Damn, March 6. That was my last blog post. Funny how time flies when life gets busy.
Since the last time I’ve published on here, I’ve:
-become the chief of a busy level 2 trauma center going back to my first great love of trauma surgery
-competed as a twig 48kg lifter for the first time
-won best lifter in my age group at Masters Pan Ams (thank you twigdom)
-continued to suck at squats
-joined a fabulous group of other mommy doctor fitness enthusiasts who encourage each other online
-learned to embrace lifting at 8pm post-call
It’s time to come back to sharing here though I think. My husband found me a new toy that I’ll review in a separate post which is even better for lift dynamics than the PUSH band. I’ve learned so many little silly things that continue to help me and maybe my learning journey will help key in something for someone out there, too. So I’ll try to be better about staying in touch. I love when I get comments on posts from people who learned something or share something that they know better than I do. I love the masters weightlifting community. So I apologize for stepping away for while. Therefore to paraphrase Jack Nicholson, I’m baaaaaaack!
Facebook is a giant melting pot for me. It’s a few friends from childhood, a lot of women who lift, a similar number of raver friends who love music and about 2,000 patients, nurses and other people I know from work. I think I’m currently at 2,986 “friends”.
But Instagram is just for me. I follow most of the people who compete at the highest national level, a lot of coaches and a ton of Russians. Well and a handful of cute baby animal accounts. I doubt they follow me back, but who cares? I derive an enormous amount of benefit from the content they provide.
But there’s a downside. Not to the kittens and the puppies -because seriously, whose day isn’t instantly brightened by a cute kitten pic?- but to the national level people.
I am 47 years old. I can only train 5-8 hours per week. I will never lift like they do. Not even in the same order of magnitude. A bodyweight snatch was the national record for the 53kg/45w class until just a few years ago. And I am not that record holder.
There is something demoralizing about seeing people casually outperform you. Watching your maxes barely register as their warm ups.
And it is that much worse if those people are clearly training under conditions you will never achieve. Whether that’s age, time, performance enhancing drugs, access to coaching and equipment – everything that can make a difference in reaching your ultimate potential.
All of those factors set up a false sense of expectations. It’s easy to be critical of your puny little lifts when you’re watching an 18yo whose last name is something-ova doing biceps curls with that weight. And being critical of your lifts can start a downward spiral of being self critical about other things. Your lifts suck so there’s something wrong with you, you’re lazy and weak and too dumb to follow a good program. And all that negativity will end up spilling over to your interactions with family and coworkers and friends.
I guess what I’m saying is that balance and perspective are kind of key when you hang out in the virtual world. You can learn something from almost everyone, even if they’re more of a cautionary tale than a paradigm. But thinking that you can copy the programming of someone who injects PEDs twice per day is illogical. Thinking you will hit numbers like someone half your age and twice your weight is illogical.
Find at least a few people who are actually like you. Masters if you are one, smaller women if you are one, adaptive athletes if you are one. Don’t look at the rock stars who are not your size, shape or gender and then use them as a barometer of your own worth.
One of the great gifts of this sport is that you only really have to compete against yourself. At the end of the day what you do on the platform is only influenced by the work you put in, the talent the lord gave you and whether or not you slept well the night before.
Choose your heroes wisely. Stand awestruck at their achievements but don’t forget that misses are rarely posted on social media, only the spectacular makes.
Then you go on and just do you. Really, at the end of the day, that’s the only thing you can do.
My website is called “StrongSnatch” mainly because I have the sense of humor of a 15yo boy. But it’s apt because I have a relatively stronger snatch than clean & jerk.
My max snatch is 83% of my max clean. But my max snatch is 91% of my max jerk. The snatch and clean ratio is fairly appropriate. But the snatch jerk ratio is almost getting embarrassing.
So it’s time to work on the jerk.
While I will be deferring to my awesome new coach in all things on this, I decided to put together a compilation of the 6 exercises that I have previously used to work on the components of a better jerk: timing, strength and confidence.
on the video, these are:
Sots press with internal rotation of the humerus (strength, core stability)
press in split (strength, stability) learned this and the next one from Zigmunt Smalcerz, the US olympic team coach, at the olympic training center
jerk in split (timing, explositivity, stability)
jerk balance aka drop jerk (timing, speed)
jerk hold (strength and confidence)
jerk hold and recovery (strength, confidence)
As you can see from the video, there are a lot of things I need to keep working on. But since I learn from other people’s journey to improvement, I hope you can learn from mine.
There were so many great things about going to the weightlifting world championships. There was a great deal of hoisting of heavy weights and I got to sit behind Apti for thirty minutes while he watched the 94A group. There were spectacular graphics and they played Sandstorm between sessions. It sort of felt like a rave with barbells.
