This weekend I am in Cheshire Connecticut for a weightlifting seminar at 3E Crossfit. During the lunch break, I had to work through a snatch wave that looked like the following: 60/3, 70/2, 77/2, 82/1, 87/1, 92/1, 85/1, 90/1, 95/1, 100/1. I also had some other work to do and had to warmup. That meant my time was limited to complete the snatch work. Therefore, I completed all the work inside a 20 minute window, never sat down, and tried to stay as close to every 90 sec-2min as possible per lift. Some of the camp attendees noticed I was always walking around, glancing at the clock, and moved through the work with what seemed to be a quicker pace.
The reason I did this was two-fold. First, the time constraints on my workouts forced the quicker pace. Secondly, it’s good for a weightlifter to be in shape. For those of you who have never lifted at a National competition, you don’t know how dynamic the attempts cards can be and how quick you can move from being 10 minutes out to be the next lifter on the platform. Lifters who are out of shape can’t adapt to changes in the attempt count. They begin to fatigue and their lifts on the platform reflect that fatigue. Furthermore, there is often many times nothing can be done about your lift attempt and the ordering of the cards.
I do work like the snatches today to prepare myself for a scenario similar to the one explained above. Yall need to have the capacity to speed up your warmups or slow them down based on the meet. That takes practice and preparation. Trust me you don’t want to be that lifter who is rushing to the platform, out of breath, and appears to be in cardiac arrest.
Work some timed reps. Work through build up waves, like the one I did today, with intentional focus on moving through the lifts faster. Practice the worst case scenario and prepare your conditioning to handle it. Hopefully, your attempt cards are fine and you never have this problem. But, on the high likelihood that everything isn’t perfect, make sure your capacity is prepared to handle it.