Takano Athletics

Go to any local weightlifting meet and it is not uncommon to see so many neophyte athletes rolling the barbell around on the platform for one reason for another.  On certain occasions there may be depressions in the competition platform that cause the bar to roll about and to not be aligned in a perpendicular angle to the sagittal plane of the athlete.
This can be disruptive to some athletes and they may spend precious time trying to properly set the bar in place as the competition clock ticks down.
Even worse, many lifters roll the bar on the platform immediately prior to lifting the bar from the platform.  This provides an additional variable to the dynamics of the lift.  With the technique of snatching or cleaning being so challenging to so many lifters, it seems foolish to add another variable to the movement, and yet that is what takes place all too frequently.
Being a coach I am always surprised that some coaches coach for years and never bother to correct this simple problem by teaching their athletes how to address the stationary bar.  This process will insure that the bar and athlete as a unit are always in the same relative positions and the initial position should work well throughout the athlete’s career.

This could mean the difference between a lift being a success and not being quite there.  Hours of hard training should not be forfeited for lack of attention to a relatively simple issue.

The United States Olympic Committee followed through on a decision actually made 8 months ago to forego plans for a 24-hour Olympic themed cable network.  There was talk of a deal with Comcast to form the network, but it was criticized by international Olympic officials who felt it was a threat to NBC’s Universal Sports, an Olympic themed cable network.

NBC has paid $2 billion to televise the 2010 Winter Games and 2012 Summer Games.  Bidding has yet to take place for 2014 and 2016, and the IOC is sensitive to anything that would discourage NBC from that bidding process.

As far as weightlifting fans go, there isn’t even a link to weightlifting programming on the Universal Sports website.  There was no guarantee that any weightlifting would be telecast on USOC generated network either, so Nothing Lost.

The San Juan Capistrano meet yesterday was to me a very revealing event.  It provided me with some new shadings to the manner in which I think about my coaching and further insights into the performance qualities of my athletes.  As nearly always, it was a rewarding experience.

Aileen Wu was first up and was ready to smash her personal record (PR).  I only count lifts done in competition as personal records as they are witnessed by qualified individuals (officials) and performed with more or less accurate weights in somewhat standardized conditions.  Aileen’s PR snatch was 48 done at the last Capistrano meet.  We began with 52 (She had done 54 in training) and she failed to recover from the squat quickly enough and missed.  She made a similar error with her second and missed.  I didn’t have to do much to remind her that the pressure was on and she responded with a successful third.  A PR, but far less than what we expected and what she was well prepared to do.

Good buddy Tom DeLong had his dartfish set up so we could quickly see Aileen’s misses and noted how easily and how high she had pulled the weight.

Ashley Weber was next up.  She had weighed in at 75.15, could’ve disrobed a little further and could have asked for a female weigh-in official and made 75, but we weren’t quite ready to think about nationals yet.  That will happen next year.  Ashley’s PR snatch was 63 done at the last Capistrano meet.  I called for 62 as the opener and she made it easily.  We went to 66 for the second and it was performed just as well.  Her third with 68 was a well done 5 kg PR.  Good improvement in the last two months.  The training worked perfectly.

Brian Littenberg was in his first meet as a 73 kg. 77 kg. lifter and because the warm-up room is a 50 second walk away from the competition venue, we entered the gymnasium just as the announcer called out Brian’s name for his opener of 70 kg.  I immediately called for the raise to 71 kg. to buy a little time.  The change was made and Brian had a few seconds to gather himself before stepping on the platform.  The lift was performed easily and looked better than any he had done in training.  I called for 76 as the second thinking of 80 as his third, as that was what he was missing in training.  He missed the 76 and then made it for a third.  A good effort for a first meet.  Believe me.  A lifter’s first meet can be an unknown journey for everyone involved.  I’ve seen a few lifters with great training, a sound history of athletic performance, good warm-ups and then a crash in the first meet.

Nghiep Dinh is nursing a tender knee and decided to come and snatch before going to work, and just flashed up beautiful lifts of 90, 95 and 100.  Very good for a 65 kg lifter who’s recent training has been somewhat sporadic.  He went to work to make histology slides rather than clean and jerk.  Go figure!

Aileen’s PR clean and jerk was 60, so we started at 60.  It was well done.  We went to 62 which was another splendid success and then 64 for a beautiful lift and a 4 kg PR.  Her best effort in training was a 61 and a 63 death clean with no jerk.  The training had been done just right.  Her total was a PR by 8 kg.

Ashley’s clean and jerk opener at 78 was 2 kg less than her PR of 80.  Unaccountably she missed the rack in the bottom and dropped the bar.  She came back for a solid success at the same weight on her second and I made a bold jump to 84 for her third–a six kilo increase.  She had never attempted this in training and made a much easier clean than I anticipated.  She is a reliable jerker and so I expected her to succeed, but she was turned down 2 to 1 for an unlock.  Her total of 143 was a PR by 3  kg.  She will do much more in the future.  The qualifying total for nationals is 149, so she will be ready for that next year.