But a funny thing happened that I didn’t expect. While I was sitting there at the beginning of each session, they introduced the judges, the jury panel, the timekeeper, the marshall, the janitor (ok, maybe not the janitor) and the……… doctor?!?
Yes! So there is an official session doctor at major competitions. Who knew?
There is also, as one might more reasonably have expected, a doctor that ministers to Team USA when they travel and doctors that go to national competitions here in the states.
Ironically(ish) the Two Doctors were commenting on this session and I ran to the back to find them and ask them if they knew anything about this magical opportunity. They put me in touch with someone at Team USA and I ended up spending a little time talking to the sports medicine doc that is in charge of America’s strongest team’s health.
Now I am not a sports medicine person by training. Sports medicine doctors tend to take care of the minimally to moderately injured athlete. I’m the one who takes care of the maximally injured. They recognize the spleen injury on the football field, but they bring the player to me to fix it.
Conversely, they are amazingly nuanced when it comes to musculoskeletal injuries. How do I know this? Because in order to start volunteering for meets, I had to go to an introductory sports medicine conference.
It was an absolute blast!
Four days of lectures and hands on break out groups where we covered the exam and treatment of injured athletes, in this conference focusing a lot on the upper extremity, head and neck.
The shoulder. Dear G-d, the shoulder.
There are so many moving parts in the shoulder. And all of them are important. All. Of. Them. Did you know your arm isn’t actually attached to your body via the skeleton? It’s really like a golf ball sitting on a tiny tee with an enormous number of tiny muscles keeping the two in contact. Your arm just kind of hangs off your body by a muscular sling. Radical, huh?
Because this was a general sports medicine conference, the lecturers kept saying things like “well, for overhead athletes, like tennis players and javelin throwers….” and I kept thinking a) what are those? Do they snatch? and b) what about the people who put multiple hundreds of pounds overhead?
Little tears in those little structures (your shoulder labrum is about the size and thickness of a rubber band) can put a serious damper on overhead stability, whether from pain or actual muscular support.
But one of the biggest take home points for me was not about injury, but about the nature of being a sports medicine doctor. The number one reason to see the team doc? Upper respiratory infections. Just because your patient is Hercules, doesn’t mean they don’t get colds that can be worrisome for performance. Or urinary tract infections. Or staph infections. And what you treat them with has to be carefully considered if they are subject to WADA testing. Common cold medicines can light up a drug test like a Christmas tree.
So I am now on the road to hopefully being able to give back to my community in a meaningful way by volunteering at weightlifting meets and maybe someday for USAWeightlifting. I also took and passed the local referee course so I can contribute in that way as well. Either way, those are some of the most awesome seats in the house and a spectacular way to meet the heroes of this amazing sport.
But I’m going to have nightmares about shoulder anatomy for a bit. Just saying.
For a doctor or therapist who understands your issues as a lifter, check out ClinicalAthlete.com, a database of medical provider athletes all over the country.
As I start to teach classes to beginners in the olympic lifts, it is becoming very clear to me that different cues work differently for different people.
I’m a surgeon. When I heard somebody explain the position of the arms when locked out overhead as, “internally rotating your humerus” that resonated with me. I understood just fine.
I have said this to several other people who looked at me like I look at my husband when he tries to explain to me why my horizontal picture won’t orient correctly on this website. That is to say, slightly slack jawed and very blankly.
What seems to resonate with many people is “push your head through”. Now this I never really got. That sounds like some sort of weird turtle thing. But recently it clicked that this is the same as internal rotation of your humerus.
Right now you’re saying, no it’s not. But think about it – if with a barbell in hand overhead, you rotate your humeral head internally, that is, your rotate your armpits down and your elbows back and up…. what happens?
Your head moves forward as your scapulae (shoulder blades) retract back and you lock that bar into a solid position slightly behind the frontal plane of your face, over or even a bit behind your ears like Charis Chan is in the picture above.
Try this. With a PVC pipe held in a snatch grip overhead, try externally rotating your humerus, i.e., rotate your elbows down toward the floor and rotate your armpits forward. Then have someone push on the pvc.
Next, still holding the PVC overhead in a snatch grip, internally rotate your humerus, i.e., rotate your elbows back and your armpits down toward the floor. Have someone push on the pvc again. See how much more solid it feels in this position?
To see Russian olympic gold medalist Alexsey Torokhtiy display this principle amazingly clearly, go watch this video posted by Diane Fu to her Instagram account. You’ll never do Sots presses the same way again, I guarantee it!
