Gwen Weightlifting

Of course Olympic viewership is down: IOC knowingly lets doped athlete compete, killing credibility of Olympic Games

2022-02-15T23:32:00.010-05:00

If there is ever a time to write a snarky, jaded post about the Olympics, it is now.

The IOC is knowingly allowing an athlete who tested positive for a banned performance enhancing substance to compete at the Olympics without serving the required suspension.

The athlete is competing for the Russian Olympic Committee as Russia, the country, is essentially sanctioned from this Olympics as punishment for systematic doping.

The athlete is a minor. It should be criminal to dope a minor.

The IOC’s actions sends a message contrary to the Olympic ideals.

This action sends the following messages:

“ that it is ok to dope if you are in a marquee sport competing for a powerful country.”

“ that all Olympic sports are dirty and are selectively punished.”

This has a lot to do with how weightlifting is being treated by the IOC. Letting this athlete compete invalidates all the criticisms of weightlifting’s doping problems, as do we really know if weightlifting was any less clean than any other sport?

This has a lot to do with why Olympic viewership ratings are so low. The Olympics were supposed to be about seeing who the athlete with the best physical ability on the day of the competition was. Every time politics interferes with this test of mettle, the Olympics becomes less and less credible. The IOC either needs to follow its strict anti-doping guidelines, or it needs to let everyone dope to the same level in their respective gender class.

The more you look at the politics of the Olympics the more it seems that the best athletes aren’t always the ones competing at the games, so why watch it.

Enforce the Passport Rule- Master's Weightlifting

2019-06-02T17:24:00.000-05:00

To my Dear Master's Weightlifting Federation:

Over the years, you ahve been extremely strict enforcing rules - everything from feet touching the bar to pressouts. Yet, this morning at the 2019 Pan American Master's Championships, I was shocked to learn that American athletes who forgot to bring their passport were allowed to lift with only a driver's license as proof of nationality.

This is unacceptable for 1 reason only:

A DRIVER'S LICENSE DOES NOT ESTABLISH ONE'S NATIONALITY. A foreign National with a Visa or greencard can legally obtain a US driver's license.

In other words, a person can fraudulently compete for the United States by showing a driver's license of a state of which they simply are a resident.

Secondly, this is an International Master's competition. All athletes were literally at least 34.4 years of age to lift in this competition. This is not Youth Nationals. An adult should be able to follow directions. No exceptions, such as "they didn't know", should be made for such a critical rule.

Again, you cannot establish a lifter's ability to compete for the United States on a Driver's license!!! Not every state even is "Real ID" compliant with Federal law.

In conclusion, any athlete that could not establish their nationality before competing should be disqualified.

If we can't enforce this most fundamental rule, then why even check that people are even registering for the right age class, why enforce press out rules, why enforce costume rules... Establishing one's ID and national eligibility to compete for a country should be way more important than whether someone's foot grazed the bar.

Peace and Love,

Gwen

The 2018 World Masters Championships just revolutionized the weightlifting meet

2018-09-06T21:14:00.002-05:00

The 2018 World Masters Championships were held just across the city line of Barcelona, Spain in L'Hospitalet Llobergat.

The championships actually shutdown entries a few weeks early because the number of registrants was going to surpass 900 athletes. At the end of the day, somewhere around 900 athletes competed , making it the biggest World's ever.

The competition organizers took a unique strategy to managing the huge number of lifters. In some sessions, they used two alternating platforms for sequential attempts. Yes, you are hearing it right, a lifter would almost never take two lifts in a row on the same competition platform.

Here is how it worked. There was a platform A and a platform B. The first lift of the competition would start on platform A, the second lift on platform B, then the third lift on Platform A, then the fourth lift on Platform B...Lifts were done sequentially, not simultaneously. Surprisingly, this significantly cut down the length of the session, especially, when you had multiple lifters with the same lifts. Roughly, the attempts took half the time. This is even considering the fact that lifters did not lift at the same time. All the time that is wasted between loading attempts, re-loading attempts, athletes changing weights was saved with having the two sequential platforms.

2018 World Masters Championships Venue

I'm sure some athletes may not have liked lifting on different platforms and bars each attempt. However, there is a psychological advantage of lifting on different platform. For example, a lifter missed their first attempt, it may help them refocus by lifting on a different platform.

It also was an advantage for lifters who had very close starting attempts. Instead of a lifter waiting minutes between their first and second attempt, due to other lifters attempting the same weight on their first attempt, the wait was about half the time.

For the audience, it made the competition more interesting to view.

This novel idea may just revolutionize the excitement of the weightlifting meet. I encourage other major events to try it.

The only thing I would change is medals for snatch, clean and jerk, and total. Medals were given only for total. Look, there is only one world championship a year, and lifters have to train hard to compete for medals. There are enough entries to support medals in each lift.

So, yeah, I won the snatch, and I want a friggin' medal for it! ;)

Leveraging your invisible load

2018-08-09T20:31:00.000-05:00

The mind is a funny thing. The way we remember, specifically.

I have done thousands of lifts over the course of my life. I don't exactly catalog every single training lift I've ever done in my mind.

However, I am finding just from simple mental cues like looking at an old video, I can remember the exact feel of a lift at that specific time range of training. I can remember what my training sets felt like at that time - what I was power snatching for triples and how high I caught those snatches.

For Master's lifters or even lifters of any age who have suffered serious injury, you may find yourself in a sense starting over in lifting after a big hiatus. And, all that work you have done over the years is an accumulation of loading; it is what we call the "invisible load".

What I can recommend to you is to try stepping into lifts- mentally- that you have done before. This is the biggest advantage that you have over your less experienced competitors- having actually done more repetitions and heavier weights in the past.

So, basic tips: think of some of your best lifts, and don't just see them or watch them, actually feel the lifts again. Find yourself as the same person, that same moment in time doing that lift-- then apply it to the now.

Weightlifting shoe studies, and some physics

2017-11-24T13:47:00.002-05:00

Suppversity just did a great article surveying various studies on weightlifting shoes and effectiveness.

What is most amazing about these studies, is that almost all of them measured output variables that no one cares about.

For example, one study measured affect on joint angles. Joint Angles-- no, no, no! People who buy and wear weightlifting shoes care about 2 things - injury protection and LIFTING MORE.

How do we measure if a weightlifting shoe is going to help us lift more-- FORCE Output .

AND, how the shoe changes the distance of the bar from our center of gravity, such that we are able to lift more. This is sort of related to joint angles, but joint angles misses the mark-- I'll show you why, shortly.

So, if you're thinking of dropping money on a pair of weightlifting shoes, let's go over some basic physics:

1. Force = Mass x Acceleration
To lift heavy stuff, you must generate a force by accelerating a mass
2. Energie or "work" = Force x Distance
You create energy by acclerating the mass of the bar over a distance, such as when you pull, squat, or deadlift a bar
3. Torque = Force X lever arm distance x sine(of angle which force is applied, most cases its sine(90 degrees) which equals 1
Torque is the expression of a force that causes rotation. The longer the lever arm distance the greater the torque. If the lever arm is equal to zero, then there is no torque or, rather, you can spin something freely about its center of mass.

Things that make you lift More -- saving you from PR killers !

The oversimplified diagram in red shows a common technical mistake- keeping the bar far from the lifters center of gravity, increasing the amount of work the lifter needs to do to lift the weight. The green figure shows that keeping the bar closer to the lifter makes the weight easier to lift! Finally, the black diagram is a grossly oversimplified freebody diagram that, overall, shows that keeping the bar as close to the center of mass as possible will reduce unneeded torque on the bar, making it easier to lift. *note, toque generated in the lifter's joints is a different subject.

As shown in the cartoon above, if the bar is unnecessarily far away from your body's center of gravity, there will be a greater torque on the bar that you will have to counteract by applying even more force. This means , you can lift more if you reduce the torque because you will need to generate less force to lift the bar over head or to stand-up with it- as shown by the green figure. This is true for both olympic lifts, the squat, and the deadlift. The further away the bar is from your body, the harder it will be to lift-- AND the more stress it will put on your spine!

Note --In both cases, the lifter generates force by pushing their feet into the ground.

So, how does this relate to weightlifting shoes, 3 things:

1. A solid heel that minimally compresses will increase force ouput to the ground.

2. A shoe with a stable outsole -- toebox and heel --will also reduce energy lost from poor lateral stability.
-- many weightlifting shoe brands have solid heels, few have a stable toebox. This makes the difference between lifters with feet that barely move (good) and feet that wobble (bad).

3. A shoe with the right heel height will enable the lifter to keep the bar even closer to their center of gravity.
--- This reduces the torque arm

Now, you can measure these cumulative effect of these 3 items by simply measuring force and distance of the bar from the lifters Center of gravity (CG). As one example, Force can be measured by having a lifter lift on a force plate or load cell. The distance of the bar from the CG can be measured with optics , also, as one example.

Just for fun, I did an anlysis on a lifter using optics. $0 was spent on this 15minute study =0. The results, however, give you a good idea of what actual scientific studies SHOULD HAVE DONE.

The subject lifter's anatomy is as such their torso, upper leg, and their lower leg are all about the same length. That means, their tibia/fibia is about as long as their femur, and the length of their torso is about half the length of their entire leg (upper leg + lower leg). There are many lifters with similar body types, whereas a torso that is shorter than the total length of the leg gives a stability advantage in the squat position of the snatch and the clean.

They were asked to do a squat with the same weight in 4 types of foot wear treatments - 1 ) in wood heel Risto weightlifting shoes, 2) in plastic heel nike romaleos 3, 3) in normal sneakers or tennis shoes with almost no heel rise, 4) barefoot. Many on the internet would say that nike's are the best of the Plastic heel shoes and that the Risto's are the best of the wood heel shoes.

I did not take force measurements since the funding for this study was $0 and 15minutes ;) .

Optics were done with ImageJ software.

Note, the actual measurment lines in the software are not shown. Lines shown are for visual guidance.

The results were quite interesting. As expected, lifting barefoot kept the bar furthest from the center of gravity, which means lifting barefoot makes squatting heavy weights more difficult. It's also interesting to see the lifter's back is the most rounded when squatting barefoot. The tennis shoes and nike's were almost equal. The tennis shoes actually seemed to edge out the nike's with respect to distance from center of gravity, but the difference in camera angle may have contributed some error. The back angle looks better in the nike's than in the tennis shoes. The Risto sports weightlifting shoes had the best bar spacing to center of gravity out of the 4. The back position of the lifter looks best in the Risto's as well.

In terms of force output, this was not measured. The two weightlifting shoes would undoubtedly win out because of better lateral stability and less compressibility of the heel. The nike had a softer toebox than the risto, so it is possible that the softer toebox could equal bigger force losses. This would be a good follow-up study to do.

Again, the $0 15min study does have error sources* in it. What we can really get out of this experiment is that weightlifting shoes are far better than lifting barefoot and (the correct shoe) is better than lifting in tennis shoes.

UPDATE- one comment received is my oversimplification of the bar-lifter system. As mentioned above , this is a very over-simplifed analysis.

A more complete model would be seen by applying control theory and modeling the lifter in State Space.

This research paper does just that: Optimization of Barbell Trajectory During The Snatch Lift Technique By Using Optimal Control Theory Shahram Lenjan Nejadian, Mostafa Rostami and Farzad Towhidkhah Biomedical Engineering Faculty, Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT), 424 Hafez Ave

Here is a more complete description of the lifter's angles:

Snip from: Optimization of Barbell Trajectory During The Snatch Lift Technique By Using Optimal Control Theory Shahram Lenjan Nejadian, Mostafa Rostami and Farzad Towhidkhah Biomedical Engineering Faculty, Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT)

Here is a model in state space showing more appropriate non-linear equations to model the weightlifter during the snatch. A similar approach can be taken for the squat:

From: Optimization of Barbell Trajectory During The Snatch Lift Technique By Using Optimal Control Theory Shahram Lenjan Nejadian, Mostafa Rostami and Farzad Towhidkhah Biomedical Engineering Faculty, Amirkabir University of Technology (AUT), 424 Hafez Ave

The above isn't actually the full set of derivations. Basically, they do model the torque in the system looking at the Center of gravity of the bar and the lifter. They discuss optimization of torque generated by each of the joints. They discuss optimal bar paths, which --GUESS WHAT-- optimize the drift of the bar from the lifter's centerline (kind of like my crude little diagram above ;).

Overall, if we did a more complex model we could model the drift in technique relative to the lifter using different shoes. It's all similar principles.

We can posit that the over-simplified $0 15minutes study does show a benefit of wearing weightlifting shoes. Weightlifting shoes can help keep the bar closer to your center of gravity, hence , enabling you to lift more with less force - everyone's goal ! =)

The author has 0 ownership or affiliation with the 3 brands tested.

* error sources- variation in camera angle, repeatability of imagej software, order lifter lifted in each treatment. May want to consider doing additional bodytypes.

The science of Youthfulness: How to look like an ageless vampire

2017-11-01T15:54:00.001-05:00

I remember reading a chapter in a Deepak Chopra book about how aging is something we are hypnotized to do. As if , seeing the people before us age, we , ourselves, were convinced that this process was inevitable for us. It was as a pretty radical thought , that "what if I didn't have to age like other people? What if some of it was a choice?".

Well, that idea kind of stuck around in my head, something that I didn't revist much. Low and behold, I am now eligible to lift as a Master, I broke a World Record, and I find myself getting confused for my daughter's sister.

I offer some objective evidence: me before the age of 30, and me post physical age of 30, at about the same bodyweight doing even more weight for a double:

So, how did I get here? Why does my biological age seem to be quite disparate from how long I've been on this earth in my current form. It's both science and mindset.

A couple of months ago, I appeared on the Thrivalist podcast where we discussed this very topic with medical experts Dr Geanopoulus and world renowned strength and conditioning coach Ben Velazquez.

There are 3 biological indications of aging:

Nerve degeneration
Sarcopenia
Dynapenia

In non-technical terms, they mean: loss of muscle, loss of muscle strength, and loss of brain fitness.

Interestingly, through my weighlifting and engineering interests, I've unintentionally addressed all 3 criteria. These were adressed through strenuous physical and mental training as well as medically based diet and supplementation.

Unintentional ingredient to youth #1: Heavy mental and physical lifting
Olympic Weightlifting is the perfect sport to maintain muscle strength, muscle mass , and even nerve function. When you train in a programmed rhythm (see Soviet System for Weightlifting), you will be able to train harder AND your Central Nervous System will be able to recover from the training. This results in maintaining or increasing muscle strength and mass. It's also addressing the needs of stimulating the nervous system to ward off aging.

A key caveat here is that you must train strenuously. You must put some load on your organism to get a result. In other words, this is why the average person spending 15min on the eliptical machine is not going to get the same benefits as they are not stressing themselves enough.

Personal anectdote: I spent most of the summer in France doing engineering stuff. My training was incredibly erradic. But, you know what, I found away to drag myself into the gym, even if for only 20 minutes. Here's why: after about 3 days of not training, I could already see the detriment. This is inspite of the fact that I probably walked about 5 miles per day just going places. In other words, a walk back and forth to the market or the parking deck wasn't going to be enough stimulation . A short, intense workout was better than just walking.

Going back to the nerve degeneration prevention, both my lifting and engineering endeavors force me to really apply my brain. Believe it or not, studying for hours in my dorm room, built a capacity for me to get into the zone easily, and reach states of deep focus. Then, I went ahead and applied this, unintentionally, to my lifting. There were times that I was better at attaining mental flow in my workouts, and ,other times, I was better at acheivning mental flow in engineering endeavors. Now, I kind of feel like I can do both equally. I would thinkthat this is similar to people who meditate often and, as research has shown, become good at controlling their mental states.

Unintentional ingredient to youth #2: Maintaining hormonal indicators

Having trained as a high performance athlete, my goal is to keep certain metabolic indicators in a specific range with rest, diet, and supplementation. Optimal hormonal and metabolic levels improves training, and, apparently, this also has spillover affects of staying youthful.

Now, all of my diet and supplementation based on going to a doctor that can actually read bloodwork. The diet and supplementation plan is designed around supporting hormone levels with in a healthy range. Bloodwork is one of the most direct ways to see if you have made a measurable affect on yourself after diet and supplementation changes. For example, your doctor might prescribe taking magnesium to affect testosterone levels, or amino acids to improve growth hormone. Amino acids and magnesium are both naturally occuring and completely legal subtances to take.

Secondly, extensive allergy testing can help you focus your diet and also take unnecessary stress off your immune system. You can get extensive allergy testing done to determine to which foods your body reacts better. In theory, if you avoid things that your body has allergic reactions to, then this should further assist your body in maintaining a good hormonal profile.

