I got a new post up at Breaking Muscle called The Top 5 Olympic Weightlifting Shoes for Under $200 Bucks. Make sure to check that out.

Also, if you haven’t noticed, the blog has a new look! Don’t get me wrong, I liked the old look, but it was slowly starting to get far too messy for my taste.

I want this blog to be EASY to read, easy to navigate … Zen in its simplicity so that the few things I’m trying to highlight really stand out, and so that you can really get into the content.

Yes … the sci-fi styling of the logo was on purpose We’re heading into the future, my friends!

Oh! And for those of you who like this kind of geeky stuff, I’m now using Headway Themes.

I’d started them as a weekly thing, then I tried to shift them over to a monthly thing because I thought I’d be able to fill them up a little better that way. I was wrong. Switching to a monthly version made them totally unruly.

Not only was it nearly impossible to manage all that material over the course of a month, it became unmanageable to read! People were telling me it was taking them over a week to get through it all.

Now … they were saying this in a positive tone, as a way of complimenting me on collecting such a cool list of stuff. But in practice that implies most people just couldn’t work their way through that much stuff at once.

The beast finally got away from me as I was finishing up the writing of my book.

What is cool is the shear number of emails I’ve been getting over the last few months from long-time readers asking me where the in Hell M.M.Z went!?

So, I’m bringing this series back in its original form. A weekly wrap up of what I’ve been reading, watching, thinking about, and anything else that comes to mind.

Sometimes you get things right the first time, and it’s best not to muddy them up too much!

Zen Quote of the Week

“All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.” — Ancient Zen Saying

This Week in the World of Weightlifting

I’ll start with some jazz that’s going on in my own sphere then branch out.

Let me tell you, 2012 is going to be a BIG year here at the Iron Samurai. You’ve been hearing me hint about some cool projects in the works for some time now, and those projects are starting to come into fruition.

One of the biggest being the project Michael Hartman and I are putting together. It’s got a number of phases, the first of which is coming out this month. (Keep an eye out!)

In fact, February is the starting place for a good many of these projects, and I’ve been CRAZY busy. Seriously, I’m working my tail off to get this stuff done because I’m so excited about it all. (If you can’t tell, I love what I do for a living!)

Nick Horton and Peter Curcio have started a new Podcast called High Octane Body. It’s a podcast primarily focussed on fat loss. Peter (Who’s weightlifting name is Petarski – he’s the guy in the image above) is one of my closest friends, business partners, and the guy who I run my fat loss programs with when I’m in the offline world. We’ve totally revamped our programs and are really excited about what’s going on.

We want to bring our approach outside the walls of the gym. A Podcast is a great way to do that.

I know it isn’t normal for a weightlifting coach to also really enjoy coaching people for fat loss. But, I am anything but normal! I love that when you help someone who really does need to lose a lot of weight, learn to workout correctly, dial in some basics of diet, that you are making a true life changing difference.

It could literally save their life.

Obesity is a serious issue we’re all facing. We may or may not be overweight ourselves. But we all love a lot of people who are, and who need us to help guide them.

I’ve said this before: You and I are part of the 1% of people in the first world who honestly do LOVE to lift weights and exercise. We sometimes falsely accuse other people of simply being lazy. But, I think the issue goes deeper than that. So many people will wake up one day after 20+ years of inactivity to find themselves so far down a hole of ill-health that they have no idea where to start. It is a huge emotional bind they find themselves in. The only way to help to guide them out of it is to approach them with a sense of compassion and understanding that is far too lacking by many of the 1%, in my opinion.

Besides, it doesn’t hurt my mission to make Olympic lifting “Mainstream” by getting out there and evangelizing to people who may not have ever even heard of a snatch … at least not THAT kind of snatch!!

JC Deen and Roger Lawson II have started their own podcast. In their first episode they go over their own back stories and how and why they got into fitness training in the first place.

JC Deen and Roger Lawson II are featured in an article at Forbes outlining the new breed of online fitness coaches. Given that I’m a part of that crowd, it spoke to me.

JC exists at the vanguard of a new generation of trainers who have sprung up online – willing to help both experienced lifters and those that don’t have a clue what a barbell is, let alone how to bench, squat or deadlift. In the past, one would only be able to side with a trainer in an established gym and hope they’d know what they were doing (and actually want you to succeed).

I’m a HUGE new-media freak, as is rather obvious to you, LOL. And the reason is because it allows us to reach out to a massive community of like-minded people we’d never have met without the internet and social media.

I obviously believe in in-person coaching, and I love it. (I DO own a gym!) But, I also STRONGLY believe in giving people options and access. The net allows us all to connect and build community in a way unheard of just a few decades ago.

PDX Weightlifting and Elite Performance Center here in Portland are running a combo Olympic weightlifting AND Powerlifting competition on the last weekend of March. Stay tuned for that.

Yes, we ARE allowing people to compete in both and attain a super total. Grueling? Yes. Awesome? Super Yes!

Chris Duffin, my friend and coach of Elite Performance Center (above) here in Portland – a kick-ass Powerlifting gym – has started a new blog, and has an interesting piece on the Gift of Average Genetics.

So what exactly is the gift of average genetics? The gift is you always have to work for every inch of progress you have made. You learned early on about incremental gains and hard work. From the first time in the gym or on the sporting field you had to work, sweat, bleed, and then do it all again just to make some measly progress. The same progress that some gifted natural athlete had just walking on the field. These small gains however are consistent and build upon each other. This is a basic psychological system that rewards your hard work, sweat, and blood. With this reward mechanism you stay at it year after year.

I can tell you, the laziest people I’ve ever met are very often those with the greatest talent. It’s the Tortoise and the Hair problem …

If you grow up your whole life beating everyone around you without having to work very hard, then you often never learn HOW to be disciplined.

Now, of course, the very few people who combine great genes with great motivation and work ethic will be the Donny Shankle’s of the world. Speaking of …

Donny Shankle Rips the head off of a Goddamned Lion:

Chris Duffin. Check out this video of him killing 495 pounds … on the one-arm deadlift! 1 rep? 2 reps? Nope. 5 reps! (By the way, Chris is otherwise known as the Kabuki Warrior … The Iron Samurai and the Kabuki Warrior, eh? Portland breads a funny brand of strength athlete!)

