Tag: camp

I have a theory about why weightlifters are such great people.

Most sports are based on an antagonistic relationship between two opponents.  Imagine football.  Two teams, who each want something completely different from the other.  One to move forward, one to push back.  Their fans scream their support of their favorites and their derision of  the other team.  It’s “us” against “them”.

Now imagine weightlifting.  In competition, you cannot change your strategy in any profound or meaningful way in response to what anyone else does.  Yeah,  you can play with stated attempts a little to gain a minute or two more rest between lifts.  But realistically, it’s a sport where what you do on the platform arises from the training you put in before you showed up.  You can’t suddenly add 10kg to your snatch just because somebody else is stronger than you are.   In a very singular way you compete against you and your preparation, not against anybody else.

So weightlifting meets tend to feel much less like a giant sporting event, and more like a collegial get together of like minded friends.  Complete strangers help each other out.  Complete strangers cheer for your attempts.  Complete strangers share a platform and maybe a protein bar.

Weightlifting also requires enormous self discipline.  You’ve got to be a fairly mature and dedicated individual to repeat the same two lifts over and over again, making tiny incremental changes in technique and gaining infinitesimally small leaps in power (ok maybe some leap faster, but I leap slowly).

The people who gravitate to the sport are therefore not like the average athlete.  They’re friendly, they’re smart and they’re kind.  Winning!

At weightlifting camp the gym rules were written on the white board from day 1.  They were:

-Be an adult

-Don’t be an asshole

-Don’t fuck up tomorrow’s workout

My interpretation of these is: clean up after yourself, nobody’s your mama and nobody else is responsible for putting your weights away where they’re safe from hurting somebody else by a stray bouncing barbell.  Be positive and supportive, don’t whine and grumble and bitch when your attempts aren’t going the way you’d like thus making life miserable for everyone around you.  And don’t bro out, trying to impress everyone with how mighty you are to the point where you’ll be too sore to lift tomorrow.

Because these are the rules, the people who stay to be part of the Asheville Strength family are a profoundly wonderful bunch.  I met jaw droppingly strong people, both men and women.  I met some who were just starting out, some who were visiting from other sports to train over school break, some seasoned veterans.  All were supportive both verbally and by their actions.  They help find and load weights.  They encouraged one another.  They teased each other lovingly to keep things light.

The coaches, Tamara and Nick, seemed to have an intuitive sense of what each athlete needed.  They never gave anybody more cues than they could handle at one time.  So nobody felt hopeless, like there was no way as adult learners we could possibly get all this which I often hear from my fellow masters newbies.  They emphasized the important points, what you need to actually make a lift in competition.  Not the minutiae of bar path and jumping vs. catapulting or whatever else keyboard jockeys argue about on YouTube.

What did they do for me?  I hit two consecutive snatch PRs because Tamara loaded my bar blind and wouldn’t let me know what was on it.  That let me get out of the scaredy cat part of my head that kept me from hitting lifts that I knew I should be able to make.  And I cannot emphasize how important that accomplishment was to making me better going forward.  They also encouraged me to get the bar a little more aggressively over and back on lockout among other good tips.

So I left Asheville with a whole lot of new friends and a competitive team to call my very own (squeeeeee!). So many people I’m proud to have worked with and with whom I’ll be honored to compete along side in the future.

Any wonder why I love this sport so much?

What did you do on New Year’s Eve?

In Judaism, we believe that what you do on Rosh Hashannah, the Jewish New Year, sets the tone for the rest of the year.

So my year is going to be awesome because this year (albeit on the Gregorian calendar’s NYE), I spent the end of last year and the beginning of this year in camp.  Weightlifting camp.  Lifting weights three times per day.

It all started when I got an email from the Weightlifting Academy in Asheville, NC.  Nick Horton made an offer I couldn’t refuse: two days of an introductory seminar on how to do the basic lifts and then 5 days of three/day sessions of two or so hours each.  The clincher for me – he said this was the experience for you if you secretly wished you could train like this all the time.

And, yeah, with all my heart, I really do wish that.

So off I went to beautiful NC.  I’ve never been in the Southeast for any length of time before and I’ll say it is magnificent.  The mountains surrounding Asheville are beautiful, the people are more interesting than almost anyplace I’ve ever been (and I grew up in NYC) and the food was fabulous.  Where have cheesy grits been all my life?!?

But what was really great was the lift-eat-sleep-lift-eat-nap-lift-eat again cycle.

There’s so much I learned in this week that it’ll take several posts to encompass it.  But here’s the biggest and the best.

I can do much more than I ever thought I could do.

I’ve done two-a-days when at the OTC this past summer, but only for 5 consecutive workouts.  This took a whole ‘nother level of ovarian fortitude.

One of the very first things Nick Horton talked about was the myth of overtraining. His philosophy: “more is usually better (maybe not in chromosomes, but certainly in training).”  To paraphrase Matt Perryman, if you lived in a communist country where the lives of your family depended on your medaling at an international event, would you train twice a day, every day, or would you train three times per week?  With the right motivation, you can do what you have to do to be better than you are today.

But what’s your motivation?  There were many years when I wanted to look better in a bikini.  Now I have a far, far fiercer drive to put weight on the bar, to lift more tomorrow, more at the next meet, to brush up against national masters records.  And to achieve this I need to not be afraid.  Not be afraid of failing at an attempt, at failing in front of a crowd at a meet.   Not be afraid of large weights held precariously over my head.  I need to realize that yeah, I’m going to be sore.  And to trust myself to know the difference between sore and injured and when I actually need to pull back.

I need to be focused and committed.  That means not making excuses for skipping a workout just because I feel kinda meh.  I PRed my front squat by 8lbs in the morning session on day 6 and it was a lot prettier than my previous lower PR.  Did I feel meh?  Hell yes, I felt like shit.  My quads were ready to secede from the union and my knees were no longer on a speaking basis with the rest of my body.  But I still PRed my squat with big girl red plates.  Little, tiny, old me and all before breakfast.

So back to the big lesson.  I can do much more than I ever thought I could do.  Succeeding at this level of volume, making PRs in front and back squats, snatch and clean means that I am a stronger, better person than I thought I was.  Going forward I’m just a little more confident.  I’m able to pull that bar off the floor with a new level of commitment, not the, “oh gee, I hope I make this” wishy washy attitude I used to have.

No joke, the day after my PR snatch I was putting my previously very difficult PR over my head.  Why? Because on that day, I was now a lifter who could snatch 3kgs more.  So pssssshhhht that old PR was now just a ramp up weight.  The difference is utterly psychological.  And the greatest gift I could have received from my week at Asheville Strength.