Hi, I am hoping someone can help me with developing a routine geared towards increasing my power clean (from the hang), snatch, squat, and deadlift. I am interested in more of gaining functional power (sports oriented) as opposed to lifting just for physical appearance purposes or bodybuilding. Mr. Thibaudeau, I have read several of your interviews, articles, and forum threads and I have a few specific questions for you. In your Power Broker interview you mentioned that you only lift bench 3 months out of the year; do you focus on this for 3 months or do you spread it around? also, do you approach shoulders and upper body in general with this same philosophy of only lifting it 3 months out of the year? also, i notice you incorporate several varieties of olympic lifts in your routines; when you lift them do you do several (like snatches and cleans) on the same day or do you devote specific days to one lift? also what kind of set/rep scheme do you use and how many days a week do you perform the olympic lifts? primarily what leg exercises do you use and how often each week do you perform these? If their are any specific articles anyone could steer me to which might contain a leg or olympic lift routine that might hold the answers to my questions that would be greatly beneficial. thx, Matt.
Allow me to append my own, albeit more simplified, question. What sort of split would one employ when seeking to competitively train the Olympic lifts?
I don’t mean to hijack the thread, but I think this is basically what Matt is asking.
You’ll see all kinds of training split in the training of olympic lifters. A lot of coaches train both lifts in the same workout and do so 4-6 times per week. Others will separate the lifts in different workouts.
Pierre Roy, the famous Canadian olympic lifting coach, uses programs in which the lifts are segmented into 3 types of workouts: a) snatch-based workouts b) jerk-based workouts c) clean based workouts
Each session has 4 exercises. One main exercise (e.g. power clean from blocks), one auxiliary exercise from a different height (e.g. clean pull from ground), one assistance exercise (e.g. front squat) and one remedial exercise (e.g. back hyper, romanian deadlift).
Every single session is different, rotating between the various lifts possible.
Christian, thanks for the feedback. One quick question. When it comes to training chest and back with this split would you include bench, pullups, etc as one of the assistance, auxiliary or remedial exercises or would you dedicate a completely different workout to train the upper body? Thx, matt
When training around the olympic lifts the bench press is trained as the 4th exercise of every jerk emphasis session.
Rows can be used as the 4th exercise in any of the two other days.