Many people get weightlifting and lifting weights confused. Technically the sport of weightlifting is also called Olympic Lifting and incorporates two moves; the snatch, and clean and jerk.
Now that we have that cleared up, many people try to avoid these lifts in our program, and I wanted to take a second to discuss the benefits of them, and why they are important to practice.
First of all, there are 10 general physical skill. They are:
Endurance
Stamina
Strength
Flexibility
Power
Speed
Coordination
Agility
Balance
Accuracy
All of these skill are important to develop if you’re going to be truly healthy and work towards longevity with your body’s performance.
Barring any other benefits, olympic weightlifting develops…
strength, flexibility, power, speed, coordination, agility, balance, and accuracy. So without any further discussion we have two moves that just by simply doing them you are developing 8 out of the 10 general physical skills, but let’s dig a little deeper into benefits of these moves.
Strength
While working on these lifts, you are developing strength. Training speed strength is extremely helpful in increasing overall strength. There are entire training methods, like westside barbell, who use these principles. PS: Many of the strongest athletes in the world train there, so there’s something to that method.
Flexibility
Moving through these movements require speed through full ranges of motion. This translates into increased flexibility. Increased flexibility will help the body move better, and lead to less joint pains.
Power, Speed, Coordination, Agility
When you’re able to move faster through full ranges of motion, your athletic ability will improve. Why is this important to you if you don’t play a sport? Easy, hang with me here….
Greater athletic performance translates into all different aspects of life. When you’re more athletic, daily activities of life become easier. Olympic weightlifting creates great speed through your core.
Here’s an example of how that’s helpful….
Let’s say you’re a small framed person and you buy a 50lb bag of dog food. Hinging at the hip with good form and then quickly lifting the bag off the ground helps you get the bag of dog food from the ground to a level you can place it in your trunk. Or how about this example, you’re doing work in your flower bed, and you have a large bag of mulch you need to transfer from one area to another. You grab the bag off the ground and quickly lift it to your shoulders. Guess what ladies and gentlemen, that’s a clean. How about you pick up a box and it’s really heavy and you need to lift it over your head to put it on a shelf. You use your hips and jump the weight up to a locked out position overhead. That’s a jerk. These movements translate into real life.
Let’s go another direction…
The snatch and clean and jerk are huge developers of coordination and agility. Why is that important? Let’s say you’re walking down the side walk and it’s uneven, your foot catches and you start to fall.
What happens next?
One of two things, if you’re uncoordinated and don’t have good agility, you will most likely reach your arm out land on your outstretched hand and fracture your wrist. This happens so often the mechanism of injury is nicknamed FOOSH (falling on outstretched hand). Option number two, you have developed great speed through your core, you have better coordination and awareness of where your body is located in space, and your agility has increased, instead of falling, your body naturally moves to a position of recovery, you stumble but stay on your feet and laugh about what a close call that was.
Developing those skills matter.
Balance and Accuracy
Balance is one of the critical factors that if not worked on will diminish as you progress in age. In fact, strength, balance, and coordination, are major contributing factors to whether or not you will need assisted living when you get older. Yeah it’s that important. Balance and accuracy are also important in the above mentioned scenarios of falling.
Here are some other benefits of olympic weightlifting…
You’ll sculpt a leaner, tighter body. Olympic weightlifting literally works every muscle in your body from your head to your toes, and it makes them work together. It’s a full body workout. By doing this, the movements become more functional to life.
Your core will be stronger. Every aspect of these movements utilize your core, so it develops extremely strong abs, legs, butt, basically everything in your middle.
You’ll supercharge your other workouts. The more athletic you are, the harder you will be able to go in your other workouts which translates into better results all the way around.
You’ll improve bone health. By doing these movements it puts good stress on the bones, and will create stronger bones in the process.
Last of all, olympic weightlifting is a mental workout. Every aspect of your brain has to work in coordination with your muscles for you to be able to complete the movement. There’s a lot to think about, which is why people get frustrated with it. That being said, there’s research out there that doing complicated physical tasks actually makes your brain function better, so it can help your brain perform better in other aspects of your life, especially while under large amounts of stress. The central nervous system is taxed greatly during these lifts and it can help your body deal with stress much better if your CNS is developed well. Also, there’s something to be said about the benefits of working on something that you can constantly refine for the rest of your life. There’s can be great satisfaction in continually improving.
In conclusion, while olympic lifting may be a struggle physically and mentally, it is extremely helpful in your overall athletic endeavors, and can translate into real life benefits throughout.
7-16-19
Strength:
Front Squat
Workout:
21-15-9
HH Power Snatch
Ring Dips
400m run after each round
For time