Now, I know there are people who say "a calorie is a calorie" and to "eat what fulfills your macros". And, to that I say, it also depends on your genetics: my mustang can run on 87 octane, but, tell you what, I can get 35mpg if I fill it up with 93 octane. Additionally, there are things like micronutrients, trace minerals that come into play-- the nutrient profile of 10g of carbohydrates of sweet potatoes and 10g of carbohydrates of white rice are going to look quite different. This can affect minerals which can affect hormones.

How this all works together

It is much simpler than it sounds-- train hard a few times a week, use your brain often, and eat what your body responds well. Many champions will tell you that their results went down once they stopped caring. So, you have to care about your training as well. View it as something as essential as drinking water in the morning.

https://engineering.mit.edu/engage/ask-an-engineer/must-all-organisms-age-and-die/

What we can Learn from Icarus , the documentary on Doping

2017-08-12T23:16:00.001-05:00

Some of you may be thinking, “why should I watch a documentary about a guy who got paid by Netflix to experiment with doping. Screw that guy”. At least, I came across one article on the internet with that title. Well, the documentary goes quite a bit far beyond that, and there is much we can learn from it.

I was actually pleasantly surprised by the level of suspense the documentary elicited from the real life events unfolding during its filming.

Cyclist/director/doping guinea pig - Bryan Fogel of "Icarus". Photo from LA Times

What starts off as a documentary on “ prove this system of testing athletes is bullshit” , quickly takes a steep u-turn as a documentary on the Russian “State Sponsored” doping system. Bryan Fogel, the director/subject of the movie and, also, a high level amateur cyclist, begins the documentary as using himself as a test subject. He applies the same doping protocol as Lance Armstrong to himself with a team of experts. Bryan Fogel also enlists the head of the Russian doping lab, Dr Grigory Rodchenko, to consult on his doping protocol such that Bryan will be able to pass all tests. Again, this is all under the guise of doing a documentary to prove that competing as a doped athlete is possible and is happening, or as Don Catlin, founder of the UCLA Olympic Lab, said in regards to cyclists on the Tour De France “they were all doping, every single one of them.”

As the documentary progresses it occurs around the same time WADA launches an independent doping investigation into the Russian Anti-doping authorities. Suddenly, Grigory finds himself in the midst of the scandal, whilst another Russian doping official winds-up mysteriously dead from a “heart attack”. Bryan Vogel is, now, Gregory’s only contact outside of Russia who can help him. Fogel brings Grirgory to the USA, where Grigory is at risk of being assassinated by Russian authorities and also at risk of being prosecuted by the US Government. Long story short, Grigory alleges that the Russian doping system goes all the way up to Putin with “99%” of athletes doping.

Interestingly, parallels are drawn between the book “1984” and Grigory’s situation of “doublethink”. Some parallels are also drawn between Grigory and Edward Snowden, with the USA and Russia in opposite roles. Grigory talks about “doublethink”, an act of having two jobs that effectively cancel eachother out- creating sensitive tests to catch dopers and having the responsibility to protect top athletes from testing positive.

Ok, now for why weightlifters or any drug tested athlete might care about watching this movie:

What did we learn from Bryan Fogel’s experience?

After doing several months of doping, Bryan enters a major amateur race in France. In part due to a mechanical failure on his bike, he finishes lower than the year before when he competed 100% clean.

What this shows is doping is not a magic bullet. His experiment was to show whether doping would make him an overnight Lance Armstrong—and it didn’t. There are still many factors that make someone a winner- training, length of doping, dumb luck, genetics.

Recent doping positives at national level weightlifting competitions proves that point. There have been multiple cases of athletes placing far outside the medals who are caught doping. Many of these athletes started off competing in CrossFit competitions, a sport which does not have the same resources as USAW to randomly test athletes. In effect, they took a crack at weightlifting, used drugs, and still registered a less than mediocre performance.

2. Why none of us are really that surprised that Russia had state sponsored doping?

Doping has been around before it was doping.

The use of substances to enhance performance was institutionalized long before there was a WADA. It is something that is engrained on a cultural and government level in certain parts of the world.

There are stories* that Soviets initially learned to dope from top American lifters back in the 1950’s! Now, in the 1950’s steroids weren’t illegal in the US, and there was no WADA. The first drug testing didn’t even occur until the 1968 Olympics, and it was highly primitive and non-systemized compared to today.

While steroids gradually became something that were looked upon with ire in mainstream America, it was the Soviets who took it to a state sponsored level and perfected it. It can be argued that doping followed the ideological models of each country- capitalism and socialism. In America, it’s something that has become privatized with wealthy elitists having the resources and access to carry it out in a highly systematic level. In Russia, its something the state had carried out and distributed to the greater part of its best athletes.

Further, Soviet state interest in the advancement of sport was tied to the Soviet-USA space race in the 1960’s. The Soviets, particularly Vrobiev, studied weightlifters in order to find training and recovery systems to apply to Cosmonauts for surviving space flight. And, in a Soviet philosophical context, if it works then it is good.

Really, drug testing was not as organized as it is today enabling cultural norms of doping to persist

As for Drug testing and the formalization of what is doping, drug testing didn’t really start to get more sophisticated until the 1990’s. So, when you hear about a legacy of doping going back to 1968 in “Icarus”, it wasn’t the same context we know today.

For example, in the 1980’s, the IWF and the IOC actually had two different doping lists, and before major competitions, it was announced which list was going to be used for testing. Some substances banned by the IOC were not banned by the IWF. Up until about 1983, Testosterone was not even a banned substance by the IWF. Today, exogenous testosterone is a banned substance. Yet, female to male transgender athletes are allowed to take exogenous testosterone, while non-trans men over 40 are not allowed to take exogenous testosterone despite probably having legit medical reasons to take it. So, here, even today, we have cognitive dissonance surrounding permitted doping.

Anyhow, WADA wasn’t formed until the late 1990’s. And, it wasn’t until around the early 2000’s, after the BALCO scandal, where WADA declared that an athlete could be sanctioned for new unknown-substances even if they weren’t explicitly called out on the banned substance list.

In summary, there are long standing cultural dynamics and general gray areas around this subject that may explain the persistence of doping at an institutional level.

Does this documentary change our attitude towards Lance Armstrong ?

It is a complex situation. According to public interviews Lance Armstrong made, he doped for years in a highly organized fashion. He doped using private resources. At the end of the day, he even beat athletes from Russia who were likely under a state sponsored program at some point in their career. And, according to Don Catlin, everybody was on drugs.

We don’t really know how far down the cycling ranking list we have to go to find a cyclist that wasn’t on drugs. Note, Lance's stripped wins were never re-allocated to other cyclists on the Tour de France...

Does it change our attitude towards the recent re-tests of 2008 & 2012 Weightlifting Olympic medalists who got popped?

The interesting thing with weightlifting, is that there is far less money to be made in weightlifting than cycling. Athletes who are state sponsored are more likely to be doped because the state will pay out large sums of money for Olympic medals. On the other hand, athletes from countries where there is little state compensation for medals are less likely to dope.

So, popping like half of the men’s 94kg class then giving the gold medal to someone in the B session, might still be putting medals into the hands of someone who equally doped or maybe doped slightly less. It’s underwhelming. At the same time, there probably are actual weightlifters at the Olympic level who did not dope.

Sadly, the IOC has punished weighlifting for these slew of positives by taking away Olympic slots at the 2020 games. Its almost unfair for the IOC to single out weightlifting and reduce spots when other sports may be just as dirty, especially any sport that brings in money like cycling.

Should you still bother using Soviet Training methods as a clean athlete?

Of course! Because doping or not, their system still works. Every weightlifting system out there is just derivative of the Soviet system. Its unavoidable. I've had scores of clean athletes use it and improve. You can read the "Fundamentals of the Soviet System: the Soviet Weightlifting System" here to learn why.

As Bryan Fogel shows us, doping is a factor and not a magic bullet. There is no substitute for a solid training system.

What does this say about American weightlifters’ views on doping?

Thanks to USADA and USAW, we actually have an anti-doping system in America.

American weightlifters don’t like the idea that someone in the session they are lifting against could be doping.

Still, its complicated. It is a lot like the documentary , also on Netflix, “(Dis) Honesty: the Truth About Lies”. A low level of dishonesty is almost acceptable, because there are always grey areas. Big cheaters are not acceptable.

For example, there seems to be sympathy towards a low level of doping, especially when it blurs lines. Our last Olympic bronze medallist had once served a 2 year doping sanction for high levels of testosterone/pregnenolone/dhea allegedly from taking DHEA. This doesn’t phase most American lifters because , well, the attitude is that whatever may have caused her high levels of testosterone/etc is no comparison to whatever the Russians must have been on-- DHEA isn’t stanazolol. It also helped that she actually had a chance at an Olympic medal, and we’ve waited 16 years for one. (it’s complicated, more info here).

On the other hand, look at the case of Charis Chan. She showed-up out of nowhere to break the American snatch record in the 53kg class, previously held by Olympic Champion Tara Nott. Public documents show she was suspended for metabolites of trenbolone. People seemed almost happy when she tested positive for trenbolone. The level of mocking on social media was probably due to the fact that she was sanctioned for a substance that Americans view as a “real steroid”. And, She came from the fitness competition circles, having competed at crossfit regionals before lifting at USAW competitions. Note, that the Crossfit Games has also suspended her for the same amount of time as USADA.

Then, look at the case of Pat Mendes. He was the first athlete ever to be banned for Human Growth Hormone** in 2012.

Pat Mendes - photo from USA Today.
The sinlget he is wearing was made for the 2011 USA Pan AM Games Team by, then USAW sponsor, Risto Sports

There seeemed to be no outrage when this occurred, probably because he came from weightlifting. And, weightlifting people don’t view HGH the same way as stanazolol. A few years later, he tested positive, again, while competing for Brazil**; it was met with a big sigh from the US weightlifting community.

So, here we have a very complex model of Americans' views towards doping.

Where do we go from here?

Superficially, it would be simple if no one took drugs ever.

Yet, it's not so simple because there are grey areas and banned substance lists can change.

It seems unrealistic for state sponsored doping to stop overnight, especially, when success at the olympic level can correspond to presidential approval ratings****.

Really, to see substantial change, there would have to be both short term incentives for competing clean and short term financial disincentives for doping for all athletes of every country.

Until then, we might as well be engaging in doublethink.

* rumors that Coach Ivan was told while studying weightlifting and training in the USSR during the 1980’s

** https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/sports/olympics/story/2012-04-16/weightlifter-pat-mendes-suspended-hgh/54326514/1

*** https://apnews.com/46235b0ab71944ec8b7301c072fc8e54/pan-am-medical-head-says-8-positive-tests-so-far

****Grigory suggests that Putin wanted a good showing in Sochi , as it would go on to increase his approval rating, giving him the political capital to invade Crimea.

Thrivalist Pocast: Mental Flow and Getting to the Zone

2017-08-02T21:11:00.000-05:00

Most people will never work hard enough to know their true mental and physical work capacity.
If there is one thing weightlifting has taught me, is that you can always train harder. If theres one thing going to engineering school has taught me, is that you can always study harder. Both have there rewards. you will never know how strong and explosive you are if you don't put in the work. And, you will never know how smart and intelligent you can become by putting in the brain work.

I've found, probably like many people, is that training hard and getting in the zone elicits the same mental states as working intensely with your mind.

I can remember when I first started lifting as a kid, how much I hated squatting. It had nothing to do with the movement or my strength, I hated doing sets of 5. Somehow, even after feeling like I was going to die after the first set, I would manage to do 5 sets of 5. Recently, I took several weeks off while working in Europe this summer. My coach programmed me 5 sets of 10! Day 1 my body was so wobbly, I felt like I lost all function of my nervous system. Day 3, I could do this work out all day long. It was like I had never taken time off. We adapt.

Of course, just being able to physically and pyschologically push yourself through workouts is just one stepping stone of developing your mental toughness. It's not getting to the Zone.

Seemingly, after putting in thousands of hours of training, getting into deep mental focus comes like a snap of the finger. I reach this state without even consciously conjuring it. Time slows down. A set can feel like an hour even if it only lasted less than a minute.

And then , there's the big pay-off. When you are able to get to the untouchable, invincible state. That state that is topped off by reaching the "white moment", during PR lifts, as Yuri Vlasov called it. I can say many times I have hit that invincible state perfectly and alwam or the left the gym or the competition feeling like I could have lifted 20 kilos more. Being able to turn it on every single competition or every single workout is something, without fail, is something I aspire to.

Similarly, I have hit the same states in engineering and in work, even in writing. It seems like, one night as an GA Tech undergrade, magic happened somewhere around 2AM. I was studying for my Jet Pro (Jet propulsion) test, and something happened. Suddenly, I could just write out equations with out even thinking. I could solve problems without consciously thinking. It just flowed out of me. It was something I had never felt before. In some ways it was similar to some of the best national meets I had had, that feeling of being able to do anything in that moment, complete focus. Though the feeling of not having to consciously think about work flowing from my hands was more like playing a musical instrument, than executing a lift. Though it was close.

I've found over the years, probably like many people who both lift and work in fields that require a lot of analysis and "thinking work", that weightlifting would make putting in the workload to study or simply work easy. And studying and working on papers, presentations, analyses would make weightlifting training easy. Its like this beautiful synergistic cycle.

Heavy mental stimulation makes it easier for you to train and to focus. And heavy, physical training loads make it easy to study and work hard in mentally taxxing fields. Both, seem to make you able to reach new levels of workload you never thought possible. It will pay-off in 2 ways: 1. you will be able to accomplish far more in less time than you ever imagined, and 2. you will hit those white moments from time to time.

So, don't be afraid to work hard. Don't fear that you aren't smart enough or athletic enough. All you need to know is that all talents must be developed. And, putting in the work over sustained periods of time will yield you almost magical results.

Because .... There's nothing better than feeling like you are invicible and have wings (Vlasov).

You can hear more on this topic by dowloading the August 2017 episode of the Thrivalist podcast on itunes.

Is your fitness Guru a Master of Sociology or a Master of Science?

2017-05-30T22:33:00.002-05:00

I probably shouldn't have posted. I probably should have ignored it.

But, there it was staring back at me on Facebook. It was clearly a sensationalistic post. Something that a social media expert posts just to get a reaction.

It was just a step too far for me to ignore. Someone said weightlifting is unsafe for the "general population of adults", and he was unqualified to say it.

Counter sensationalistic statement: Non-Olympic lifting expert says weightlifting is too dangerous for you, the general population. And, he just called you "old".

Many people walk into to my gym, thousands really. I don't always remember everyone, especially if they are just in for the day.   I do remember when people quit inexplicably.

I remember the first couple times I met Ben Bruno. He was quiet, mild mannered. He just graduated Columbia University with a degree in sociology. He apparently was in the area to visit family. He seemed intent on learning Olympic lifting. I was hung-up on the thought that someone who just got a degree from an Ivy League school in Sociology wouldn't be out applying it. It was also around the time I was having deep discussion on sociology with a non-weightlifting friend of mine. And, then one of my lab mates at MIT was starting long discussions on Milgrams experiments and somehow tied that back to us aero-astro students. So, it was oddly synchronistic, and it oddly stuck-out.

Anyhow, we had a good rapport going; at least, I thought. Then, a few days later, like that, he disappeared. Trying to be an honorable person, I sent him a message or two checking if he still wanted to lift. I don't recall hearing anything back, and we were facebook friends.

A few months later, I saw an article on Bulgarian split squats by some guy working with Mike Boyle. And, it was authored by a Ben Bruno-- the same guy that was just in my gym.   Well, good for him; Mike Boyle was probably one of the biggest names in New England for fitness at the time.

The only problem with the article was that, well, I've trained in Bulgaria. I have literally trained with Olympic Gold medalists, World Champions, and European champions, and guess what, none of them did split squats. This must have been 2010-2011, which was still the height of "Bulgarian system hysteria", where any clown with a computer wrote fake or exaggerated internet lore of what the Bulgarian system was.  Yes, it is not my job to be the internet police, but sometimes for the greater good of mankind (ie the truth on Bulgarian training) , you need to speak up. As it struck a cord, I had to comment with a link to actual Bulgarian training we filmed.

When it comes to facebook, being a "friend" does not necessarily mean anything other than you may have some tiny shared interests in common with so-called facebook friends. I have more facebook friends than I can count.  Periodically, people I haven't seen in years pop-up. I'm sure in the last 7 years a handful of Ben Bruno statuses popped-up showing his latest training conquest. So, with maybe 3 data points, it looked like Ben had climbed some social fitness ladder-- from Mike Boyle to Chelsea Handler. And his image looked like every other "fitness guru": a thick looking guy in a red shirt with his arms crossed with some facial hair. It's a masculine pose saying, "hey, I know what I'm doing, follow me". Anyhow, good for him. I'm happy anytime someone succeeds, why not.

