Oct 3, 2010

"Regularly learn and play new sports"

So, wanna guess what my new sport is?

OLYMPIC WEIGHTLIFTING!

Hells yeah bitches!!!

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The back story. :)

I have been following the blog and Facebook page of a CrossFit gym in my area (35-45 minute drive from where I live) for a while now -- Sandbox Athletics. I noticed several announcements about their weightlifting club, and the results of competitions they attended. Then a few guys from my gym started going to their training sessions, and a few took part in some of the competitions.

I was still just thinking about checking it out, and then 2 important events happened in quick succession.

I had my mind-blowing private session with Aimee at CF KoP, and learned that my clean was stalled because it needed to be completely rebuilt. I knew then it was high time to find myself a local coach who could help me on a consistent basis.

A few days later, an announcement came through my feed reader about Sandbox Weightlifting club looking for new members.

The decision to join basically made itself -- I wanted to improve my lifts, get coaching on a consistent basis, and also learn more about coaching the lifts by working through the process of fixing my own problems.

One thing I didn't expect was to participate in my first competition just 2 weeks after my first practice! It was hectic, but in hindsight I'm glad the timing worked out that way for a few reasons. One, it got me through those "first time jitters". And I definitely suffered from some jitters. :) Two, I learned a lot about how weightlifting competitions are organized. They are very confusing -- hands on experience is a must to figure out how things work. Three, I now have a baseline from the true beginning of my training, which I can use to measure my progress. Yay! :)

My first competition was on September 11th. I know, I am sooo late filling you all in on this stuff!

If you have zero experience with Olympic weightlifting (like me 1 month ago), here's the basics:
  • Competitors are organized into weight classes. I lift in the 69kg weight class at the moment. There are hopes I could drop down to 64kg, we'll see. :)
  • Each competitor gets 3 attempts at each lift -- snatch and clean and jerk. 
  • Weight classes are usually divided into sessions, and all the competitors in a session perform their 3 snatch attempts, then there's a break, then all competitors perform their 3 clean and jerk attempts.
  • There are 3 judges who watch each lift, and each judge can either activate a white light or a red light indicating if the lift was good or bad. As long as you get 2 of 3 white lights, the lift counts.

Here's how I did at the competition:
Snatch: 35kg, 37kg, 39kg
Clean: 37kg, 39kg, 45kg

All my lifts were judged as good, so I went 6 for 6! Also, I got all 3 white lights on each lift as well, so that made me super happy. :)

These were very light weights in comparison to my fellow competitors, but the goal for my first competition was just to get 6 good attempts and experience my first competition. Done and done. Now I'll be focused on competing with myself, and PR'ing at every competition. Sometime in the farther off future I'll be ready to compete and try to win something. :)

Hope you aren't disappointed by my "big news" -- it's big to me! I've been training at Sandbox Weightlifting, and also at another local gym with my coach's coach, at least twice a week, and I hope to bump that up to 4. Which explains my measly 2-3 CrossFit WODs per week.

I won't be doing WODs that involve the Olympic lifts anymore, mostly because I need to ensure perfect form every time I approach the barball, and secondarily because my "home" gym doesn't have any ladies bars. Didn't realize how important it was to have a bar that's the right size for your hands! Now I finally understand why I could never get my thumb locked when I "hooked" on a men's bar. :)

I could totally go on forever about this, so I'll stop myself here, and keep my updates on this short and sweet in the future. If you want to know more about the specifics of my training, just shoot me an email. I might start posting my Oly lifting workouts here in addition to my CrossFit WODs, but I haven't decided yet.

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Random internet goodness for you -- do any of you remember that game for NES where you could do clean & jerk and snatch, and also other weird sports, like cliff diving and log rolling?

Ok, well *I* remember that game randomly today, and wanted to look it up to see if I could play it online, or at least just see a screen grab. At first I thought it was part of "Track & Field", but thankfully Google helped me figure it out.

It was called "World Games", and put out by some random manufacturer. And I found a great page with tons of description, and best of all, pictures!


And I found video of the game play too! Luckily weightlifting is the first sport in the game, so it's right at the beginning. :)



I can remember trying to play this game, and failing miserably. Maybe now that I understand the point I would be able to play it better. :-D

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Also, I wanted to throw in a link with this post. Here's a cool blog from some chicks who lift -- I love the name: Pretty Strong Blog.

They're just getting started, but I have a feeling they'll be posting some good stuff!

3 comments:

  1. I love Olympic lifting too!!! I love love love cleans. I'm lucky that 2 of our coaches are USAW certified. I love lifting even more after watching the CF/USAW meet this weekend. Our head coach Michelle Benedict won 2nd in her weight class. It was so awesome to watch. I can't wait to hear more!

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  2. No disappointment from me! I'm super proud of you for jumping in like that so quickly after starting. It does sound like you reaped a number of benefits from that competition. I'm EXCITED to read more about your progress so hopefully you'll decide to share this important part of your training.

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  3. Awesome! I love how excited you are about it, and I know you will put 110% into it. I'm just in awe that you've already done a competition! Very, very cool!

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