Weightlifting sounds fun
Hey internet, it's me again. I haven't written here in a while, I thought maybe I'd write about how weightlifting sounds more fun. I get nervous when I write these, because other people can read them. I'm trying to tell myself to just calm down and write. But then ironically by writing these interludes that remind me to calm myself down, I get more agitated by the fact that if I don't get straight to the point with these blog posts then people will get bored easily. It's this self-conscious loop. Jeez maybe it's easier for me to just write this for myself. I mean gosh it almost is like I'm writing exclusively for myself to begin with. Anyways.
So I have to start out by saying that I haven't done olympic weightlifting in almost like 4 years. The very little I did to begin with, I was only doing hang cleans because that was what was prescribed in my workouts. I don't know if I was doing them correctly, I had shit mobility then and I remember being scared about hurting my wrist. I'm pretty sure I did have like minor sprains while working out so that was justified to a certain extent.
So why the sudden interest? I came across weightlifting content through YouTube, and more specifically through Clarence Kennedy. I found out about him through some meme lifting video, and this guy was absurd. Squatting 250kg for reps, doing backflips, I was like damn this dude's a god. So from there I just started watching his Q&A videos, and then got to watching more weightlifting centered content like Zack Telander (I'm pretty sure a lot of other powerlifters watch his stuff too), and then I watched the Olympics and that was fire. I watched Klokov, Pyrros Dimas, Lasha, Lu, and I was like damn those guys are fire. It's such a beautiful movement. The snatch and the clean & jerk. It's just so nice to watch. I don't know what it is about it. It's so fast, so strong, really precise. The intense look of focus on the lifters' faces is incredible. The way I try to explain it, for people who never watched Olympic weightlifting as a sport, is it's kind of like basketball. Except you only have 6 shots to take in the whole game, and each shot is progressively further away from the rim as the game progresses. Is kind of how I think about it. It's like a competition where each player takes a buzzer beater 3, six times. It's like, ridiculously clutch. And when they squat down and get ready it's like, that atmosphere is this intense calmness. And I see Klokov bear his teeth, he puts his game face on that's intense as hell. Some dudes stay calm like Lasha and Ilyin. But it's like, that moment when they're getting ready where anything can happen. It's actually really cool. And the best thing about it is that, for me, I can get into the sport too. It's just weights on a barbell. How simple is that? For most sports I've been a part of, it's always 100 times more fun to play the sport than to watch it, and actually watching a sport becomes 100 times more fun when I start playing it, because I get to understand all the nooks and crannies.
So I honestly can't wait to try and get into weightlifting. I'll probably suck at first, like suck bad. But I think it's ok. For me there are things I'm ok with sucking at. There are things I actually like sucking at. And I realized I still suck at the movement today, actually, which is another story. Basically my gym closed yesterday, and will stay closed for the next 2 weeks, though I speculate they may be closed longer than that. And today was my GPP day, so I really needed something to do other than the basic mountain climbers and ab cycles, which bore me to death. So then I remembered, oh yeah, there was this guy named Torokhtiy, a dude who won the Olympics in weightlifting in 2012, who made a series of YouTube videos for home workouts for weightlifters. So I was like aight, I'll check that out. And that shit was hard. I was using something like a broom-ish thing to replace the barbell, which he did in his video too, and I needed to do some movements like an overhead squat in the snatch hand position, as well as the clean hand position. And I was dying, my traps and upper back had never been squeezed to meet that range of motion. I mean I'm working on that ROM in my stretching routines but it was still hard to keep up with the workout. I was straight dying. But it was fun! It's nice to know that my work I do in this workout, it can carry over to the mobility I need in doing an actual snatch, and clean & jerk. And I hope I can figure that out once this virus is past. Not having access to the gym really fucking sucks, it sucks for real, but I'm really happy I've been able to find ways to cope in a way that's fun.
But to go back to my increased interest in weightlifting, I think it also has a lot to do with my idea of what powerlifting means to me, as more of a way to get generally stronger, rather than a field to compete in. The judging is more slippery and subjective, and it just didn't appeal to me, the feeling of a powerlifting meet, the numerous straps and knee wraps so tight people can't walk properly. Those dudes are really strong, I'm not going to take anything away from them, powerlifters are badass and strong people. But something about weightlifting just struck a cord in me.