Brian missed his opener at 90, made it on a second and then missed 95 for his third.  He said that he felt a little tired after the long wait between snatches and cleans and jerks.  There were 30 + lifters.

Overall, I was happy with the results.  The meet gave me a chance to evaluate my training program (I tried something a little bit different with Aileen and Ashley and it worked well.  More on that little tweak in a future blog!)  I know how Brian responds and I’m ready to up the ante for the next meet!

A big thank you to CJ Del Balso, the meet director and to Danny McDermott, the LWC chairperson.   I’m sorry that I didn’t say anything about other lifters there, but part of the job of the coach at a meet is to be very focused on his or her own lifters’ performances.

Sorry for the lack of photos!  Something’s wrong with Network Solutions as they deal with hackers.  You can see all the photos from the meet at the Takano Athletics page on Facebook.

22 April 2010

Power Snatch: 77 lbs.:35 kg/2 reps, 92:41/2, (99:45/2)3 sets

Power Clean & Jerk: 99:45/2+1, 109:49/2+1, 119:54/2+1

Back Squat: 99:45/2, 129:58/2, (143/2)3

Short of the Baron de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, the two most stirring figures in the Olympic movement have been Peter Ueberroth, the head of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee and Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the IOC from 1980 to 2001.

In 1979 the Olympic movement was in dire trouble.  The 1972 Munich Olympics became synonymous for terrorist acts as Palestinian terrorists took Israeli wrestlers and weightlifters hostage before assassinating them in the Olympic Village.  The 1976 Montreal Games had a cost overrun of over $350 million and suffered through a boycott of the African nations over the admission of South Africa into the Games.  As the IOC congress met in 1979 to select the site of the 1984 Games, only two cities had come forth with bids–Tehran and Los Angeles.  The former city was on the verge of a political revolution before it finally withdrew its bid and so Los Angeles was the only possible choice.

Things didn’t get any better in 1980 when 53 nations joined the United States in boycotting Moscow in retaliation over the Soviet Union’s attack of Afghanistan.  This prompted the Soviets to lead their own 16 nation boycott of the 1984 Los Angeles Games, the first during the Samaranch presidency.

Enter Ueberroth who, through exceptional management, turned the Games into a cash cow with the Los Angeles Games earning a hefty profit of $233 million.  Ueberroth’s model set the stage for future Games and as such the IOC is now a  billion dollar a year enterprise with dozens of cities bidding to host the winter and summer versions.  Multinational corporations enter into the fray offering huge sums for exclusive sponsorships.  No question, Ueberroth made the games into a viable economic entity.

And Samaranch?  During his term, he enlarged the participancy to the point where the number of member nations of the IOC exceeds the membership of the United Nations.  He brokered deals that allows the world’s great professional athletes to enter the Games.  He increased the participation of female athletes from less than a third to almost half.  He cleared the way for the institution of standardized dope testing and elevated the stature of his own office to that of the most welcome citizen on Earth.

No single individual on the planet is welcome in more nations than the president of the IOC.  Undoubtedly there are entire nations that will not welcome the President of the United States, the Pope, Bill Gates or the Secretary General of the United Nations.  There are probably even places that don’t want Paul McCartney.  But the president of the IOC is welcome everywhere.

The Olympic Games is the world’s party.  Everyone can attend and ticket prices to many of the events are well within reach of the average citizen.  The world stops to view the Games and no detail goes unnoticed by the world’s mass media.

On Tuesday, Samaranch passed away at age 89.  Those of us in the Olympic sports are richer for the role he played in bringing them credibility on the world’s stage.   Rest in peace, Juan Antonio.

I see it so often these days—”Don’t try to do the Olympic lifts without a coach!”  This caveat is all over the internet.  It’s probably a good idea for many people, but it does display a lack of ignorance regarding the history of the sport in the United States.

When I first started lifting back in the 1960’s, there were no weightlifting coaches in the U.S.  Noted leaders like Bob Hoffman and John Terpak served as the national coaches for the U.S. teams at the world’s and Olympics because coaches were needed to submit the requests for weights in the competition, but there were very few people who actually taught and coached the Olympic lifts.   Maybe you were fortunate enough to be within a reasonable drive to get to Joe Mills in Rhode Island, Marty Cypher in Pennsylvania, John Schubert in Ohio, Otto Ziegler in Texas, Butch Toth in New Jersey or Bob Hise in California.  Most, however, were not.  You learned to lift at home in the garage or maybe from another lifter at the local YMCA.

I remember my parents buying me my first barbell, an exercise set, for Christmas when I was 14 years old.  It was a bar made of hot rolled steel (the kind that bends easily), with a chrome sleeve and cast iron plates.  It was a Sears Roebuck barbell and came with an instructional booklet that was largely stolen from the old Four York courses.  The month after I got the barbell, I discovered Strength & Health magazine at the newsstand.  That first issue carried a report of the world’s championships and I quickly became consumed with the idea of being a weightlifter.