So, here comes data point number 4-- a twitter snapshot, not even a post, talking, implying Olympic weightlifting is not fit for the general population. If we look at this from a data perspective, Mr Bruno's twitter post is factually incorrect. There's insufficient data to support his comment.

There's far more data to say most adults will get sports injuries from playing recreational sports like soccer, basketball, tennis, or softball.   You don't even need to google it-- just walk into any physical therapy office-- most adults are being treated a bad knee from playing a pick-up game of basketball, or hurt their shoulder playing softball in their office league, or tore their ACL during ski season. So, with the logic in Ben's tweet, most adults should never play basketball.

So, why would someone make a, perhaps, exaggerated statement? Maybe because they are a sociologist, and their expertise lies in building a social media following. Maybe because it is a sensationalistic statement. Its like saying the "Yankees suck"-- 50% of people will agree , 50% of people will want to kill you -- either way, you get a huge reaction.

Yes, normally, I would ignore sensationalism, but, today, I couldn't. Because, effectively blacklisting a sport- that has done so much for so many-- just to get a twitter reaction is wrong. I mean are strong women like Chelsea Handler being denied the opportunity to reap the benefits of snatching and clean and jerking because they are not "young" or not "men". I've trained people from 65 year olds to 8 years old in lifting; everyone can learn to Olympic lift if taught by a real coach.

And for those of you thinking, "well, why Olympic lift when you can just do other weight training" , my dear friends, you are missing the point. Olympic weightlifting does what no other barbell or machine training can do - it improves your reflexes. It uses your sympathetic nervous system*, which means you will be faster and more explosive, and more able to react quickly without thinking in stressful situations.   It makes you better at every other sport. It makes you better at normal everyday things like avoiding a car accident, saving your child or dog from falling, catching a ball...even cooking. Aside from that, it's more efficient at building bone density and muscle than using cute little dumbells to "Bulgarian split squats".

But hey, what do I know, I'm just a rocket scientist. Maybe Ben can give me some advice on how to be more sensationalistic.

Peace & Love

*Reference: Fundamentals of the Soviet System: The Soviet Weightlifting System

by Gwendolyn Sisto (Author), Ivan Rojas (Author)

Learn how weightlifting improves your reflexes

Closing Time-Every new beginning comes from some other beginings End

2017-05-27T22:51:00.000-05:00

"Closing Time. Every new beginning comes from some other beginings End"
- Semisonic, "Closing Time"

Today marks the end of an era, the day Risto Team (USAW weighlifting club) shuts its Maine training center and, some of its members, goes on the great American voyage to Florida. Yes, the team is trading one Vacationland for another vacation land of sorts--reverse snowbirding this summer.

We, the weightlifting team, leave riding a synchronistic wind of change. We did a lot right here in Maine, and now its time to go and spread the good word of weightlifting elsewhere.

When we came to Maine, there was no lifting in Maine. Ok, there was a powerlifting gym in Westbrook, Gilly's Gym in Waterville, but nothing you would call a dedicated - heart and soul- weightlifting gym. We were here long before crossfit dotted the land with boxes.

When we first came, it must have been over 25 year since a weightlifting meet had ever been held in Maine. So little lifting was going on, that around 2010, Maine LWC was absorbed into the New England LWC, probably where it really belonged.

I first came here lifting for Coffee's Gym. I lifted again for East Coast Gold. Then, finally, I competed for Risto Team, which only made sense after a weightlifting oasis was built in Eliot, ME. Interestingly, Coffee's Gym also closed this weekend, sadly , for good.

In 2011, we held the first weightlifting meet in about 30+ years in Maine. The legacy we left for Maine doesn't end there, there's a lot more:

1-We had the only National medalists from Maine whilst here
-- Me, Gwendolyn Sisto, too many gold, silver, and bronze medals at national level meets to count. Yes, I am dead serious, I lost count
-- Gwendolyn Rojas- two National Youth Championships Golds (she only collects gold medals apparently)
-- Emily McNally - youth national championships bronze
--Amylynne Frankel- National Masters Silver

2- We trained olympic medalists right in Eliot, Maine
- Maryam Usman, trained for several months with us in Maine, Olympic Bronze Medalist
- Luz Mercedes Acosta, also trained a few months with us in Maine, Olympic Bronze Medalist
- Diego Salazar, trained multiple, multiple times with us in Maine, Olympic Silver Medalist
-Honorary mention- Dmitry Klokov, Olympic Silver Medalist, did his photo shoot for his klokovequipment.com launch right in our gym. He commented, "this IS a weightlifting gym" , probably the biggest honor we could get from him.

Klokov Russian-izing my start position at Risto Sports in Maine. Me, I'm like, "dude, I learned my starting position from Cuban National Coach Alfredo Gonzalez" Who did it better Cubans or Russians? lol

3- We gave Maine the only people from Maine on National teams of any kind
- Gwendolyn Rojas competed at the Youth International invitational, and, ofcourse, brought home gold to Maine.
- Gwendolyn Sisto, World University Team whilst being a Maine resident.
-- funny story, at the time, I was going to MIT- Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The friggin' intern at USAW actually changed the as entered national meet results to read "Maine Institute of Technology" , because she couldn't believe that a person from Maine would go to the real MIT. Not sure if that was a Freudian slip on her behalf or says something about what she thinks of Maine-iacs.
- Gwendolyn Sisto , World Masters Games medalist
- Rob Morrison, World Masters Cup Champion

4- We gave Maine possibly the Only Maine person to ever hold an IWF world record
- Gwendolyn Sisto 2017 World Record Holder for 35-39, 63kg

5- One of only 3 2008 Olympic Trials athletes across every Olympic sport from Maine
- Gwendolyn Sisto, 53kg, 2008 Olympic Trials

6- Regional impact
We trained tons of people from across the globe right here in Maine. We, especially, had one of the best teams in New England. Honestly, most people came up from the Boston and Rhode Island area to train with us. There are many people who trained with us, only to start their own teams or keep lifting at a team closer to them.

In other words, there are several teams in New England that wouldn't have existed without us, because their coaches or key athletes- whether they like to admit or not-were trained by us.

Here's some of our contribution to the New England lifter National/International medals:
Melissa Siegel- Masters National Champion
Jessica Weisman - World Masters Champion, World Masters Games Medalist
Honorable Mention- Kaiti Bennet, National Collegiates Medalist
Other people I am probably forgetting and will be pissed at me because I did
People we distanced trained in secret, and I can't disclose ;)
A bunch of people that will probably be added to this list soon (Russy, Giorgio Armani ;)

7. Local Eliot/ South Berwick impact
We trained an entire cohort of Marshwood high school wrestlers in Olympic Lifting. These kids went on to win the state champions, multiple kids were all-Americans.

When I asked them why they didn't tell other kids from adjacent school districts about us, one kid notes , "we don't want our secret to get out" . Good for our local school district, not so good for business lol.

8. We increased the diversity in our locale by probably 200% everytime we had a training camp
I am so serious when I say Maine is probably the whitest place I have ever lived. I remember dropping my daughter off to her first day of Kindergarten thinking, "I see blonde people". Everyone is either some kind of white- like Northern European white- or Native American. Oh, and almost all the white people claim to be part Native American. I am not making this shit up. Good thing the "racial appropriation" police haven't taken up shop in Portland, Maine as the have in Portland, Oregon. Ok, there are "black people" in Maine, just almost all of them were born in Somalia. Maine is home to many Somalian Muslim refugees. And, we all get along =)

Maine people seem to have been exposed to so little diversity that they tend not to be racist at all and find new cultures as a novelty. This is also a sentiment that a "real Maine" person relayed to me. (Apparently, if 3 generations of your family weren't born here, then you can never really be "from Maine", thus I must seek out a "real Maine" person's opinion for legitimacy.)

Getting back on topic....
Just look at our Team photos. Completely unintentionally, we are probably one of the most diverse teams in the USAW if your consider our diversity make-up versus diversity make-up of our location.
On top of that, we also tend to train a lot of athletes from across South America - Ecuador, Colombia, Guatemala, Panama , Cuba, etc. We brought Dr Herrera here. And of course , we've hosted the entire coaching staff from Kazakhstan(central Asia).

Outside of Olympic Medalists, we've had Youth and Junior World Champion Neisi Dajomes lift in our center, her coach Mayra Hoyos, Pam AM champions Johnny Andica, Elio Guerra, and Carlos Andica lift with us. And, Rocio Navarro of Panama.

So, everytime we have a big training session, you will probably find the highest concentration in York county, Maine of Asians, Latinos, Black, Jews, LGBTQ, and other so-called minorities right in our gym. Again, I don't know how it all worked out this way, it just did, and I think its cool.

In a nutshell, we did a ton for the state of Maine when it comes to establishing a weightlifting legacy. I'm not sure anyone in Maine actually recognizes this. Although people in the area seemed to appreciate us, most never took substantial time to hang out with us. Ok, they came to a seminar or two, and, yes, I do appreciate this. But, dude, we were RIGHT HERE. WE were right in the same state. For the first time, there were actual weightlifting people driving distance to you, and you only stopped by a handful of times. I mean WTF people? You know, when I was a kid, I would have died to have lived so close to a gym that was regularly pumping olympians in and out of its doors. Do you know how many people have approached me with the same comment, " Ohh you're leaving. I'm so sad. I should have came by sooner."

On the positive, though some lifters are leaving Maine, some remaine holding the torch in their crossfit boxes and garage gyms. I hope, for Maine's sake, USAW-elite-level lifting will carry-on, carry-on.

As for Florida, I know you guys already have a few good gyms, and you actually have weightlifting as a high school sport. I'm sure there's room for one more. I think the space coast can use a pure Olympic lifting beacon. It's a big state. Glad to be here lifting unattached for myself.

My non-lifting thoughts on Maine:
Maine is an awesome place. It is gorgeous , in all 3 of its seasons- Fall, Winter, and Summer (we don't have a spring...its either snowing or hot during "spring"). The coast is incredible. Its so majestic; it has character with every jagged, rocky-edged cliff. We have lots of pine trees and moose. Though I still haven't seen a moose. I never lived anywhere before where access to nature and free-nature based activities were so readily available. In winter, you can ice skate on a pond or ski down a little hill. The summer and fall the ocean is rife with activity. You can go to some revolutionary war fort or 17th century house or park-like forest and just enjoy walking around in nature, peaking at the ocean or the river with your dog. You can really have unfettered, free adventures. If your backyard is big enough, you could go shooting right outside. And, the place abounds with organic and locally grown food. Traffic is nil, or at least incredibly predictable. The tourists will never learn that there is zero traffic before noon and after 5:30 on a summer Sunday afternoon. Maine is utopia----almost.

So, I will miss Maine.

I need to leave though. We were just kind of stagnating in Maine. Like, we were at a good level, and if we wanted to see a revolutionary change in our progress then we needed to change. Secondly, there is a metaphysical force sweeping me to Florida , or , maybe, France. And, that is something for me to write about another time, perhaps, when you are more ready to hear it.

Maine, It's been good. See ya around bae.

Breaking the World Record- 2017 World Masters Games Championships

2017-05-03T12:46:00.003-05:00

I am back in America after 2 weeks between Auckland and Dubai! I am coming home to America holding the World Record in the Snatch in women's 63kg at 35-39, the Games record in the snatch, and a medal. I also broke 4 Games records in the process.

Another highlight was an Australian coach telling me that my article on UCL rehab helped save his lifter's bid at the Australian Junior World Team; it's pretty cool to do a good deed just through writing.

Breaking the World Record and becoming the undisputed best snatcher in the world is a pretty awesome feeling. There are many champions and fewer World Record holders. So, I feel I accomplished my top goal for the championships.

It was a hell of a journey getting here...I had many trials and pulled it all together at the last minute.

The Journey

My journey started back in September. I had just done 80/100 at the Olympia Cup in Vegas, narrowly missing 83/104 weighing around 66-67kg. 2 weeks later, I attended the 2016 World Masters Championships as coach. The top 63kg did 168kg; the top 69kg did around 174kg. Then, I hear the World Masters Games are in New Zealand and the World Records are weights I've lifted more than in the past. So, why not throw down and try out this whole master thing?

***Know what you are*****

Training was going awesome….until Christmas. It was somewhere around December 27^th, I had the week off before starting my training for the World Masters Games. A dear friend of mine invited me to go skiing. He’s an expert skier among other things. I, on the other hand, can count the number of times I’ve skied.

I get to the mountain, Its dark. Its two for Tuesdays night skiing. My friend is late. I wind up getting on the wrong lift; I couldn’t even see where the lift let off because it was past the top of the mountain. It was so dark. It was like the worst theme park ride ever: I’m alone on this slowly moving, rickety wooden thing, barely held in. Its bobbling along, swinging in the lonely darkness, and I have no idea where its going. I just sit in it, holding on, hoping I don’t accidently slip out to the pile of boulders 50 feet below.

After realizing that I put myself on a near deserted triple black diamond slope in the dark, all I can think is "If I kill myself getting down this mountain, my coach is gonna kill me."

Anyhow, being alone, I ski the parts that are reasonable (*cough* no death turns) and hike down the actual triple diamond parts. Well, way to jump into it after a year off from only the second time ever that I ever skied on an actual resort hill.

So, I make it down alive, and there is my friend. I tell myself, I am going home before I get killed. But…I drove all the way up here and spent money, I'm not going to have a chance to go skiing again until next season. .... Anyhow, my friend convinces me that I should stay and let him coach me.

We get off the "smaller" lift which is still fairly advanced because, apparently , this ski area only has “difficult hills” open for night skiing.

At the top of the hill, we are standing to the side, ready for me to be coached. Suddenly, snow boarder plows straight into my friend, taking him out at the heels! This was not a good sign. I had never skied on something that was so icy and fast before. I cautiously ski back and forth on the hill.

He tells me to speed up, that I’m an ATHLETE, WHY IAM I BEING SO WEARY. GO Faster! I start going faster and faster, and take more risks. Then, I try an advanced maneuver and wind up digging the tip of my left ski into the hill, pulling my groin. This was a verifiable “oh fuck moment”. Worst part was, I still had to get down the mountain! Only way this was going to happen is if I skied down or hiked- the insult to injury.

I drove the whole way home with plastic Market Basket bag full of snow wrapped around my thigh, telling myself, “I am not a skier, I’m a weightlifter! I am not a skier, I’m a weightlifter".

I didn’t snatch over 70 kilos again until late March. The funny thing with the groin injury is that I could clean more than my front squat without pain. Sometimes front squatting anything over 90 kilos didn’t hurt—it would just kill me the next day. I rode the fine line of training sore and training injured, everyday. Two steps forward, one step back.

The battle between the negative self talk – “how could I fuck this up”-- and positive affirmations commenced.

Aside from skiing, there were some other interesting trials and things going on in my life, that, now, lead me to the Florida Space Coast where I will be nowhere near a ski hill!

***which weight class am I?****

With the new weight class rule-- that being lighter has no more advantaged-- being a 69 held less and less appeal. I have, yet, been able to attain a bodyweight of heavier than 67 kilos and change. I lifted at the 2016 American Open just to post a qualifying total. weighing around 66kg. I saw that the top 63’s were barely touching my snatch attempts from 2014 nationals , my last competition as a 63. And, now, with my injury, a world record was much more realistic as a 63 than a 69.

Well, should I have been more focused on winning than world records?
I don’t know. There are fewer world record holders than world champions. I felt it was only worth competing for a World Record. If you have a World record, you can undisputedly say you are the best at something in the world. If you are a world champion, you may have just been the best that day. It’s the same at any level in the sport- youth-senior-junior-master. Maybe I’m impatient and didn't want to wait to start breaking records.

****Strategy and How I actually lifted***

The startlist showed that 63kg and 69kg were going to be competitive weight classes with top entry totals at 177kg and 204kg. As always, in seniors and in masters, the 75kg weight class looked like a cake walk compared to the lower 2 classes. With my leg healing, the strategy was: lift 63kg and close the session, pull everything together last minute, definitely get a world record in. What we didn't know and couldn't have known is that the 69kg at 204kg total did not show-up to weigh ins.

This was the first meet that I had lifted as a 63kg in almost 3 years. It was my first meet, ever, as a Master. Judging from the competition field, the strategy was to open light then take larger jumps. My nearest competitor had lifted at several major championships as a Master (Pan Ams, Nationals) and appeared to be a veteran crossfitter. Actually, it seemed many of the 35-39 US lifters had been crossfitting longer than olympic lifting.

Snatches went really well. They were so easy. What's strange is that I actually went to snatch each lift versus just go for a power snatch. This is actually a safer move since a full snatch, technically requires less energy. I was fluid. I put down a solid 73kg. My competition had a lower lot number so she went first, I followed. We went to 76, so she went to 76. She took the weight. So, we increased my second attempt to 77kg, a lift I’ve done a million times, just not since September. This lift would break the prior world record by 2kilos. I nailed it.

