Programming for Olympic Weightlifting is initially tricky. Conventional wisdom and thoughts in the US has taught us Performance Coaches that squatting 2-3x a week is pretty risky. Yet in Weightlifting all we do is squat! Squat clean, squat snatch, back squat, front squat, overhead squat! Squat squat squat!
So how does one go from squatting twice a week to 3-4 times a week?
It’s pretty simple, accumulate the volume slowly and progressively. The key mistake many people make is increasing the intensity and volume too quickly. They go from doing day 1 5×5 to day 2 3×2 work sets and try to jump into a full Weightlifting program that may look like this:
Day 1:
- Squat Snatch 5×2 80-90%
- Squat Clean 3×1 90-100%
- OHS 3×3 85%
- BSQ 5×3 85+%
And repeating something similar for the next two or three days. I wouldn’t suggest something like this for a new Weightlifter. The key is try and build up his foundation in the lifts. While they do need a lot of time under the bar, the intensity should be much lower..
My suggestions:
If you’re going to squat x3 a week. You can do something like this:
Using 60% of BSQ for all the days with a variation of the volume such as:
- Day 1: 5×5
- Day 2: 2×10
- Day 3: 6×3 Pause
Here’s another example:
- Day 1: Medium with high volume (anywhere from 3×3-8reps)
- Day 2: Light high volume lower intensity (5×8 50-60%)
- Day 3: Light Tempo Volume (4×3 5:2:1)
This method allows the Weightlifter to get stronger in this joint angle without a high intensity. The higher volume but light intensity (weight) should allow them to recover pretty quickly and still focus on positioning.
Recovery
It’ll be typical for the Weightlifter to be a bit more tight/sore so they should spend a good amount of time on recovery via
- Ice bath
- Epsom salt bath
- Fascial release (foam roller)
- Stretching
And always the Coach as the responsibility to adapt. If this is too much volume for the Weightlifter they may need to kick it down a bit more and slowly increase the volume throughout the next few weeks.