What’s good OTA Nation,
Today I wanted to address a question that I sometimes get from high school and college athletes that view my videos or read my blog posts.
Do I use Olympic lifts in my programming?
The straightforward answer is, NO.
A more elaborate explanation is; because Olympic lifts are very technical by nature.
It can take an athlete a couple of months to perfect a snatch or dead clean, depending on his/her limitations.
And being a strength coach who’s sole purpose is to get the best results possible for my athletes in the given amount of time we have to work together, it would be irresponsible to incorporating these types of lifts into their training.
Why waste 3 months on perfecting a lift that we can replicate using another exercise that takes a lot less time to learn and is a lot safer to perform.
When you start to understand that Olympic lifts are just hip flexion and hip extension movements, you can start to experiment with other exercises that require these exact movements (hip flexion/extension).
So for example;
- Medicine Ball Toss
- Tire Flips
- Explosive High Pulls
Are all movements that require you to bend your hips and explode forcefully forward in order to lift the resistance.
So if you’re a new athlete that’s just getting into the gym.
Or if you’re an athlete that has a goal to complete at a certain level but doesn’t have the time to waste.
I suggest using other exercises that mimic the hip movements of an Olympic lift.
[cleveryoutube video=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AonLDxArrgg” vidstyle=”1″ pic=”” afterpic=”” width=”” starttime=”” endtime=”” caption=”” showexpander=”off” alignment=”center” newser=””]
Holler,
