I took a quick break from these lesson to cover and compete at the American Open. I still have three more left to give for those of you who are curious what I learned in my first international trip.
Lesson 3- Body Changes
This lesson is not specific to Thailand but I think this past meet was the first time I noticed it. Over the past 6 months since moving back to Georgia my body has wanted to put on some extra weight. I can’t tell if the difference is the job and impact that has on me, the large amount of fried foods and gravy in Georgia, or the change in my training schedule. With that said, I weighed 75.8kg 3 weeks out from the meet. I weighed in at 68.6kg. 7.2kg (15.8lbs) of bodyweight changes your body. What’s more, at 69kg, it changes your body a lot. All the habits that I could prevent and had fixed in training came rushing back in warmups. My butt rose too fast off the floor. I drove the bar out in front of me on the jerk. I slammed my hips horizontally into the bar at the hips rather than driving with my legs vertically. All of these bad habits I had fixed in large part in training. However, on competition day they all came back. After spending some time talking to Colin about why that was and what would cause that, we realized that my body was different, moved different, and responded to stimulus different at 68.6 than it had in training at 75. Colin had experienced this is his own life as he cut for years from 89kg-91kg down to 85kg. During those years his best snatch in training was 166kg and in competition only 152kg. The same story was true of me. For most of my training 120kg had become a routine weight. I snatched it 6 or 7 times in a row multiple times in training. At one point I had done a high pull plus double hang snatch with it. What’s more, I had snatched 127 or 128 5 or 6 different times in the month leading up to the meet. On the platform at 68.6kg, I missed 120 in my opener, made a very ugly second attempt at it, and wasn’t even close to 125kg.
The lesson is obvious but one that I had not previously thought impacted me. 7kg of bodyweight cut from my frame changes how I lift and how my body moves the bar. Expecting my lifts to be the same at 69kg as they were in all the training sessions up to that point was utterly unrealistic. If you are cutting substantial weight I would give you one of two points of advice depending on how tall you are. 1- Don’t. Lift at the class you’re naturally in and grow into it.
OR
2- Concede to the truth that you will be the type of lifter that always lifts far more weight in the gym than on the platform.
Till next time…