Bret Contreras has created a new challenge he calls The Sexy Challenge which is a complex of 5 exercise that you do (mostly) back-to-back for max reps. Like me, he’s a big lover of what I call the “big three” of lower body training: Front Squats + Romanian Deadlifts + Hip Thrusts. So those make up the first three. The 4th and 5th exercises are the Incline Bench and Chin Up.

Bret kicked ass on the RDL’s. I think I can smoke him on the Front Squats, LOL. But, that’s the only exercise I’m super confident in. (I’m getting very close to a double body weight front squat, btw – which only requires that I get 5 kilos less than my old max when I was bigger. 5 kilos to go!)

Here’s my plan: I’m going to finish each weeks workout with The Sexy Challenge (or some close cousin) on Fridays for the next 4 weeks. Given that the exercises are ones I’m doing anyway, it just is a matter of going for reps rather than maxing out.

At least one of those Fridays, I’d like to get 100 reps and be able to call myself “Dead Sexy”

You should join me!

Rob Addel Snatches 170k. If you think this man looks impressive on video, I can tell you he looks twice as large in person! (See my write up our time at Average Broz gym for the Las Vegas Open last month.)

John Romaniello gives a breakdown of the most popular IF (Intermittent Fasting) styles.

The benefits of IF vary from hormonal management to caloric reduction and decreased hunger, and which benefits are prioritized will be dependent on which “type” of IF you use.

In this article, I’ll give you a complete analysis of the most popular IF styles currently discussed in the fitness world, benefits and drawbacks, as well as my own personal experience.

As you know, I’m a big proponent of IF, used it to lose 15 pounds in a month before my wedding, and use it with my clients in my High Octane Body fat loss program.

Roman’s got a great approach with this stuff, plus, he’s just a funny and very genuine dude.

Ruslan Albegov of Russia does a 210k snatch and makes it look like a joke!

Nia Shanks goes off on a food rant.

Look, I acknowledge that everyone would be better off if they never consumed sugar or fake sugar ever again, for the rest of their lives. I also believe we would all be healthier if we grew our own food in natural, optimal conditions and only consumed grass-fed meat, wild caught fish, free range poultry and eggs, raw dairy, and other free range meats. (Get resources for purchasing these items locally can be found here).

Adding to that, ideally everyone would get at least 20 minutes of direct sunlight every single day, and only drink water that cascaded down the peaks of the snowy Rocky Mountains, and lived in pollution-free areas. Trust me, I could go on and on about “ideal” situations, eating habits, and living environments.

But the truth is, it’s not realistic for most people to follow those guidelines every day for the rest of their life, and so I won’t suggest such a thing. And obviously, many of those suggestions aren’t the least bit practical for some individuals. Setting unrealistic goals leads to aggravation and unnecessary stress.

AMEN. I couldn’t agree with her more! One of the whole reasons Peter and I are starting our High Octane Body podcast is to promote the idea of chilling the frak out about this stuff. You don’t have to be perfect. Not even close. Just stick to a few basics and you’re golden. Overcomplicating this stuff is causing a lot of paralysis by analysis. That HAS to stop.

(By the way, I’m working on a guest post for Nia that you weightlifting ladies will definitely want to keep an eye out for. I’m writing it for (and in support of) you.)

Lu Xiaojun of China does some core work. I don’t recommend you follow his lead, but it does play into the joke we have in my club that the Chinese team has never met an exercise they didn’t like!

Adam Stoffa makes me want to buy a titanium spork. Yes, you read that correctly!

Doug is also a member of the brotherhood of titanium spork owners. This is the ultimate in high tech silver titanium-ware. Doug has his spork fastened with a tactical lanyard for extra security. Whether you’re at the kitchen table or sitting on the edge of a cliff, you don’t want to risk inadvertently dropping this kind of gear and losing it. Sure his spork helps him eat right, but boys and girls, if you want to grow up to be be big and strong like Doug don’t forget your daily dose of iron.

Rob Addel does a 272.5 kilo Back Squat – that’s 2.8 times his bodyweight.

Rog Law gives you 10+ Ways to Rock 2012′s Face Off. I particularly like this one:

Create movement. Create time. Create relationships. Create the life you want.

Mikhail Koklyaev discusses squat technique. Ya … it’s in Russian, but who cares!

(Hat tip: All Things Gym)

All Things Gym has a recap of one of the greatest battle in Olympic Weightlifting ever between Naim Suleymanoglu and Valerios Leonidis, two super champions!

Niam and my step dad used to hang out together actually because my step dad was on the Bulgarian national gymnastics team, they’re the same age, and they lived in the same basic complex. Pretty cool … I’m going to have to call in that favor at some point so that I can meet him!

Here’s a vid:

Finally:

If you want the judges to be on your side, DON’T do this!

Ooops!

That sparked some controversy!

And then I made it worse by saying that for some people Back Squats can be dangerous even if you do them correctly. Man, sometimes I really know how to put my foot in my mouth!

So, I created this video (it’s about 20 minutes, so grab a cup of coffee) explaining myself fully, including:

• What I mean by the word “Dangerous”: Think Probabilities, not Absolutes
• I love coffee …
• Why some people are simply built better than others for back squats
• Why Olympic lifting shoes kick ass, and why YOU should own a pair if you’re serious about Oly squats
• Why not being dogmatic is always good … that’s a no-brainer!
• And, again, I love coffee …

It’s not always easy on the internet to explain subtle points in small sound bites. It’s why I like to write such long articles here. Anything worth knowing about is going to have some deeper areas of subtly that will require more time and energy to communicate, to learn about, and to digest.

That’s a good thing, not a bad thing. I like learning, and I know you do to. That’s why we kick butt, LOL.

OK, here’s the squatty stuff:

The subtitle to my blog is not Zen and the Art of Weightlifting for nothing. It isn’t a joke, nor is it my way of being gimmicky. I don’t take it lightly.