Then we went to 80 . I actually didn’t know that my competitor missed 80kg. I got overly excited and cut my pull. It was easy. I had more in the gas tank. Honestly, if I am to "Monday morning quarterback", I think I should have just went to 82kg, because I have done 77-82kg jumps a thousand times, and I might have approached the bar more focused and made it. I did get to close the session =)

Clean and jerk strategy was tricky. The safe strategy is to open light, secure the medal, do 3 good lifts, put pressure on the competition. The risk strategy would be to open light then take big jumps. l had not cut weight in years, so we were not going to open with my "real opener" in the clean and jerk. Also, judging from the competition, there was a good chance that the safe strategy would work out for the win.

In the warm-up room, I had so much energy that I felt tired. On the platform, it was a different story. I FELT AWESOME. I muscle cleaned 85kg. If I was lifting 69 without a weight cut, I probably would have opened 10 kilos higher, no joke. My 90kg was a toy. I would say the say the lift was a 9 out of 10; I caught it a smidge forward. I think I had spaced my feet a little too wide in my start positions.

My third was a debate. I wanted to save it and jump to 105kg, because that was the World Record. My coach, on the other hand, didn’t want to take too huge of a jump being I am barley back from injury. So, we took 95kg, and, like my 80kg, because it was a light weight, I feel like I rushed my set-up was and I popped it forward. Again, just sayin, I really think we should have done a repeat of my 13kg jump at the American Open.

Call me unrealistic-- because I don't know what the words "realistic" and "impossible" mean.

At the end of the day, I really wanted to get a world record and be certain that a I medaled. It turned out, my total was even higher than the 75kg gold total and I would have won 69kgs. I guess that’s why my lifts were a World Record breaking performance- because they were good enough to win the next two higher weight classes!

It also seemed that my story was compelling enough for me to be interviewed on World Masters Games TV. I really feel that I captured the hearts of the audience. I described how I broke the world record after a near career ending injury. Let me tell you though, if I knew what my competitors were going to say, I TOTALLY would have been like "I've only been competing for 2 weeks as a Master, and this is my first major event EVER as a Master"- that would have been funny as hell. #satire #icanthelpmyself

There was a nice barbend write-up on this video. I would say, more than "its never too late to start", you can always leverage what you have done in the past to excel at new ventures in life.

The interviewer also asked me about competition training and "rituals" , so I explained how Risto Sports factors into all of that. They cut out my blurb on Risto Sports (it was germain to his question, and just 5 seconds!! I swear lol) so hear it is: I wore 2 different pairs of Risto shoes, a Risto singlet, Risto warm-up suit, my new book on the Soviet system has key strategies for training for competition, and I wore Risto wrist wraps in the process of securing the World record, a medal ,and breaking 4 Games records. Side note, there were a ton of Australian and New Zealand lifters competing in Risto Singlets or Shoes.

Additionally, USAW had a great write-upnas well; it is great to see the organization celebrate successes https://www.teamusa.org/USA-Weightlifting/Features/2017/May/03/Team-USA-Wins-More-than-50-Medals-at-World-Masters-Games

A lot of people ask me if I’m happy. Yes, I am very happy that I won the snatch world record. And, I look forward to destroying all the other records, and I would like to do across a few weight classes.

***What was it like lifting at the World Masters Games ***

The World Masters Games is recognized by the International Olympic Committee. So, I guess its kind of like lifting at an age specific Games such as the Youth Olympic Games or the Universiade. There are many good things yet also many areas that could have been improved.

The filed of play was great. The competition platform had a perfect surface finish. The lighting was bright and shined-in from the sides. The audience area was nicely cordoned off by World Masters Games banners. The audience seemed fairly into the competition. They seemed pretty behind me, which was awesome to feel. (When I got my medal, I was actually announced as "Gwendolyn Sisto of Australia" if that says anything). The Officials were very professional, helpful, had a great attitude.

**Things that could have improved***

The first thing that could have been improved was training hall. The venue had ample training areas that could have been used. There seemed to be about 3 different areas just by the competition area that had training platforms built into the floor. It would have been ideal to have a section of training hall platforms right at the venue.

Ok, so maybe for some reason the organizers couldn't make that happen. The solution was not that great: basically, an email was sent out with a lift of places offering training, many asking a fee per session, many with only limited time slots. We were basically on our own to figure it out.

This is problematic as New Zealand is on one of the least populated continents in the world. So, most people would be traveling long distances to this competition. Most people would need to acclimate. Hence, out of any place in the world, New Zealand is one place where would want to have easy to figure out training timetables and locations all posted and ironed out before the competition.

Some of the rules were inconsistently applied. For example, there is some rule at Masters that you can always move up a weight class the day of weigh ins; however, the organizing committee sent out an email indicating that the final verification of entries was when the final startlist would be published implying no further changes.

Then, there is the legless singlet debate. One lifter in the women’s 69kg 35-39 wore a legless singlet and was made to change it or be withdrawn from the competition.

This is the most laughable thing I have ever heard for two reasons: 1—We weightlifters have fought for the right to wear legged singlets and weightlifting suits with sleeves, why would anyone want to wear a retro legless singlet? AND 2- how could legless singlets ever be illeagal? Prior to the early 90’s, there was a rule that singlets could not cover the thighs.

My dear people, do you see how backward the situation is? The weightlifting community is willing give up its right to have legged singlets and some officials in the IWF are now forgetting that legless singlets used to be the standard mandated for decades.

As a side bar, of course legged singlets give you an advantage because there is less friction on the singlet fabric than skin. But, hey, people do crazy things for style. I’ll probably start making legless ones at some point.

Another improvement area was the disconnect between the world masters games regulations and how the weightlifting competition was run. The World Masters Games website was pretty clear that coaches needed to register for credentials. Really, only athletes needed to. The weightlifting was run much like a normal Masters meet- the athletes were given a coaching pass. If there was more than one athlete per country in your session, then you totally got shafted on getting a coaching pass if you had a higher lot number. However, the warm-up room was so spacious, that control on passes wasn't that strict. So, it seemed everyone got to bring their coach in the back.

*****Drug testing**********

Drug testing went home at like 5 o’clock. Like, no shit, they literally didn't test anyone in the evening sessions day 7. WADA, never around when you want them to be.... bahahaha.

Did Texas's UIL just say its ok for teenagers to Dope?

2017-02-27T21:18:00.003-05:00

Editors note: Let me first start this post with the following background. I work with, know, and am friends with many LGBTAQ people. This includes transgender people. I am willing to accept anyone who treats others with kindness and respect. Likewise, it is still important that we talk about the how we can make sure that everyone has the opportunity to compete in sport, while being fair. It is better to resolve conflict than to let it fester.

In the world of the IOC and WADA, taking a steroid hormone like testosterone is considered DOPING. There are now penalties for up to 4 years of suspension for taking testosterone among other hormones. Likewise, in some very limited cases, an athlete is allowed to take male steroid hormones if they satisfy a "therapeutic use exemption" (TUE).

Recently, a teenage wrestler who was born a female and is taking testosterone, a male steroid hormone, to transition to male, won a girls wrestling division in Texas.

A brief synopsis of the story is such:
Mack Beggs was transitioning from their birth gender of female to "male". They wanted to compete in the boy's division. The UIL (University Interscholastic League) dictated that they had to compete in the division of their birth gender. At the time they were competing, they were openly taking steroid hormones to "transition to male". This created a lose-lose situation where 1) Beggs had to compete as a girl, even though they were transitioning to male, and 2) the female athletes had to compete against an athlete with an unfair testosterone advantage or a "doped-up" athlete.

The UIL clearly prohibits doping such as taking of steroids. This is evident as the UIL clearly references WADA in anti-doping policies, therefore, they were inconsistent with WADA guidelines on handling trans-athletes and doping.

How transgendered athletes on steroid hormones are supposed to be addressed
WADA's policy, to paraphrase is such: basically, a trans athlete has to take "hormone therapy" for two years, then they can compete in the "gender" division they desire. It requires multiple medical exams and documentation as well as getting an approved TUE. The athlete is allowed to compete in the new "gender" only after 2 years of therapy. (one can argue, these guidelines are insufficient especially for male-to-female athletes as strength gains for a male during puberty are not erased by taking female hormones. This is another topic).

Balancing eachother's natural freedoms
On one hand, sports are so important to our culture because they help connect our physical reality to our spiritual reality. It takes both heart, intellect, and physicality to be the best athlete.

Certainly, for a teen dealing with gender identity issues, it is probably a good thing for them to compete in a sport.

On the other hand, the UIL created a condition where an athlete was allowed to take steroid hormones, out of accordance with WADA guidelines, and still compete against clean athletes.

In the real world of professional and olympic sports, this is calling permitting DOPING.

In sports involving explosive strength like wrestling, track, and weightlifting, steroids can provide a huge advantage. Just look at the re-tests of the Olympic drug tests from the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games of weightlifters. Almost all the weightlifters who tested positive in the re-tests won medals. In effect, there is a documented competitive advantage of taking steroid hormones.

What the UIL should have done- be creative!

There are many ways we can give trans-kids the opportunity to compete whilst keeping the playing field fair to everyone else. Here are some options:

Option 1- Probably the least safe and practical- everybody dopes
If the UIL is going to let Beggs take testosterone, then they need to let every other female athlete that Beggs was competing against take the same steroid hormones. And, to make it even more fair, make sure their hormone levels are testing in the same range for the same length of time.

Option 2- What Beggs requested - compete as a trans-F-to-M Boy!
Have Beggs follow WADA guidelines for female to male trans athletes, then compete in the boy's division. ( note: This might also cause some inequities. Boys, like girls, have a natural hormonal cycle. Because Beggs is taking synthetic hormones at prescribed dosages, they may actually have an advantage of having level testosterone hormones year round)

Option 3- Create an un-gendered division
Create some sort of "open division" where anyone can compete. Maybe have males "transitioning" to female compete against females transitioning to male.

Option 4- Probably the most equitable but least feasible option
Create more than 2 gender divisions. Do you know a tiny percent of the population is intersex? There are people born with only an X chromosone. There are people born XXY (true "hermaphrodites"?). There are men born with vaginas. There are women born with penises. And, then, of course, there are transgender people who feel, as Caitlyn Jenner put, " were born with the soul" of the opposite sex.

Any of the 4 options presented above would have been more fair then what went down this weekend in Texas.

(Side thoughts: Why did the UIL let this problem fester in the girls division. Would it have been more scandalous to the UIL for Beggs to have competed as trans-boy in the boys division? )

Conclusion

The UIL did none of the above. If anything what they did was lazy. They forced an athlete in transition, to compete as a doped-up girl, when Beggs really wanted to just compete as a transgender-female-to-male boy.

By failing to take an equitable stance on Beggs' situation, the UIL created an environment where Beggs had an unfair advantage over their competitors. If anything, the organization violated its own procedures on doping by allowing a trans athlete to compete in a manner inconsistent with WADA guidelines. As the UIL references WADA in their constitution, they should have simply enforced that Beggs to file a Therapeutic Use Exemption, complete all medical history documentation, and take hormones for a minimum of 2 years per WADA guidelines. Then and only then should Beggs compete and compete in the boys division.

UIL's antithetical actions made a mockery of the sport. By not following their own references to WADA guidelines, they sent a message that "its ok to dope". Because of their ( perhaps cowardly) actions, clean athletes were denied their rightful placements and Beggs was put in the awkward position of competing as a doped up athlete. Basically, the UIL created a Lose/ Lose situation for all the wrestlers, including Beggs.

Final thoughts to the angry mob
Remember, this situation is due to adults failing kids. If anyone wants to be angry, then be angry at the UIL.

References:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/highschools/meet-the-texas-wrestler-who-won-a-girls-state-title-his-name-is-mack/2017/02/25/982bd61c-fb6f-11e6-be05-1a3817ac21a5_story.html?utm_term=.48bd07586e97

http://www.uiltexas.org/site/search?cx=006910494062867778790%3Aaazkbtwv1gu&cof=FORID%3A10&ie=UTF-8&q=doping&sa.x=0&sa.y=0&sa=Search

https://www.uiltexas.org/files/constitution/uil-ccr-section-1207-1210.pdf

Goals and your athletes

2017-02-05T23:09:00.000-05:00

"You will find yourself in a place where you want it more for them more than they want it for themselves. ...when you do for them what they should be doing for themselves, you create entitlement and dependency rather than empowerment"
- Matthew Kelly, "Resisting Happiness"

The above quote is from the book Resisting Happiness. It's helped me realize that you can't want something more for your athletes than they want for themselves.

Do you know what your goal is? How hard are you willing to work for it?
Photo by Gwendolyn Sisto. 2016 American Open. Go to www.ristosports.com/blog for more photos

Many times, people walk into to my training center asking to be made into a champion. Yet, are they willing to go all the way and make the sacrifice. Most of the times, athletes seem content to train hard for a solid 6 months. Somewhere around 6 months, many start complaining that they are too tired to go out on weekends, or that coach told them they can't go hiking on their day off because it will make them too tired to train the next day.

My biggest flaw as a coach is that I expect too much of people. That I take their words of wanting to be a champion at face value. Hence, I expect them to want to be the absolute best they can possibly be and aim to inspire them to move in that direction. I assume that they want to be pushed in the direction of their goal, because that's what they said they wanted to do.

This goes back to doing my thesis at MIT. Every few weeks, I would meet with my thesis adviser. I loved meeting with her, she was so smart and we could talk for hours (if it wasn't for the fact that she was equally busy). Anyhow, I would bring my latest draft, and , indeed, it would be much better than the last time. But what would happen was, although, I would get affirmation that I improved, I would also get an, " ahh I'm, sensing more chapters" or "this is good, now you just need to flush it out more".

It was a wonderful , beautiful, seemingly unending torture. There was a point where I wanted to write something really good, and I also wanted to balance that with level of effort to graduate. Well, with the inspiration of my advisor and other researches in the lab, it really pushed me in the direction of writing a 150 page thesis ( the average in my major was around 75pages?). But, you know what, I like being an over achiever. And, it still bothers me when I open up my thesis and see some tiny grammatical errors, or I think of how I could have further developed one idea or another. Art is never done.

I've found for athlete retention that this is not a good approach . If I am going to self reflect, I have been through some difficult trials in life. So, when an athlete tells me something is too hard, my empathetic reaction is, " Yes, I know, and you can do even more". And, many people don't want to hear this.

Here is what I run into with many athletes: when they come to Risto Sports, they want to do the hard program, they want to get better. We tell them what they can achieve . And, after the first macrocycle , every single person improves. But, for some, something happens- they quickly realize they don't want to sustain this same level of effort to keep getting results. Some are happy just to have lifted at nationals- scratch that, most are just happy to have trained enough to go to a national meet, and even better if they win a medal .

The problem is most will not tell you this. Ok, you might say, ''this is my job as a coach to check we're on the same page". But, if someone is paying us to train them for predetermined results, then we will train them as such.

It's up to the lifter to say, " I want to lift fewer days" or " I'm ok with only improving less than the projected forecast".

Instead, some just quit, and complain that we were too mean.... because we trained them them too hard , and they didn't have enough fun.

This situation is a complete contrast to international lifters who train at Risto Sports. Most will train with no complaints about not going out enough on weekends. Though some may whine during training, most will just complete the program regardless. And, they seem grateful for the results. It's important to note that many of these athletes are paid to train and get paid based on yielding results. (I feel like these observations are somewhat opposite of a Millgram experiment I read about- ha)

So, what's the point of this whole article?

Its a cautionary tale for both lifters and coaches.

Advice for lifters:
Be clear about for what you are paying your coach.
- Is it just to increase your total enough to lift at a national meet?
- Is it just to get a little better at lifting so you can win some trophies at local meets?
- Are you just doing this to learn how to lift and get in shape?
- Is it about truly pushing yourself to see how far you can go in the sport?

AND , do your goals match the level of effort you are willing to put in?
- Be honest about how many days a week you want to train
- Be honest about how important your social life is to you
- Be honest if you like to continue doing other sports - like crossfit, kayaking, hiking,...

AND, Lord forbid your goals actually change, or your desired level of effort changes, then:
- Tell your coach!
- Quitting or switching teams isn't going to fix this. It's just as easy, probably more beneficial to you, to have this conversation with your current coach than a new coach you have barely worked with.

Advice for coaches:
Ask more than once what the new lifter's goals are. Make them flush it out as much as possible.

Be clear about how much effort it will take for someone to reach a goal
- if the level of effort talk seems to scare your potential customer away, then offer them back-up options that they may not be thinking of

Remember, it's not your job to want success more for the athlete
-If they are not doing the heart-emotional-mental heavy lifting as much as the physical heavy lifting, then they need to step it up, not you
- Your job is to inspire

Check in with the athlete after every macrocylce about their goals for the year

If your athletes are not responding to inspiration - ie they're not putting their heart fully into the training, and whine often, then:
- Instead of acting like their over-zealous parent and pushing them, its better to pull them aside and ask them to re-evaluate their goal/level of effort ratio
- Give them options. Come prepared with a back-up plan that might meet their social life needs with reduced results

Finally, a Harvard study showed something like 70%+ of the time people act irrationally, that it is hard wired into us. Sooooooo.... Good luck!

