Author: Rachael Keilin

Rachael Keilin, MD is a surgeon, weightlifter, knitter, lover of EDM, thinks cats secretly rule the world (deservedly), NYC girl living in a small(ish) town in Texas.

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!!!

Let’s Talk About Weight….But Not the Kind on the Bar

Weight is a big deal in weightlifting.  Yeah, that’s a “duh” kind of sentence, but for once I don’t mean what’s on the bar.

Scale weight, specifically, YOUR scale weight, is a big deal, too.

Weightlifting is a sport divided by weight classes.  So how much you weigh determines in which of the 8 men’s classes or 7 women’s classes you will lift.  Somewhat obviously the shorter you are and the heavier you are within a given weight class, the more you will likely lift because you’ll have proportionately more muscle and shorter lever arms to move the weight.

For masters athletes, weight classes can be a particularly painful subject.   While it it’s generally true that the heavier you are the more you lift, as a proportion you would lift more with additional weight if that weight were primarily made up of muscle, not fat.  A combo of fat and muscle still makes you stronger, but there is a point of diminishing returns if the majority of any body weight you add is only fat.

Masters are going to have a much harder time putting on a higher ratio of muscle than fat.  Assuming your supplements don’t end in the letters “-ol” or “-one” and have to be injected with a needle, then your hormone levels ain’t what they used to be.  And without the hormonal signal to tell your body to take all that protein you eat and turn it into quadz, then extra calories will put on some muscle but almost always with a fat component, too.

Dieting off the excess fat to make a certain class without strength losses is also a little tougher the older you get.  Metabolisms slow (although not as much as sedentary age matched cohorts! Go us!) with advancing age, so the habit of living above your weight class and dieting down before competition can be tricksy at best.

The human body is about 60% water if you’re a lean man, 55% water if you’re a woman (women are statistically less lean than men and fat carries less water within it than lean tissue).  This can be manipulated to change the scale number for weigh-in without sacrificing muscle mass, but there are limits to how much you can dehydrate in a week and not compromise performance.  The powerlifters that weigh-in 24 hours before have a huge advantage over us in this unfortunately, since we only have 1-2 hours between weigh-in and lifting.

So if you started playing this game later in life, you may not be coming in with the percentage of muscle that the folks who have been lifting since they were 12 get to have.  I’m not saying it’s impossible to build muscle past a certain age – that would be absurd.  But you may have to accept a higher body fat percentage and scale weight to go with all your shiny new muscle.

For many of us this may be a socially hard pill to swallow.  I consciously gave up my 102lb, size 0 self to bulk up to 117lbs of lots of muscle.  That was a 15% increase in body weight.  The transformation took about 18 months.  Six months for the scale to change to 117, 12 or so months to recomp -slowly- all that extra weight into muscle.

While a lot of my clothes still fit, not all do.  An argument could be made that what fits, fits a lot better with juicy quadz and a booty to fill them out, but if twiggy women are your jam, then you’re SOL with me.  At my height (5’1.75″) if I could get up to 58kg with a lot of muscle, I’d be thrilled.  But my concern is that most of that extra scale weight wouldn’t be muscle at my age and I wouldn’t be competitive in that class.  I’d just be bigger and need a whole new wardrobe and get my ass kicked every time I hit a platform.

But having said that, I will caution first time competitors about getting too wrapped up in all of this.  My advice to first timers and for people not competing to qualify for a national or international event is to not worry about it at all.  Let the chips fall where they may.  Eat a great dinner the night before, and you weigh what you weigh the next day.  There will be enough stress involved in figuring out the flow of a meet, of conquering nerves on the platform and wearing a singlet in public.  You don’t need to walk in HANGRY and dehydrated, too.

If you like to geek out on statistics, check out the data HERE  on All Things Gym.  It’s a compilation of all the heights and weights of the senior lifters at the 2012 olympics.  Again, I’m not sure you can use it as gospel for what you should weigh to be competitive at a given height as a master, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

 

Motivation

I’m in a lot of women’s fitness groups on Facebook.  We talk about lifting, we talk about food and occasionally we talk about things unique to female lifters (I’m willing to bet no men’s group ever had an extended discussion on whether or not one should care about visible panty lines in spandex pants).

