Olympic weightlifting

I had my assessment with my new weightlifting coach. He said my upper body strength and range of motion is looking pretty good, but it will probably take several months to get my lower body doing the explosive deep squats required for Olympic lifts.

This was actually better than I had expected, since about a month ago I started working on deepening my squats. I have made a lot of progress, but yesterday was a rude awakening as to how low I have to go for the snatch and clean.

The skills I definitely already have: mindset, practical expectations, patience, and grace to give myself and my body. And the understanding from experience that progress isn’t linear.

These are the qualities of a middle aged athlete that most younger athletes cannot have because they haven’t had the life experience to teach them. And tbh I’d be kinda sad for young people who had already learned these lessons, although I know they’re out there.

I wanted to mark this occasion, the beginning of my Olympic weightlifting training, with what I can do now:

• Military press
• Press from behind the head
• Overhead press is at 60#
• Stand from deep squat, then come back down, then stand again and come back down, but when I tried for a third time I definitely couldn’t get back up! Deep squat as in basically sitting, ass to the grass
• 10 back squats to parallel with barbell and weight (I’m doing like 60-65 lbs now but I’m sure I could do much more, I’m still working on training the movement and technical proficiency)
• 5 front squats with the barbell, maybe to parallel? 50# but I’ve been struggling with the front rack position. Will hopefully get better soon after pointers from coach on how to support the weight
• Decent thoracic spine mobility, where I can maintain front rack position and NOT choke myself out
• Still learning form, technique and cues in all of this
• Working on better inter abdominal bracing with breath
• My quads are so ripped up after the assessment it’ll probably take 2-3 days before I can squat again! Recovery is brutal rn

I hope I’ll remember to write again in a month or two and log my progress. This is an exciting journey as my initial inspiration to lift was to do Olympic lifts!

The coach I found gives really good vibes, very professional, very understanding of the limitations of the athletes body and the need for rest. And the community of lifters in his gym is very cute. They are friendly, encouraging, and support each other to reach their goals. Also there are always children and dogs there and lots of women and POC. And now they have their middle age enby lifter too 😝