Thoughts on being more than just one thing, and why it may scare people

2017-01-02T00:20:00.003-05:00

I'm tired of people telling me that I do too many things.

I'm tired of people telling me to pick a direction, because I'm pretty sure I'm aimed in one.

Its happened more than once in the last few months.

Is it wrong to want to be good, even great, at more than one thing?

Whatever happened to being a "Renaissance man"?

I'm gonna go out on a limb and throw in a pop culture reference. I think of the movie Divergent. Actually, it was a series of like 3 movies. Anyhow, the whole point was there were people who were "divergent" because they didn't fit well into one type of mold. Everyone had to take a test when they were 18 to see which of the 5 career categories they best fit into. People who fit into all 5 or had no strong bias for one category over another were called "divergent" and were stamped out of the system. SPOILER ALERT: the heroine unlocks some occultish device which reveals lost knowledge, that the true goal of the society was for everyone to be "divergent", for everyone to one day be able to equally do any of the 5 careers.

Call this confirmation bias, but I kind of agree. What fun is it to be just good at math? Or just good at writing? Or just good at one sport? Can't a person be even great at more than one thing?

I think back to the great artists of the Renaissance- such as Michelangleo and Da Vinci. Leonardo Da Vinci is known for painting the Mona Lisa. The funny thing is, he was so much more than a painter, he was so much more than an artist. He was an engineer, an architect, a pioneer in anatomy. Sure these things are different and related at the same time. To paint people well, it would help to understand anatomy, even if it meant dissecting cadavers in secret when the practice was considered heresay. To design an incredible building, it would help to understand architecture, and it would help to understand mathematics. This could lead to being able to think like an engineer- he made the first sketches of ornithopters, and he made sketches of gliders, well ahead of his time. Michelangelo was arguably just as multifaceted. He was a sculptor, a painter, an architect, and a poet. He was a perfectionist and mostly a self-taught painter. Again, his areas of expertise were similar but slightly different.

So, many people want to put me in a box, and I'm sure this happens to many other people too. To some, they want to see me as just an engineer. To others, they want to see me as just a weightlifter. To others, they want to see me as just an author. Some want to see me as just a coach. Some want to see me as just a weightlifting shoe innovator, etc ,etc, etc.. And I wonder why?

To some extent, society reinforces this. I see it every time I get interviewed for a news article. It unnerves the interviewer, because they see a news story going in too many directions if they can't just label me as one thing. Many want to reduce a multi-dimensional story into a 1-dimensional narrative, something simple and digestible.

For some people, its easier for them to categorize you if you are just one thing. It makes them feel warm and fuzzy on the inside to be able to think, "yep, this person is this category. They belong with this group of people. Done. " . Some people even seem to feel unsettled, maybe to the point of fear, when they can't neatly and simply put someone cleanly in a box. Usually, these types of people do not like uncertainty. Though, what can I say, you can't please everyone.

For some, they genuinely think doing more than one thing will prevent growth and expertise in any one area. And for that, I appreciate their concern.

Still, I really think there are some people in this world that really cannot go their life doing just one thing. And, maybe people like me are just a tiny percent of the population, and , well, I think the world needs us. Its like that little bit of saffron you sprinkle on rice to get that something extra.
Saffron costs more per ounce than gold; I can live with being saffron.

Goals, goals, goals, it's all about goals

2016-12-12T21:29:00.000-05:00

I just got done with the American Open. This was the first time I went to this meet just to do a total, and not necessarily to compete. For me, being a competitor, it was a weird feeling.

Regardless, I had clear objectives for the meet, and I was not about to let something like my ego get in the way of it.

Here were my goals:

1. Qualify for the 2017 World Master's Games in April 2017
- 2 lifts, that's it. 1 good snatch and 1 good clean and jerk. That is all I need
2. Compete for first time in 2 years at a National Meet
3. Actually talk to people
-- not kidding, 90% of my competitions, I'm so focused on winning that I never get to actually talk to my friends or network.
4. Stay healthy

Stretch goals
1. Do up to 80%
- This was the preset limit for this macrocycle**. No maxxing out, no going above 80%

Super stretch goals
1.Use Jedi mind tricks to convince coach to go heavier and win a medal
- hmmm, might be counter to my goal of peaking in April
- note to self, lift more such that my 75% is the winning total at all national meets

My goal for 2017 is to win the World Masters Games and to break all the World Records.

I actually never really thought about lifting as a Master. To be honest, when I found out that the World Master Games were in New Zealand, I was like, "sign me up!". Let me tell you, I want to go and see the "Hobbits" in New Zealand so bad. You know, I just spent 3 days in Orlando and could care less about dropping $100 to see Mickey Mouse or Harry Potter at the theme parks. Now, for the chance to see the land of the Hobbits and Lord of the Rings movies, that I will take any excuse to fly half way around the world. The actual sets of the Shire are still there!*

Now, the only qualifier in the qualifying period for the World Master Games that I was eligible to lift in was the 2016 American Open. I was simply too young to compete at any of the other qualifiers. The last thing I wanted to do was to show-up at the American Open and just train through it. I am in a part of my macrocycle where maxxing out would just mess things up.

Personally, I am a competitor. Having me go to a meet to not compete is insanity to me. It actually took a lot of discipline and restraint to do just enough to qualify and not too much to stay within my intensity zone for this microcycle. I even purposely registered at the minimum entry total so as not to be tempted to go heavier; it also afforded me to open way under 80%.

Platform approach for 100kg. The expression tells it all- to compete without really competing. Nice Photo from Lifting Life by Andy Blaida. Turns out Andy once had a pair of Ristos and gave them to one of his lifters..so years later, his pair of Risto weightlifting shoes are still in circulation.

I am sure there are people reading this thinking, " What's the point of weightlifting if sometimes you are not going to even try to lift your best".

Well, in lifting life, you need to decide - are you a competitor or are you a weightlifter? If you are a weightlifter first, then just lifting for the sake of lifting is enough. The joy of lifting the bar over your head is more than satisfying. Now, if you're a competitor, then its more about hitting specific goals. Which competitions do I want to win? Win by how much? Specifically, how much do I want to lift this year at my peak competition?

I tell you what-- going to this competition with a completely different mindset and set of stakes lead me to some learning.

Its not about where you start, but where you finish -- well, sort of not really

I can't tell you how many times I have heard weightlifting coaches say, "it's not about where you start, its about where you finish."

Well, yes and no. At a normal competition, starting 1-3% lower than planned isn't such a big deal. Most people at an advanced level can take a 4-5kg jump on their second attempt if needed.

Now, if you are in a situation, like myserlf, picking a lift >10% below your real openers, then it gets more tricky.

For example, I opened super light in the snatch. I wanted to take at least a 7kg jump to my second attempt. My coach, keeping goal #4 in mind, was not having that. His point of view was "Stay healthy. Just take a moderate jump and do six lifts". Plus, there's the other dilemma of there being 30 attempts between taking a 7kg jump or 15+ attempts for taking a 4kg jump.

Well, guess what, both options kind of sucked. So, we went with the conservative 4kg jump. I had at least 15 attempts to wait out. I am very fortunate that, normally, I lift towards the end of the A Session and have never waited more than 3-4 attempts ever. Waiting >15 attempts was insane. We dropped down to like 55kgs and kept taking snatches to keep me warm.

Coming out for what was normally an easy 77kg snatch seemed ridiculous after I had been in the warm-up room over 30 minutes. I was getting impatient and flustered. I complained to my coach that I didn't want to play this game of take one lift then sit for 30 minutes. I let my mind drift out of the Zone. Needless to say, I badly missed my second attempt-like not even close. It felt like missing the bar-- should just not happen. For my 3rd attempt, I only had like 5 attempts to wait. I got my shit together thinking to myself, "Gwen, you do this lift in your sleep. Just do it". This one was a much easier snatch, still I missed it. I was out of the zone.

This lead to some interesting strategies for the clean and jerk.

Strategy
You can control the situation or let it control you.

By the time clean and jerks rolled around, I was 50% at my goal. I had done 1 snatch as needed; now, all I needed was 1 good clean and jerk.

I was not going to jeapordize my 1 good lift for any reason, especially, being at the mercy of other coaches moving their lifters attempts up and down.

I realized I had one advantage no one else had. I've totaled 202kg before, most of the lifters in my session had never done over 180kg, and I only needed a paltry 82kg clean and jerk to hit my qualification goals.

So, how do I get control back? 1. Lowered my opener such that I would be the first person to open the session, Then, 2. take over a 10kg jump for my second attempt.

If I opened with something ridiculously light, I could do very few warm-ups- say 4-5 reps. Then, if I took a large enough jump, I would have 30+ attempts until my second attempt. This would give me plenty of time to rest, then warm-up again to something a little bit closer to a real starting weight.

Well, the plan worked out incredibly well. My opener was ridiculously easy, and making it had taken all the pressure off the rest of my lifts. I then jumped 13 kilos to 95kg (it was mischievous fun just to see the panic that ensued after I took above the expected 2-5kg jump..sorry, not sorry, to my coaching friends in the warm-up room).

I probably should have went 100kg for my second attempt. Here's why: As planned, I had plenty of time to warm-up to 95kg. However, a bunch of coaches had then moved their athletes' third attempts to 96kg. This then put me back in the game of waiting a long time between my second and third attempt.

I opted to go 100kg as I did not want to wait to the last lift of the session if I took say a 6 or 8kg jump. Once again, I did not do so well with the long wait and racked the 100kg out forward.

Aside from using this competition as an opportunity to apply some unorthodox attempt selection strategies, it also showed me that I need to get better at real-world competition situations such as having more than 2-3 attempts between my lifts --you never know when that situation might arise again.

Later that weekend, I watched the men's 85kg session. I was impressed with how some of the lifters , like James Tatum, waited many attempts between their first and second attempts and still came out to make big lifts. Here's a photo of James with a close 182kg Clean and jerk on his way to winning the USAW American Open. < Yes, he is wearing a pair of the Tiburon Risto Sports Weightlifting shoes. Yes, I chose this photo because of the perfect lighting on the shoes and its 6 red plates ... >

Here's James Tatum winning the 2016 American Open in Men's 85kg. This was a very close lift with 182kg clean and jerk. I'm sure he'll do even more soon! Yes, he won a very tough competition in his very own Risto Sports Tiburon weightlifting shoes. Photo by Gwendolyn Sisto.

It made me, again, reflect on the fact that, yes, it would be good for me to increase my ability to hit lifts on the competition platform after long breaks between attempts.

On my other goals:
Hey, I can give myself a little slack. I posted a total at my first National meet in 2 years. I also took the biggest jump of my competitive career ever - a 13kg jump between first and second attempts-- and nailed the lift. My elbows held up just fine ( The two year anniversary of blowing out my right elbow at the 2014 AO is tomorrow. You can memorialize the moment by sending me gluten free cookies lol=), and, overall, I stayed healthy.

And, yes, I did , finally get to socialize a bit more at this competition. There were so many "facebook friends" I got to actually meet in person and become "real" friends. There were even some serrendipitous moments like seeing my friend Tim Mcrae , a 2016 USAW Hall of Fame inductee, for the first time in years. I am really starting to appreciate the rich and amazing network of friends I've made through the sport of weightlifting; probably why I dedicate myself to improving knowledge the sport.

________________
*For people who are not familiar with sarcasm-- Yes, I know New Zealand isn't actually MiddleEarth LOL
** If you are wondering what a macrocycle and microcycle are, I am coming out with a book on the Soviet System in the next few weeks. Its written at a level that both newcomers/beginners and experienced coaches can get something out of it.
*** James Tatum is wearing the current model of the risto sports tiburon " lifters " or weightlifting shoes. He joins many other well know lifters who have won championships in these shoes such as Neisi Dajomes, Carlos Andica, Maryam Usman, Rocio Navarro, Lesbia Cruz ... plus Dmitry Klokov in exhibition post competitive career.

Are Cleans good or bad for baseball players?

2016-11-28T23:45:00.000-05:00

Ok, I have to admit, I was randomly poking around the internet and came across some conflicting views on whether baseball players should do cleans.

I was actually surprised to see the level of controversy surrounding it.

Back in the day, when I was a college Student at Georgia Tech, I was granted the great privilege by the Athletic Director to use the athletic teams' weight room. This was when bars and bumper plates in a weight room were unheard of. It was also because I was weightlifting even back then and was on various National Junior Teams for weightlifting.

Anyhow, I always saw the baseball players doing Olympic lifts (very early 2000's, GT's team was very good). The only lifts which the athletic coaches shied away from were snatches, because they were worried about the pitcher's hurting their elbows. I remember seeing them doing cleans ( I think one of the athletic coaches of the GT baseball actually wrote a book on how he trained his athletes).

Now, many years later, having another great privilege of working alongside some of the best weightlifting coaches in the world, I think the question should be approached differently.

Athletic sports performance coaches should ask : what is the goal of doing the olympic lifts, and which lifts should my athletes do?

So, a weightlifters goal is to snatch and clean and jerk as much as possible.

A baseball players goal of lifting would be to become more powerful and explosive, and a small secondary effect of balanced use of both sides of the body.

Thus, baseball players do not need to train like olympic weightlifters. The best exercise would be hang power cleans- yes, not even full clean and jerks. There is a benefit to doing overhead work like the jerk, which is the most explosive part of the olympic lifts, in terms of acceleration. They might not need to snatch.

It seemed most of the controversy was over whether the clean put too much stress on the elbow and UCL. I have torn my UCL -- the answer is for a healthy elbow, NO.

Most lifters tear their UCL for two reasons - 1. bad technique in the snatch, 2. saving a lift that is going backward in the snatch at a near maximal weight (what I did ;).

To get the most bang for your buck in the olympic lifts is simple:
1. Teach the baseball players relatively good technique. If they can hit a tiny ball traveling over 70mph, I am sure they can learn how to do a decent clean.
1a. For example, The system I use, I can get someone to do a decent clean in 1 training session--especially, if they are already an athlete.
1b. Any exercise the athlete is doing requires technique. I have seen people mess-up something as simple as an incline bench. We should avoid the excuse that olympic lifts "are too hard to teach". Again, your players are highly athletic individuals, they can learn a good clean.
2. Reward consistently good technique. Technique should actually get better the more tired the athlete is - because it forces them to be more efficient. If their technique is starting to breakdown, then have them go down in weight-- you can even have them work with the bar for 30min.
3. Avoid singles and doubles, work in lower intensity zones-. If the goal is to get more explosive and not to be the best weightlifter, then doing lower intensity for sets of no less than triples is fine. There is no reason to do singles and doubles.

So, to answer the question, most elbow injuries do not happen in the clean. The clean is a very safe exercise when done with reasonably good technique. If anything, the clean will improve hypertrophy of the front delts, biceps, and forearms. The elbow is one of the few joints which can actually be better stabilized by increasing muscle mass around it. Doing cleans on a healthy elbow with good technique at reasonable intensity and reasonable repetition range/set may actually get the muscles, ligaments, and tendons in the elbow thicker, and , hence, better prepared for sport.

That's my humble opinion.

PS: And, I clean on my fully recovered UCL all the time ;).

*I think I saw the original topic, headline of this article, on a sports performance forum I randomly came across. Sorry for missing the citation. Content in this post is my own.

Weightlifting shoe heel height- Trend or Utility - the best heel height for you.

2016-11-21T09:38:00.003-05:00

All the time I am asked about heel heights for weightlifting shoes and what the best heel height is. Based on how the question is asked, I can even tell what sport the lifter is coming from and what lifting trend they are following.

So, in this post, I'll give you a brief history of weightlifting shoe heel trends, including which gave the biggest results.

First, let's talk a little sociology.

Heel height of weightlifting and what is a considered a "big heel" or a "small heel" has become incredibly perception based. Depending on what path the lifter has taken, their view on what a heel should be can be incredibly skewed. Someone coming from Starting Strength views anything over a 1/2 inch heel height as gigantic. Someone coming from CrossFit is looking for between a ".75 inch and 1 inch effective heel"( To this day, I'm convinced the term "effective heel" was spawned on a crossfit forum somewhere as many shoe manufacturers don't use the term). Someone coming from a strict Olympic weightlifting background is looking for over an inch heel, many want between 1/18 inch to 1 1/2 inches. Then you have what I call general purpose lifting - strength athletes that squat and do some cleans,bodybuilders looking to up their leg game-- they just want something with a heel.

