It’s a new semester at King’s Ridge. What that means is about 85% of my weightlifting classes have had a semester of seasoning and technique work under their belt. For these athletes, it’s going to be a semester of pushing the weights a bit more than they did last year. However, there are a handful of athletes who have never seen a snatch completed, considered that they may ever have to snatch, and certainly have no idea how to put those progressions together. What that means for them is a whole lot of patience on their part and a whole lot of preaching and teaching on my end. What they’ve heard all week and will continue to hear for the next semester is “Precision before Progression.” Especially in the snatch, perfection of movement must come longer for progression of load.
I plan to write a long a blog post next week on this reality but the truth of the matter is that for most high school athletes the snatch is not something they should ever go heavy on. When I use the word “heavy” I mean any weight that might push them to the limit of their technical precision. That could be 40kg or 100kg depending on the athlete. For those athletes who just walked into the weight room for the first time this semester, “heavy” is currently the bar. This is why they will be overhead squatting for the next couple weeks or so. For those athletes who spent the last semester working on the snatch, heavy is a spackling of all kinds of different weights. However technical precision always take precedence over the weight on the bar. This is an idea that I have preached over and over and over again and hopefully not a new one to anyone reading this blog.
However, for the new guys they have to know and trust that precision will always create progression. As will a lack of precision create a lack of progression. For those of you coaches out there who may be dealing with a new lifter or a new client who has never even seen a snatch before and they want to learn how, remember this tenant. The snatch is, for 95% of the world, a weightlifting movement used to create agility, balance, coordination, and flexibility. It is not a lift designed to create strength gain. (There are the exceptions to the rule and those lifters compete for national and international podiums, more on this to come.)
Coaches, don’t let your own desire to see your athletes lift heavy weight get in the way of your understanding of precision. We all want to see our athletes succeed. What we have to remember is that success is ALWAYS found in precision and only SOMETIMES found in progression of load.