So anyways that's what I've been thinking about lately. I don't know how exactly I'll fit training into my schedule when I do decide to go all in, since it seems an official weightlifting gym is a train ride away from my place... I'll have to figure it out. Thanks for reading.
So I have to start out by saying that I haven't done olympic weightlifting in almost like 4 years. The very little I did to begin with, I was only doing hang cleans because that was what was prescribed in my workouts. I don't know if I was doing them correctly, I had shit mobility then and I remember being scared about hurting my wrist. I'm pretty sure I did have like minor sprains while working out so that was justified to a certain extent.
So why the sudden interest? I came across weightlifting content through YouTube, and more specifically through Clarence Kennedy. I found out about him through some meme lifting video, and this guy was absurd. Squatting 250kg for reps, doing backflips, I was like damn this dude's a god. So from there I just started watching his Q&A videos, and then got to watching more weightlifting centered content like Zack Telander (I'm pretty sure a lot of other powerlifters watch his stuff too), and then I watched the Olympics and that was fire. I watched Klokov, Pyrros Dimas, Lasha, Lu, and I was like damn those guys are fire. It's such a beautiful movement. The snatch and the clean & jerk. It's just so nice to watch. I don't know what it is about it. It's so fast, so strong, really precise. The intense look of focus on the lifters' faces is incredible. The way I try to explain it, for people who never watched Olympic weightlifting as a sport, is it's kind of like basketball. Except you only have 6 shots to take in the whole game, and each shot is progressively further away from the rim as the game progresses. Is kind of how I think about it. It's like a competition where each player takes a buzzer beater 3, six times. It's like, ridiculously clutch. And when they squat down and get ready it's like, that atmosphere is this intense calmness. And I see Klokov bear his teeth, he puts his game face on that's intense as hell. Some dudes stay calm like Lasha and Ilyin. But it's like, that moment when they're getting ready where anything can happen. It's actually really cool. And the best thing about it is that, for me, I can get into the sport too. It's just weights on a barbell. How simple is that? For most sports I've been a part of, it's always 100 times more fun to play the sport than to watch it, and actually watching a sport becomes 100 times more fun when I start playing it, because I get to understand all the nooks and crannies.
So I honestly can't wait to try and get into weightlifting. I'll probably suck at first, like suck bad. But I think it's ok. For me there are things I'm ok with sucking at. There are things I actually like sucking at. And I realized I still suck at the movement today, actually, which is another story. Basically my gym closed yesterday, and will stay closed for the next 2 weeks, though I speculate they may be closed longer than that. And today was my GPP day, so I really needed something to do other than the basic mountain climbers and ab cycles, which bore me to death. So then I remembered, oh yeah, there was this guy named Torokhtiy, a dude who won the Olympics in weightlifting in 2012, who made a series of YouTube videos for home workouts for weightlifters. So I was like aight, I'll check that out. And that shit was hard. I was using something like a broom-ish thing to replace the barbell, which he did in his video too, and I needed to do some movements like an overhead squat in the snatch hand position, as well as the clean hand position. And I was dying, my traps and upper back had never been squeezed to meet that range of motion. I mean I'm working on that ROM in my stretching routines but it was still hard to keep up with the workout. I was straight dying. But it was fun! It's nice to know that my work I do in this workout, it can carry over to the mobility I need in doing an actual snatch, and clean & jerk. And I hope I can figure that out once this virus is past. Not having access to the gym really fucking sucks, it sucks for real, but I'm really happy I've been able to find ways to cope in a way that's fun.
But to go back to my increased interest in weightlifting, I think it also has a lot to do with my idea of what powerlifting means to me, as more of a way to get generally stronger, rather than a field to compete in. The judging is more slippery and subjective, and it just didn't appeal to me, the feeling of a powerlifting meet, the numerous straps and knee wraps so tight people can't walk properly. Those dudes are really strong, I'm not going to take anything away from them, powerlifters are badass and strong people. But something about weightlifting just struck a cord in me.
So anyways that's what I've been thinking about lately. I don't know how exactly I'll fit training into my schedule when I do decide to go all in, since it seems an official weightlifting gym is a train ride away from my place... I'll have to figure it out. Thanks for reading.
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