Olympic Lifts

Weightlifting representatives: CrossFit’s popularity behind growth and understanding of Olympic sport.

Of the 14 women who train as full-time weightlifters at Waxman’s Gym outside Los Angeles, 10 of them began as CrossFit athletes.

“That tells you everything you need to know as far as CrossFit and weightlifting,” said Sean Waxman, owner and head coach of the California facility.

His gym reflects CrossFit’s effects on Olympic weightlifting as a whole. The training… Continue Reading

Zachary Long explains how to identify and correct flexibility limitations in the front-rack position.

Front-rack positioning can make or break the CrossFit athlete.

Poor flexibility in the front rack is one of the most frequent complaints in the gym, and without good positioning an athlete’s ability to properly perform the front squat, clean, overhead press and jerk can be significantly affected.

The front-rack position is a combination of several motions: shoulder flexion… Continue Reading

The snatch and clean and jerk can safely be used for conditioning—and have been for years.

A tremendous amount of criticism has been leveled at high-rep Olympic weightlifting.

Much of it comes from a variety of sport-specific coaches—often vocal weightlifting coaches and personal trainers who state that doing higher repetition snatches, cleans, and jerks is not effective in application and likely dangerous. In their opinion, no one can perform… Continue Reading

By Roy Masters’ reasoning, most weightlifters in the Olympics aren’t very strong.

Masters, clearly grinding a very large ax in the Aug. 8 Sydney Morning Herald article “World CrossFit Games Runner-Up Tia Toomey Finds Rio 2016 a Different Beast,” reminds that Tia-Clair Toomey’s Olympic results make her the “14th strongest” woman in the world—“and that’s only in the 58kg class.”

We suppose Deng Wei’s world record 262-kg total in the 63-kg class… Continue Reading

Mike Burgener offers quick tips for turning push presses into jerks.

The jerk is a lot like Nobuyuki Kayahara’s “Spinning Dancer.”

Some see the silhouette spinning clockwise, while others see counter-clockwise movement. The effect of the optical illusion is so profound that the brain struggles to grasp how the reversed movement would even be possible. Look at the silhouette again and you might see that the movement has… Continue Reading

Mike Burgener offers quick tips to correct footwork in the jerk.

The jerk really comes down to a fraction of a second.

Time it perfectly and the bar seems to stall in the air while a lightning-fast athlete wedges himself between the steel and the ground with perfect balance. The lift looks easy and natural, full of agility and grace. It’s like watching a gymnast stick the landing.

Miss the correct moment by… Continue Reading

Mike Burgener offers quick tips to correct errors in the snatch and clean and jerk.

Just as it’s possible to correct weightlifting errors, it’s possible to cause errors when cues go awry.

Take, for example, the oft-used cue “finish!” What the coach is looking for is a natural position created by perfect balance and unbridled aggression. In a snatch or clean, a profile shot of the finish will show a lifter at full… Continue Reading

Mike Burgener offers quick tips to correct errors in the snatch and clean and jerk.

Most of us have seen the guy who can do a kettlebell swing with a 300-lb. barbell. The lift is called a clean, but it lacks the grace and speed evident when skilled lifters pulls their bodies around and under a perfectly placed bar with lizard-like speed.

While ugly, the swinging clean is impressive because the lift… Continue Reading