Shockin' Busy

I've been busy over the last week, so only getting to post this now. Here it goes-

Saturday

I competed at the Masters, my first competition of the year, and the first since the seniors last year. It was a excellent competition, and I was reasonably happy with how I lifted. I totalled a massive 127kg at 63.5kg, comprising of 52/75. I made all six of my lifts, which tells me I've more in me. That much is encouraging.

Unfortunately the water loading didn't quite work for me. After discussing it with Barry during the week, my attempt became half-hearted. He reminded me I'm only a beginner, and shouldn't be worrying about weight classes at all, which of course he was completely right about.

Thanks to everyone for the advice and encouragement. I met a lot of sound guys at the comp, and their kind words were much appreciated. Congratulations to everyone who lifted, there was a lot of great lifting, and there is much more to come from all.

Tuesday

Tuesday was the first day of training this semester for the DCU Weightlifting Club. We've managed to get our hands on one of the strength and conditioning rooms in the college to use, which is a big improvement on last semester. We've also secured some funding, which means we can purchase some basic gear to get us going. At the minute we're using broom handles, and olympic bars. This is fine for now, as a lot of members need to improve their flexibility before they're ready to use the proper equipment.

The excellent Harry Leech, who has taken position as coach; takes us for two two hour slots during the week, and one hour and a half slot. At the minute the sessions are broken up into a quick warm up, which includes joint mobility work; followed by some skill work (snatch drops, hang snatches, hang cleans etc.). We finish up with squatting followed by some static stretching. The skill work is a step backwards for me, but I think it will be useful practice, and will help iron out some of the issues I'm having in the basic parts of the lifts. I'm also finding the stretching and mobility work very beneficial, this is a very important area for me to work on.

Wednesday

Morning
I trained in Hercs from 11 as Harry was in training. I didn't go to heavy, since it was my first day of proper lifting since the competition. Here's what I did-

• Snatch - worked up to 6*1*47kg

Harry had me focusing on getting the hips lower for these. I found it was making it a lot easier to push through the center of my feet. When I had then higher I was extending through the toes, which was causing many other problems.


• Clean & Jerk - worked up to 4*2*61kg

Again Harry had me trying to get the hips lower, and again it was effective. I was very tired for these though. Especially the second reps. I'm really not used to morning sessions at all!


• Back Squat - worked up to 4*3*90kg

Afterwards I went up to do a little stretching with Harry and Alex. I didn't really do much, but got a few more issues I'm having pointed out by Alex. The list keeps building! The newest is weakness in the inner abdominals/obliques. A lot of these problems seem to be connected, and contributing to my weak jerk and snatch. I feel as if I'm improving slowly though.

Evening
We had another session with Harry in DCU. It was pretty similar to Tuesday, but we got to use a bit of weight when squatting. It's great to see how quickly everyone's improving. Some members have a lot of potential, and I'm really looking forward to seeing us becoming a successful weightlifting club.

Friday

I was majorly hungover from Thursday night, but managed to make it along to the final session of the week in DCU. Good to be working a way at the stretching and mobility work, even if I did feel terrible! The skill work wasn't great at all, and the little bit of squatting felt terribly heavy. Unfortunately most Fridays will be like this.

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That was the weeks training. I also did a little bit of shoulder work on Thursday, but it's not really worth logging.

This week's training will be pretty similar. Hopefully I'll have a little more time to update this.

Step 1 - Acceptance

It's been a long time coming. I've made several half-hearted attempts, but the temptation always took over. This time it's for real. It's time to finally say goodbye to the bench press. Well... almost!

I had my first Olympic Weightlifting competition in March of '08 (The Irish Seniors). I've been lifting close to 2 years now it might appear, I've surely built up some reasonably impressive numbers in the various lifts involved. Unfortunately this is not the case (as you can see from my pbs below). The list of excuses is endless, I won't bore you. A quick summation would read- laziness, shoulder issues, laziness!

For now I'll use the second excuse. Even though by right, laziness was the reason I didn't sort it out! See I've been lifting weights from the tender age of 15. I was the best at the bench press and bicep curls for miles! This however, rightly fecked up me shoulders.

For my first competition I was self trained. My technique simply involved muscling the bar overhead, it wasn't pretty (I lifted 45/62 in the 62s). It wasn't until October of the same year, that the excellent Harry Leech took me under his wing.

With my shoulders almost melding with my chest Harry realised he'd have his work cut out! It took about 3 months until I could overhead squat correctly. Even when I got that far, it became obvious, that without serious shoulder rehab; they would impede on most other parts of both lifts. And they did.

However I still managed to make the Irish Seniors again, and with some coaching under my belt, I made a slight improvement. 49/70 @ ~63. It was still pretty bad, and I soon started finding my motivation declining.

I was in the middle of my 1st year in DCU. So when summer hit I moved back home to the mighty Monaghan. Training took a standstill for 4 months. The most I did was squat occasionally.

Returning to college in October, I figured I could really start making the change, and I did to a degree. I became involved with starting of a DCU weightlifting club (I'll have more on that soon), and upped my training. This went on for 2/3 months, I had the World Drug Powerlifting Championships in November, so it was disturbed.

After the competition the shit hit the pan. Too many late nights, to much drinking, to much not going to gym, etc etc. And now I'm here...

A New Year, a New Beginning -
1) Fix the bleedin' shoulders once and for all.
I've seen a physio twice over xmas, I have the rehabbing solution, I just have to follow it.
2) Train four times a week.
Not difficult. Harry has a program laid out for me, and I used to train 6 times a week for powerlifting. Four's nothing.
3) Get the weightlifting club sorted.
We really need to step up the fight, and get the funds needed. Then we can really get the ball rolling.

So there you have it. The blog is going to act as record for me, a motivator(through you the reader hopefully), and a guide (if you're all generous enough to give constructive criticism and pointers!)

Cheers,
Shane

ps. I'm sure there's much I've forgotten to include. I will make sure to mention them in the coming days.