Tag: masters

Masters at the American Open

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

 

 

Masters Nationals 2015 – Passover, PRs and PMS

Despite it’s being over a week past, I am just now sitting down to write up my experience at this year’s masters national championships.  I apologize for the delay, but I went straight from nationals to a week long trauma job (hooray!) which kept me too busy to contemplate lifting (gasp!).

So many things were challenging going into this year’s meet.  Passover started 7 days before.  For those of you not familiar with the Jewish holiday, it celebrates the exodus from slavery in Egypt.  Which is lovely except it’s celebrated by NOT eating leavened bread.  Fleeing pharoah’s wrath meant grabbing dough before it had a chance to rise and getting the hell out of Dodge. Or Cairo as the case may be.

Lovely, but anybody who knows me knows I eat a lot of leavened stuff.  Donuts.  Fig Newtons.  PB&J sandwiches.  This holds especially true after weigh-in.  I don’t live very much above my weight class, maybe a kg or two, so making weight means cutting back salt and carbs for a few days and limiting water the day before competition.  Right after weigh-in, the re-feed begins with lots of simple carbs (Newtons!) and Monster.

But what was different on this day vs. all other days (you’ll get the reference if you’ve ever been to a seder)?  No Newtons.  No Lenny&Larry cookies.  No Pop Tarts.  And none of those yummy carby treats to fuel up after the preceding week’s workouts.  Ugh.  I think I ate my weight in matzah brie and matzah cashew butter and jelly sandwiches.

Now add challenge #2.  This was PMS week.  So I retained water like a sea sponge on Mercury.  Not good for making weight.  It also meant that forgoing the donuts was extra hard because donuts and PMS go together like, well, donuts and PMS.

Challenge #3.  I wafted into Monrovia on a cloud of Advil and Aleve trying to nurse what I could out of an extremely painful shoulder injury.

All in all, I was nervous.

But guess what? I won.  By 1kg, but I won.  And I did well-ish.

I missed my first snatch for a little re-bending of my inured arm (I can hear Nick Horton yelling at me to LOCK OUT even as I write this).  So I went out and locked the living shit out of snatches two and three.  But alas that meant re-trying my opener which meant I didn’t get to try my super big third attempt.  No biggie, went into cleans 3kg ahead.  And I hit my 40kg snatch which was my dream lift not that long ago.

determined

We went lift for lift in the clean and jerk though, with her opening bigger than I did.  So it came down to each of our last lifts.  I had wanted to do and think I could have jerked 53kg.  But to be safe I needed to make  54kg so that’s what I tried.  The clean was kind of ugly, but I made it.  But then missed the jerk.  She went out to do 54kg, made the clean (prettier than I did truth be told) then missed the jerk.

clean at nationals

And that’s the moment that I became a two-time Masters National Champion.

I PRed my total.  I beat last year’s total by 14kg.  FOURTEEN KG!!! I PRed my competition snatch, although I’ve done better in training.  I PRed my competition clean.  I matched my recent competition jerk.  And my singlet totally rocked.

I’m pretty ecstatic really.  And now I’m all kinds of fired up to go to Dallas in August for the Masters World Cup and see if I can hit a triple digit total.  I have amazing coaches, I have a super supportive team and I have goals.

And I once again have donuts.  Yee haw!!!

Next year…… threepeat.

Masters Nationals



For those who don’t compete, olympic weightlifting is divided into four groups: youth (the under 17 crowd), juniors (the under 20’s), senior (20-35) and masters (35 and above).  These are not inviolable divisions.  I watched a 14yo girl snatch a US record at the American Open this year (ostensibly a senior event) in the same session as last year’s 53kg masters champion who is 47 years old.

The competition I went to this past Friday was Masters Nationals, so a national level competition for lifters over the age of 35.  It is further subdivided in 5 year age increments, so 35-39, 40-44, etc as well as the traditional international weight classes.

It was an amazing experience for a variety of reasons.  First, to see 80+ year old lifters still competing with good form (albeit with more power receipts than full squats) was encouraging.  Having found this sport late in life, it’s nice to know that there is still a place to compete and encouragement for people who worry more about hormone replacement than hormone surges.

Second, it was held at LSUS (Louisiana State University Shreveport) the home of Kendrick Farris, two time olympian and a nationally competitive weightlifting team.

But most importantly, it was the culmination of a year of training, studying, worrying, and discussing these two lifts for me personally.  It was a chance to qualify to compete at the masters world championships in the fall.  It was an opportunity to prove to my family that their support wasn’t in vain.

First, the good news.  I am now the 53kg/45w national champion.  I lifted a total that will allow me to go to Worlds and compete against some of the best lifters in my age and weight class from around the world.

But now, the analysis.  As meets go, it was actually fairly awful for me.  I went 1/3 on the snatch and 2/3 on the C&J and both were far lower than I had planned.  My total was lower than either my first local meet and the Texas State Championships.

So what did I learn?  I learned the timing of warming up.  I’m a lifter who does best very warm.  So I started a little earlier than everyone else with my foam rolling and standard warm-up maneuvers.  But then the session in front of me went over and I ended up lifting about 30 minutes later than I had planned.  Rookie mistake to be sure, but I probably should have been paying more attention to that.  So I hit my opener easily in the back, then got cold, missed it on first attempt, went up a kg, got it, but was frazzled and missed the third attempt forward from overhead in the hole.

I noticed when I went to the back after finishing the snatches that I was sitting in what I consider a meek and sad position.  Arms folded around my middle, kind of hunched over.  So I decided to shake my disappointment at the crappy snatches by adopting a power pose – knees out, chest up and back, arms out to the side taking up space.  It really did help me get back in the game and get focused on the second half of the competition.  I convinced by brain (though adopting a physical pose) that I wasn’t pitiful and was still in the game.

Cleans and especially jerks are harder for me technically than snatches.  I don’t work them as much because a) I like snatches more (and yes, I realize this is not a mature way to train) and b) since snatches were initially more challenging, I spent more time focused on them.  So my C&J aren’t the big powerhouse savers for me that they can be for other people and that is most surely going to be a big focus going forward.  How?  Squats, leg power, plyo accessory movements and simply more reps from the floor.

My competition cleans have been overwhelmingly power cleans which means I’ve got a lot more kgs in me if I can just trust myself to get under the bar.  What I noticed with both cleans and snatches this competition is that I can get even heavy weights up to my eyebrows, so strength ain’t the issue.  Technique and speed most certainly are.  Part of technique is keeping the bar closer so that I can just scoop under it after the second pull is finished.  So there’s my homework for the next 5 months.

Jerks just need work.  I just started playing with squat and power jerks, and who knows, maybe I’ll end up there because I’m much faster down in a squat than a split.  But I am going to keep working on my split jerk for now, with more aggressive feet and moving back leg first and landing with front leg at 90 degrees, not with knee over toes.

With snatches I need to strengthen the overhead position.  What good is it to get it overhead than lose it because you can’t lock it out?  Sots presses, heaving snatch balances (learned courtesy of the Catalyst website) and static overhead holds around 200% of max snatch is my plan there, along with more behind the neck push-press work at “stop being such a giant candyass” weights (as opposed to what I often lift).

All this may sound very negative, but overall I’m pleased.  I learned a lot about competing, about training about my weaknesses and even discovered a few strengths.

And if I choose to go to Copenhagen for Worlds in September, I’ll get to wear a USA masters singlet.  That will be an extraordinarily proud day indeed.

If you want to see a slomo version of the snatches here it is: