I Want It All (Powerlifting & Olympic)

Training Powerlifting
1

Long time member… First started forum. Prepare to flame away. I am not currently a power lifting competitor, but intend to some day.

I have a very broad interest in all weight training, but specifically I am trying to make identifiable progress in BOTH power lifts and olympic lifting. It never fails when my focus moves to one side or other of the spectrum, my progress in other segment plateaus or weakens. I’m fairly seasoned as a meathead, but there is always room for improvement. 32yrs old. Link below should have a view videos validating effort. watch… heckle…

YouTube

Does anyone know who the expert in program development for consistent progress in the 3 power and 2 olympic lifts?

I’ve looked into all the principals of westside, juggernaut, crossfit (dumb), pendlay’s stuff…

Who ties it all together the best? Feel free to share what has worked and what has not.

2

You might want to look into Shane Hamman. He held some squat record at over 1000 and also his clean and jerk was over 500 which makes him one of the only Americans to do it in quite a while.

I only know two things about his training. 1) he did squats with a ballistic “dive bomb” approach, dropping fast and bouncing back up, and 2) he did very heavy partial clean pulls from the rack, pulling only a few inches with like 660.

Taranenko, who holds the clean and jerk record at at least 585 (before they redid the weight divisions) believed that back squatting was the foundation of the olympic lifts. He did a double at 837 I think with a high bar, and pretty close stance. He trained 15 times a week, three times a day for 3 days and 2 times a day for 3 days at his peak. He snatched every day. My guess would be that out of 15 workouts he probably snatched 6-8 times, cleaned 4-5, and squatted maybe 2-4 times a week. Probably did one lift per workout for 12-24 reps (mostly doubles) on the clean and snatch in the 60-85% range. Probably squatted 70-85% for 4-8 reps per set.

3

I honestly don’t know who to point you to for both olympic lifting AND powerlifting programming.

All I can really give you are my two cents, which are probably worth about .01 cents cause I’m not a particularly strong powerlifter or olympic lifter haha. But like yourself I love all kinds of lifting and put a lot of time into researching programming and whatnot.

Common sense tells me that your best bet would be pretty simple: start most sessions with olympic lifting. Snatch, clean and jerk, or power snatch and power clean and jerk. Because of how insanely technical they are, you need to be doing those lifts fresh, and you need to be doing them very frequently in order to perfect technique. So I would be training at least 5 days a week, doing an olympic lift to start each session. Doesn’t have to be super heavy, most days should be light enough that it is more or less technique work.

Then, after you are done olympic lifting (for example, say you did 10 snatch singles at 75%) move on to a very basic powerlifting program. This will be the time to really hammer away at heavy weights and get you stronger. While you might be a little tired from the oly lifting, the explosiveness of the lifts will prime you to be moving fast and explosively when you squat, pull etc. I would probably do snatch variation, followed by a ton of squatting as one workout, and clean and jerk variation followed by bench and pulling as another workout.

They key, I would bet, is not overworking the olympic lifts. Take 20-30 minutes to really hammer technique, don’t miss a single lift, and just get GREAT at them. Then, take 30-45 minutes (once you are all warmed up and explosive) to crush some heavy weight for a lot of reps on the big 3, and just kick your body’s ass. If you get significantly stronger at squatting and deadlifting, and significantly improve your olympic lifting technique, I have a feeling your oly lifts will improve significantly as well. Imagine you take your squat from 300 lbs to 500 lbs. I’d bet that, even if you didn’t clean that ENTIRE time, your clean would probably go up quite a bit haha. Now, imagine you up your squat 200 lbs, and you have been cleaning 3 x a week, never missing lifts and always focusing on perfect technique.

Obviously this probably isn’t the best way in the world, but for a guy who isn’t trying to be an olympian, I bet it would work pretty well. Probably the best way would be to do the oly sessions in the morning, and the power sessions in the afternoon, but I think combining them would work as long as your are modest when picking oly percentages. This is how I would set it up

day 1) Light snatch variation / heavy squats (high bar or front squat)
day 2) light clean and jerk variation / heavy bench / rep effort or dynamic deadlifts (probably clean deads would be best)
day 3) Rest/mobility
day 4) heavier snatch variation / rep effort squats
day 5) heavier clean and jerk variation / Heavy deads / rep effort bench
day 6) Cleanup day - oly lift variation or variations, accessory work (rowing, curling, pressing, whatever you feel you need that week)
day 7) rest/mobility

Again, I have no idea how useful this is to you, but if it were me and I couldn’t find a pre-made program that worked, this is how I would do it.

4

I honestly don’t know who to point you to for both olympic lifting AND powerlifting programming.

All I can really give you are my two cents, which are probably worth about .01 cents cause I’m not a particularly strong powerlifter or olympic lifter haha. But like yourself I love all kinds of lifting and put a lot of time into researching programming and whatnot.

Common sense tells me that your best bet would be pretty simple: start most sessions with olympic lifting. Snatch, clean and jerk, or power snatch and power clean and jerk. Because of how insanely technical they are, you need to be doing those lifts fresh, and you need to be doing them very frequently in order to perfect technique. So I would be training at least 5 days a week, doing an olympic lift to start each session. Doesn’t have to be super heavy, most days should be light enough that it is more or less technique work.

Then, after you are done olympic lifting (for example, say you did 10 snatch singles at 75%) move on to a very basic powerlifting program. This will be the time to really hammer away at heavy weights and get you stronger. While you might be a little tired from the oly lifting, the explosiveness of the lifts will prime you to be moving fast and explosively when you squat, pull etc. I would probably do snatch variation, followed by a ton of squatting as one workout, and clean and jerk variation followed by bench and pulling as another workout.

They key, I would bet, is not overworking the olympic lifts. Take 20-30 minutes to really hammer technique, don’t miss a single lift, and just get GREAT at them. Then, take 30-45 minutes (once you are all warmed up and explosive) to crush some heavy weight for a lot of reps on the big 3, and just kick your body’s ass. If you get significantly stronger at squatting and deadlifting, and significantly improve your olympic lifting technique, I have a feeling your oly lifts will improve significantly as well. Imagine you take your squat from 300 lbs to 500 lbs. I’d bet that, even if you didn’t clean that ENTIRE time, your clean would probably go up quite a bit haha. Now, imagine you up your squat 200 lbs, and you have been cleaning 3 x a week, never missing lifts and always focusing on perfect technique.

Obviously this probably isn’t the best way in the world, but for a guy who isn’t trying to be an olympian, I bet it would work pretty well. Probably the best way would be to do the oly sessions in the morning, and the power sessions in the afternoon, but I think combining them would work as long as your are modest when picking oly percentages. This is how I would set it up

day 1) Light snatch variation / heavy squats (high bar or front squat)
day 2) light clean and jerk variation / heavy bench / rep effort or dynamic deadlifts (probably clean deads would be best)
day 3) Rest/mobility
day 4) heavier snatch variation / rep effort squats
day 5) heavier clean and jerk variation / Heavy deads / rep effort bench
day 6) Cleanup day - oly lift variation or variations, accessory work (rowing, curling, pressing, whatever you feel you need that week)
day 7) rest/mobility

Again, I have no idea how useful this is to you, but if it were me and I couldn’t find a pre-made program that worked, this is how I would do it.

5

i would talk to matt rhodes or steve pulcinella (not sure how to spell that last one) over at elitefts.net i think they would be able to give you some great advice. just send in a question on their Q&A section.

6

i would talk to matt rhodes or steve pulcinella (not sure how to spell that last one) over at elitefts.net i think they would be able to give you some great advice. just send in a question on their Q&A section.

7

i would talk to matt rhodes or steve pulcinella (not sure how to spell that last one) over at elitefts.net i think they would be able to give you some great advice. just send in a question on their Q&A section.

8

FWIW, Louie often writes that olympic lifters would benefit greatly from incorporating PLing principals (even claims this is the reason Americans are solid at PLing on the world stage but suck at OL). He gets flamed by the OLing community whenever he tries to write in that arena, but I don’t think he’s too far off base (if you go from pulling 600 to 800 lbs off the floor, shouldn’t your OLs be benefitting greatly with a more powerful start?)

My two cents: Try something like westside, except use the DE days to train OLs instead of speed work for the Big 3? You could also do OLs on the ME days before your ME lift, just don’t work at too high of an intensity or do too many reps that it takes away from your ME lift that day, but plenty of people do some kind of explosive/DE movement anyways before their ME variation.

Good luck man. I don’t see anything wrong with working on both if that’s what will drive you. Obviously you may not get 100% of the gains you’d get in each if you just focused on one or the other, but they aren’t unrelated and you should be able to make good progress in both at the same time.

9

check this out - Glenn Pendlay's Supertotal Program - Christian Thibaudeau Coaching - Forums - T Nation

10

I follow 531, and it works well for PLing, and Oly lifting. Right now because I’m off work with lots of rest time, I train 5 days a week with Mon for Oly lifting, than Tues-bench, Wed-squat, thurs-military, Fri-Deads, all 5 lifts are 531 with only one other accessory lift per day. This is a gruelling program that beats the shit out of me, and probably won’t be on it for to long.