So this is what putting your head through really means- getting the bar in a secure position with the humerus internal rotated, scapulae back and traps shrugged. But I still think it makes you look like a turtle.
Last week the senior American Open was held in Reno just one week after the World Championships in Houston.
So much great weightlifting in America this year!!
For once I was not glued to the live feed because I was worried that I had reached the limits of my family’s tolerance of my weightlifting obsession after their letting me go to Worlds alone over Thanksgiving. For anyone interested, I had a grilled cheese with french fries from room service for Thanksgiving and loved every bite of it because it meant I had spent the day watching the best weightlifters in the world compete.
So instead of watching the live feed, I made donuts on Saturday to celebrate Chanukah which started Sunday night. A whole week of celebrating your religion by eating fried foods. Not a bad deal! And Sunday had to go re-certify in trauma life saving.
But while I was munching and saving lives (at least on paper), great lifting was occurring in Reno. What is most remarkable to me, is that a fairly large number of masters not only qualified for and competed in the Open, but a few actually platformed. The 48kg Open champion is a master – Kelly Rexroad Williams – and the silver medalist in the 53kg class is also a master, Melanie Roach. Both set American masters records with their platforming lifts and both qualified for senior nationals in 2016.
Jo Ann Aita set masters records in the snatch, clean&jerk and total in the 58kg class at 45 years old. I believe the oldest master to lift was Robert Arroyo who is a 47yo 85kg lifter.
If you think about it, this is amazingly impressive. That a former olympian and US senior record holder (Roach) is still kicking ass as a master may not sound remarkable at first glance but think about it again. She’s 41, she’s had 5 children. And she is still performing at the highest national level.
I am 47. I know what 47 feels like. The slower recovery, the more delicate line between sore and injured. And yet Jo Ann Aita competed in the C class at a national meet. And she has not always been a weightlifter. She was a powerlifter for most of her youth I believe. So she is accomplishing this remarkable performance without decades of olympic training behind her.
This may be the last year we see so many masters at a national event. With the 77s going into an H class this year I”m thinking they’re going to raise entry totals in the future making it tougher for many masters to qualify.
So let’s just revel for a moment in the grey (or greying) hair that competed this year. Kudos to each and every one of you. You are all my heros.
If you want to peruse the results of the 2015 senior American Open, you can find them here
NOTE: I AM NOT AFFILIATED WITH PUSH STRENGTH NOR IS THE LINK IN THIS ARTICLE AN AFFILIATE LINK. THIS IS JUST MY PERSONAL EXPERIENCE AND OPINION USING THE DEVICE.
As you may know, I train largely by myself. Which means I video a lot of my lifts to dissect afterwards. But an even more useful tool is my PUSH band. I first wrote about it at this link if you want to learn some of the basics: Review of Push-Band
The PUSH band is basically like an affordable Tendo unit. It’s an accelerometer that is worn on your forearm that measures bar speed- both peak and average- throughout the lift.
For olympic weightlifters, peak bar speed is, I believe, a nice measure of speed at the end of the second pull. This is a measure of the power you were able to generate with your pull. It also gives you power readings for your lift (you input the weight on the bar) but I think bar speed is more reliable lift to lift.
Now previously you could only look at this data after your set was done as seen here:
But a recent update to the software means you can now watch your lifts in near real time, i.e., a second or so after completion.
I keep my phone with the bluetooth linked program propped on a tripod where I can clearly see the screen while I lift.
This feature is most useful to me on sets where I need to do more than 1-2 reps, for example, squats. Now I am not a natural squatter. My secret of secrets is that I kinda hate squats (I know, that’s not good for an olympic lifter, but there you go. I like pulling, not squatting). I always feel like I’m going to get crushed to death. So I’m a giant wimp about squats.
Left to my own devices, I am likely to wimp out on squats as soon as they “feel hard”. What’s valuable about real time data is that it can tell me if the squat was actually hard as opposed to just feeling hard. By watching average bar speed, I can look at when a squat actually starting becoming a grinder, i.e., when did I actually start slowing down during the lift.
So now I tend to push myself one to two sets more and 5-15lbs heavier than I used to with squats. Because by seeing that what felt hard actually went up easily, I build the mental confidence to push for more. It’s also actual data as opposed to the subjective “yuck this feels hard.”
A few sets with a few extra pounds may not sound like much but when you squat every day (which, at the moment, I do) that volume actually adds up pretty fast. I think it is why I’m already seeing more out of frequent squatting this time around than I did back in January.
There is also a feature in the real time update that lets you pick a speed range by telling the program what your objective is. If you tell it “strength” is your goal, it has one set of suggested speed parameters. If you tell it “power”, then it has a different set of parameters. But either way, it will ding after a rep to let you know if the rep was good (in the range) or bad (too slow).
