I am a junior in high school that has recently joined the school’s weightlifting team. My current max is 165 maybe 170 on a good day. I have been at this weight for a couple of weeks now and I’m hoping to increase my max to 200lbs. by the end of February, which is right before our 1st meet. If I could get any advice on how to increase my max that would be great.
Just keep pushing the weights.
- Make sure your coach helps you out with technique, and practice the clean & jerk often.
- Push the front/back squat poundages.
- Do jerks, push press, and military presses.
At your age, you just need to try to go heavier and heavier each session/week/whatever. Your body is at a stage of easy adaptation.
Also, here’s some combos for the C&J. I’m not sure if your team has a set program, but here they are anyways: F. SQT + Jerk, CLN + F. SQT, PCLN + Jerk.
Best of luck.
[quote]Jeffra wrote:
I am a junior in high school that has recently joined the school’s weightlifting team. My current max is 165 maybe 170 on a good day. I have been at this weight for a couple of weeks now and I’m hoping to increase my max to 200lbs. by the end of February, which is right before our 1st meet. If I could get any advice on how to increase my max that would be great.[/quote]
Here’s a general piece of advice for this sport: even though its all about the numbers, don’t focus on the numbers. That is a recipe for a bad meet. I can’t tell you how many times I ‘knew’ what I wanted to hit and consequently went 2 for 6 and not coming close.
Work hard, focus on the technique, and try to make as many successful lifts as possible. If you hit 200, great, but that’s not what is important. This is not a linear progression sport; you might make a lot of progress in technique, but not see your lifts go up for another 2 months. Just keep trying to get better and don’t get set on any specific number.
My main problem right now is building an explosive jerk. I can clean the weight just fine its just the last part of the motion that gets me. I either get the weight up 90% of the way and I’ll have to lock out the last few inches or I won’t even be able to get the bar off of my shoulders. If I could just build up to an extremely powerful jerk my max would skyrocket, the jerk is really the only thing holding me back.
Very good advice from Dr. Manhattan.
A younger kid on my old team had that problem all the time. One thing is you are fatigued after a hard ass clean and jerk, so for me it always took a little bit of willpower to make sure I put my all into the jerk. Second, are you dropping under the bar enough/fast enough?
And third, you just may need to develop more overall power. This will come along eventually but one thing that helped me get a nasty vertical jump at 220 lbs. is just straight box jumps and reactive jumps. I’m not sure if this is even necessary for someone at your stage but it’s something to look into.
You got any videos of your Jerks?
What are your front, back squats and Power Jerks like?
You may be dipping too deep or leaning forwards int he dip and sticking yoru bum out,
are you dipping on your HEELS. Your HEELS MUST STAY PLANTED in the DIP phase of the Jerk.
Is your back legs knee bending enough?
30lbs in a month? You must have glaring issues or you will never get 30lbs in a month. What does your coach say? He’s seen your technique. We need more information to see where your going wrong and right to make suggestions.
A suggestion is to Jerk at the start and at the end of your sessions. This will increase your Jerking reps a lot each week.
Koing
Koing,
I just did some C/J today and got some video.
My reasoning for thinking that I could be able to hit 200lbs is because previously when I was doing C/J weekly I was able to put a good 5lbs on my max a week. Today I got to my old max of a couple of weeks ago, 175. I felt that I could get a good 180 but unfortunately I had to leave. I’ll have some video of these lifts up either tomorrow or Wednesday.
It is very easy for a beginner to put 5 to 10 pounds on his max each week or every couple of weeks. As u start getting more advanced and move away from a beginner phase the increases happen less often. just keep going with it and keep pushing the weight and u’ll be good to go.
My mate with about 5hrs coaching over a few years, got about 30mins of coaching on Friday and managed to PC 90kg, so thast 188lbs. His stats:
DL 180kg x 2reps
Back Squat ~ 130kg? he leans forwards quite a bit, does about 8reps x 4sets with 110kg or so?
He is a pullup and dipping machine.
He is NOT explosive as he can’t jump or sprint well
His technique was okay but has issues (early arm bend, not keeping the bar close enough, not finishing, not receiving the bar properly, not bending knees enough on the receive) but he managed 90kg. I’m confident that if he trained at least once every 3-4 weeks with me he could Power Clean 100kg within 3months.
Koing
Koing, what program do you do?
I work legs 3x a week with wed. being the day that I focus on clean and jerk.
What would you recommend adding to my program?
P.S.
I haven’t been able to get the video yet but I will have it up shortly.
[quote]Jeffra wrote:
Koing, what program do you do?
I work legs 3x a week with wed. being the day that I focus on clean and jerk.
What would you recommend adding to my program?
P.S.
I haven’t been able to get the video yet but I will have it up shortly.[/quote]
My program is uber secret…not even I know! lol
I do a mix up but I’m not really lifting at the moment. I’m concentrating on getting stronger. I’ve been lifting for 9.5yrs so my technique is alright. The fundamentals are down but I have a few issues
-early arm bend is creeping in over the last few months?!
-the bar goes away from me in the Clean quite a bit but I can get it, it swings out and back in
-Need to keep the bar closer on the snatch as I lose it over head as it swings out and back in
-sorting otu my Jerk
I squat 3x a week and occasionally lift when I feel like it. I’m focusing on my back squats so far. After the English Champs I’ll focus on my DL and Pulls. I have 18 weeks until the British after the English. 6 week strength phase, 4-5 week power phase, 6-7 week OLift phase. After the British get on the Russian squating cycle again. Power phase, Russian cycle and then OLift and the London Open.