Occasionally, somebody reaches out for motivation.  They used to be gung ho to get to the gym, now they can’t get up the gumption to get off the couch.  Or they’re going, but less frequently and putting in less effort.  The truly desperate gave up months ago, ate their way through the holidays like a snowplow on a rescue mission and now don’t know where to begin again.

I get asked the question about getting their mojo back because I’m a gym junkie.  Left to my own devices (and if those pesky bills would stay off my ass for a while), I’d be in the gym 6-8 hours per day, happy as a clam.  Work, being a wife, being a mom and being a friend mean that while the full day thing doesn’t happen often, an hour or two usually does, 5-7 days/week.

I don’t have a Harry Potter wand to wave and make all your motivations return.  But I have some advice.  Actually several pieces of advice.

First, set actual and measurable goals.  With a deadline.  What’s the best way to do this?  Compete.  Nothing cuts through fuckarounditis like a deadline and the possible public shame of failing in front of an audience.  Not “feeling the gym happies”?  Too bad.  Let fear drive you.  When you’re drinking champagne and celebrating after the fact you’ll appreciate the swift kick in the butt that is competition.

Second, consider your support system and to whom you are accountable.  If the answer is nobody, that might be your problem right there.  Not everyone is self-driven.  In fact, as a species we are very sociable and tribe like.  So hire a coach, join a Crossfit box, make a pact with someone who belongs to your gym or maybe even join a challenge online.  Find other people who will expect you to show up and cheer on your efforts when you do.

Third, fake it til you make it.  There are numerous studies showing that if you do something consistently, you’re psychologically loathe to “break the chain”. So promise yourself you’ll go to the gym every day for a week.  Get an old fashioned wall calendar and put a big X on every day that you do it (or a sticker or a smiley face or whatever).  Visually and psychologically you will not want to leave a hole in a continuous pattern by skipping a day.  Sounds silly but it actually works.  My perfect example of this is the 21 Day Squat Challenge run by Nick Horton and Tamara Reynolds.

Fourth, and maybe most important of all, find something you actually love.  Going to the gym because you want tighter thighs is not, in reality, much of a motivator for the long haul.  Going because you have fallen passionately in love with ……… (fill in the blank) is a completely ‘nother thing.  Rock climbing.  Weightlifting.  Bodybuilding.  Powerlifting.  Curling.  Yoga.  Maybe even (gasp!) running.  Or maybe your groove is needing constantly varying stimuli.  Great.  Then do all of the above (accepting  that you’ll never be great at any).  I spent my 20’s and 30’s forcing gym work (read: endless treadmill hours) because I wanted to look better to other people.  I have spent my 40’s having to be dragged out of the gym by my family or my pager because I can do 1,000 repetitions of a snatch and never be bored.  The rabbit hole of technical lifts makes my geek heart sing.  Find your bliss and your heart will sing, too.

 

What To Do When You Can’t Snatch

Yesterday I ignored what my body was trying to tell me and I kind of tweaked my knee doing squats.  I don’t think it’s a bad injury but for once, I’m going to try to be an adult and lay off of it for a day (or two).

Does this mean couch time? Nay nay!!!  Just because I don’t want to load my knee while flexed doesn’t mean I’m throwing a pity party for one.  It just means doing other stuff for a bit that in truth I should probably be doing more of anyway.

So today was putting all my joints through a full ROM (mobility work, yay!!!), then half an hour of handstand practice which I’m convinced will help my torso stability under load (sound like a jerk to you? Yeah, it did me, too).  Then a little triceps and ab work.  Because I’m incapable of being in a gym and doing nothing for lower body, I did some reverse hyper sets.  A loaded back and booty is a happy back and booty.  Or maybe that’s just me.

Supplements I Like

I’ve often been asked by other women in lifting groups or in forums what supplements I take.  Let me be the first to say that as an older female athlete I’m willing to try anything not on the WADA banned list if there is some proof that it will actually raise testosterone or growth hormone naturally.

Alas, the list of actually effective supplements is fairly short.  So forthwith, my daily supplements.