It has also provided interesting data on my olympic lifts. I have noticed that the speed and power don’t vary much from my working sets (70-85%) to my sets with a failure (usually 90-95%). This tells me that it’s not a strength issue, per se, but likely more of a technique issue. Maybe failing to keep the bar close or wimping out and moving elbows slowly in the clean for example.
So here is a video of me using the PUSH while doing some fairly light snatch doubles. You can see the tripod in front of me and inset is a shot of the screen.
You can see on the screen inset that it counts reps at the top (the “1”) and then average bar speed below it (the “1.21”). Useful data when you’re training alone to know when to stop and take a rest even if form “feels” ok.
If you’re interested in learning more about the PUSH or interesting in purchasing one, this is their website:
They also have 1RM calculator software which my husband and I are eager to try. The 1RM works on your data from sub-maximal loads of your lifts. I’m currently having trouble with the PUSH picking up all my deadlift reps which obviously needs fixing before I can test that lift, but it does well on almost every other lift except jerks off blocks (where it also misses reps).
I think of myself as Superwoman. Or Wonder Woman. I actually have two pairs of WW underwear from Target so I must indeed be wonderful. Clearly if it’s on your underwear it must be true.
What are not wonderful are my shoulders. I’m on shoulder “issue” number three in four years. The first was left shoulder when I first started lifting heavy weights. It hurt to even put my left hand on top of the steering wheel to drive. Symptoms matched “bursitis” when I consulted with Dr. Google (yes, even doctors use Dr. Google sometimes) so I treated it with rest and NSAIDs
It took four months to resolve. But the upside was I discovered the semi-sumo deadlift during that period. I couldn’t even pull with my hands more than shoulder width apart, so I learned to semi-sumo pull with hands straight down. Hallelujah! I added 75lbs to my deadlift during that period.
A few years later, which is to say earlier this year, it was my right shoulder. Same symptoms. Painful in some ROMs, not in others. I’m pretty sure this one came from over-exuberant practicing of handstands. I tend to overdo anything I”m excited about so I was spending 30 minutes per day upside down. Cue shoulder pain.
That seemed to magically go away over several weeks when ironically my volume was high but so was my NSAID intake. This was at camp in Asheville. It “should” have been excruciating but it actually got better. And since wide grip didn’t hurt, I worked a lot on my snatch and PRed at 50kg.
Then the day after a few sets of handstand push-ups the left shoulder flared again.
So what to do now.
I’m not a rester. I’m not the type to use an injury to sit on the sidelines and yell “go team!” to everyone else on the field.
So right now it’s time to build my squat and my snatch. Jerking is very hard on my shoulder (as are presses), so that’s all on hold. But wide grip once again isn’t so bad so I’m going partial Bulgarian and trying to do a snatch variation and a squat every day. There are so many great things written about doing exercises every day that I figured I ought to really try them for awhile.
I’m also doing some bodybuilding. Yes, bodybuilding. Like bro stuff of 3×12 for triceps and lats. If you know me, this is a sign of the apocalypse. I count my reps 1, 2, 3, one too many, two too many, cardio. And I don’t do cardio.
But here I am bro-ing out, trying to put some muscle back on. I inadvertently lost about 7lbs through working really hard running around the hospital and just not eating enough because of some stomach issues. That was a sudden 6% drop in body weight. Not shocking that many of my lifts were affected and not in a good way.
So why am I giving you this big rambling status update?
Mainly because I’m eager to share my journey into bro-world and squatting every day with you in the upcoming weeks. But also because I’d like to make the larger point about not giving up.
I’m pretty aware at this point that there is something fundamentally wrong with how I move my shoulders or how my shoulders are constructed or both that lead me to recurrent injuries. I am going to work on figuring out why and how to fix it. I’m finally going to get over mourning the death of my massage therapist and find a good MT.
But I’m also going to squat every day because my legs are just peachy. I’m gonna do all kinds of core and back work because my trunk is pristine. I’m gonna keep snatching because I can and that is joyful to me.
I will not sit on the couch and eat Lenny&Larry’s cookies while I bemoan my fate. OK, well I will eat Lenny&Larry’s cookies, but only after I lift. It’s for recovery brah.
I can’t jerk right now. OK. Big girl Wonder Woman panties are on and I’m ready to make lemonade out of lemons. Or gainz out of cookies. Same diff.
I refuse to make you all jealous by posting pictures of my bed. But I really do have the greatest bed of all times.