I made much better gains 4 days a week, training (Mon) bench- (Tues) snatch before squat -(Wed) off- (Thurs) Military- (Fri) cleans before deads , again all 6 movements 531, just getting required reps with min. accessory work. It’s hard to serve two masters, but with the second example all 6 lifts moved up monthly, and my body felt good.

My goals are strickly PLing over the long haul, but my short term goals right now are to bring up snacth, and clean to respectable number’s, and in fact the Oly lifting has been good for my dead. Goodluck

11

Thinking about in now, it seems pretty simple though what I would probably do.

Lets say that I have a traditional powerlifting split with 2 bench days and 2 lower body days.

Bench comes with a second press, like overhead or closegrip, and some kind of upper body pull.

Squat comes with a lower body pull plus abs.

Just combine the bench with snatches and overhead presses (but put the snatches before the bench).

Squat will be done with cleans pulls, or olympic style deads plus abs.

  1. Snatch, Bench, push press
  2. Clean, power squat, abs
  3. Snatch pull, jerk, closegrip bench
  4. Olympic squat or front squat, clean pull or snatch grip deadlift, abs
12

I did it for a while, was really entertaining. I was training 6 days/week with a oly coach so technique was on point most of the time.

Everyday:
Snatch: work up to a max with good form, then drop weight to 90% and do 3 singles
Clean and Jerk: same as snatch
Back squat/Front squat (alternate every sesion): hevy set of 3 reps, maibe keep working up to a heavy single if feeling good.
Bench Press: Only benched 3x week, using always Prilepin’s Chart percentajes. The other 3 days I would skip this to next excersice.
Upper body pulling variation: chins ups or row, just some high reps to keep shoulders healthy, 3 to 5 sets of 8 to 20 reps.

Hope this helps.

13

Ya I think PLing, and Oly lifting goes together better than most people would think. Today I wasn’t much in the mood for workout (squat day) I did my 6x3 of power cleans, and my body was revved up for squatting, I said it backwards on my earlier post, Fri, are snatches before deads. If you can find the balance it all seems to work well together

14

[quote]Trevshenko wrote:
check this out - Glenn Pendlay's Supertotal Program - Christian Thibaudeau Coaching - Forums - T Nation

Trev, thanks for the link to the thread. I’m going to spend some more time looking into Pendlay’s Supertotal program. If anything, the name sounds cool! below is the link

15

I’ve feel like I’ve at least been sent in the right direction. I’m going to go with Pendlay’s setup. It will take me a while to tweak the sets/reps. I hit some front squats pretty heavy last night and I feel like there is no way I “Rip the head off a lion” as Donny Shankle would advise. Bench press it is. I’ll reach the goals below, and hope to let everyone know how long it took and maybe have a set/rep scheme to share.

My current maxes are below
Bench 360
Squat 400
Deadlift 475
Clean & Jerk 255
Snatch 165

Goals
Bench 400
Squat 450-500
Deadlift 500
Clean & Jerk 315
Snatch 225

16

Forget programming your weightlifting at this stage, forget percentages and ‘days’.

Looking at your videos you do not currently have the flexibility to perform the Olympic lifts with proper technique, you need to do LOADS of work on flexibility and technique with very light weights.

You do not currently have the flexibility to hold a proper rack position. Don’t even think about attempting to clean or jerk anything approaching a challenging weight until you have developed the flexibility to hold a proper rack position.

Stretch every day, practice snatching and overhead squat with a broom handle every day. When and only when you have the flexibility to overhead squat comfortably to full depth should you move onto snatching with (very light) weight.

None of that will interfere with powerlifting training, just train the bench and deadlift as usual, when you’ve sorted out your rack position add in some cleans and jerks a couple of times per week. Also, cut the weight of your squats in half and work on squatting to full depth, when you can squat to full depth with light weight work your way back up.

Maybe after a year or more, when you have developed the flexibility and technique to properly execute the Olympic lifts, then and only then should you start to think about programming them and begin to work with challenging weights.

17

Oly training would have you squatting, pressing and doing deadlift variations while PL training would have zero snatching and clean and jerking.
You would never get the same numbers in PL as someone training straight PL but from my experience PL training sucks if your goal is to learn Oly lifts

18

You should talk to Wade Johnson, he competes in both powerlifting and olympic lifting. He is an elite powerlifter with a 1000+ squat, 700 bp & dl.

19

I went to Pendlay’s sight, and looked at the supertotal program, that’s awesome. Might give it a try myself.
Side note; getting stronger in the clean has only helped with my dead, and squat number’s

20

Hey fella, I think I have a program you might be interested, I found it in one of my Oly lifting books, I’ll post it tomorrow after school and football, or u can Google the book (Olympic lifting for coaches and athletes, Greg Everett) and look for the program sample called weight gainer.

Adios