I strongly believe that Olympic Weightlifting is an Art Form in the same way that Kung Fu is. 

My friends Adam Stoffa and JC Deen encouraged me to write up this post, or rather I decided it was the only option when I was asked the following question that might not (at first) seem related, but here it is:

“Question: When do strength athletes hit peak performance, age-wise?”, said Adam.

I explained that it all depends upon when they start. If you start in your early twenties (or better your teenage years), and you work your ass off, then you’ll likely peak at around 30 or even 35 (if you can stay injury free).

However, if you don’t get into it until you are ALREADY over 30 (or 40, or later) then you probably won’t peak. Not strictly. You’ll never reach that genetic maximum that you could have reached had you started much younger.

That’s the bad news.

The good news is that you will be able to keep making progress almost forever, and that you can still get close to that maximum.

Start at 30, you probably won’t stop getting stronger till you’re ready to retire. This is even more true the older you are when you start. Begin at 50, you’ve got a solid 20 years in you. And even then, you’ll be able to maintain your strength for WAY longer than most people believe is possible. (Think of Jack Lalanne. That man was from another planet.)

We had a lifter in the gym for about 8 months who turned 60 last year (did I get that right, Bob?) and he made great progress. He’d always wanted to learn this stuff, and Hot-Dog, he did! He also does yoga, hikes for miles and miles at a time, and is one fit dude all around.

Now the RATE of progress slows down over time. The longer you’ve been lifting, the harder it is to see progress. But it still comes.

Age can slow that rate down even further. So while it might take a 20 year old 3 months to add 50 pounds to his front squat, it may take a 60 year old over a year or more. (Depends on a lot of factors, of course!)

So the key is this: No matter how old you are when you start, you can continually make progress until you come close to your genetic maximum. You may only reach it if you’re young. But shoot, if you only got 50% there, that would be amazing … and a Hell of a lot stronger than you are now.

Everyone progresses at a different rate, but everyone progresses.

Start young, you peak early. Start older, and you may never peak at all. It’s kinda awesome to be older sometimes. Who wants to peak early and spend the rest of their life regressing?

The Art of Weightlifting

This point led Adam to say (something like), “So you’re saying that weightlifting is an art, something you get better at as you get older?”

YES

But not so much for the reasons above.

The Martial Arts are justifiably called “Arts” because they require a kind of mental training and development that is absent in many sporting events. They require years of hard work and maturation to even be mediocre at them. How in tune your mind is to the task at hand is every bit as important as how powerfully your muscles can contract.

Adults are simply better at mental training than young people are. A LOT better. This gives the advantage to us.

Case in point: Football players.

There are many many college football players in this country who have the physical strength to snatch and clean what the best Olympic lifters in the U.S. can do … but they aren’t able to pull it off.

It’s NOT a simple lack of technical training (though, that’s part of it!). It’s also that they are basically very very large children.

As I’ve said a million times before (and will say a million times more), it’s one thing to be able to exhibit proper technique on the snatch with an empty bar, it’s quite another to do so with your maximum.

The technique is the same.

If you show me that your technical skills are beautiful with light weights, but that you fail to lift anywhere near what I KNOW you are capable of … Then you have a mental problem.

Only dedicated work on training your mind is going to fix it.

You must learn to no longer allow the fear response (the “holy crap this weight is heavy!” response) to cause you to break down and lose form.

In the martial arts it isn’t uncommon to see a new recruit who is capable of performing the moves very well in the dojo completely break down in a street fight.

Life and Death and Snatching

In my book I have a chapter entitled, “The Samurai Strength Philosophy” where I go over this exact point.

Samurai faced life and death situations. If they maintained their ability to use proper sword technique, even in the face of an opponent, they might live. If they freaked out and started flailing around like a monkey … they’d surely die.

Mental strength was literally a life or death skill. Excommunicating fear and anxiety was a MUST.

You aren’t going to die on the platform. But on a (much) smaller scale, this is what is happening to you when you miss your heavy attempts.

Control your fear! If Samurai could do it while facing death, you can do it while learning to snatch.

Of course, it’ll take a while. A very long while.

My own belief is that a proper use of meditation combined with a training program that forces you to face your fears constantly is the best approach.

I’m not just a “Bulgarian” because I like the food. The approach to training is to take on the heaviest weights you can handle with good form … and constantly try to move the needle.

• How close to your true max can you get with perfect form?
• How often?
• Can you do it on cue, with no anxiety or fear and under pressure?

That’s exactly the situation of a contest. You are under pressure, there is a bunch going on around you, and you have to somehow attempt to make lifts that match your best ever.

How do you do that?

Practice … duh!

Putting it all together

Olympic Weightlifting is the clearest example of an activity that requires a truly “Strong Mind in a Strong Body”. You have to have both.

Building physical strength is the easy part. It is FAR easier to take someone and make them brute strong than it is to get someone to become truly efficient on the snatch. (By efficient I mean that they are lifting at the upper capacity of what their base-line strength allows.)

When you get that rare person who is “too efficient” for their own good, then all you have to do is get their squats and pulls up and you’re gonna have an amazing lifter.

So long as this person can hold it together in a contest, you’ve got a champion.

If only …

Those three things:

1. Strength
2. Efficiency of Technique when NOT under pressure (light weights)
3. Ability to keep it together when under pressure (heavy weights, contests, etc)

… Are very hard to put together. But that’s the sport. And it’s why I love it so much.

If you can get better in all of those areas it will spill over to the rest of your life. All of that mental strength and control is something you get to use outside the gym as well.

Becoming a better person, a better version of yourself ain’t gonna just “happen”. It isn’t good enough to know WHAT to do.

You have to find a way to practice those skills and get better at them.

With the right approach to The Art of Olympic Weightlifting that is exactly what you get: A strong mind in a strong body and the ability to do something that is cool as hell.

