Month: March 2015

Competing in Charlotte

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;

but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” Theodore Roosevelt

I got to do my first meet with my team, Weightlifting Academy, this past Saturday.  I think in the end we had 13 lifters there and it was more fun than I can even articulate (but I’ll try, because, after all, I’m writing this and you’re reading it).

First, let me tell you what it means to me to be on a team.   I was that kid in middle school/high school/college/medical school/all of life who at best exercised occasionally to burn off some caffeine or to try and look good in shorts.  I was never an athlete.

I have always self identified as a geek.  If there was an olympic medal for reading, I’d be Ilya Ilyn.  Seriously.  I can (and often still do) read about a book a day.  My husband jokingly says his next wife will be illiterate since I spend so much money on books.  I love history and physics and linguistics.

For whatever reason, my self identity was binary.  I could be a geek or I could be the hot chick, but not both.  I could be well learned (pronounce it with two syllables) but not have smarticles AND be an athlete.

Fast forward to today.  Now I geek out on weightlifting technique and articles about recovery.  And I can finally see the many facets in my reflection.  The geek, the athlete, the raver (I love trance and progressive house music, don’t judge), the *ahem* mature beauty, the wife, the mom, the doctor, the lover of fast cars and cute cats.  It’s all in there, it all has a place.

Which brings me to my team.  So now in my 40’s, I am a member of an athletic team for the first time in my life.  It doesn’t hurt that this team has at its’ helm two other people who think that thinking deep thoughts is a worthy endeavor.  But it’s still a weightlifting team and you still have to compete.

Last Saturday I got to do something scary and nerve wracking with the love and support of my team mates.  It’s not easy to wrap yourself in spandex and lift weights in front of a crowd.  As Teddy said above, the credit goes not to the internet warrior criticizing your crappy clean, but to the person who dares greatly and gets up to challenge themselves in the arena.

But how much more wonderful was it knowing that I had people who would cheer me on from the stands and who understood every minute of what it took to get on that platform?  People with whom to share a warm-up space and rocky road cookies.  People who had tape in case I forgot it and who helped me shake off two failed snatch attempts.  A coach who said I should go for my shiny new competition PR clean and jerk.

And people for whom I could scream from the stands after I was done.  I have a team.  I have people.

I actually got teary when I saw my name on the schedule for Masters Nationals in two weeks and saw “Weightlifting Academy” by my name instead of “unattached”.

I am a proud member of the #AshevilleStrengthLegion, some of the most awesomest people in the world.

My First Arnold Sports Festival

For those of you who have never heard of it, the Arnold Sports Festival is like Lollapalooza for athletics.  Held in Columbus, Ohio, 50 some odd sports have exhibitions/contests and there is a giant arena of  vendors with all things gym related.   While the aesthetic sports predominate (because Arnold), it’s a Pan Am qualifier in weight lifting so it draws pretty big talent.  I enjoyed it, but with some qualifications.  Forthwith, my impressions.

1. You can, in fact, live on pre-workout and protein bar samples.  There are literally dozens of booths each promoting their proprietary blend of pre-workout energy supplements, recovery drinks and protein protein protein. So my lifting girlfriends and I went from booth to booth sampling the wares.  There are restaurants somewhere in the bowels of the convention center.  But we lasted two days on eleventy million milligrams of caffeine and protein bar samples.  We may never actually poop again, but we were wired for sound.  Fueled two awesome workouts with my besties. Best of kind was a cheesecake bar.  Worst of kind was some “no cow” (I guess no whey?) bar that tasted like grass.  Without the gr.  This made my friend exclaim loudly, “I need something else in my mouth right now!” which made several men turn immediately in her direction.  Hilarity ensued.

2. Not all strength sports are the same.  when not trying to see if I could actually hear color from caffeine overload, I was watching the events.  A tiny bit of the aesthetic stuff and a lot of weightlifting and some strongman.  Strongman is ridiculously cool.  The middleweight women did yoke carries with 450lbs.  Alanna Casey, who won the middleweight division, practically ran 120 feet with her yoke.  It was jaw droppingly impressive.  She is roughly two inches shorter than I am so in my opinion she’s a goddess. We’ll talk about the weightlifting in a minute.  But the aesthetic stuff was interesting to me.  Male bodybuilders are so big in person that they barely look like we should be counted in the same species.  But male or female, all the aesthetic people were leeeeeeeaaaaaannnnnn.  I hardly look in the mirror and think, “gigantor”.  But these guys were missing any semblance of subcutaneous fat.  And they were all dark orange.

Clearly all of them put in gym time-lots of gym time- to get where they are.  But it’s odd for me to think of fat loss as a significant portion of a sport.  It was like a contest for who could diet the best, certainly not who was the strongest.  And it was off putting for that reason.  Judging is somewhat subjective, not the objective “you locked this out or you didn’t’ of powerlifting or weightlifting.  Women are judged every millisecond of every day for how they look.  Why would I subject myself to more scrutiny and more negativity on this front?  Why not reach for what you can do rather than what you look like?  Which leads to….

3. My heroes don’t take selfies in bathrooms.  Every time I went to a bathroom during the festival, someone orange was taking a selfie in the mirror.  In the hotel lobby waiting for the shuttle from the parking garage, there was a woman taking a selfie.  In the bathroom at the airport leaving  the last day, there was a lady taking a selfie in the mirror of the airport bathroom.  Every bathroom in the convention center had somebody taking selfies in the mirror.  If you search the hashtag #ASF2015 on Instagram, you will see hundreds of bathroom selfies.  I follow a lot of weightlifters on Instagram.  Know what they posted pics of?  Them hoisting mighty weights.  It goes back to what you find important.  Is it the ultimate narcissism of posting pics of yourself on IG to see how many likes you can accrue?  Or is it what feat of mastery of sport you can achieve after years of training.

