I started Fusion Weightlifting based on the principle that our lifters focus on positions and not so much strength and numbers. While general strength and numbers are great you still need a strong foundation of positioning. Positional work is key for intermediate and even high level lifters. This is something many new lifters like to ignore for some reason,t hey watch what other high level lifters are currently doing but ignore the MANY years they trained to get to that point. Because of this positional work focusing on an upright torso, straight pull, speed under and out of the hole has been very beneficial for our lifters. This also kept the programming pretty simple regardless of competition cycles or not
Meatball Moment
Over the last few weeks, somehow I started to get away from positioning focused training. As my back is healing and I get a bit anxious to push heavier weight, I reverted back to a meatball mentality. Luckily I had a great meeting with one of my former Coaches , Coach Yu, and owe did he smack that meatball mentality right out of my head. It’s weird because as I stated my rationale out loud, I wanted to hit myself too :). This conversation reminded me that keeping the program simple and focusing on your weak link will have greater carry over rather than purely pushing just for numbers…numbers WILL come you just need to be patient and focus on building strong positions.
My meatball mentality has already taking a toll on my body, my hip flexor is tweaked and I can feel little tweak in my back again… This is all due to bad positions in the squat clean and squats, funny thing is that I would never let my lifters get away with this, had I swallowed my pride I would’ve realized that I need to scale it back. While most lifters have some sort of pain, the point of a coach is to minimize that, and hopefully keep the lifter healthy enough to keep progressing forward. Otherwise they’ll get to the point they may need scale the intensity/volume down or even worse, surgery = time off = wasted time.
Get to the Point
My whole point is that if you’re coaching/managing all aspects of your own training and having some issues you should talk to a qualified coach and hear your rationale for your program out loud. Answering the question why you have X movement in and what your goal of the phase is. Of course everyone wants to build on technique, positions, and strength – both in the lifts and general strength. But attempting to concurrently build up on all skills in one phase isn’t very systematic, more than likely you’ll stunt your long term progress. In the end, for myself, talking to my coach and getting perspective has been very valuable and I’m sure it will be for many others too.
Stay strong,