You may be wondering - "so who is right?" . From my experience, for the 99% of the population, there's really two groupings for two purposes - ultra low heel for starting strength followers/low bar squat and an actual weightlifting heel for everybody else.

Starting strength and low-bar back squatters for their own special goals and purposes- which differ from crossfitters, weightlifters, bodybuilders, and other strength athletes- advocates a 1/2 inch heel. For this reason, many years ago Risto Sports made a highly successful shoe for a distributor geared towards starting strength (that distributor replaced it with an inferior vinyl EVA heel shoe made in China). Now, Risto Sports carries a 1/2 inch heel just for lifters that fall into this segment, because they have their special reasons for wanting a 1/2inch heel, and they deserve a shoe made from the best materials!

Now, there is everybody else- weightlifters, crossfitters, powerlifters, strongmen, bodybuilders, athletes training for strength sports - all squat and many do at least power cleans. For this group, a heel height of between 1 1/8inch and 1 1/2inch has traditionally yielded the best results in snatch, clean and jerk, and squat. This is why Risto Sports makes shoes in this heel height range. Famous "high bar" squatters in powerlifting have used olympic weightlifting shoes. And, some of the best bodybuilders in the world, with the best quads-- ie TOM PLATZ--have squatted in the standard olympic weightlifting shoe heel height as a long hidden trade secret. You can even find photos of Arnold squatting on plates to get more heel height (not recommended as this can cause ankle injuries).

There are shoes on the market targeted at crossfitters that have a heel somewhere between the low heel and a normal weightlifting heel-- this is often a miserable compromise in the shoe design, in an attempt to make an all around shoe. Plus, the CF Games title sponsor's crossfit footwear is, currently, the only footwear allowed to be worn at the games. Still, outside the CF Games and the pre-reebok crossfit years, you will notice many high level crossfitters do their heavy snatches, clean and jerks, and squats in weightlifting shoes.

The short answer on what the best heel height is:

The heaviest lifts ever, pound for pound, were done in the 1980's. These incredible world records were erased due to weight class changes*. Many of these lifters had shoes with around between a 1/4inch 1/2inch forefoot with and around a 1 1/2inch heel height. So, yes, you want an "effective heel" or delta heel height was an inch or more! likely, not much less than an inch delta for small sizes! Certainly, a quarter inch higher than plastic and EVA heel shoes!!!!!

Want proof, take a look at these incredible photos:

This one is of Dravco Stoichjov lifting 215kg clean and jerk as a 75kg in the early 80's- 1984ish. I took this photo in Slavia, Bulgaria. He's wearing wood heel shoes with the traditional heel height which some people view as "big" . The current 77kg record is 214kg!

Dravco Stoichkov doing an insane 215kg clean and jerk at around 75kg bodyweight circa 1984 -ish. Higher than the world record today in 77's, weighing less! He's wearing wood heel shoes with a heel height similar to Risto Sports. Much higher than plastic heel or EVA heel shoes

Here's one of Vardanyan who is famous for totaling 400kg at 82.5kg and outlifting even the competitors of the 2 heavier weight classes above him. Note the shoes. Look at the shoes his competitors are wearing-- do you see any ultra low heels? Nope.

Photo credit from wikipedia, 1980 Olympics article. Yuri Vardanyan winning Gold at the 1980 Olympics

The Long answer on why heels got lower:

My engineering guess on why shoes with plastic heels and EVA heels have smaller heel heights

1a.Simple, the plastic is more likely to crack. There is a lot of flexion going on midfoot during the final extension of the pull and in the jerk. Plastic is known to soften as it is worked (think of bending a plastic fork back and forth), so having a bigger delta between the back of the heel and the forefoot is asking more of the material.

1b. EVA is a soft material. It is made for cushioning. Sure, the type of EVA used in lifting shoes are a bit stiffer than what you find in neck supports. YET, they still compress more than a wood heel, they still suck more energy out of your lift than a wood heel. Now, imagine if you doubled the height of the EVA, the squishy-ness would be even more noticeable. It would act as an even bigger damper.

2. Cost Reductions -- I have worked in companies , where because of volume, we would work projects aimed at reducing just a 1/4 inch of material off of a part. Smaller heels are cheaper to make because they use less material.

3. Lack of expertise-- Let's face it, two of the biggest weightlifting shoe companies in the world are not weightlifting companies. One is a soccer shoe company. The other is a running shoe company. The market dynamics are something like this.....One company sold a little more shoes one year as a novelty, so the other followed their trend and lowered their heel heights.

So, are you really going to wear a shoe because a company wanted to cheap out on the design? Do you really trust a company that was born for the purpose of making running shoes to tell you what to lift in?

Negative effects of wearing too low a heel:

The lower the heel gets, the wider a lifter's stance must get to attain the same torso postions.

Nowadays, there are any videos of lifters barely breaking parallel in their squats. If you look at lifters from the 80's and 90's that lifted more than today's lifters, they are squatting "ass to grass".

So, a lower heel height will make it more difficult for a lifter to attain for squat depth. The lifter may be able to attain full depth with discomfort.

Why do we even care about full squat depth? Well, you can predict an athlete's total based on their back squat if and only if they are squatting full depth. In other words, giving me the PR back squat of someone who does half squats is like a useless statistic for me. It tells me nothing.

Also, fully squatting has big benefits. Some studies shows it is less wear on the knees as the motion is completed smoothly. A full squat utilizes more of the posterior chain --- more muscles to generate power. I can get into this for hours. This is my abridged answer.

Check out Khaki Khakisavillis doing full squats in Russian boots (Russian style weightlifting boots) in this training hall video.

Here is a video from my personal stash training in Bulgaria, circa early 2008, before those plastic ultra-low heels appeared on the market. Note, lifter's full squatting.

Now, here's a video from the 2016 Junior World Championships from our friends at All Things Gym, note around the 4:24 minute mark the squatting segment. Most of the squats barely break parallel if even, and look how wide her stance is in comparison to the Risto Sports and Iron Mind videos. There are several other training hall videos showing this trend; the lifters have one thing, for the most part, in common- plastic lower heel shoes.

This is simply meant to be an observation and not a criticism.

My advice - wear a shoe that's going to help you fully squat comfortably.

* weight classes changed due to substances that were once legal to take became prohibited and dopign was seen to be wide spread in the late 80's. However, recent doping retests of the 2008 and 2012 Olympic Games shows that many top lifters were doping, anyhow, and still had lower results than lifters in the 80's.

**Note, the heel height is relative to the "lift" in the ball of the foot(I'll get to that later), which subtracted from the heel height gives, what crossfitters call, an "effective heel".

*** Ok, now time for me to shamelessly plug Risto Sports. You can get real weightlifting heels heights at a great price and fair trade at www.ristosports.com .

Leave weightlifting shoes to an actual weightlifting company. ;)

Protesters- go to the gym and squat

2016-11-14T01:06:00.004-05:00

To all the people that somehow found time to protest the election of Donald Turmp the last few days:
(particularly college students)

I think you really need to start lifting. You would see that excessive walking is counter to your goal of gains. You would value every spare minute you were not in the gym to practice the art of active rest. Plus, the rest of us trying to get to and from the gym, would not have to worry so much about which streets you are blocking.

Ok, for those of you that feel protesting transcends the basic human need to lift heavy things, here is an analogy coupled with some facts for you to mull over:

The election is a lot like a weightlifting competition. The results and the winner are based on numbers. Sometimes, you go to a competition with the number one total on the startlist, far ahead of anyone else, its pretty much assured that there is no way you can't win. Then, shit happens. Hey, you blow out your elbow, or maybe you didn't cut weight properly. Or, maybe, there was just someone who, gasp, actually lifted better than you on that day.

The point is, we hold weightlifting competitions to see who will actually win, because the startlist isn't always a 100% indicator of who will place how.

So, think of it this way, the polls almost all showed Hillary Clinton ahead. Some said it would be 90+% assured that she would beat Donald Trump. Well, just like the startlist, the polls are not a perfect indicator of an election. That's why we actually go out and vote to see who will win. Just like how we go out and lift on the platform versus scoring people on their best entry total. And, all those celebrity endorsements and SNL skits showing Clinton as the sure win-- those are a lot like youtube videos. How many youtube weightlifting champions have you seen that never quite compete or put the same lifts together on the competition platform?

Now, the facts show that Trump won the electoral votes by a wide margin, and no one has showed evidence of voter fraud. Actually, some articles show that Clinton won less votes than Barack Obama's past election.

In a weightlifting competition, sometimes athletes lose competitions because a lift was turned down by a referee. Its ok to protest a bad call by a referee if you have cause. And, if you really did press-out or elbow touch, or whatever illeagal move in weightlifting, then it only makes you lose credibility to protest a fair call by a referee. Protesting a fair call is just going to alienate you from the refereees and make it even harder to deal with them in the future.

In other words, protesting a "fairly" won election by Donald Trump is silly. It comes off as a tantrum. And, calling all his supporters sexist-homophobe-racists is only going to alienate yourself in the long run.

Think about it-more than half of the people who voted , voted for either a 3rd party or Donald Trump. The total votes for Clinton and Trump differed by 0.4%-- that's practically a statistical tie. You know how we have tiebreakers in weightlifting- like lot number and bodyweight- well, think of the electoral college as the tie breaker.

Again, for easy numbers purposes, if half the country voted for Trump and half voted for Clinton, then that means roughly half the people you know voted for Trump. Are you telling me half the people you know are sexist-homophobe-racists? Really? You know by voicing such opinions of half the voters in the country, you may inadvertently cost yourself friends (maybe even job promotions).

Secondly, do you really think that there are no sexist-homophobe-racists who voted for Clinton? Extremism- far left or far right- always results in some group to be hated. Maybe some far left people hate a different religion than some far right people. Finally, if you're 100% sure that all your friends only voted for one candidate, then you need to get out more and meet people with different opinions, races, religions, gender, etc...

You know a really good place to meet a diverse group of people -- the gym. Weightlifting has the most diverse medalists of just about any Olympic sport.

So, next time your college offers a cry-in, or playdoh therapy session to "cope" with the election results, please try squatting double bodyweight for a few reps instead. Or, do what I used to do - workout till my legs were too sore to walk, then study till my eyes were bloodshot. [ None of the colleges I went to could give two f's about whether I was happy or sad when George Bush or Barack Obama won their terms (I don't remember anyone protesting either of them). Nope, my tests and projects were going to be due the day after election day regardless. Then again, engineering school has been likened to masochism by some.]

Finally, there is a huge mental side to lifting. Often, lifters have to block out negative external influences. They have to believe they can lift the weight, and block out the naysayers and lifters trying to psyche them out. Well, I just got an email from an environmental conservationist group saying something ridculous like, " we know you woke-up feeling alone and afraid [the day after the election]". That type of negative garbage prevents forward movement. Maybe, instead of assuming the sexist-gay-racist apocalypse has come, try actually reading all of Trump's 100 day plan for yourself. Try looking-up who Trump has assigned to his transition team -- HINT: it includes a woman, a gay man, and a black man.

Save your end of the world protests for when an actual foul has been committed--you know, protest referee calls when the call is actually bad. You are wasting so much time that could be dedicated to lifting and studying, and you are also making it hard for the rest of us to get to the gym.

Peace and love,

Gwen

Gwenternational Dimplomacy- A Story on Weightlifting abroad

2016-10-11T11:08:00.003-05:00

I was coaching last weekend at the World Master's Championships. I needed to get in a work out. So, early in the morning, Ivan and I arrived at the training hall. It was in an open air basement in the bottom of a the training hall. It was literally a biergarten (beer garden?) with some curtains put up to divide the training platforms from the beer drinking. It was Oktoberfest.

Giant Weightlifting hay monster, greeting you to the World Master's Training Hall

There were a total of 3 platforms and 1 squat rack. Two women's bars and 3 men's bars. This, again, was for a world championship. It seemed the beer drinking during Oktoberfest had taken priority over getting some training in.

Beautiful Ruins near Heinsheim, Germany Bad Rappenau , taken from the Competition Hall parking lot

I was training alongside lifters from Japan, Australia, and France. Turns out the French guys, who I spoke to in French, knew the coach at the gym I often frequented while in France.

Then a lifter from Norway came over, and she proceeded to do about an hour of mobility WOD work with the bar at the edge of the warm-up area. Maybe not the best use of space given the crammed quarters, and, well, I probably would not recommend any of the exercises she was doing for a lifter about to max out the next day. But, hey, she's not my lifter...and, you know the code, do not coach others who do not lift for you, unless their coach/they asks for your help.

About halfway through my workout, a team of Iranians and 2 IWF Iranian Referees came over to train. The Referees were more there to hang out and watch training. The Iranian team is all male as weightlifting is generally not seen as a sport for women to do. They seemed to move as a team.

Because I try to be a decent human being --really, people, I try-- I offered for them to work in with me. There were no open platforms; it was now just me on the platform, and there was a free men's bar. I felt obligated to help another weightlifter get their training in; this urge to accommodate other weightlifters transcended any realization that I was a Western women in tight work out clothes offering them help.

So, we started working a rotation. My work out called for me to go up to 90kg power clean and push jerks. At this point, one of the older men in the background said to me, "Mashallah".

The training hall really was an open air basement with fancy tarp segregating it from the beer garten

To which I replied, " Inshallah." I had learned from my Muslim friends the relationship between Mashallah and Inshallah, and I automatically equated them to one another. With inshallah meaning, "God Willing" (in some ways, when you're asking God to help you make something happen) and Mashallah meaning to thank God or express gratefulness, particularly, after something you had once had expressed "inshallah" about. Maybe like "praise be to God, Alleluia", sort of?

Anyhow, he seemed happy that I clearly knew these two words - mashallah and inshallah- then he promptly corrected me. Then said, "No. Mashallah- Thank God" ,and sort of gestured to the bar I just lifted.

"Yes, mashallah. I understand".

I then asked my coach,"Should I go up to 95kg?", to which my coach in almost unison with the Iranian lifter and referees answered , "No. no, stop there". I was starting to lift more than some of their male lifters, which perhaps was the root of this request.

I went back over an conversed a bit more with the elder Iranian. He seemed to be in his 60's. He wanted to make it clear that I should be grateful to God for my good lifting. The Iranian referee chimed-in and gestured "gold medal" to me.

The elder Iranian commented, " You not woman, you boy... Are you boy or girl?"

"Umm, I'm a female."

Seeing the dismay on my face, he corrected, "This is joke. 'Are you boy or girl' " .

Somehow, I was to understand that this was a compliment. In his culture and even American culture, we are taught that women are not supposed to be as strong as men or strong at all. So, he was saying, "you are very strong".

At this point, many people would have been mortally insulted and walked away. Now, I have been called worse things, and this man was clearly trying to somehow compliment me. So, why walk away? Even in our current world of "micro-aggression", where back-handed compliments like this should send me off to a safe-space, I opt to seek to understand before being understood.

We talk for a few more minutes, and it rapidly descends to who will I vote for in the coming presidential election (he called Trump crazy, with the classic crazy hand gesture to the head, where one swirls their index finger around their temple. He was not much more enthusiastic about Clinton.). It always amazes me to see how much people from other countries follow the US election. I make it known that I must depart for my lifter competes later that day.

Tug of war statue in downtown Nackersulm, Germany, near the meet hotel. Metaphor, anyone?

Once again, being respectful of fellow lifters, I hand out business cards. One of the younger lifters (40ish) seems eager to receive one. The elder gentleman I spoke with indicates that it is not good for him to receive one. Yet, I gestured that the card was of no value to feel embarrassed by, that it was only valuable in what it symbolized- respect through acknowledgement of my fellow human being's existence.

In my culture, when I make a new acquaintance and had a good conversation with, particularly in a formal manner, then I will give out a business card (if I remember to bring them with me).

Treading the line of cultural acceptance is always tricky. I 'm not sure if I insulted or caused embarrassment over a behavior. There were also a couple times when I thought I was supposed to shake hands, and sensed fairly quickly that touching was out of the question.

Earlier that week, I had been in France where acknowledging ones existence is paramount to showing respect. At work, you must shake a person's hand upon greeting them the first time that day. If you see them a second time, you must remember to shake their hand, again, or it is seen as disrespectful-- that they were so unimportant that you forgot that you already shook hands. What is more bizarre is that this is for every person you run into at work -everyday. It is not just for someone who is visiting for a business meeting, it is literally everyone in the plant.

I was just talking to French people before my interactions with the Iranians. So, not only did I had to switch languages, I had to also switch behaviors.

Navigating this cultural sea has its rewards. By making an effort to meet people half way in what seems like odd behaviors to you, you actually build bridges of understanding. and, when you are out to learn as much as you can about weightlifting around the world, it comes in handy.

I'm not saying this is something everyone should do, All I'm saying is, if you are feeling enlightened, then, yes, make an effort, and what you learn from these transactions are reward enough, And, maybe you will build a network a little bit in the process.