IMG_1329

Let me start with caffeine (and my utterly adorable photobombing fur baby, Taffy).  I don’t really like pre-workouts because they make me jittery which makes technical lifts like the snatch harder, not easier.  But I do like to drink a Monster about an hour before lifting which gives me a little caffeine boost.  I prefer this sugar free version mainly for the taste (which is actually divine, like Fresca’s grown up grapefruity sister).  It only has 140mg of caffeine which is less than a mug of brewed coffee.  The perception is that Monster is one step away from meth, but this is absolutely not true.  It’s basically two Coke’s worth of caffeine, not a crack pipe.


BCAAs

Either right before or during a workout, I’ll drink BCAAs (branched chain amino acids) to improve (hopefully) muscle growth especially since I often work out minimally fed.

arginaid

Immediately after working out, I drink Arginaid.  It’s 4g of arginine, an important amino acid in the nitric oxide pathway.  I came to love Arginaid when I was working in a wound care clinic.  I saw some really remarkable wound closures after starting patients on it twice daily – wounds that had previously failed to heal in months of therapy.  My supposition is that since muscle growth comes from tissue injury (exercise) and subsequent repair, why not give the cells the building blocks they need for that repair?  Subjectively it seems to have helped recovery tremendously, especially since I’ve upped the volume to daily training.

evening vitaminsDIM

My evening regimen consists of fish oils to aid in recovery, boost mental prowess, prevent heart disease, make me leap over tall buildings in a single bound, etc. etc (insert all the magical claims made about fish oil in the past here).  There’s a great t-shirt that says, “if it can’t be fixed with squats and fish oil, you’re going to die”.  If a t-shirt says it’s good, it’s gotta be good for you, right?

Nighttime also means Vitamin D because I beat most vampires for lack of sun exposure.  I wear SPF 30 every day and have for two decades.  This is why I’m also mistaken for being 30.  I’m not going to change, so I supplement with vitamin D.

Zinc and magnesium are two of the only supplements shown to help testosterone production so you bet I’m going to take them.  The magnesium in the form of magnesium citrate as found in Natural Calm also helps sleep (which is why I drink it at night) and “regularity”.  You’ve got to be careful with it for this very reason.  Overdo it on the first day and the next day you won’t get out of the bathroom for very long.  Start with a judicious dose and work your way up.

DIM is to help prevent breast cancer as it (in theory) helps shunt estrogen metabolism toward a “better”, less carcinogenic form of estrogen (there are three naturally occurring forms).  It is found in broccoli in case you want to eat your supplements instead of swallowing them as pills.  DIM has also been used by some women who have been diagnosed as “estrogen dominant”, i.e. their estrogen: progesterone ratio is off kilter causing a myriad of different symptoms.  DIM is purported to help some of these symptoms.

Ibuprofen is my bestest friend.  Let’s not kid ourselves here.  I’m 46 years old and shit hurts.  My shoulders take turns as to who wants to be the problem child.  I think my knees have secretly called adult protective services behind my back.  If I took time off for every ache and pain, I’d never lift.  So I take my ibuprofen when I need it, sit in warm tubs or take hot showers and see a massage therapist regularly.

Fred Flintstone Gummy Vitamins

When I remember it (which isn’t very often, maybe twice per week), I’ll eat two Fred Flintstone gummy vitamins.  They’re yummy and I figure they fill in any nutritional gaps I miss.

So there you have it.  Looking at them all together, it seems like a lot.  But they each have a purpose and it doesn’t take much time nor offer much risk, so why not try them?

What supplements do you take?  Let me know! Let’s learn from each other 🙂

 

Want to be a Better Lifter?

You do if you’re reading this past the title.

Wanna know how to be better?  Lift every day.  The more work you do, the stronger you will be.  Yes, some of that “strength” will come from not-very-heavy technique work and some will come from heavy singles and some will come from accessory work.  But you will get better overall not by going to the gym 3 times per week, but by perfecting some element of your craft every day.  Mobility and foam roller counts, too and sometimes that’s all your body can handle that day.  But you should actually do some of that icky stretching and rolling on your non-gym days, don’t just rest.

I thought about this concept when my husband showed me this awesome article by Neil Gaiman.  He was asked by an aspiring writer how they could become better.  His response here is priceless.  Substitute lifter and you’ll understand the gist.

On the top of a distant mountain there grows a tree with silver leaves. Once every year, at dawn on April 30th, this tree blossoms, with five flowers, and over the next hour each blossom becomes a berry, first a green berry, then black, then golden….