Hi christian, welcome back to the forums!!! Ok my question is kind of a westside vs Olympic lifting kind of debate. No disrespect to any of the believers in each system of course!
Admittedly i have not been doing o-lifts for long (7-8 months self taught from books, net articles (thanks again) and a video). and only the power variations. I managed a 80kg power snatch and a 105kg power clean at 5"8’ 80kg BW. Both from the hang position. I am into the lifts for sports performance improvement and was following HTT kind of program. But stagnated. I dunno i did not find myself that much more explosive, but certainly leaner (despite my lingering plantar facitis, got suggestions for that also would be appreciated!) could be the volume of the htt.
Then i started a westside style thing with wide box squats and lots of good mornings and speed deadlifts, one speed and one max effotr day each week for the upper and lower body. Without o-lifts and just trying for fun one day, i did 117 hang power clean pretty easy also at 80kg! What does this mean?
I was too weak in the posterior chain to begin with? Both kinds of training complement each other and can be integrated? CNS just got used to heavier weight from deadlifting? Anything else?
and the plantar facitis is really annoying! prevents me from basketball and HIIT… darnit! Got any suggestions from your experiences?
Sorry for rambling and i dont mean this post to cause any personal attacks!
You’re not alone in that case. I did my best olympic lifts while doing a Westside program! After the 2001 Canadian champs in Olympic lifting (in which I did extremely poorly) I was sick and tired of the olympic lifts. So I switched to powerlifting for 6 months or so. Then decided to test my snatch. I did not went all out on the first day, but after only a week of being back to the olys I snatched 142.5kg (my previous best in training has been 127.5kg and my best in competition 120kg) and power snatched 137.5kg!!! I was very pleased to say the least! I tried to clean and jerk, but the Westside lifting increased my triceps mass so much that I had flexibility problems racking cleans. I decided to go back to strictly olympic lifting, dropped the Westside stuff and dropped back down to a 125kg snatch!
Something similar happened to me after my physical transformation. For the major part of my transformation program I did not use any olympic lifting at all. When I started the transformation I was snatching 120kg and clean & jerking 155kg. After the transformation I resumed my olympic lifting training and within 2 weeks of practice I was up to a 130kg snatch and a 170kg clean & jerk. Then it normalized back down to 125 - 155!!!
Nowadays I’m not doing much olympic lifting. However I do a lot of heavy lifting and explosive jumps, jumps squats and such and can power snatch 115-120kg really easily any day of the week.
A lot of times north american lifters are simply too weak to perform well! So much emphasis is put on technique that increasing strength in the right places is put on hold! Who’s the best North American weightlifter? Shane Hamman… who has a large powerlifting background. Look at all the European olympic lifters and you’ll see huge lifts in the assistance exercises (especially squats, front squats and pulls). Louie Simmons once said that the biggest problem of North American olympic lifters is that they are not strong enough. I believe that he’s right! When you look at it, the technique of the best US/Can lifters is just as good as the lifting technique of the Russian and Bulgarian lifters, the problem has to be elsewhere.
American lifters also look like they lift in slow mo. Europena lifters are still fast at max lifts
Also the comment about your explosivness not increasing with olys. I find that the reason for this is that people usually don’t do olys properly, they do some sort of power swing, and they do it too slowly, even though it’s still faster than your regular lifts.
Yes you can do olys “slowly”
And it also takes a while before results come through when you begin to load them properly.
