bronco wrote:You forgot:
d) You are strong enough, technique is good enough but lack of self confidence stops you from trying
. 100kg is pretty heavy, but just because it feels heavy doesnt mean you cant clean it. The only way to make the weights less intimidating is practicing with heavy weight. Ok, probably having good consistent technique also helps.
But you can't develop consistent technique with heavy-heavy weights. All that does is get you into bad habits and scrappy lifting just for the sake of getting a training PR. Fearlessness comes from being consistent, and consistency comes from putting in the hours with 80-85% weights, and occasionally doing a few lifts in the 90%+ range. There's absolutely no point in me sticking 20kg over what I can squat clean 4 times out of 5 with good technique just so I can pull a one-off scrappy power clean for the sake of training numbers. The long term is better served by working in that range where you can hit the lift 8 times out of 10 with minimal technical errors. Then, when you can pretty much hit that every time up the weight until there is a technical breakdown. At that point you drop the weight slightly so you're back working in that 8/10 lifts made range, which is now higher than it was before.
Seriously, if you only want to oly-lift weights that feel light you will allways be behind your strenght potential. Why wait until you are strong enough to clean 120 before you clean 100 ?
"Light" is relative. It feels light because a)
it is relative to my squat and thus it's easier to maintain solid positions during the lift, and b) it's within that range where lifts can be performed consistently with few major technical errors. Often the only thing separating a lift that feels heavy and one that feels light is a slight variation in position (such as not keeping your elbows along the bar in the snatch, or hitting the thigh too early in the clean). Just because I can pull 100kg for triples doesn't mean I can clean it. Most misses occur not because of lack of bar height, but inadequate speed reversing direction or poor positions.
JP wrote:i can see your point ninearms and it is probably the right one for a beginner.
but you are getting past that.
I still consider myself very much a beginner. I have about 8 months training, and about 5 hrs coaching, which in O lifting terms is very much beginner level. Maybe next year when I get down to Woking more often and start competing I'll consider myself a novice.
You need to learn to battle out oly lifts, to be out of your comfort zone, to really grind them out and learn to miss them as well sometimes and learn to attack them like you would your max front squat. It being more technical shouldnt change that, though it makes it more difficult and there are more possibilities for it to go wrong.
You can't grind out a snatch or clean and jerk, only the recovery. I agree, you need to allow yourself to miss, but you need to balance that against the lifts you make. Missing a lift 5 times in 10 isn't helpful and is very hard to overcome. Missing the same lift 3 times in a session, 3 sessions in a row, and then making it once, does nothing to make you a better lifter in the long run. It just makes you a lifter who once in a blue moon might get a total on the board and the rest of the time is lucky if they make their opening weight for their third lift. The fact that it is more technical does change how you attack the lift, because the earlier you are in your weightlifting career the less ingrained the correct motor patterns are, and going at the bar like a psycho a la Benedict Magnusson doesn't help that in any way, especially in training. I mean even Ilya Illin missed this year's World Champs because his coach was away for a couple of weeks, and during that time Ilin injured himself because the coach wasn't there to make him back off, because "he is crazy".
If we're talking about comfort zones, another way of working outside them is to make yourself hold back a little for the sake of long term technical gains. Going all out too often and saying "fuck technique" is just as much about bottling the "hard" stuff as "dodging the weights" to work on better technique. We've had that conversation numerous times on here, particularly with regard to deadlifting, where some people admit they have a hard time dropping the weight to work on technical problems that have dogged them for a long time and which will hinder progress (and possibly health) in the long term.
I don't even attack my front squat that hard! If you look at my log you'll see I keep the volume low and only do 4 or 5 reps above 85%.
Oh, and PBs are never perfect form eh?
Exactly my point. Save the balls to the wall technical abominations for your 3rd lift on the competition platform, not your everyday training sessions.
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said gravely, “and go on till you come to the end. Then stop.”
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