We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the Squats began to take hold …

And suddenly there was a terrible roar all round us and the sky was full of what looked like huge bats, all swooping and screeching and diving around the car, which was going about a hundred miles an hour with the top down to Las Vegas. And a voice was screaming: “Holy Jesus! What are those goddamn animals?” — Hunter Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

I knew we’d entered the land of monsters the second we’d walked into Average Broz gym. Multiple squat racks were loaded with up to, and well over, 200 kilos. Even the small guys (yes, not everyone is as large as Pat Mendes) were lifting weights most of us would be envious of. Every one of their 5 platforms was being dominated by, what must appear to outsiders, to be a collection of wild beasts.

The usual suspects were in the house – Pat Mendes, Rob Adel and Jared Enderton- as well as a number of other cats like my new friend, Tim, who is a regular reader of this blog, and was interviewed a while back about his experiences training with Broz (I posted the video at the bottom of this article).

I can tell you, as big as some of these guys seem on video, they are twice as large in person!

And then … there was this giant dude, bigger than the rest, with a shaved head standing by a tall squat stand talking to a woman about half his height. He turned and recognized me. Just then, I got “the fear” and froze. It’s always best not to move when you’re being stared down by a rabid animal.

But I was wrong … of course.

With a big smile that seemed oddly incongruous on a man of his stature, he reached out his hand and said, “It’s good to finally meet you in person, Nick”. And that was it. I was totally at ease.

John Broz has that effect on people. He somehow – through shear force of personality – makes the fact that he’s so large and physically imposing totally irrelevant.

Over the course of our time there, it was confirmed for me just how relaxed, genuinely affable, helpful, and all-around cool John Broz is as a man. He made our stay a great one, put on a fantastic meet, and is a real asset to the sport of weightlifting in America.

For my club, PDX Weightlifting, the Las Vegas Open will be a regular stop from now on.

Feels Oddly Like Home

One thing that Peter, Dave, Brandon, and myself all noticed was that the vibe of their place felt a heck of a lot like our own.

Sure, they have some beasts in there who could out lift all of us twice over. But there are also regular lifters like you and I. They’ve got a young kid, only 16, who shows real promise and has just an awesome attitude – I look forward to seeing him at future meets. And no matter who you are, if you come in ready to train hard, you’re welcome.

What you may not be aware of is that Average Broz is full of a great group of folks who spend every moment when they’re not under the bar goofing off and having fun.

We could totally relate to that.

They go for a heavy lift, and whether they make it or not, they are back to joking around. Lot’s of laughter, sports talk, video games on the iPad, etc. You might find that surprising if you’ve only seen their videos.

When it is time to lift, sure, it’s time to lift and you do. No complaining or whining, bitching and moaning. That kind of crap just isn’t tolerated.

And why would you, anyway? Going for it, lifting harder, more often, and with more intensity than anyone else IS fun.

The point is that if you aren’t someone who agrees that killing yourself in the squat rack is awesome, then you just don’t belong. But, regardless of your current ability, if you DO agree that hammering it as hard as you can and not giving up is THE way, then you’ll fit in great.

When you have a crowd of people who all love to work hard at the same things, there is always going be a lot of horsing around. It’s the Yin/Yang balance idea. The training is hard, very hard. So why not relieve the tension by running away from monkeys on an iPad?

What Would Naim Do In MY Body?

John Broz is an inspiring man. Just being around him makes you want to squat again … even if you just did for the last hour. He’s full of interesting aphorisms, advice, and motivation. His combination of hardcore training philosophy with a lighthearted personal demeanor is captivating, to say the least. So over the course of the next week or so, I’m going to put up a number of articles explaining to you some of the best advice I got from him. But before we do that I want to at least mention this one.

One of the things that he said is still rattling around in my head, and it relates to something that Peter and I discussed a lot on the plane ride home, is Broz’ emphasis on the mental side of “talent”. Having physical talent for a sport is meaningless if the right mental state isn’t there.

If you don’t already know, Naim Suleymanoglu was a Bulgarian weightlifter. (Bulgarian born, raised, and trained. But by ethnicity he was Turkish, and eventually competed for Turkey.) He has the greatest Sinclair formula of all time. (The “Sinclair” is a way of calculating how good a weightlifter is by comparing how much they lift with how much they weigh.)

He won three Olympic Championships, seven World Championships and six European Championships and earned 46 world records. – Wikipedia entry

What made Naim so amazing wasn’t just his physical capability and raw talent. It was his mental fortitude and control. Many other people on this planet have been born with great bodies for weightlifting. No one has ever done what Naim did.

The difference between a good athlete and a great athlete is determined between the ears.

During one of our conversations, Broz said, “What would Naim have done in my body?” That’s a profound question, when you think about it. It’s one you should ask yourself.

You may not have the physical genetics to match the greatest athletes on the planet (you might, it’s impossible to know for sure until you truly go for it), but are you doing everything in your power to maximize what you have? Are you using your perceived lack of ability as a crutch? An excuse not to give it your all?

If so, then you need to change.

It happens in my club all the time. Someone comes in with a certain belief about how far they can go. But after training with us for a while, they have to increase their goals! They’ve already surpassed what they originally believed to be possible.

You can’t ever know how far you can go until you’ve already gotten there.

John asked me what my goals were. I said I wanted to break the American Snatch record in the 35 y/o, 77 kilo class before I turn 40. He said, “What’s the World Record in that class? That should be your goal.”

What would Naim have done if he’d been born in your body? In mine?!

(Sounds like to plot of an awesome movie … )

No Matter What, You’ve Got to Squat

It’s undeniable. When you walk into Average Broz gym, you feel the uncontrollable urge – no, NEED – to squat.

We love squats at PDX, but holy heavens, the boys of Average Broz LOVE Squats. And it makes sense. If you ain’t strong, you’ll never snatch and clean the numbers you want to.

When I lost all my weight, the first thing to go was my squat. That caused my clean and jerk to tank.

When I started training hard again, I got my snatch back really fast. The clean and jerk has taken almost 6 months. And my squat is STILL not back to where it was when I was heavier!

