrete enough to cause hibernation to take place where they minimize caloric usage until food supplies increase.  In some humans far from the equator it can manifest itself as the condition known as Seasonal Affective Disorder in which depression sets in during the winter months.

Since diminished photoperiod leads to less food, it is not necessarily a good time to reproduce, and so some of the body’s reproductive hormonal activity is also diminished.  These very same hormones can aid in the restoration of the body following demanding training.

The effects of the shortened photoperiod can last well after the Winter Solstice, and it might be a factor during the winter months until the hours of sunlight increase in the spring and bring about a change in an individual’s biochemistry.    Keep in mind that our evolutionary history has been overwhelmingly equatorial, and we are probably best adapted to having very little variation in our photoperiods over the course of a year. Although we can spend a great deal of our time in artificial environments with artificial lighting, and eat plenty of food that is not produced locally, we are still susceptible to the swings in daylight hours over the course of the year.

This may not completely explain why some individuals are more sluggish during the winter months or why they tend to put on more fat bodyweight, or why they lack aggressiveness or have a lowered libido, but it might partially explain why training is not nearly as effective during this period.   Just something else to keep in mind as you prepare your athletes.

Well, the meet at Camarillo came and went and although Aileen did well, we still need to work on strengthening her while she improves her technique.  She did 41 and 43 in the snatch to tie her PR, and did 54 and 56 in the clean and jerk to give her a PR total of 99.  So progress is being made, but  there have to be more modifications in the program to improve her rate of progress.  So here’s the training from Monday, the first day back in the gym.  By the way I had a question about how soon to resume demanding training, and the simple answer is that it is a case by case basis.  The size, age, weightlifting age, severity of the previous cycle and the psychological disruption of the competition are all factors that need to be considered when designing the post-meet training.  In Aileen’s case, she had no soreness, no psychological issues other than normal disappointment and no feeling of malaise after the meet.

I decided to combine snatch high pulls with snatches and clean high pulls with cleans since she, like most people, has better technique on pulls than on the actual lift.  Jerks are worked separately from cleans and back squats were substantial, but not an especially heavy load.

Snatch High Pull and Snatch:  53 lbs.:24.1 kg/2+1, 73:33.1/2+1, 77:35/2+1, 77:35/2+1, (82:37.2/2+1)6 sets

Clean High Pull and Clean: 99:45/2+1, (109::49.4/2+1)5

Jerk: 99:45/2, 104:47.2/2, (109:49.4/2)5

Back Squat: 99:45/3, 124:56.3/3, (143/65:3)4

This was a good post meet workout.  We are planning to take a longer cycle before the next meet which will be in February.

Don’t overload the light bumpers!

Before I left for the Crossfit Oly Cert a couple of weekends ago I got an e-mail from Mercedes Dickerson, the manufacturer of Hi-Tech Plates.  For those of you unfamiliar with her products, Mercedes makes some great bumpers in the 2.5 and 5 kg. range that are the standard 45 cm in diameter, thus putting the bar at the appropriate height for those lifters not yet strong enough to use 10 kg. bumps.  With so many people from a variety of strength levels starting to get involved in weightlifting, these plates are of great value to teach beginners the proper technique for lifting off the floor.

Unfortunately some people have a poor comprehension of the proper function of these plates.  I know its easy to start out with a pair of 2.5 kg. bumps on the bar and then to add metal plates of lesser diameters to increase the weight as the training progresses.  You then end up with an inordinate amount of weight supported by two, relatively fragile plates that were not designed for that purpose.

A few drops with this combination load on the bar and the bumpers are then damaged.

Back in the late 1970’s when Bob Hise introduced the first 10 and 15 kg bumpers, we had the same problem with people loading the 10 bumpers, and then adding more and more metal 5’s until each drop of the bar produced great impact on the bumpers.  We lost a few 10’s before we figured out how to use them properly.  In my gym I had to make a rule that as soon as the weight on the 20 kg bar got to 50 kg, you had to remove the 10’s and replace them with 15’s.  I think that gym owners who purchase the High Tech bumps should implement a similar rule and require that people use the largest bumper available.

This simple policy will save the wear and tear the on the lighter bumpers and keep them available for the people who need them to learn good technique.