Finally, we must not overlook Context. In this circumstance, a key factor to building these cultural bridges was Sport. Weightlifting, like all other sports, has a common language and sets of behaviors. All weightlifters around the world speak the same language- weightlifting . We don't even realize that we have this new mystical, intuitive way of communicating until we are forced to use it in a training hall with non-English speakers. This is also why weightlifters get so touchy when people from other sports flood-in and try to rapidly add new behaviors-- the weightlifting culture is universal, world-wide, established over a century and enables our ability to communicate cross-cultures because of a common set of behaviors.

Women's 35-39 69kg winners. Risto Sports lifter Jessica Weisman brings USA home the Silver Medal

Of Weightlifters Passed- the persistence of memory

2016-09-05T23:54:00.001-05:00

Is it normal that a bunch of your weightlifting friends and acquaintances will die in their early 30s? And is it normal not to fully know why?

I just found out former weightlifter and dear friend of mine Amanda Wilson just passed away.

To understand my disbelief, we have to talk about USAW’s Junior Squad.

Back in the late 90’s, there was this thing called Junior Squad. Every year, the best junior lifters in the country were sent all expenses paid to the United States Olympic Training Center (OTC) in Colorado Springs, Colorado for a 2 week training camp. There was a boy’s camp and a girl’s camp held at separate times. Under the guidance of the now famous Coach Burgener , or “Coach B”, the girls camp trained. This was also in the era when Lynn Jones, Dragomir Ciroslan, and Bob Morris coached at the OTC. Every other year, we were given a new USA warm-up suit with “National Junior Team” printed on the front of it and “USA” printed on the back of it.

I made every team from the first ever full team in 1997, until 2000. By 2001, I was at Georgia Tech studying my ass off and not bothering to compete at Junior nationals.

Several of those junior squads, I met or even formed relationships with a number of lifters who would impact me forever. Several of them would die before the age of 35, several of unclear causes. Lifters from this late 90s era with whom I crossed paths that befell this strange fate of an early death included: Corey Wilkes, Robert Murphy, Andrew Garcy, Anthony Martin, and, now , Amanda Wilson.

My dear friend Amanda Wilson is the latest to have passed on. Though we had communicated for years, even recently, the last time I had saw her was at the 2008 US Olympic Trials held at GA Tech in Atlanta. She was no longer competing and came to see her friends, including myself, compete.

Interestingly, also in 2008, was the last time I would see my friend Andy Garcy. I competed at a final World University qualifier at the US OTC in late 2008. At the time, he had coached a youth lifter female who was practically cleaning double bodyweight (almost 60kg weighing almost 30 something kg, if I recall??). Yes, I think he would have went one to be a great coach.

It is funny how memory works. Recently, I made a new friend that bared only the very slightest resemblance to my friend Andy Garcy, maybe he conjured only the slightest of analogous feelings. Days later, suddenly, I could remember in detail the face of Andy, strangely associated with my new friend. A month ago, I wouldn’t’ have been able to do so. And, now, just days later, my friend Amanda passes.

As memory seems to be more of a network , a web of slightly related topics linked together- something hardly linear-- I might as well discuss my two unrelated friends in a related way, in the way that I associate with them in my mind.

The first time I really got to know Amanda was at the 1998 Junior Squad. It was my second JR squad, so the OTC didn’t quite contain the same magic it first had. We got along pretty well. We liked opposing baseball teams. We eventually went to opposing colleges. We would make jokes about eachother’s states. She liked preppy cloths; I ‘m more rock and roll, and, nowadays, I often enjoy wearing Ralph Lauren to be ironic and live out a New England fantasy. But, you know what, she was always someone that I could go and talk to. Like if you’re in a crowd of people, and you’re not sure to hang out with, or who to talk to, Amanda was always a person I could hang with. Like that person that’s there for you and won’t leave you out there alone. A person that will always be your friend and not treat you like a passing fad. She wasn’t one of those annoying fake nice people, or fake-caring people; she was authentic.

She was a very talented lifter. When I was at GA Tech, I went to watch her at a weightlifting competition that CJ Stockel had put on in college park Atlanta. She did something like 160kg or 165kg total that would have put her on the junior world team (I was sad to see that she didn’t do quite as a well a few weeks later at Junior nationals). Amanda could really lift well when she was on, and she was pretty damn strong too. She was lifting for Coffee’s Gym. I always looked-up to the strong women of Coffee’s Gym; probably why, I would at one point compete for Coffee’s Gym (she actually encouraged it years before I did). I would see her at multiple Junior Squads as well as multiple times in Georgia by virtue of going to GA Tech and here living a couple hours away. By the way, don’t get your hopes up my Ramblin’ wrecks—she was a UGA fan (her only flaw ?;).

Andy was also a good person. He was a talented weightlifter, and he just so happened to be gorgeous. Seriously, I can substantiate the gorgeous claim with fact: once Rolling Stone did an article on athletes that trained at the OTC, and, guess what, Andy happened to be one of the few athletes profiled. At the time, every month a Rolling Stone magazine came to my house, and , holy shit, one day, I opened-up Rolling Stone to see Andy staring back at me!

He became my friend when I went to Junior Squad, as he was a resident athlete at the OTC. The first Junior squad I ever went to was the inaugural full girls team junior squad in 1997. Going to the OTC for the first time was like magic! Wow, I got to lift where Wes Barnett and Pete Kelley and Tim McRae lifted. I got to hang out with some of the resident athletes- wow, could they be the next Olympians too?!

This was before I realized that not everyone who lives at the OTC ever becomes an Olympic athlete or even an Olympic medalist for that matter. That was before I realized that there were many much more mythical weightlifting places in the world. Either way, I really looked-up to every weightlifter who lived there. For a brief, moment in USAW history, they were like the weightlifting chosen ones in America…yeah, that didn’t last long. It seems this way when you are an adolescent, but as you become wise to world, you learn, once again, that they are just human and other mythical human creatures exist outside the walls of the OTC. Even Peschalov once told me that he was “only human”, and he was one of the greatest Olympic champions of the 1990’s/2000’s.

Regardless, Andy was my friend. He was always nice and respectful to me, and I don’t think he ever got enough credit for how much of a good person he was. Again, much like Amanda, he was an authentic person. I watched my first ever Adam Sandler movie with Andy and my friend Catherine at the OTC—this was when Adam Sandler movies were still a thing. I will forever remember the feelings of watching “Happy Gilmore” for the first time with them; it was one of Adam Sandler’s masterpieces, even better than “Billy Madison”. Ironically, Amanda and I did see and Adam Sandler movie together with the Jr squad kids: “Big Daddy”. Andy was also the reason I had met Blaine Wilson, a quasi-famous American gymnast who recounted stories to Andy in the cafeteria as I listened on. The following year I casually knodded to Blaine as Amanda introduced herself, noting that they shared a last name though they were unlikely related (she really wanted to meet him). Anyhow, like Amanda, I would also see Andy at another subsequent junior squad and national competitions. Then it would be several years till I would see him a few last times in 2008.

As I reflect on my weightlifting friends, it is probably why I don’t write much about American weightlifters, because its too personal. I don’t like to write about my close friends, nor really the OTC. Perhaps, because, the mystique I once had for places like the OTC had long left my soul like a mist evaporating in the morning sunlight. To me, the OTC had become just another place devoid of that magical realism type qualities you only find in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez book. Maybe the OTC was special for a tiny speck of time when just the right combination of people were there.

Don’t take my word for it- just listen to Pyrros Dimas

2016-07-31T22:52:00.001-05:00

If you read this blog or any weightlifting blog or new site, you probably know who Pyrros Dimas is. He is the most decorated Olympic weightlifter of all time, having won 3 Olympic gold Medals and one bronze.

Recently, it was pointed out to me that there is an excellent docu-series on Pyrros Dimas, that supports a lot of what I write about on weightlifting theory and science. Pyrros did an amazingly well done interview with the two doctors ( or , the “two bakers” as we affectionately call them at Risto Sports* ) Dave Boffa and Jonas Westbrook along with Nat Arem of hookgrip. I actually watched it through posts on ATG. Ok, honestly, I’m not sure why I haven’t watched it sooner, I was probably too busy translating Russian or improving my French.

The interview is great as it takes you form how he first got into lifting through how he trained in his Olympic Medal winning days. The team does a great job narrating - the writing is entertaining and keeps you interested.

Anyhow, this interview supports what I have written about on the Soviet , Chinese, Kazak, and Bulgarian systems either in my book, articles, or this blog. Which, my dear friends of the internet, really should come as no surprise, as my information is based on having trained in all these places or trained with someone who is an expert in a place’s system.

First, I would like to encourage you to watch both part 1 and part 2 of the series and read the rest of this article. It is very easy to watch, and, of course, who wouldn’t want to hear Pyrros Dimas- the man, the myth, the legend- speak for himself.

Key points Dimas makes in this documentary:

-          Always start in the Soviet system to get a solid base
-          Use the “right system at the right time”
-          Used a “Bulgarian system” at his elite level, the video references Abadjiev
-          Took him 4 years to acclimate to the Bulgarian system
-          He is pretty clear that he did not max out everyday***
o   He max-xed out 3 times a week-- ie planned max out points as part of his program
o   His subsequent training days were based on the max’s hit on prior days

As I wrote in the Kazakhstan Weightlifting System book – just like Pyrros Dimas reports-- the Kazakh team uses the Soviet system, then after a certain age and level of sport mastery, uses a different system. Usually this is around 18years old and Master of the sport level must be achieved. The Kazakhstan book contains a program that shows the flavor of that system. And, on top of that the national team has a system developed with Enver Turkileri (Enver Turkileri famously worked with 3 time Olympic Champion Naim Suleymonglu in Turkey, with whom Suleymonglu won 3 Olympic gold Medals**). The Kazakhstan coaches actually elaborated on how this system differed from the soviet system when they attended Risto Sports’ seminar in 2013 in Eliot, Maine, USA. Like the system Dimas described, its fewer reps with more intensity, and again not the same as Abadjiev’s system. This very much echos what Dimas says about using the right system at the right time.

Also, Dimas’s description of the Abadjiev Bulgarian system aligns with what I have written about. As I mentioned in previous posts, they do not max out everyday. They have planned max out points. In Pyrros’s case, he describes maxxing out a planned 3 times a week. Think about it though- your max is the max of that day. In other words, everytime a lifter maxes out on their planned max day, they might not hit 100% or more, they might hit, say 95% or 99%. Certainly, one would guess, over some period of time, their personal record would have to increase to stay on the team.

Here is a sample graphics to describe what the above might look like. Again, this data is just illustrative and not actual data (ie not every training session or training day is shown).

Day 1	Day 2	Day 3	Day 4	Day 5
100kg (max for the day)	85kg (max of previous day)	95kg (max of the day)	81kg (85%of previous days max)	102kg (max for the day

From the above table, you can get the idea of the rhythm described.

Secondly, there are Bulgarians who did not use this specific system. Again, I had trained in Bulgaria to prepare for the 2008 US OLYmpic Trials. The Bulgarians I trained with didn’t use this exact system, they had their own variation which was slightly more soviet; lifters who showed-up to train and were not doing an Abadjiev-style system at that time included: Olympic Champion and Multi-time Olympic medalist Nikolai Peschalov, and world champion Stefan Georgiev. They were being coached by European champion Drazco Stoichkov (Stoichkov who would have probably won the 1984 Olympics had Bulgaria not boycotted it).

As I have probably alluded to in previous posts, at Risto Sports, we do not use the “Bulgarian system”- the specific Abadjiev-style with frequent max outs--because of the low volume and high intensity is not optimal for clean athletes. Long term, it has super human recovery demands that most clean athletes will not do well on. The whole point of the Soviet system is to use high volume to naturally increase hormone levels. We had worked closely with Dr Hererra who was part of the Soviet system development in the 70s-80s, and he is incredibly against-doping/ for natural sport because of the ravages he saw on athletes, and he was able to produce clean champion. Again, I’m sure there are people who have done the Abadjiev style “Bulgarian system” clean; I am only saying that at least one expert believed that it is less optimal for producing a clean champion than a high volume soviet based system. And, max-xing out multiple times per week is something you certainly would not want to do with novice youth athletes.

Side bar—on an overall intensity an volume view – Are the Bulgarian System and Soviet System much different?

In the Soviet System booklet published by Risto Sports, there is actual data from the late 1990’s comparing the training of Bulgarian, Russian, and Chinese lifters.

Two sentence, incomplete summary: work in the highest intensity zones wasn’t as drastically different between Bulgarian and Soviet based systems – likely because Soviet system goes up in intensity towards the end of the cycle. The Chinese did the most volume of the 3 and, likewise, won the most gold medals at the World Championships. I am working on a full soviet system book project, and, hence, you can read more on this in a few months. So, yes, if you want the full picture- including volume and intensity break down by lift by System and analysis-- then check out the Soviet System book in a few months.

One last summary and recommendations

My recommendation for American lifters—especially anyone who has been training in a strength sport less than 7-10 years (the 10,000 rule)---should be using a soviet style system. And high performance lifters (people who can make a World team) in the USA may want to vary their program, and a fully "Bulgarian System" is not recommended unless you have incredible Natural recovery methods and resources.
-OR-
What Pyrros said--> get a "base" in the Soviet System, use the "right system at the right time"

Footnotes:

*I say this with admiration and affection -based on the two doctors having visited Risto Sports for a work out and used so much chalk it looked like a bakery . It was cute=)

** the documentary credits the “Bulgarian system" with Suleymonglu's success. He won all his Olympic gold medals under Turkish flag. His coach Enver Turkileri was an ethnic Turk form Bulgaria as well.

***Note-Internet folklore says Bulgarians max out every day this is something I have personally tried to dispel and taken undue flack for by faux-expert internet trolls.

**** again, there’s other Bulgarian coaches out there doing different things. Yes, I am going through much pains to articulate this point. For example, there are Bulgarian coaches in Colombia; there are also Cuban coaches there (more Soviet school). The Colombian training is not identical to what Mr Dimas describes.

Other side note-- the documentary uses Russian and Soviet system interchangeably. I am using the term "Soviet System" for simplicity.

Who doesn't love Pyrros Dimas

Some more references:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/4756849/Weightlifting-Pocket-Hercules-feels-the-weight-of-history.html

http://gwenweightlifting.blogspot.com/2013/03/part-2-kazakhstan-superstars-of.html

http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/five-more-gold-medals-for-turkey.aspx?pageID=438&n=five-more-gold-medals-for-turkey-2005-04-25

Statistics- How good are the US Women versus the World?

2016-04-13T17:29:00.003-05:00

Weightlifting is full of data. We can do many statistical analyses to interpret who our best lifters are and how they stack up versus the rest of the world with readily available continuous data.

In celebration of the Olympic year, this article examines the distribution of female weightlifter totals by weight class, and the percentile which the current top US woman in each weight class would score. Using descriptive statistics, we can understand the level of competitiveness the US women and have insight on which females are best positioned to medal at the Olympics.

Method:
The dataset for each weight class was obtained from the IWF Olympic individual qualification rankings. Specifically, the IWF dataset for individual qualification includes only the highest total registered for an athlete from every Olympic qualification event since 2014 through the present. Further, there is one athlete total per weight class per country-- it is not the complete ranking list with every single athlete from every country that has competed internationally. So, for example, Jenny Arthur is the highest totaling US 75kg in the last 2 years, so only her total out of all US 75's that competed internationally, is shown. This is actually a better way to do the rankings since a country can only enter a maximum of two athletes per weight category, and, at the Olympics, no country can send a full team. In effect, it is highly unlikely that a country with prospects of medaling in multiple classes will send 2 athletes in the same weight class. Outliers were not cleaned form the data as these stats are from actual people who lifted at actual weightlifting championships. Plus, it would not be rational to remove the top lifter or even the worst lifter from the data; it makes physical sense that they should be outliers in many cases.

For comparison, the current USAW Olympic ranking list was used to compare US totals to the World ranking list. To be consistent with the IWF ranking list, the top US total from each woman's weight class was compared to the IWF list, and the percentile rank was calculated.

Results and Analysis

What the world looks like on the whole by weight class:

First, let us take a look at the distribution of totals by weight class across the world.

Here is a dotplot of each total in each weight class. The dotplots show the frequency at which each total occurs. So a really high stack of dots means that multiple lifters hit a certain total; itt is the same idea as a histogram. The dotplot is a little bit better visual to see frequencies, hence it is utilized.

The data tells us which weight classes have very large variation and hint at whether the data is normal (normality test must be done to confirm).

For example, the 48kg weight class seems to have the tightest distribution of the classes. This may be the effect of bodyweight --that there is no class lower than 48kgs for which to compete in, hence athletes can only move up and not down from this weight class. Interstingly, the data is marginally normal; an Anderson-Darling normality test yields a .06 p-value.