This means that I am far more efficient now as a lifter. That’s the good news. I used to have a bodyweight snatch. Now I have a snatch that is 20k above bodyweight. I didn’t just lose weight, I doubled down on technique. I’m a better snatcher now than I’ve ever been.

But I’m hitting my limit. For me to add more weight to the snatch and clean, I have no choice but to get my squats and pulls back up.

“A guy who only squats 100k ain’t gonna snatch 120k.” — John Broz (paraphrase)

Olympic lifting is a technical sport. But it is also a strength sport.

There was a great young kid who competed this weekend at the Vegas Open. He came up with a (really fun) team from California. I think he’ll make a solid lifter in the future. But for now, he’s all technique and no strength. He ended up missing his last clean and jerks because he couldn’t stand up out of his cleans.

Now … I think that is GOOD for a rank beginner. (Kudos to his coach for a great job – all of his lifters looked very technical.) At first, you want to drill technique so much that you can do it all in your sleep. You want to be so damned efficient, that you are cleaning almost as much as you can front squat.

My book Samurai Strength is all about dialing-in the technical stuff as fast as possible.

But at some point, you’re technical abilities will outstrip your brut ability to honestly move that heavy-assed bar! This is still a strength sport.

There is nothing shameful about squatting first in a workout while you are still fresh. Squat, squat, and squat some more. Then work your technique. If you can, put them in different sessions. Squat in the first session, then Oly lift in the other. Do them on alternate days. Whatever. Just make sure that when you squat, you can focus on making it the priority, and you can go ALL OUT.

Of course, if you are like many lifters out there, you may be stronger than you are technical. If that is you, DON’T squat first. Work your snatch and clean first, then squat in your workouts. However, if you’re getting to a point where your technique is pretty solid, but your squat hasn’t moved, it may be time to start adding in some serious volume on the squat.

(The pic below is my lunch – chicken and waffles – that I ate before we got on the plane on Sunday. After a long exhausting weekend, it hit the spot!!)

How Much, and How Often Should You Squat?

As hard as you can, as often as you can.

Really … it’s that simple. Broz doesn’t have a white board where he puts the WOD (workout of the day). He doesn’t have a simple set/rep sequence for his guys that is carved in stone. That would miss the point!

The point is to do as much squat volume as you can possibly handle.

More Volume –> More Stress –> More Adaptation

We watched Broz’ lifters squat up to a max, miss, then re-rack the bar and try again and again. Then afterwards, they’d drop some weight and start doing 3′s. This could last quite a while.

A variation I’ve been playing with – which seems to be working – is the following template.

Squat Template

• Work up to a 1RM (rep max)
• Drop 20 or 30k off the bar and work back up in 3′s till you miss the 3rd rep, or you start to ‘grind’ too much. (Add 5k or less per jump)
• drop 20 to 30k off of your best 3RM, and do 2 sets of 5 reps. These last ones are all about speed and technique.

I do this 5 days a week. Back Squats on M/W/F, and Front Squat on T/H. But whether it’s front or back, the workout looks the same. I then finish with heavy clean pulls to a heavy single (not max, just heavy).

Yes, it’s taxing. Holy God it is taxing. But my squat is slowly crawling back to where it was, and I’m still a 77k lifter. My goal is to surpass my old weights on the squats in the next few months. I can really tell that my form and comfortability in increasing by leaps and bounds.

In the past, I’ve usually stuck with doing more sessions, all to heavy singles, with minimal back off sets. Because I own a gym, it isn’t hard to do 2 or 3 sessions a day if I just decide to. I LOVE that way of training, especially when I’m just doing the Oly lifts and front squats, with occasional RDL’s thrown in for good measure. It works miracles on the snatch!

But that kind of wildness is hard to translate to others with different situations, who’s jobs don’t have squat racks in the cubicles!

What I’m doing now is something I believe will work even you only trained 3 days a week.

I’ll keep you updated. If this squat experiment goes well (I’m going to also get some of my guys to do it), I’ll let you know.

Speaking of heavy squats, here’s Dave squatting a new 170k PR at Broz place the day after the contest:

The Contest

The entire reason we went to Vegas in the first place was so that Brandon could use it as a Nationals qualifier. Brandon decided about 3 weeks prior to the Las Vegas Open to move down to the 62 kilo class, as he felt he’d be more competitive in the long run.

That’s great … except that he had a little under 20 pounds to lose!! He’d been lower previously, but because of the holidays, his weight had been slowly creeping up. This extra weight gain was fantastic for his strength levels. But moving to the 62′s was going to be brutal.

On the day of the meet, Brandon was understandably nervous as to whether he’d actually made weight.

He did. He weighed in at 61.65 kilos! I think, realistically, if it weren’t for the dry Vegas air, and it’s tendency to dehydrate you, he wouldn’t have made it.

But he DID make it, and he did what he came to do. With his opening lifts, he qualified for Nationals as a 62 kilo lifter. This will be his first showing at Nationals, so it’s going to be a lot of fun. Now he’s got 6 weeks to regain his strength (well … 4 weeks plus a 2 week taper) while simply maintaining his weight.

My Masters lifter, Dave (in the 40-44 y/o, 105k class), also came down. He was in the opposite boat as Brandon. He didn’t have to diet. He ate his way into the contest! (Any time you can eat your way into a contest, you are far more likely to lift well. I personally prefer to live about 2 kilo’s under the weight class limit just to allow for this. Pizza the night before a contest is awesome!)

Dave had a great meet. He didn’t lift his best ever, but he came close. He hit a 90k snatch, and a 110 clean and jerk. He cleaned 115, but missed the jerk because of a wonky catch on the clean. No biggie. I think we’ll have him open at 90k on the snatch at Masters nationals this year. We’ll see. (He’s already qualified for Masters Pan Ams. And we all have plans for Masters Worlds in 2013. I hear it’s supposed to be in Italy … yes, please!)

Conclusion

We’ll definitely be making the Las Vegas Open a yearly stop for us from now on. Broz and his crew are all great, friendly, and inviting. They ran a fantastic meet.

Las Vegas is a draw all by itself, though we noticed that we were far more interested in spending all our time squatting and chatting with Broz, Pat, Rob, Jared, Tim and the rest than we were in drinking on the strip.