It’s huge, it’s got a big caved canopy and it sits in a very cold room. My bed is sleep heaven.
Why is this important? Because the number one thing one can do for recovery is sleep. Everyone seems to perseverate on diet. I would argue that eating enough and not eating *only* crap are good general guidelines for diet and that people spend far too much time arguing about the details of what and when and macros.
Nobody really likes to talk about sleep.
But many great things happen during sleep including growth hormone release to fuel more gainz, re-phosphorylation of ATP (to fuel tomorrow’s workout), new neural connections and repair of free radical damage.
Not sleeping can contribute to depression, impair the ability to learn new activities (like, oh say, snatching) and make gainz less likely by impeding all of the above processes.
Sleep is an integral part to becoming stronger. So important that I would argue that when I hear people complain about overtraining, what they’re really saying is that they are under-recovered and that usually means not sleeping and, to a lesser degree, not eating enough.
But the problem lies mostly with sleeping and that’s something people don’t even realize they’re lacking. In many surveys, around 70% of people get 7 or fewer hours of sleep per night. And the actual quality of the sleep is often poor. Just being in bed for 10 hours doesn’t count if the hours of sleep aren’t restful with appropriate REM cycles.
So what should you do to get better sleep and become a gainz making beast?
don’t be afraid to look like a dork. My husband convinced me to get blueblocker sunglasses to wear after 9pm so that the light, especially the light from my smart phone and computer, doesn’t disrupt sleep. I am actually tired and able to go to bed when I wear these starting after dinner. The pair I bought was $9 from Amazon. It’s not a bank breaker
keep your bedroom cold. Sleep quality is enhanced by sleeping in a cold room. No more thermostat wars. Just turn it down and keep it down.
If you refuse the dork look, at least get programs like f.lux for your computer which will automatically dim the computer screen at night to decrease stimulation to your CNS.
Nobody loves caffeine as much as I (and maybe my bestie who keeps Starbucks in the black) do. But I have a hard and fast rule about no Monster, no coffee, no nothing after noon. I want at least 10 hours between my last Monster and bedtime to prevent disrupting sleep patterns
eat some carbs and consider some milk before bed. I’m not going to argue whether or not milk is good for you. But I will say that it has tryptophan which can aid sleep and it has casein which is a long release protein to keep your muscles fed overnight.
reserve bed for sleeping and sex. Read, surf the web, post to Facebook from your couch or a chair but keep bed a space only for sleeping and sexing.
Promise yourself for a mere two weeks you will try to get 8 hours of outstanding quality of sleep. If you don’t see mood, weight and your lifts all improve, I’ll be shocked. Give it a try. The only thing you’re risking is being mocked by your children who will hum, “I wear my sunglasses at night….”
I know all the reasons why old people lift. For the personal satisfaction of reaching goals. To keep aging at bay. To feel powerful.
But you know what I think is one of the most important reasons you lift?
To inspire the next generation.
Let’s face it. Other than Melanie Roach, us oldies are unlikely to see an olympic platform as a participant. But what we can do is lead by example. And the people we’re leading are the youngsters who see us every day.
I had a friend who told me this story thinking it was hysterical but it’s actually kind of sad. She was getting ready to put on a nice silk dress for an evening out. She was wearing a thong to avoid panty lines in the fitted dress. Her then 8 year old daughter looked up at her and said, “Mom! It’s not that your butt is too big. It’s that your panties are too small!”
Yeah, it’s kind of funny. But what does this say about how many times her daughter had heard her critique her (very slim) backside? And how likely is it that her daughter will absorb that kind of negative self talk as being normal behavior?
Contrast that with the parent who lifts. My kids see me head out to our home gym almost every day. Lately, after a summer of Kids Crossfit, they’ve been asking to come along. They like squatting and deadlifting, they like clean and jerks (snatching is still a harder sell). The girl in the video is my daughter Ariel, who spontaneously decided she wanted to max out her clean and jerk this week just so we could spend some time together.
Just like my friend’s little girl, they subconsciously absorb the message I send them. That strength sports are fun. That commitment to a goal is important. That competing means challenging yourself and that it’s ok to do things that make you nervous or uncomfortable in the pursuit of being a better person.
Maybe it’s not your kid that you’re going to inspire to try weightlifting. Maybe it’s some teenager at the gym where you train. Maybe it’s the neighbor’s kid who sees you with the garage door open, dropping heavy weights from overhead.
Maybe that kid could be the next CJ Cummings.
Or maybe it’s not a kid. Maybe it’s your mom who starts lifting in her 60’s and builds better bone density as a result. Don’t laugh – I have a friend who competes at the national level in masters events who was inspired by her daughter in just this way.
