Don’t miss out on Updates : Make sure you follow First Pull on Facebook and Instagram for daily pictures and advice You are responsible for your success. You are also your own worse enemy. Seeing athletes miss lifts because they thought too much during the lift has been my pet… Read More »Paralysis by analysis : Stop thinking and start improving!
Although weightlifting success is not a 100% dependent on Leg strength, strength of the legs is of great importance for the weightlifter. Every athlete is different – yet we could define them as either Technicians and Strength based athletes. Technicians tend to be rather weak in the strength movements (especially the squats), yet lift heavy because of how efficient they are (They can use a high % of their strength). Strength based athletes tend to get strong super fast in comparison. Their efficiency is, however, on the lower side. They tend to have a large surplus of strength. Both type of athlete can and do step on the international stage. Here are some of my better tricks and ideas to build a bigger squat.
Read More »Leg strength problems : Why your squat won’t improve and some ideas on how to fix it
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Developing a high level athlete of any sports takes time and steps cannot be skipped. A young talented athlete needs proper support from the family as well as proper financial support for all the expenses that can be encountered (food, transport, physio, equipment, etc.). A young athlete also needs dedication and discipline (ie : not missing practice and doing the work). The coach, however, is there to lead the athlete on the right path and to make the athlete reach his/her potential fully. Yet, in weightlifting, many often forget about how important stages are and get carried away with weights.
Read More »Developing young lifters the right way : Not skipping GPP is key
Credit Rob Macklem
Training methodologies have evolved since the sport was developed. We could probably say that without any doub training methodologies were first refined as a result of different decisions made by sport authorities in regard to competition. For instance, weightlifting used to have single arm events and abolishing those events must have had an impact on how people trained after it was removed from competition. Hence, dumbbell and one handed snatches have pretty much disappeared from most programs around the world.
Read More »On the topic of training methodologies and principles
From Lifter’s Life. Copyright © Clance Laylor 2014
Assistance exercises are often debated and debaters tend to have a wide range of opinions. I have encountered and discussed with coaches and athletes that defend how useless they think assistance exercises are just like I have encountered coaches and athletes that are so much into assistance exercises that the main lifts just does not get the required attention to make it better. In my discussions, I have noticed that people have different thoughts about different assistance exercises when, actually, I don’t think we really need to single out an assistance exercise more than the other one. The most common argument for the use of certain exercises over others, is specificity. I don’t think assistance exercises need to be that specific to be useful and here are my thoughts on this matter.
Read More »The lack of specificity of weightlifting assistance exercises : Part 1
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In Part 1 of this essay, I covered various strategies and ideas for recruiting young individuals in the sport of weightlifting. I went over the role of the coach or club manager in the recruiting process and on how to sell the sport to young athletes. In part 2, I will go over talent identification and talent screening. I will go over key abilities that I think are good indicators of talent for weightlifting as well as discuss the general concept of talent and personality.
Read More »ESSAY ON TALENT RECRUITMENT, IDENTIFICATION AND RETENTION (PART 2: Talent identification)
Credit to Lifters life
As weightlifting is getting more popular and gets more people interested about competitions and competing, we are seeing a lot of new athletes – and some not so new- in the master division. We are seeing incredible performance by master lifters at the international level and they should get the recognition they deserve for their accomplishment. In the last few weeks, I received a few emails about this topic which I answered but I figured, that judging by the interest, a post about it would be interesting to others as well. Here are a few thoughts about things to consider when starting this sport at an older age.
For a little while, I have been posting advice of the day on First Pull’s Facebook. The tips touch pretty much all aspect of weightlifting : coaching, injury, programming, psychology and technique. The thing about Facebook is that it is not easy to search or browse for something specific. The following tips have been posted within the last two months on Facebook and I have decided to list them on here so that they can be accessed or refereed to easily. So far, I am up to 23 advice, and these were the first 7. I will be compiling these tips on here on a weekly basis.
When it comes to programming, a coach’s job is all about the dosage of intensity and volume so that the athlete reaches the goal both of you have selected. The coach has to predict how the athlete will respond to a given stimulus and take into account various aspect of the athlete’s life and background. Aspects that should be considered are current or previous injuries, school/work, training experience, technical weaknesses, strength weaknesses, the amount of training time you have before an upcoming competition, and recovery. Programming is best defined as a mix of science and art. Indeed, predicting the adaptation of a biological system to a given stress is not an easy task. Nevertheless, the following is a 3 months long very basic programming guide. All the key elements are considered.
Read More »Programming 101 : Basic short term programming for weightlifting (beginner template)
The process of training humans has to be based on some kind of facts and beliefs, individualized and very well calculated. That is, every trainee is different biological wise, personality wise and background wise. The fact that the human body is not a machine complicate the job of a coach. For instance, there is probably nothing harder than coaching somebody that is, at least on paper, ready for big lifts but won’t believe he/she can. Variation across trainees is not all bad though. As a coach, you need to work with different athletes in the gym to stay sharp and discover new things. That will allow you to really test your method. Anyhow, in my experience, there are three types of athletes that will walk in your gym and all of the them
Read More »The 3 type of athletes and differences in the coaching approach