I mean, really. If you’re going to go all the way to Las Vegas, you gotta get your squats in!

Coming Soon!

Over the weekend I met a number of other great coaches (and athletes), including Derrick Johnson, and had some great conversations with them. I’m going to write up separate articles addressing what I gathered from these talks for you over the next couple of weeks. There’s so much that I couldn’t possibly get it all into one post!

Stay tuned for that.

And if you haven’t already signed up for my email list, be sure you do. I just revised and updated my Free eBook, The 7 Deadly Sins of Weightlifting – all you have to do is sign up and it’s yours.

Here’s that interview of Tim from few years back:

I’ve got a new article up at Breaking Muscle entitled, “I am Batman: How to get 10% Stronger in 10 minutes by Playing Dress Up“.

Here’s a quote:

My lifter Arron has a unique way of facing his fear. When he’s heading up to the bar, on the platform, he imagines himself a superhero. I’m not sure if he’s wearing tights and a cape in his fantasy, but given that Olympic weightlifters DO wear spandex, it’s a natural fit.

I know how funny that sounds, but it has merit. Think about what this does for a second. You take yourself out of yourself. You no longer are subject to the same old rules that govern YOU. You aren’t you!

Research has shown when students imagined themselves to be mathematics professors they scored higher on math tests. This suggests the act of attempting to think LIKE someone else actually helps you to think more like them.

The question still remains. What super hero are you?

Of the top ten most popular articles over on Breaking Muscle in 2011, my own article on the 7 Fitness Myths was #1. Given the amount of back and forth discussion it generated, I suppose that I shouldn’t be too surprised.

In fact, it prompted me to write up a formal response to some of the discussion on the Calories in, Calories out “debate”. (You’ll have to read it to find out why I put the word “debate” in quotes!)

Of the 7 Myths, it was #6 that got the debate a brewin’

6. What you eat is as important as how much you eat when you’re trying to lose weight.

Your overall health has a lot to do with the quality of the foods that you ingest. But, your overall level of fat does not. As I mentioned above, fat loss is about how many calories are going into and out of your body each day.

There is no getting around the basics of Thermodynamics. If you want to lose fat, you MUST eat fewer calories than you burn. Period. There is no other way unless the laws of physics don’t apply to you for some reason…in which case, you can eat whatever you want!

If the calories you eat are also healthy, then you may increase your progress some. You’ll certainly increase your health and sense of well-being. But, you can easily get fat eating too much healthy food.

Don’t believe me? Just ask a Sumo Wrestler. They eat very healthy food every day, avoid junk food like the plague, and yet are the poster children of obesity.

Calories in, calories out. Period.

And here’s a quote from my response:

The food you metabolize has an effect on the number of calories burned per day.

That means X affects Y!!

The quality of your food obviously has an effect on how you lose weight, but largely because it has the power to raise or lower your Y value … thus contributing to the calorie deficit. Quality affects Quantity.

The use of calorie cycling, and other types of macro nutrient manipulation work because they are a way of constantly keeping Y high. Your body is sneaky, it adapts! It want’s to lower Y. You can make your weight loss efforts work better if you do everything in your power to up your Y value.

But, none of that negates the basic equation.

I got a question recently from a reader about the differences he saw between the way I coach the snatch and the way Greg Everett’s lifters at Catalyst Athletics seem to be performing the snatch in their videos.

When I watch the daily video at Greg Everetts website I often see the lifters keep their shoulders above the bar (rather than in front) for the entirety of the lift and these guys seem to be very effective.

I appreciate the different body types will adopt different styles however this seems to be systematic throughout his lifters.

Can you please explain the potential pros and cons of such technique?

I originally thought about answering this readers very astute question via my Samurai Strength Video Series as it was directly in response to one of my vids. But, given the topic, I think I can be clearer in print.

I’ll answer the question directly below. But first let me give some background information which I think is relevant.

Quick Recap of My View of “Good” Technique for a Beginner

I split the pull into 3 positions that I want beginners to drill:

1. The Hip Position
2. The Knee Position
3. The Start Position

At the Hip Position, your shoulders are behind the bar, your legs are in a (roughly) quarter squat position, and you are prepared to explode. This is the last point you hit before you finish your pull.

At the Knee Position, your shoulders are forward over the bar, your hips are high, and your shins are vertical to the floor.

At the Start Position, your shoulders are behind the bar, your knees are forward, and your hips are low.

At all positions, I want you to have your heels down and your lats tight.

See my 3-part How to Snatch video series for details.

Best Practices and the Science of Coaching

Sometimes two coaches will honestly disagree on something they both feel to be fundamental. This is not one of those cases.

I don’t want to speak for Coach Everett, or put words into his mouth – I also don’t know exactly how he trains his lifters in his own gym. But I can gather from his excellent book on Olympic Weightlifting, and from the videos of his lifters that his methods are very much like my own.

There’s a reason for that …

MOST coaches methods are very similar to most other coaches methods. The are only so many ways a person can get a bar from the ground to overhead. Not all of those ways are equal. If we’re being generous, there are only a few that can be defined as optimal given the constraints of the human body – there may be only ONE way to do it. (Cue the theme song to The Highlander!)

Yes, you will see differences based on body morphology. But, for any one person, there will only be one (or at most a few) way(s) to lift that bar in a manner that can be defined as truly efficient.

That isn’t to say that we already know what the best way to do it is. We might, though the evolution of the technique in the high jump – from going over the bar tummy-first to going over the bar ass-first – is a good reminder that we don’t always know as much as we think we do.

The point is that the consensus of the coaching community at large on what technique a lifter should use can be seen as the Best Practices of the sport of weightlifting.

As a rule, I try to follow those best practices as much as I can. Most coaches do.

Here and there, we might get fitted into one camp or another on some esoteric technical argument that is fun to argue about – but has little bearing on the training of a beginner. However nearly all good coaches agree on nearly everything pertaining to what constitutes “good” technique.