I’ll go heavy in the Snatch/ Max out, C&J heavy, back squat heavy, do ab work
This is not going to help you lift as you need to work on technique. Depending on where you are I’d do like 6 singles at 2.5-5kg below your maximum and see how they are. If your technique isn’t consistent you won’t improve.
Koing
Jeffra, if you are indeed the person that I think you are, first off welcome to T-Nation! I used to row for Maclay and got recruited to Hopkins.
As per your question, were exactly do you fail in the jerk? Is it coming right off the shoulders or closer to when you arms are locking out? This will determine weak point in the movement. As for the qualities displayed, if your standing press is relatively strong, then that would lead me to believe that your speed is weak and if your standing press isn’t strong then I would focus on bringing that up.
Hope that helps!
Koing,
what is your set up on the Power phase and Russian cycle of your program?
[quote]mwebb wrote:
As per your question, where exactly do you fail in the jerk? Is it coming right off the shoulders or closer to when you arms are locking out? This will determine weak point in the movement. [/quote]
If I fail on the jerk I usually fail to get the weight above the middle part of the motion.
I’ve started to work on building an arm day that focuses on being explosive so hopefully this should assist in fixing out the jerk.
[quote]Jeffra wrote:
Koing,
what is your set up on the Power phase and Russian cycle of your program?
[quote]mwebb wrote:
As per your question, where exactly do you fail in the jerk? Is it coming right off the shoulders or closer to when you arms are locking out? This will determine weak point in the movement. [/quote]
If I fail on the jerk I usually fail to get the weight above the middle part of the motion.
I’ve started to work on building an arm day that focuses on being explosive so hopefully this should assist in fixing out the jerk.[/quote]
Power phase is undecided but I’ll just do heavy single and triples for power Snatch and PC and PJ. I’ll go heavy as possible once every 3rd or 4th session depending how I am.
Russian Back Squat is this:
http://www.exrx.net/WeightTraining/RussianSquatProgramGenerator.html
3x a week for 6 weeks alternating heavy and recovery sessions, first 3 weeks it’s the same weight but you increase the rep for each of the sets until you get up to 6x6 at 80% in the 3rd week. Then you go heavy taking a rep and set off and you go up by 5% in weight.
How long have you been Jerking?
The Jerk is a very co ordinated movement.
My mate can press 72kg but he can just about Jerk 80kg. Why? He’s had about 2hrs of coaching!!! His co ordination isn’t in tune yet and he doesn’t set the jerk up well.
Do you take a breath and hold it?
Is your weight DIRECTLY OVER YOUR HEELS?
Dip and drive straight?
Do you pull yourself back down in to a split or just float down?
Do you whip your elbows up and back?
Is your back and chin tucked in back so the bar can go directly straight up and doesn’t ahve to go around your face?
Are you dipping and driving hard and fast? Short and sharp dip and drive or is it slow with a pause and deep?
Pausing a Jerk will kill all of your power
Are you gripping the bar tightly so when you dip it comes off your shoulders as it’s under tension?
The bar should be relaxed across your shoulders and it will stay on your shoulders as you dip and drive.
Lots of things to work through in the Jerk phase mate.
Other mate C&J 85kg which is a PB but he’s had about 100hrs of coaching and is more natural then the other mate. He’s more explosive and the other mate is use to slow strength. He is a chunk stronger then my other mate but has a lot less coaching and isn’t use to doing things explosively. He will get a lot better with more coaching.
Koing
[quote]Jeffra wrote:
Koing,
what is your set up on the Power phase and Russian cycle of your program?
[quote]mwebb wrote:
As per your question, where exactly do you fail in the jerk? Is it coming right off the shoulders or closer to when you arms are locking out? This will determine weak point in the movement. [/quote]
If I fail on the jerk I usually fail to get the weight above the middle part of the motion.
I’ve started to work on building an arm day that focuses on being explosive so hopefully this should assist in fixing out the jerk.[/quote]
If you are missing the bar midway, you are probably pushing it forward. You need to really focus on staying flat on your feet through the dip and drive and only bending your knees, not your hips. A Fast dip is NOT important, especially to newer lifters. A controlled, flat footed dip and drive will get a lot more weight over your head.
Over and over again, I hear people say ‘I am going to do more arm work for the jerk.’ Don’t. Spend that extra time olympic lifting, especially jerking. Your shoulder/arm strength is likely more than adequate. You are probably just messing up the technique/timing.
The thing to remember about the jerk is that your legs send the bar up, and your shoulders/arms send your body down. My first coach never pressed more than 85kg, but he jerked 182kg. My best press is 100kg, and I’ve jerked 170kg multiple times. You won’t see me start to push with my arms until AFTER I’ve exploded with my legs, and I am just using them really to get myself underneath.
So to summarize:
- Work on the technique
- More jerking
- No extra arm day
- Stop trying to use your arms to push the bar up. Use your legs for that.
If you were weak in some way, it would almost definitely be squat strength and not press strength. -Feeling- weak is usually indicative of the bar being out of position or having crappy technique.