Beginners Template

Goals

1st CnJ for 4 months

Goals for 2014

Various stuff

Whoa

The Bulgarian System

The System
SAID

SAID stands for “Specific Adaptation to Imposed Demands” and states that “adaptation to a stressor is specific to that stressor”. Applied to weightlifting, this implies that performance is best improved by performing the snatch and clean & jerk with maximal weights. The SAID principle became the corner stone of Abadjiev’s training philosophy.

“Our athletes do not do any "supportive exercises" they stay with full clean and jerk, snatch, and front squat We have found that taking back squat out is more effective for the healthy lifter. Sticking with the three lifts named above as the only training for the advanced and healthy lifter…. If the athlete is injured they will do back squat or parts of the lift the full lifts (ie. high pulls, push press, etc...). You must be extremely careful with the stresses you put on your athletes. You must have direct benefits from each exercise because the athlete has limited recovery capacity.” IA
- 'David Woodhouse - Ivan Abadjiev & the Bulgarian Weightlifting System'

Progression rates

Extracts from 'Takano - Weightlifting Programming'

Qualification levels used:

Catalyst Athletics Programs

Quick and Classic

Clean and Jerks

Liao Hui 184kg

Oleg Perepetchenov

Real number 1

Number 1

Snatches and Hinges

The ultimate goal is to pull the bar up high enough for you to get under it. The bar starts on the floor and must finish overhead. You can lift the bar to just above your hip level simply by standing up with enough force. But that will not be a sufficient height for you to slip underneath it.

A lot of emphasis is given to multiple pull sections from the floor to overhead. Breaking down each stage into a different pull. I think this is a poor way to visualise the movement as it (in my mind at least) leads to segmented, non free flowing movement. It can be taught correctly, obviously, as almost all successful weightlifters are taught via the breakdown of the pulls. This is simply another way of looking at it.

Really, it's all a single pull, the only thing that changes is that at certain heights on muscle group is more suitable placed to move the bar higher than another group would be. Or at least, more suitable to do so whilst preserving the ultimate goal in an efficient manner and in a direction that benefits the lifter most.

Cleans

Lu Xiaojun 211kg

Sa Jae Hyouk 203kg

Su DaJin 206kg

Zhang Jie 176kg

Klokov Dmitry 220kg

Not made by me

How To: Snatch - Cliffnotes

Floor to Knee

• Floor to Knees
• Shoulders and hips rise at same rate
• Shoulders above or slightly in front of bar
• Vertical/slightly back bar path
• Knees back/out out of the bar path
• Weight on Midfoot
• Strong Back

The Snatch

The Snatch

The Snatch is the first of the two competition lifts in Weightlifting. In it, the bar travels from the floor to overhead in a single movement.

The snatch is performed with a wide grip. A good way to check the correct width is stand with the bar and spread your hands until the bar sits at your hip below you lower abdomen and above your pubic bone. As you progress in technique and your own style, you may want to tweak the width accordingly (also if you gain or lose weight, optimal width can be affected).

Snatches

Kim Un Guk 150kg

Sa Jae Hyouk 157kg

Lu Xiaojun 165kg

Oxman 200kg Clean and Jerk

Liao Hui 198kg Clean and Jerk

Prehab

This is basically injury prevention stuff. So the focus is on strengthening the things which tend to get injured, ie the muscles and connective tissue which take a lot of stress in weightlifting.
Some don't do this at all; it's not entirely necessary. Others just dedicate a time after their workout to do whatever they want, with no program for it as such. Or you can program it, or just program parts to work on each day. It's mostly up to personal preference; it doesn't matter a huge amount.

Programming for Weightlifting (Part 3 - Other Excercises)

Now, it is true that the Snatch/Clean + Jerk are the only lifts one NEEDS to perform in weightlifting. As they are the only lifts required in competition. And in fact many countries have routines focused almost exclusively on those two movements and squatting. Bulgaria under Ivan Abadjiev being the obvious example, whos system was essentially Snatch, Clean + Jerk and Front Squat to a daily max every day of the week. Under this system, the Bulgarian team was incredibly succesful. Producing a large number of Gold, Silver and Bronze medals for the country.

Programming for Weightlifting (Part 2 - How Often Should I Train?)

The simple answer is 'as often as you can'. If you look at all the most successful Weightlifters, you'll notice they all have one thing in common, they train a lot. The more often you do something, anything, the better your body will be  adapted to performing that task efficiently and effectively. Somebody who lifts once a week has almost 7 days for his body to forget the movement patterns he spent a few hours learning one day. A person who lifts 3 days a week only has a day or two between each session to forget, a person who trains every day has almost no time to distance themselves from the movement, and a person who trains multiple times a day? Well you can work it out.

Now, for a beginner, or somebody who plans on having a life outside of lifting weights; training 12-14 times a week is a little excessive and difficult. However it is a good target to aim for and to keep in mind when you think you're training too frequently.

3x a week is the absolute minimum you should be training the Snatch/Clean and Jerk. And at that low a frequency, pretty much every session will need to be with maximal or near maximal weights, or very high volume (lots of setsxreps). Now, if you add in sessions on the days between those Maximal days, you can play with the loading of weight a bit more.

OVERTRAINING

Overtraining is when you reach a point where it will take over 3 weeks of no training to completely restore your previous level of performance. Overreaching is when it will take less than that much time to get back to normal. You get into this state when you train too hardcore.

Programming For Weightlifting (Part 1)

Programming for Weightlifting is not difficult (at the very basic level). There are only two movements you have to practice. The Snatch and the Clean + Jerk. Everything else is an assistance to help improve those lifts. As mentioned in the previous post, you want to Snatch before you Clean and Jerk. The reason being that the Snatch is faster and technically more difficult to complete than the Clean and Jerk and also requires the lifter to move faster over a larger distance. So you want to be fresh for this. The weight used in the snatch will generally also be lesser than in the Clean + Jerk and any later exercises. If you were to Clean very heavily first, you would be fatiguing your body when it comes time to Snatch, making it difficult to
hold good technique throughout the lift.

How into Weightlifting

First: If you want to get into weightlifting, you do weightlifting.
You do not need a 'strength base'. The hard part of weightlifting is getting the technique right, start that as soon as possible.
There's no reason you can't do this at the same time as building your strength up. Build weightlifting specific strength by doing high bar/front squats, and snatch/clean pulls (not low bar squats and deadlifts), at the same time as you develop your technique.

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