In terms of medals, the data shows a clear favorite for the gold medal evidenced by the top total being in an echelon of its own. Silver and bronze, however, are anybody's game as the athletes are so tightly clustered between 2nd through 8th place.

On the other hand, the 75+kg weight class has the most variability. Although at a first glance, the data looks non-normal, an Anderson-Darling normality test shows it is a normal dataset with a p-value of .307.

More interesting are the top 2 totals in the 75+kg class- Tatiana Kashirina's 348kg total and Lulu Zhao's 334kg. Kashirina's total is almost a full standard deviation from 3rd rank (Graboetskaya of Kazakhstan). It can be implied that there are two lifters truly vying for Gold and silver at the Olympics, assuming both lifters are healthy, compete, and total at the Olympics. Such can be said for the bronze medal between the 3rd, 4th, and 5th ranked athletes who are grouped around a 300kg total. The remaining athletes are around 280kg or less.

Here is where 75+kg, gets really interesting-- again, countries can only send a max of 4 female athletes to the Olympics. Its highly possible that not all the athletes in the 300kg total grouping will even show-up at the Olympics. It then makes the bronze medal anybody's game around the 280kg total mark.

The 75kg class is another fascinating weight class because it just doesn't have the same depth as the other middle weight classes (53,58, 63, 69,75) . Like 75+s, it has clusters of high totals, then a whole chunk of athletes over a standard deviation away from the top. It is one of the easier weight classes.

69 women's appears to be the most competitive class for winning an Olympic Gold medal as there are 6 athlete totals in proximity to the first place total.

How the US women rank

This May, US women will be competing at the Olympic Trials in Salt Lake City, Utah for Olympic slots. The USA currently has 3 Olympic slots for women. 1 slot has already been designated to our top 75kg lifter, Jenny Arthur. Mattie Rogers and Sarah Robles are ranked in the remaining 2 slots, per USAW's site.

The data can be examined rather easily for: (1)our best lifters in each weight class score versus the rest of the world, and (2) which athletes would be the top 3 in the USA based on their percentile rank in their weight class.

1. How US Female lifters score in their weight class on the IWF rankings

Per the below table, Mattie Rogers scores the highest across all weight classes with an 86th percentile rank. Sarah Robles is in the 84th percentile, and Jenny Arthur is in the 82nd percentile.

The next closest lifter, Lucero, is in the 65th percentile. Interestingly, Morghan King scores equally well as a 53kg or a 48kg with 58th and 56th percentiles respectively.

2. Athletes best positioned to medal, or place the highest
The data shows us that Rogers, Robles, and Arthur are really in a grouping of their own at this point. The data supports the US ranking system which has all 3 currently projected to make the 2016 Olympic Team.

That being said-- this can all change should any of the other lifters on this list, or even any lifter competing at Nationals for that matter, have a huge Personal Record. The lower weight classes are more sensitive to change as, well, the totals are smaller. So, Morghan King might have the best chance of upsetting the 3rd ranked Olympic team spot should she have a big PR. For example, a 188kg total as a 48kg would put her in the 84th percentile. However, by the USAW Olympic Games qualifying totals, King only needs 174kg to bump Rogers.

In this case, one could argue that the USAW ranking system has some deficiencies, which will always happen when rankings are based solely on percent of an average qualifying total. As mentioned in previous articles on this site, the population cannot be described by an average alone.

Weight Class	N	Maximum	Mean	StDev	Minimum	Q1	Median	Q3	Top US female		Percentile
48	52	205	164.13	23.07	91	153.5	163.5	180.75	170	KING	56th
53	58	233	178.43	25	104	157.75	181.5	194	184	KING*	58th
58	62	252	183.35	36.09	75	165	190.5	205	199	LUCERO	65th
63	61	261	195.66	35.95	75	180	197	214	206	MYERS	63rd
69	57	268	208.02	33.5	115	190.5	209	230	238	ROGERS	86th
75	53	292	215	35.93	120	193.5	217	238.5	244	ARTHUR	82nd
75+	46	348	228.85	54.37	126	189.25	232	264.5	279	Robles	84th

The last table is the USAW current Olympic Ranking for female's. The USAW ranking method based on averages has the following athletes in spots 1 through 3: Robles, Rogers, King. Note Arthur is not even in the Top 3 per this method. This differs from the percentile method where, again, the ranking would be Rogers, Robles, and Arthur per the same data.

PATH 1	PATH 2
RANK	RANK	NAME	CREDITS	<=2000	CAT	BWT	COMP	TOTAL	OG/100%	%
1	1	Robles	2	1988	75+	148.01	15WWC	279	290	96.21%
2	2	Rogers	2	1995	69	67.74	16NJCOQ	238	256.4	92.82%
3	3	King	4	1985	48	47.73	15WWC	170	186.6	91.10%
4	*	ARTHUR	3	1993	75	74.65	15WWC	244	269.2	90.64%
5	4	Winters	1	1993	48	47.97	15WWC	165	186.6	88.42%
6	5	Chan	0	1987	53	52.84	15AO	187	212	88.21%
7		King	4	1985	53	50.44	16NJCOQ	184	212	86.79%

Conclusions

Based on the current US female totals, the data clearly shows that the US female athletes with the highest percentile score are Mattie Rogers, Sarah Robles, and Jenny Arthur in that order. This implies that these would also be the USA's best chances of medaling, although a more complex model can be created to forecast medal potential. Just going by raw ranking, all three lifter would place about 8th or 9th on the IWF ranking list. And, considering that countries cannot send full teams to the Olympics, these 3 women would be likely to score even higher at the Olympics assuming they do the same or greater total.

Secondly, the data supports the USAW decision to give Jenny Arthur an early qualification to the US Olympic Team.

Thirdly, the data tells us that the USAW may have a more accurate and fair model of ranking their athletes should they use percentiles of the IWF ranking list and not percent of an average. The current ranking system gives a positive bias to the 48kg weight class and gives an negative bias to the 69kg weight class among others.

Sarah Robles at the 2012 Olympics,
singlet by Risto Sports, official 2012 sponsor of podium attire

Top 7 signs your weightlifting coach is full of Sh*t

2016-04-04T10:39:00.003-05:00

Weightlifting has gone main stream. People are now looking to cash-in and make as much money as possible off of unsuspecting new clients. So, buyer beware. The below list gives you some guidelines on how to know if your coach is legit.

1. Your coach can only name weightlifters from the last 5 years

If your coach has only heard of Ilya Ilyin and Dmitry Klokov, then they probably have not been around long, nor have a basic understanding of weightlifting history. An extra minus 5 points if they cannot name a single female weightlifter outside of Lydia Valentin. Minus 20 points if they can't name the last American to medal at the Olympics in weightlifting.

I understand that not every coach is going to have geek-like encyclopedic knowledge of weightlifting stats like I do. And its ok. They just need a general understanding of what some of the biggest lifts have been done pound for pound as a measure of goodness. One must know where the sport has gone before trying to move the sport forward.

2. They use terms like first pull, second pull, pockets, and triple extension

These terms do not exist in the scientific communities of weightlifting. These are simply pop culture terms of people trying to dumb down weightlifting to the masses; unfortunately, this winds-up bastardizing technique at the same time.

Weightlifting is talked about in actions, periods, and phases. Think about it- there is no pause in the pull; it is one continuous motion. That is why we cannot segment the pull. We can , on the other hand, discuss phases of the pull. You can read more on www.ristosports.com/blog .

Here's a short educational video I made just for you:

3. You can hear them yelling, "squeeze" at every competition
This is a personal favorite of mine. A lifter has a lift overhead and the coach is yelling, "Squeeeezzzzze".

Squeeze? Really? Really? Squeeze what? What is the lifter squeezing. The lifter is keeping their muscles tight while they wait for the down signal -- so , maybe, yell "tight". But "squeeze"-- that implies that the lifter has a walnut between their butt cheeks and is trying to crack it by squeezing their glutes (not advisable to ever do whilst lifting).

Bad cues make bad lifters.

4. They brag about being "USAW level 1" certified or their level as a USAW coach
Look, USAW level 1 is a nice course. It is definitely not designed to teach you everything you'll ever need to know about coaching.

I mean Ivan Rojas is the Olympic Coach of Panama and has coached 2 international teams for the USA, and in the USAW system his official level is a "Club coach".

It is far from a comprehensive system. Additionally, the science of weightlifting programming is not taught at universities in the USA , so there is about 0 formal academic training available in the USA on weightlifting.

When evaluating a potential coach, ask for how they were trained in coaching-- did they take actual coursework? Bonus points if they studied weightlifting coaching in a country where it is a profession like Colombia or Germany. Did they at least apprentice under someone who was able to take courses in a formal weightlifting educational system?

5. Every problem is due to Mobility
Mobility, mobility, mobility. It's like the biggest buzz word in crossfit and weightlifting. All they talk about is mobility, and everytime a lifter has a little problem with their technique, coach tells them to do more mobility exercises.

Guess what-- you know why a lot of new lifters have bad overhead squats - because their abs are too weak and they are squatting in sneakers. Shit, if I had abs as about as supportive as a string bean and was squatted in shoes as squishy as a marshmallow, I probably would have a crappy position too.

Most people have weak abs; you can have a six pack and have weak abs relative to your leg strength.

The formation of people's bones and bodytype will also dictate what their bottom position looks like.

And, too much mobility might destabilize you in some positions. Your coach should be able to tell you how much mobility is good.

Your coach should do a full diagnosis of your technique, strengths and weaknesses before jumping on the mobility band wagon.

6. They have a max-out day once a week and allow you to PR at anytime
Guess what if you want to get anywhere in the sport maxing out once per week does not work. All modern weightlifting systems used by people who have produced Olympic medalists have planned max out points.

Yes, when you are a beginner maxing out is easy! Sure, when you just start and you are lifting so far below your potential, you will PR frequently. This early period of improvement is temporary. When you start lifting closer to your actual potential, maxing out whenever can lead to undue injuries and stagnant improvement.

7. They think you can be elite at crossfit and weightlifting at the same time
These three questions have the same answer:
How many Olympic medalists do you know compete at the Crossfit Games?
How many crossfitters who medaled at the crossfit games are competing at the Olympics?
How many Crossfit Games medalists also medaled at the last weightlifting World Championships? (guess what Thorisdottir, Davidsdottir, and Sigmundsdottir all lifted at the 2015 worlds)
Answer: 0 .

Weightlifting is all parasympathetic nervous system and fast twitch fibers. Crossfit is a mixture of both nervous systems and uses type 1 and type 2 fibers, because it has those events with running and swimming and burpees ....etc...

Russian Olympic Silver medalist Oxana Slivenko almost qualified for the Crossfit Games in 2014, and she was not weightlifting at the level she lifted at the Olympics at the same time.

Basic safety - weightlifting competitions

2016-02-14T12:18:00.001-05:00

It seems as our sport of weightlifting grows, the need to ensure a basic safe physical environment for lifters has waned as a priority.

This is reminiscent of the culture exhibited at the 2015 Crossfit Games, where the rigs got so hot from being in the sun all day, that athletes' skin was peeling-off during pull-ups ( see reference at end of article).

Exihibit A:

This past weekend, I was at a 2 day competition in Massachusetts. The weather was unseasonably cold;still, not anything that New Englanders haven't seen before. It was widley publicized on social media and the news that the weekend would be very cold-- ie your heat would need to be on.

Day 1:

The first day, our lighter lifters competed. There was an obvious issue with the building HVAC- the warm-up room seemed to never get above 60degrees. The crossfit owner was notified, and attempted to turn up the heat.

To my surprise, many of the lifters were missing lifts. Athletes who normally would go 5 or 6 for 6 were going 2 for 6. I would even say I saw more missed than usual at the competition as a whole.

Day 2:

When we arrived at the competition, the building was even Colder than the day before. The warm-up area was in the 40's. I went as far as to talk to the meet diector and call the building owner as lifitng in sub 50 degree in a proper lifting uniform is recipe for pulling a muscle. The crossfit owner seemed completely ambivalent about the situation.

Certainly, having known the heat was not working the day before-- he could have taken simple preventative measures such as: setting-up 2 or 3 space heaters in the warm-up room, and calling his landlord until the HVAC was adjusted( trust me the state of massachusetts takes landlords freezing their tennants seriously).

For the record, the warm-up room never warmed to above 51 degrees even with over 30 competitors.

Below is a photo of the audience wearing winter jackets and hats to brave the ridiculous conditions:

Why you should care and how it affects you:

When you compete in a sport, you are accepting risk. And, the amount of risk you accept is limited. We go into competitions with basic assumptions that the environment will be safe.

Permitting lifters to compete in conditions where they can get hypothermia or tear a muscle - ie competing in a tiny spandex singlet for a 2+ hour session in sub-50 degree - is at best insensitive at worst negligent.

Especially as weightlifting is a summer in door sport, and uniforms are designed for "room temperature" conditions.

Having been in the sport for over 20 years, I have the blessing and curse of knowing what can happen. Maybe if I was a newer lifter, I would have toughed out the fact that I couldnt feel my legs, that my toes were frost bitten,and rolled the dice with injury.

But, I know better. When I paid $100 to compete at this competition, I didnt sign-up to risk injury. I didn't sign-up to throw away months of training for a chance at a shiny trophy.

Im ending my post here as -Adding insult to injury- I need to drive an hour home, then turn the heat in my gym and do a workout, because the competition environment deprived me of one.

References:

https://www.t-nation.com/powerful-words/open-letter-to-crossfit-hq

Elbow UCL Rehab for weightlifters-what you need to know

2016-01-23T23:11:00.002-05:00

It all comes down to the triceps and wrist wraps--- Below is information that has really helped me with my UCL recovery. You can use the information in the article to have an informed conversation with your doctor before starting a rehab program for an injured UCL. Afterall, I'm not a Doctor- I'm just a rocket scientist.

It is common for weightlifters to injure their Ulnar Collateral Ligament in competition, due to hyperextension. This usually happens when attempting to save a lift backward.

Many of the doctors who work on UCLs come from a baseball paradigm and associate it with “Tommy John”, the famous baseball pitcher who had the first ever surgery for a UCL injury in 1974. In other words, for the average orthopedist, most of the UCL tears they will see are from baseball pitchers and will not have a lot of experience tailoring their treatments to weightlifters.

Although it is the same ligament that weightlifters injure, weightlifters are using this ligament in a different manner. In baseball, a pitcher uses the UCL almost like a rubber-band in a slingshot. They load it up with tension, then release it. In weightlifting, lifters utilize the UCL for stability in the backwards and forwards direction (in front of and behind the head). In effect, the treatments for UCL tears need to be more sport specific especially as you enter the phase of the athlete returning to competition.

From personal experience, I have found that the average American physical therapist focuses entirely too much on the biceps and the extensors of the forearm when rehabbing a UCL injury. When really, triceps and the flexors, I found, are at least as important, if not more, for weightlifter stability (they are antagonistic muscles afterall!). Many therapists even prioritize shoulder and scapular strengthening over the triceps as this relates to throwing mechanisms due to their baseball centric world view.

Think about it- what happens when you are supporting a bar overhead? Your arms are fully extended with your forearm rotated such that the thumb is in line with your ear and your wrists are fully bent backwards. Right? So, what are your muscles doing: the triceps and extensors are in extension, and there is a lot of load on the flexors as your wrist is bent fully backward.

Perhaps, developed triceps, flexors, and extensors will help relieve loading from the UCL. Developing these muscles, according to my French doctor as well as any bodybuilding expert, lots of repetitions with not to heavy a weight is key. Exercises like tricep pull downs are great. The goal is bulk, here (I know contrary to much of what we do in weightlifting).

Something else that can help --->Stabilization during lifting:

This is a pre-injury photo of me with 110kg. You can see me with obly ine of my leather wrist wraps on; the wrist without the wrist wrap is bent back much further.

In weightlifting, we are not permitted to wear elbow wraps. However, the muscles of the forearm have two attachment points- one by the elbow and one by the wrist. An orthopedist in France (the same guy that told me to work more triceps ) pointed out to me that wearing wrist wraps will stabilize one of the attachment points of these muscle groups, and may be more effective than stabilizing at the elbow.

Physically, this makes sense as when I wear my Risto leather wrist wraps, the amount my wrist can bend backward is restricted. This does two things: (1) it reduces loading on the flexor tendons, which will change loading on the UCL, (2) the wrist wrap is actually absorbing some of the load being transmitted from the extensors. It's got to relieve some of the hoop stresses in the forearm.

Overall, I feel more stable with leather wrist wraps and was able to do overhead work sooner with them.

Here's a post recovery photo of me demo-ing the wrist wraps, note the better wrist angles, and you can even see my flexors bulging, illustrating how they play in securing the bar overhead.

If you get anything out of this article -- the message is work your triceps , forearm,and wear leather wrist wraps to aide your elbow.