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Articles  >  Olympic Weightlifting  >  April 7 2014

You’re all adults, right?

I think that’s accurate. I don’t think many kids read these articles. They’re too busy being young, screwing around with their friends and playing video games. Instead of reading Catalyst and getting an education about how to be better weightlifters, they would rather play Grand Theft Auto and get a 1,000-point bonus for shooting a crack whore in the face with an Uzi. That’s what kids these days like to do.

Maybe I’m wrong, and we have a young audience I don’t even know about. But whether that’s true or not, I think most of you are older. That means you’re busy. You have jobs, families, responsibilities, dogs, etc. All of those things take up a lot of time.

And you all want to be weightlifters. That means you have to find time to train in the middle of your hectic life. I don’t have to tell any of you how complicated and frustrating this can get. You practically need to have a PhD in time management if you want to be a serious lifter when you’re in your adult years.

This creates a variety of challenges. One of the main ones is that you have several different things you want to do in your workouts, but your time is limited. If your schedule only allows three or four workouts per week, and you only have around an hour or 90 minutes for these workouts, how are you supposed to fit in all the lifts and exercises you want to do?

I know many of you spend a lot of time online researching weightlifting, and that means you’re constantly getting new ideas. You’ve read a ton of different programs, and many of them have these exercises that sound really cool. On top of that, you watch hours of videos where you see some European lifter named Gigantor Scrotumski snatching 185 kilos while standing on top of a telephone pole, or some other bizarre trick you’ve never heard of. If you’re new, you become convinced that you absolutely have to start snatching on top of a telephone pole if you ever want to be as awesome as Gigantor.

And that’s in addition to all the other training ideas that sound like they’re essential for success. Before you know it, you’ve got an arsenal of lifts that you want to use in your program, including:

• Snatch
• Clean and Jerk
• Rack Jerk
• Power Snatch
• Power Clean
• Snatch Pulls
• Clean Pulls
• Front Squats
• Back Squats
• Overhead Squats
• Low-bar Back Squats
• No-bar Back Squats
• Hang Snatches
• Hang Cleans
• 3-position lifts
• Deadlifts
• Zercher Lifts
• Push Press
• Military Press
• Telephone Pole Snatches
• Deficit Snatches
• Defecation Snatches
• Stone Loading
• Stone Passing
• Bench Pressing
• Whatever you saw a Russian lifter doing on YouTube that week

And the list goes on. Then, you realize you have a big problem.

You still have your job…and your family…and your dog…and weeds in your yard…and relatives that think you don’t care about them…and every other friggin time-consuming distraction imaginable. So after all your weightlifting research and the gargantuan accumulation of lifts and exercises you want to use, you still have very limited training time in your week.

You just don’t have the necessary hours to do all those things. That leaves you with an obvious conclusion…you’re gonna have to eliminate some stuff. And that leaves you with an obvious question…which stuff can you eliminate, and which stuff is absolutely essential if you want to keep making progress?

Believe it or not, there’s actually an easy way to break this down.

First, you need to make sure your priorities are clear. Do you want to be a successful Olympic weightlifter? Is that your top focus? If so, here are the training categories you’re probably thinking about:

• The full competition lifts (SN, C&J)
• Pulling exercises (SN pulls, CL pulls, RDLs, etc.)
• Squats (FSQ, BSQ)
• Assistance exercises directly related to SN and C&J (Overhead SQ, Push Press, block work, lifts from the hang, etc.)
• “Variety” assistance exercises (deficit OLifts, stone loading, the crazy YouTube stuff, bodybuilding-style lifting, basically everything else that doesn’t fit in one of the previous categories listed above)

So if you have to drop some of that stuff, what’s the pecking order? If time constraints are absolutely going to force you to eliminate things, what can stay and what can go? Here is how you need to look at it, in my opinion:

Things you absolutely have to keep, no matter what, undeniably no question about it:

• The full competition lifts (SN, C&J)
• Squats (FSQ, BSQ)
• If you only have time for one other thing, what should it be?
• Pulling exercises (SN Pulls, CL Pulls)

**Question: “So does that mean squats are more important than pulls?” Answer: Yes. Pulls are important, but squats are more important.

If you have to eliminate more stuff, what should it be?

• The first thing to drop is the variety assistance exercises. Many of those things are fun, and some of them are actually useful. But if you want to be a successful OLifter and you don’t have much training time, they aren’t the bare essentials.
• Assistance exercises directly related to SN/C&J (Overhead SQ, Push Press) are more important than variety assistance. If you’re prioritizing, they’re higher on the list. But once again, look at how much time you have and refer back to what we’ve already said above.

This is a lot like the old question, “If your house was burning down and you could only save one thing, what would it be?”

Well, look at it this way, “If you want improve your OL total and you can only do three exercises, what should they be?”

If your answer is, “Power Snatch, Deadlift, and Low-bar Back Squats,” you’re in trouble. Those things have value, but they don’t give you the most bang for your buck.

Your life is much different from Gigantor Scrotumski. He’s a full-time professional weightlifter. You’re not. So you have to play by a different set of rules than he does.

Matt Foreman is the football and track & field coach at Mountain View High School in Phoenix, AZ. A competitive weightliter for twenty years, Foreman is a four-time National Championship bronze medalist, two-time American Open silver medalist, three-time American Open bronze medalist, two-time National Collegiate Champion, 2004 US Olympic Trials competitor, 2000 World University Championship Team USA competitor, and Arizona and Washington state record-holder. He was also First Team All-Region high school football player, lettered in high school wrestling and track, a high school national powerlifting champion, and a Scottish Highland Games competitor. Foreman has coached multiple regional, state, and national champions in track & field, powerlifting, and weightlifting, and was an assistant coach on 5A Arizona state runner-up football and track teams. He is the author of the books Olympic Weightlifting for Masters: Training at 30, 40, 50 & Beyond and Bones of Iron: Collected Articles on the Life of the Strength Athlete.


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