This is just another example of how good platform management and etiquette in the gym can make it a more productive place for all the people that make use of it.

Second to the last workout before the meet on Sunday the 13th!

Snatch: 53 lbs.:24.1 kg./1 rep, 53:24.1/1, 73:33.1/1, (77:35/1)3 sets, 82:37.2/1, (82:37.2/1)3

C & J: 82:37.2/1+1, 99:45/1+1, 109:49.5/1+1, (119:54.0/1+1)3

Back Squat: 119:54.0/2, 143:65/1, 153:69.4/1, 163:74/1, 168/76.3/1, 173:78.5/1

Snatch High Pull: (99:45/2)4

Yesterday I happened upon a query on Yahoo in which someone named Pasquale asked how to become an olympic weightlifting coach.  These were his/her specific questions:

How to become an olympic weightlifting coach?

Do you have to go to school (college)?

If so what colleges offer them (if any)

Do you have to get a certification? If so how?

extremely curious!!!! want to know how to become one.!.!.!

It was interesting to me became it wasn’t very long ago that no one even knew that weightlifters were coached.  On some social occasions I’d end up in a group of non weightlifters, and I’d really try not to bring up my weightlifting activities because it would end up in frustrating conversations.  Someone, however, would know that I was a coach and introduce me to strangers as a weightlifting coach.  I would usually get one of two things (or both) said to me.

“How much do you bench?” (This one is losing popularity)

OR

“You don’t look like a weightlifting coach.”

As if anyone even knew what a weightlifting coach looked like since there was no You Tube in those days and precious little weightlifting being telecast.  The second statement was just another way of saying, “You don’t have large biceps.”

Anyway getting back to Pasquale.  One person (wsguy198) responded, “My guess is to become an Olympic weightlifter first.  Just a hunch”

Now wsguy198 was probably being a wise guy, but he was right.  Pasquale knows nothing about the coaching education program or the protocol for classifying coaches by proficiency levels developed by USA Weightlifting, the national governing body for the sport.  He would know about these things if he were a member of the organization and had competed in sanctioned competitions.

I have to assume that we have someone in Pasquale who has never been a weightlifter, may never have actually seen a weightlifting competition and probably has little or no contact with the weightlifting community.

What is a little frightening is that there may be more Pasquales out there and that this may be just an indication of where we are going in our society as far as the development of educational guidance and participatory  leadership is perceived.  Pasquale thinks that you never have to be involved in a sport to coach it.  You only have to take courses or go to a school and get a certification and that that is how you acquire the expertise to lead other people in this endeavor.

To the Pasquales of the world, there were weightlifting coaches before there ever was an organization to annoint them or recognize them.  For thousands of years humans have immersed themselves in activities that they were passionate about and committed to and developed enough mastery and expertise to be considered experts, and teachers and mentors.

The specific designation of the competence of an individual within a given field has been  driven out of a necessity to communicate that level of proficiency to people who are not deeply familiar with that field.  Everyone that has attained a certain amount of proficiency knows the ability levels of other players in their field of endeavor.  The designations are for the people who are not a part of the community.

Furthermore we are in a litigious society so there is a need to have some sort of stamp of approval that guarantees  a certain minimal level of competency.

So, I must say to Pasquale that there is a path to becoming a weightlifting coach.  It begins by becoming a weightlifter and accepting the addiction to the sport that will carry you through the drudgery involved in developing any kind of mastery of any endeavor.  The early stages of the development will involve some formal education or courses or clinics, but above all it involves a great deal of coaching and entering your athletes in competition to see how they perform against others.  There is no other metric of any significance.  But first you must become involved with the sport.

I had a long, but undistinguished career as a lifter, and I don’t think I really felt like I knew what I was doing until I’d coached about 200 weightlifters.  I had a good grasp of the art and science of coaching after about the 400th.  I continued to learn more as my career has progressed to probably exceed 1,000 lifters.   The fact that I was a biology major in college is certain a valuable part of the mix.

I present this information not to extol my own virtues, but to exemplify the amount of work, dedication and passion that goes into becoming a sound weightlifting coach.  It far exceeds what you can learn in a four year college major, a weekend certification, or preparing for a qualifying exam.