4. Weightlifters are amazing humans. And the sport is growing.  While on my quest to become the single most caffeinated person alive, I came upon a booth where a man looked familiar.  Then I thought, “that’s Anthony Pomponio.  Oh shit, THAT’S ANTHONY POMPONIO!!!!” who is a current olympic training center resident and utter badass.  And who could not have been sweeter to this fangirl.  He introduced me to the medical director of the company and was just very humble in the face of my calling him a god (because yeah, that came out of my mouth).

Words cannot even describe Tatiana Kashirina.   During the introduction to the athletes in the class, she just stood smiling like the adorable 21yo girl that she is, with her long braid behind her.  But then she got on the platform and performed 6 technically perfect lifts with 10kg jumps between attempts.  10kg jumps.  That’s the stuff legends are made of.  And she was no where near her world record lifts.  You know the meme that says, “somewhere some girl is warming up with your max”?  This girl- who is not yet old enough to rent a car- is that girl.

The crowd watching weightlifting at the Arnold

During the men’s Pan Am qualifier session, there was standing room only.  And the spillover crowd into the adjacent hall was 25 people thick.  I took a picture of the crowd to show just how underestimated the crowd turnout was.  I wanted to send an email to ESPN to take note and maybe consider broadcasting highlights of nationals.  My friend looked around to see what I was photographing and turned to me and said, “is that Donny?”  And there, in the middle of the crowd, just standing unmolested by fans, was one of the icons of American weightlifting.  Not standing in a booth with a long line to have him sign something, not hanging out with an entourage, not orange.  Just a single guy, enjoying some really good examples of the top of his sport.  After much goading from friends, I went up to him and thanked him for all the great content on his blog and for being such an inspiration.  And he was very cordial in return.

Seriously? Best.  Sport.  Ever.

How To Learn How to Snatch in Under 3 Minutes

I had a friend in a private Facebook group ask my advice on learning how to snatch.   Like so many people, she was stuck with analysis paralysis.

Every tutorial I’ve ever seen makes snatching seem sooooooo hard.  And at some level, it is.  For people who are trying to have technically proficient and maximally mechanically advantageous movement patterns, it is hard.  An olympian and U.S. record holder recently posted some technique work she was doing to perfect her clean.  If she’s still technically refining her lifts, you know the average Joe can spend a lifetime learning.

But when you’re just starting out, is all of that necessary?  I would argue no.  And not just no, but hell no.  First, you have to learn the basic mechanism of getting the bar from the floor to overhead.  Otherwise you’ll just get lost in the detail and you’ll quit.  And quitting means fewer people in the sport which is bad.

So this is a video for rank beginners.   In particular, rank adult beginners.   The assumption is that you’ve already figured out what your grip width on the bar should be (there are a lot of tutorials on that out in the world) and that you’ve actually seen a snatch performed.  With those two in mind, this video will take you to the getting it overhead position.

I take none of the credit for this series of cues.  They were learned from Nick Horton and Tamara Reynolds who are fantabulous coaches and amazing humans all around.  I just put them on film for a friend (hence, the “Hi, Abi!” at the beginning of the video).  I think they encompass the essence of the snatch.

In essence:

-start with your shoulders right over the bar, arms look straight when viewed from the side

-bring the bar up to your thighs by moving your knees back and out of the way – “shoot your butt back”

-stand up and pull the bar into your hips (the “power position”) with your lats

– jump with the bar pulled into your hips

-then lock that bitch out overhead by “spreading the bar apart”.  End of story.

Please don’t leave a thousand comments about why it’s important to externally rotate the humerus to keep elbows out and protract the shoulders and keep thoracic extension and initiate the movement with leg drive and keep torso angle stable etc etc etc.  I know all that.  You, if you are saying that, know all that.  But it is not essential to learning how to snatch at the very beginning.  So let the beginners get a few under their belt before they’re bombarded with the stuff it takes a lifetime to perfect.

And don’t bitch about the “jump” cue.  It’s hard for adult learners to understand explosive muscular power in any other way.  So shhhh and let the newbies enjoy.

Pistol Squats

If you look back through some old posts you’ll see that fixing my wonky squat has been a project for the last year.  I have (I think, after much research and contemplation) weak thigh abductors relative to adductors and a weak glute on the left, weak quad on the right.  These imbalances may be due to scoliosis and/or a slight leg length discrepancy.  Or maybe I just like to hula when I squat, I’m not sure.

But to help fix it, I’ve been doing a lot of unilateral work, particularly pistol squats.  What one year ago was impossible, I can now rep for 10 on each side.  And because a friend jokingly challenged me to do so, I tried an overhead pistol squat with a bar.

But here’s the thing: while I don’t recommend adding this to your training regimen, per se, it’s a fun test that illuminates weaknesses.  Do you have weak dorsiflexion of the ankle that you compensate for by having great thoracic mobility?  Guess what, you’re gonna tip over when you’re on one leg.  Do you have powerful legs but crappy shoulder mobility?  Great mobility all around, but weak quads?  It’s a tipping you’re a going.

So give it a try if for no other reason than because it’s kind of fun and it might show you things about your snatch mobility that you didn’t know.  Personally, it made me feel a little badass.  Which then led to hitting 90% snatch singles which I had been missing in the past month or so.  Hooray!!!