In this case, the Best Practice is getting your shins vertical at the Knee Position. (See my Video, Spring Load and Explode! for more on why this matters so much.)

Where your shoulders are relative to the bar isn’t the point, it’s a side effect.

Pedagogy and the Art of Coaching

Pedagogy, or the art and science of TEACHING is where you will see the largest differences in style.

• Some coaches teach the snatch from the top-down.
• Other coaches teach it from the ground-up.
• Some teach the power snatch for a while and then switch to the full snatch.
• Others go full from day one.
• Some teach cleans first.
• Others teach snatch first.
• Some coaches have you learn a bunch of assistance exercises first, and break the lifts up and only later do the full lifts.
• Other coaches have you learning the full lifts right out of the gates.

In my book, Samurai Strength, I outline my own method for teaching a rank beginner which has these basic premises:

1. Learn the Snatch first
2. Top-Down approach
3. Over-Exaggerate the Key Positions to drill them into the brain better
4. Stick to the Ultra-Basics and Work them HARD
5. … Did I mention Stick to the Basics?

That’s MY method, but it surely isn’t the only one that works. Many do. The important thing for the beginner is to pick ONE method and stick with it until they are no longer a beginner.

So, if you get my book, ride it out for the full 12 weeks. If you have some other training manual, ride that one out.

A truly curious student of weightlifting will (wisely) get ALL of the training manuals and books written by the lot of us over time so that they can learn everything they can. But that doesn’t mean they can hop around from program to program and succeed.

You gotta stick to something.

What About That Shoulders Over The Bar Thing, Man?!

I coach lifters to “bow” over the bar quite a bit at the Knee Position when they are beginners (the photo at the top of this post is me doing exactly that). As I mentioned above, I like the learning process to involve a lot of over-exaggeration of the basics. I believe that people learn faster when they do that.

So it may SEEM like I’m telling you to do something that is pushed farther than the lifters at Catalyst are doing it. But that is because you are still in the early learning stage, and those lifters are not.

The Best Practices advice that Everett’s lifters are sticking to, and that I’m trying to teach you, is that when the bar is at the knee-cap, your shins NEED to be perpendicular to the floor.

It turns out that to do this correctly requires most people to raise their hips up pretty high.

If the hips are high AND the shins are back … the shoulders will poke forward over the bar.

How much this happens has a lot to do with how you are shaped.

• Short legs + long torso = shoulders right on top or barely forward over the bar.
• Long legs + short torso = shoulders farther forward and hips higher.

What I’m trying to have you avoid is allowing your shoulders to ever be BEHIND the bar at the Knee Position – that’s BAD. There are precious few humans on this planet who can have the bar at the knee-cap, their shoulders back behind the bar, and still have their shins perpendicular to the platform.

Not going to happen!

If your shins ain’t vertical, then that means you had to “zig-zag” the bar around your knees to get it there in the first place. You messed up the bar path and the entire lift is now less efficient than it could otherwise have been.

There is an argument that the higher your hips, the more active your posterior chain is during the pull, and therefore you are more powerful with a high-hipped, shoulders forward position (at the knee). But that is a secondary concern (and really doesn’t apply as well to short legged folk who struggle too much in that position). The primary concern is whether you have a good bar path or not.

A more advanced lifter does all this naturally. You don’t … yet.

I’m trying to get you there. To make an otherwise horribly unnatural movement become natural to you will take a lot of dedicated time and work. But if you can over-exaggerate the positions for a while, it speeds up the learning process.

Conclusion

Greg Everett and I don’t have a disagreement on this issue as far as I can tell. His lifters do exactly what I’m trying to get you to do: get your knees back as you pull the bar from the floor to your knee.

His particular lifters (each of which is unique) may not bow over the bar as much as other lifters do (like Jon North of Cal Strength), or as much as I’m having you do. But that is unique to both their own morphology AND relative to their advanced status.

The point isn’t to focus on how far over the bar your shoulders are. The point is to get your shins back. It just so happens that if you think of getting to the position I’m in at the top of this post, you’ll do that naturally and easily, and it will become ingrained.

Every lifter eventually finds what works best for them within the constraints of being human and their own body. There are only so many ways to do things and there is only so much wiggle room … but there IS some wiggle room.

BONUS: Case in point, here’s my own lifter Arron who doesn’t bow over the bar much at the knee, either. This was a PR, btw!

I’ve got a new article up at Breaking Muscle about tackling your New Year’s Resolutions – The Hard Way.

Every year, you make New Years Resolutions, commitments to yourself to reach goals you CLAIM are important to you. And every year, you fail to meet most of them – maybe all of them.

Think about what that means for a second.

If you added up all of the failed resolutions you’ve made over all the years of your life, and all of those you will fail to meet in the future, what would that leave for that poor person who is charged with writing your obituary? Not much.

A life of goal setting, and no action.
A life of false starts.
A life looked back on in disappointment.

I don’t want to come across as a Negative Nancy, but life is a finite thing. If you don’t accept that as fact and act accordingly then I promise you, you’ll wish you had.

I realize how dour that sounds …

Thankfully, in the article I go over the 3 things you can do to actually reach your goals this year.

My evil twin, The Plastic Ninja, doesn’t care about these kinds of things, but I do. I want you to succeed, come hell or high water.

Not for me, but because you owe it to your future self.

This last year has been a substantial one in the life of the Iron Samurai. The blog has gone from being a rather obscure one to being one of the most widely read blogs in the English speaking world on the subject of Olympic weightlifting, as well as being a platform for articles on (what I believe to be) the closely connected subjects of personal growth and self betterment.

I attribute that growth to a few factors. Among the most important is that I’ve stuck to my guns. It would have been rather easy to try and copy-cat the more successful blogs in the fitness industry. When I first started writing seriously for others I made the (reasonable at the time) assumption that readers would prefer that I stick to “How to” articles on general fitness topics.

I was DEAD wrong.

Thank God. It turns out that you and I are more alike than I expected originally. The more I focused on just writing about those things that matter to me most, the bigger and bigger this blog grew. From very specific technical issues on the Olympic lifts to articles about Zen and Depression, I’ve just gone with whatever seemed like something I’d like to read myself.