I was too young to drive to the YMCA to train with Bob Hise, so I had only the booklet from the Sears barbell and S & H magazine.  I read the description of the three (yes, there were three then) Olympic lifts, perused the photos in S & H and began practicing in my backyard in the evening after homework.

And so did every other weightlifter in the country.  My story wasn’t an uncommon one.  Although I lacked the talent to become a great lifter, there were some great lifters that started just as I had.

Now my advice to anyone wanting to learn the Olympic lifts is to get as much good coaching as possible because it will result in a shorter learning period, and no bad habits will develop that may not be breakable later.  I am involved in clinics and certifications to introduce prospective lifters to learning sequences that will help them become accomplished lifters.

But once I demonstrate the proper exercises and go over the proprioceptive cues that are critical to learning the snatch and clean & jerk, I emphasize that a great deal of practice is necessary to cement the technique in an efficient manner.  I know that this practice can lead to a functional technique since so many of my peers learned the lifts in just that manner–through dedicated solitary practice.

I actually learned to press, snatch and clean and jerk without ever talking to a coach or having a video to watch.  I went to a few weightlifting meets and saw some proficient lifters perform the lifts, but I never heard a word from a coach.  I taught myself the split technique for the snatch and clean since it seemed easier than the squat.  I split snatched over bodyweight and cleaned and jerked 37 pounds over bodyweight on an exercise bar, just by practicing in my backyard on my own.

When I was finally able to get to the Downtown Los Angeles YMCA I was in a position to clean up my technique under the eye of Bob Hise.

There is more “how to” information on weightlifting available now than at any time in the history of this country.  There are more clinics, and anyone with internet access can watch videos of the best in the world performing the movements.   Having a coach is helpful and will save time, but it is not the only way to learn the lifts.

To help things out though, I’ve decided to write a book.  Perhaps I’ll make some videos.

This is meet week.  We’re going to another competition at San Juan Capistrano this Saturday.  The workouts are short and designed to let the body restore so that all systems are functioning at full efficiency when the athlete steps on the platform this Saturday.

Aileen Wu, Ashley Weber and Brian Littenberg are in and out of the gym.  Their singles in the 85–90% range, or doubles in the 80–85% range are easier than they’ve looked through the entire past two months, but there is also a certain lethargy to their efforts.  Just as I hoped it would be.  Their minds are not on the lifts at hand but rather on Saturday.

Aileen lifting in Capistrano in February

Despite all the hard lifting and tough training they’ve undergone,  no matter how much all the indicators are in place, these competitors, like all weightlifters, are waiting for the meet to greet the genie as it comes out of the bottle.

This will be Brian’s first meet, although he’s competed in other sports, most notably jiu jitsu, before.  It will be interesting to see how he responds to the prior training cycle.  Most of the time was spent remediating his weak areas and learning the lifts.  He’s lifting well enough that he’ll look respectable on Saturday, but there’s no telling how he’ll perform once out on the platform.  His warm-ups will give me some hint, but there’s no telling how a lifter can change from the warm-up room to the competition platform.  That’s part of what makes a first meet so intriguing for a coach.

I’ve done this so many times before–taken an absolute novice into the first competition.  I know how to maintain the proper mood, what to say, what not to do.  It is the first big step that Brian and I will take together on what will probably prove to be a fairly long journey.

Aileen is in he fifth meet and the first one in which her technique has been stabilized for the entire cycle beforehand.  She will get some PR’s this Saturday, the question is how big.  I know she wants this slow week to pass quickly–for Saturday to arrive.

Ashley has spent the cycle before this meet finishing off the clean-up of her technique.  I know she’s a gamer and this is probably her 10th or so meet.  The preparation has been just right.  She will handle the genie.

This is a good week.

20 April 2010

Snatch: 77 lbs.:35/2 reps, 92:41/2, (99:45/2)3 sets

Clean & Jerk: 99:45/2+1, 114:51/2+1, (124:56/2+1)3

Back Squat: 114:51/2, 143:65/2, 153:69/2, (163:74/2)3

19 April 2010

Snatch: 77 lbs.:35 kg/1 rep, 92:41/1, 99:45/1, (104:47/1)2 sets, 104:47/1, 109:49/1, 114:51/1, 119:54/1, 114:51/1, 114/1, 114/1

Clean & Jerk: 99:45/1+1, 114:51/1+1, 124:56/1+1, 129:58/1+1, 134:60/1+1, 139:63/1+1, (129:58:1+1)3

Front Squat: 99:45/2, 119:54/1, 139:63/2, (134:60/2)3

Clean Extension: (132:60/2)4

Push Press: (99:45/3)4

16 April 2010

Snatch:(77 lbs.:35 kg/1 rep)2 sets, 92:41/1, 99:45/1, 104:47/1, 114:51/1 (119:54/1)2, 119:54/1, 109:49/2, 109:49/11, 109:49/2

Clean & Jerk: 99:45/1+1, 119:54/1+1, (129:58/1+1)3

Snatch Extension: (109:49/2)4