Anyone doing (or has been doing) any of the lifts OLs are doing? Anyone been an OL? Anyone know anything about the sport in general and your thoughts about it and the exercises behind it? Post anything about this sport...

 

I'm a big fat of compound lifts.
My favorite being the deadlift.
Soon I will work on my form with the clean and jerk. However I am hesitant because I want want to get a ton of looks when I make a tiny bit of noise when I set the weights down.

Cleans, Snatch, Jerk and Deadlifts hit all the muscle groups
require lots of concentration and intricate form:
http://www.coachesinfo.com/category/...ditioning/237/

During the summer/fall I am more focused on cardio and body fat loss, so I rely on compound lifts to maintain muscle mass.
Come Winter I will focus more on lifting and do more isolation exercises as well as compound lifts.

 

^ Nice link. Lots of really good info.

The thing is that, in my case, the more I research athletics, the more I gain repsect of olympic lifters. I had no idea how amazing is what they do. I started understanding this when I first understood the difference between strength and power due to lifting and how it helps athletes in various sports.

I could not believe my eyes when I found studies done in the late 60s that found that olympic lifters were able to vertically leap higher than any high-jumper or any other athlete. And they were 50% heavier than most other althletes. Then they ran the first 30 meters of a sprint FASTER than the fastest 100 meter athletes! Unbelieavable!

I did research as to why that happens and I am amazed of what I found!

To this day, for me, there is no other more amazing athlete than the Olympic lifter.

 

 

Is this a chop?

 

 

I used to do olympic lifts on the track team at college:

Snatch, Clean & Jerk, Deadlifts

Are you interested in getting started?
It is all about the proper form

 

Serious? How much did you lift?


:ibjokeaboutclean&jerk:

 

Snatch I didnt do for too long because it really hurt my shoulder.. I mean I seriously had to stop so thats not even worth mentioning, it was bad- like 75# lol.. thats how much stress it was on my shoulder..

Clean & Jerk is my fav.. I think the most I had on there was 35# on each side so.. 115#... like I said, I mean my upper body is not that strong... plus I broke my collar bone when I was like 10 and it never healed right, making pressing movements stressful.

My upper body really isnt that strong at all...

I am much stronger with my legs.. Up until about 8 months ago when I continued working out after college I would warm up with 45# on each side free squatting. 135#... and I could get to 2 45# on each side, so 225# for my last set, doing like 6 reps or something...

I think my max for Leg press was 5 or 6 plates on each side about 10 months ago...

Right now I could probably only do 3 its pathetic... and squatting probably only 185# now... man I hate how muscles hypertrophy

 

for a gal, free squating 225 for 6 reps is pretty impressive

How tall are you?

 

Nope. Just a low-quality pic.

 

I know I used to be really proud, especially since I dont look like I can. When I was a PT at Ballys people would come up to me after I did it. lol.

I am 5'8" about 130-135lbs

 

That is HOT.

 

I started doing power cleans a couple of months ago and also jerks.

Any advice would be great.

 

Did you just ask stiffy for advice on jerks?


I need to stay out of this thread before I get myself in trouble.

 

Sure... here is a good link and a lil quick video that I think is great:

http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/...fts/Clean.html

The problem that a lot of people dont realize is what a great leg/hip exercise it is they focus more on "pulling" the bar up, rather than coming underneath the bar and what its intended exercise is for. Its all about explosion, the bar sorta naturally comes up on its own, you dont need to pull so hard.
what I find a lot of people who do it incorrect look like is that they dont sit back on the drop. Basically when it comes to being in the squat form, they are like barely flexing their knees. Which defeats the whole purpose. Look at the movie, she is below parallel.... now you dont need to go down that low, but if you want to get the real benefits from this exercise you need to at least be parallel to the ground.
Its hard to explain... Notice in the movie how when she is lifting the bar that she uses her legs to come up and immediately drop under the bar when it gets to shoulder level. Its such a great leg workout.

Are you following?

 

Ive never had to explain it to someone without being in person and going through the actual movements.... so I apologize if this is not helping you at all

 

Send me pics of your legs please...yknow...for educational purposes.

 

Wow, that's pretty impressive.

 

Thanks.

First let me say again, that I dont do cleans (to be accurate: "classic cleans"), I do power cleans. Many reasons for that...

I was doing them last night and what I noticed is that the bar does not touch my thighs when it gets to that point. It's "clean" of the body (where the clean got its name from). I tried to have it closer to my thighs but I lose momentum and I cant lift the weight. Unless if the form for power cleans is different than for cleans.

I will tape myself one day and upload to see what the hell I am doing wrong.

However, I have been going up in weight quite aggressively (probably because I started doing them a couple of months ago) and I noticed that my deadlift has also gained substantially (without even having done it that often lately).

I am not powercleaning 185 pounds (the 10th time I did them), I dont know if that's good, bad, all I know is that I was barely powercleaning 150 pounds the first time I tried.

Finally, I use my legs a lot, I go low (probably because of good squatting technique).

 

I think that my form is a lot closer to a High Pull shown here

http://www.exrx.net/WeightExercises/.../HighPull.html

The only difference being I turn my wrists at the top and stop the bar on my chest, instead of dropping it. I cant tell if the bar touches the upper part of her thighs when it comes up.

 

Also, in the link that stphy32 showed, the other difference between the girl there and my form is how we start. She is looking up with a very "straight back", I start more like this guy here

http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/exer...me=Power+Clean

and even lower so that I increase the range of motion which will add to the momentum. Notice he is looking down and the angles of his hips, waste, etc are very different than the girl's in the first link.

I tried the girl's posture but I am 100% sure that I cant lift nearly the same weight I would if started that way.

 

My bad, I was under the impression you did both

That is really important that you use your legs.. Good squatting form is essential

 

High pulls are completely different than cleans

 

Have you ever tried power cleans?

 

So you are most doing power cleans? I give you props those are hard. If you are doing power cleans and want to add more for shoulders you might as well do the jerk and press it up.
(you probably have to lower the weight)

 

I do jerks but separately. I do them in the power rack and use the spotters to hold the barbell up high. The pick it up and start the jerking. When the weight comes down is the hardest

 

Not ever by themselves. But maybe I will The power clean is the movement when you do half of a clean and jerk so technically I have done it but I always pressed above me.

I like doing "classic" cleans more to work on legs more.

 

hell yes the moment on the way down and getting it back up is funnnn!

 

Thas really cool that you do those lifts... I dont much so more but fawk if you want to get an amazing workout, they are the best. You use so many different muscles I am sweating like crazy and tired after a good workout with those lifts!

 

That's one of the many surprises that scientists found when tried to analyze olympic lifting. They were amazed at the "cardio condition" that these athletes were at. They were expecting to find little of that.

It's simple to me. The bigger the muscles invoved, the more intense things get, hence olympic style lifts and the amazing results they have as far as cardio-conditioning.

The Bulgarian OL team always timed their STR (short term recovery) by heartbeat status and not just plain total time elapsed.