Everyone has the same advice: write what you know. But, following that advice is no where near as easy as it would seem from the outside. Writing just for yourself can be dangerously egomaniacal. Without a nod toward your audience, you aren’t really a writer.

However that doesn’t make the advice of being true to yourself less true! It’s just hard. But, heh, we like things to be tough around here!

This year, I wrote what I knew, what I cared about, and you all came along for the ride with me and it’s been great so far. Next year, I fully plan to take all of that even further.

But first, let’s take a look at a selection of the most popular articles from The Iron Samurai in 2011.

On Weightlifting

One of the greatest successes this year on a weightlifting-specific subject was my article Are Back Squats Really Necessary? in which I argued that most athletes – even most recreational weightlifters – do NOT need to back squat.

Teaching the back squat properly is a pain in the ass! Everyone wants to use too much weight, doesn’t get low enough, bends over too far forward, and turns the exercise into an ugly Good Morning. With beginners, this means I spend my entire evening having to watch and correct guys (it’s usually men) squatting like morons rather than focusing my attention on the platforms where the truly hard technical work is being done on the snatch and clean.

No thanks!!

Another popular one was my article, How to Combine CrossFit and Olympic Weightlifting. A great many of the lifters in my gym are members of one of the local CrossFit clubs. I’ve gotten rather good at finding a way to help people merge the two.

What’s funny is that these two activities are so remarkably different from one another, you wouldn’t expect people to want to do both … but they do! And, the fact that they are so different actually makes them a fantastic match.

In spite of their successful attempts to work together … Olympic Weightlifters and CrossFitters still have a love-hate relationship.

CrossFitters can find Weightlifters myopic, arrogant, and elitist. Weightlifters can find CrossFitters to be undisciplined, hot-headed, and impatient. And, they both have good reason to feel this way. Their descriptions of one another are surprisingly accurate! They don’t tell the whole story, of course, and they are gross generalizations that don’t apply across the board, but they represent a side of the truth that is correct more often than either of us would like to admit.

Mental Training and Personal Growth

Hands down, THE most popular article I’ve ever written on any subject was How to Manage Depression with Weightlifting. When I wrote it, I was convinced it would flop. (I’m really bad at predicting these things!)

I’ve suffered with depression all of my life. But unlike so many others I’ve found ways to combat it that have largely worked to eradicate the worst excesses of the disease from my life. Part physical, part psychological, and part philosophical, the piece struck a cord that still amazes me.

I used to believe that if life had no inherent meaning, that there was no point to anything. I know believe the opposite. Life has no inherent meaning, so it is incumbent upon us to create that meaning. We do this via loving each other, putting work into those things we are passionate about, and increasing the number of moments where we can feel some semblance of happiness and fulfillment.

In my 2-part article, Zen Mind, Big Snatch, I took a hard look at the two classes of lifters – distinguished by their psychological outlooks – that I run into most in my coaching: Dragons and Pearls.

Most lifters are one-sided. They are either aggressive, able to finish the pull hard, will go after anything, but throw the bar all over the place and miss the big weights because they can’t control the trajectory of the bar. Or, they are mellow, have nice (even flawless) technique with light weights, but won’t finish the pull strong enough on the big weights, and so they miss anything truly heavy.

The aggressive ones are like Dragons. The mellow ones are like Pearls. You don’t want to be either.

Or, more accurately, you want to be both.

You want to be a Samurai.

Other

I got married this year … and I was determined not to be fat at my wedding. So, I took an extreme step and put myself on what I (half-jokingly) called The Vodka Diet, which was my take on Intermittent Fasting.

Call me girly, but I had no intentions of being fat at my wedding. Unfortunately, with only a few months to go, that was exactly the situation I was facing. I needed to take drastic measures, measures most will find insane. And, because of my experimental personality, I took them! Lo and behold, it worked! I dropped a total of 25 pounds, and I’m now leaner than I’ve been in over 3 years. What was my solution? Drink more Vodka and Mocha’s; eat more Burgers and Bacon; and pay as little attention to detail as possible!

Another personal one that has practical applications was my birthday post, Reflections on Lifting, Coaching, and the Pre-Masters Class in which I discuss my first serious forays into Bulgarian-style training, ala John Broz; as well as a quick discussion of the 7 things I felt I’d learned up until that point on Coaching.

Here’s a bit about the lifting:

We maxed on the full lifts and squats on Monday/Wednesday/Friday, and maxed on the Power versions and front squats on Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday, then maxed on squats on Sunday.

No days off for 8 weeks!

During this period we started doing back off sets on the M/W/F workouts dropping down to 80% and doing doubles or triples and trying to slowly work back up in weight. We’d do that on all three lifts. We also ended up doing full lifts on 2 of the original power days sometimes going heavier than we were able to the day before. Lot’s of lifting, all the time. Finally, we tapered down for 2 weeks leading into the contest that we had this last Saturday.

With some variation, that is very similar to how we still train at PDX Weightlifting.

Samurai Strength Videos

I began a new series of video tutorials called Samurai Strength (which are companions to my new book of the same name).

This is an ongoing series where I take YOUR questions and answer them.

Here are two of the more popular ones.

The Hip Thrust:

My “Fab-5″ Snatch Drill:

New Book!

And last, but certainly not least, I released my first book, Samurai Strength. It is, ostensibly, a book about how to take yourself from not having a clue about the Olympic lifts, and then 12 weeks later being good enough to compete.

It’s based on the exact programs I use with the lifters in my own club. That’s what we do here. Someone comes in not having the faintest idea what they’re doing … and 3 months later they’re ready to compete.

But, fundamentally, Samurai Strength is (like this blog) far more than just a programming book – as those of you who have already bought the book and read it already know. Everything I do, everything I write is done in such a way as to help you to be a better person tomorrow than you were today. Not just physically, but mentally. We are all trying to better ourselves, it is the first of the great noble goals of ones life.

On that note …

Thank you for being such a loyal reader here. It means more to me than you know.