Adam Beytin's Weightlifting Page

In my spare time, I train and compete in Olympic weightlifting. Check back here to see my current progress, records, rankings, and blog!

In the last blog post I talked about going six for six with major PRs at a local meet. It's not the first time that I hit a big PR total: in May 2008 I made an 8kg PR snatch en route to a 10kg PR total (the meet before was already a major PR). I was then unable to match that snatch or that total until the following year. I think it's fair to say that I wasn't really a "257kg lifter" back then, even though I did it once.

Now, two weeks after my perfect 282kg meet, I competed in the Arnold Championships again. Six for six, 280kg total. Two meets with 280kg or more in a row. No matter that I was cut all the way down to 77kg, and no matter that it was on a national stage. No matter that I had food poisoning for two days and couldn't sleep up until the day before the meet. We even held back on the last lifts when we could have gone for PRs. A fluke?? I think this time I really am as good a lifter as the meet numbers suggest.

This means quite a lot in terms of my development. There are now only about five or so active 77kg lifters in the U.S. that can reasonably do 280kg or more. Unless they all show up, chances are that I will come away with medals from every major national meet I compete in - even with the gold and silver medalists competing from last year's American Open I still took third place at the Arnold. I am very much within striking distance of 290kg even without improvement, and I still have the entire year to train. It looks like I may have a legitimate chance at qualifying for international competition by early next year. All I need to do is train!

On a separate note, I'd like to go into the details of the meet and why it seems I did so much better than last year. For sure I am a stronger and more consistent lifter, but I also addressed all of the major issues that made the 2009 Arnold so disappointing for me. The meet was still a big hurry-up-and-wait situation because so many athletes in the session had similar starting totals. That means that only a few people need to change their weights and all of the sudden it's your lift, yet if a couple people miss then you may have to wait several more minutes. Last year I got really tired because I did so many warmups in the back, especially because I had lots of time between attempts. This year we organized the warmups so that I only did six sets instead of nine during the snatch (40/65/85/100/110/115), and I waited less time between warmups so I didn't have to start as early. I have trained waiting longer between lifts as well, so when I had to wait for eight or more people to go between attempts I only had to do a single warmup, and not necessarily with heavy weight. The meet was consequently less stressful and I didn't have to do twice as much work to stay warm.

The other major issue that I fixed was the weight cutting. I didn't even give it credit last year. I still cut nine or ten pounds in the prior two weeks, but this time I controlled my electrolytes aggressively throughout the final hours while sweating off weight. As a result my snatch technique was consistent and no dizziness on my cleans! I even focused better on the platform, with only a couple really important things to think about.

The result of all this is that I pulled ahead of much of my old competition. Trique Meininger, who beat me at the American Open by 1kg, had the next highest total in my class at 263kg. Oleg Danilov, who would have taken my bronze at Nationals if he hadn't bombed his jerks, totaled only 268kg at 81kg bodyweight and looked happy to be able to do it. Others I aspired to match aren't even on my radar anymore. Leo is already dreaming even bigger numbers (and so am I), so now it's time to get to it!

I said it would be a breakout year, and it's happening! I'm fixing what needs to be fixed, and the results are already coming in. Yesterday I lifted in Mike McKenna's meet, the Vision Fitness Open (aka: "Garage Ink"), a relatively small but surprisingly well-attended meet with impressive lifting for a local competition. I entered the "Invitational" division, which means I paid double the entry fee for a chance to win cash prizes. Ten of us in all different weight classes competed, and while my own class was not competitive (I still got a HUGE medal, 4.5" diameter and 3/4" thick!), it was a real battle for the money, with Rick Bucinell at 105kg+ snatching 150kg, and Derek Fry at 94kg opening at or above my meet PRs. For the Open division prizes we were ranked based on our percentage of the American records for our weight classes, a tough break for Rick being a Masters lifter but having to use Shane Hamman's huge numbers, and for me purposefully not dropping all the way to 77kg (78.6kg!) but still having to use Kendrick Farris's total. In the end we were all pretty close, but Derek took the top prize, I took second, and Rick took home both the third Open prize AND some Masters money.

For me, specifically, I had a spectacular meet. In an incredibly rare feat for me (only three times so far in nearly three years) I made all my lifts, going six for six with an all-time personal best snatch of 126kg, an all-time best matching clean and jerk of 156kg, and a 10kg total PR of 282kg! That's 19kg more than I did at the American Open 2.5 months ago, enough for third place! The lifts were easily the best technically I have ever done at that amount of weight, and even so I can still identify areas where I can improve so I could do even more.

The high total, technical efficiency, and PRs were all great, but they weren't my real breakthrough this meet. I already knew I could lift that much, and my technique has been steadily becoming better. I even use higher maximums for my percentages in training than I did at this meet because I know I can do them; my workouts usually are given in percentages of maximums and I calculate the weights from that, ie: 80% clean and jerks of a 160kg max would be 128kg.

The real breakthrough was, believe it or not, in weight-cutting technique. I did cut weight, cutting back on water and sweating off weight to get to within at least 2kg of my weight class. I have been frustrated for a long time now with having trouble with faltering technique and dizziness at big meets. Even though I have been making weight for years, it's hard to tell how it affects you - in wrestling, it seems you always feel like crap! I didn't even pinpoint the weight loss as the problem until talking with Mike Walters and Rich Harris, whose wife is a nutritionist, when I did a small exhibition for them at Mike's place in Mechanicsburg, PA. Rich's wife pointed out that the two hours between weigh-ins and lifting is not enough time for the body to correct its electrolyte balance, regardless of what you eat and drink. This time I constantly drank small amounts of milk, Pedialyte, and lite salt even while I was sweating off the weight. It's a little strange, because you're ingesting weight even while actively losing it. I made sure I drank more and more, even when I didn't feel like I needed it or wanted it, sprinkling salt directly into my mouth and chasing it with very small mouthfuls of liquid, continuing to do so even throughout the actual competition. My mood was much, much better, and I didn't have ANY dizziness issues this time! I probably had more leeway to sweat off weight, and it makes sense then to try and come in lighter than the weight class, especially when considering ties or best lifter competition.

It's hard to make predictions for any meet, so I can't say much about the Arnold Championships in two weeks. Though technically this is also the Pan American qualifier, I am not in a position to make the team this year. It's also highly unlikely that I will go six for six again, so a 280kg+ total is probably not in the cards, but if I prepare as well then I should see some solid numbers. If I make my openers and then the subsequent lifts then that will put me in position to try for PRs. It's tough to hit PRs multiple meets in a row, and doing so would put my "potential" even higher, inching me even closer to that 300kg mark...

In the last entry I had just finished diagnosing my neck injury and was preparing to prepare (heh) for the American Open. It's now two months later, so as usual my perspective has shifted quite a bit.

First, the American Open: 5th place. 263kg total. Beat the two guys who beat me at Nationals, but I barely had anything to do with that (Mike Soha bombed and Dave Boffa went extremely light). 1kg behind 4th place, and except for that was at the top of the major pack of lifters in the largest weight class (19 contenders) including 2x Olympian Chad Vaughn. My first time selected for the A session. In other words, looks pretty good on paper!

Except.., I didn't perform nearly up to my potential. Three for six, missing both openers, and pulling out only 118kg and 145kg. I've snatched 120kg for a double, no misses anywhere, and 145kg is a routine clean and jerk now. I was a total of 18kg under my practice bests. I really didn't expect to see anything less than a 270kg total. So, no, I'm not happy.

But now it's the new year, and I have hung up my 2009 National Team shirt (really!). Besides getting better in general, my major goal is to bring my meet lifts up to the level of my practice lifts. I want to be a serious contender by selection time for the 2011 Pan Americans. To these ends I will be attending more meets this year to find and fix the problems. I will continue to close the ever-narrowing gap between my strength and my technique, and I will seek out and destroy the magic 300kg number!

I am taking it one week at a time, and I make no predictions for individual meets during the year, but expect to see a major jump in my meet totals.. 2007-230kg, 2008-257kg, 2009-272kg, 2010-???!

Front squats have been feeling easy for me. Really easy. Early last week I tested doubles, going to 98% of my previous best 180kg with ease. I followed with 182kg, no problem, and then 185kg where I missed the second rep. I was tired so I stopped there.

Three days later I tested power snatch doubles (one from the high box plus one from below the knees). Beat my best singles for either lift with 97kg, then 101kg, only 3kg below my best double from the floor. All was good, so I moved on to testing back squat doubles.

With back squats, for the first time I didn't feel like it was easy. I took fairly big jumps, but by the time I had 196kg on the bar (only 6% over Monday's front squat) I knew I was probably on my last set. I stood up with the first rep well enough, but as I was finishing that rep I felt/heard a crunching noise on the spine where it was resting and a bit of pain. I waited a moment to see how my body handled it, and it was okay, so I went ahead and did my second rep. I decided that was it for squats.

Like I knew it would, my neck still hurt after that. I was somehow able to do heavy jerk supports without any pain, but after it was over the area just got more and more painful throughout the day. I worked from home the next day so I could lay in bed with it supported. I knew I wouldn't be lifting again for a little while...

It's really hard to deal with injuries. All sorts of things passed through my head with this one: that it wasn't so bad, that it's fractured and I won't be able to prepare for the American Open in five weeks, that maybe I just ended my career. The worst were the flashbacks to the moments when I officially had to declare my collegiate wrestling career was over. I dreaded the same fate, and I know this will be the last sport I ever train for at this level.

I also think I handled this remarkably well so far. Even with the worries, overall I have kept an even keel and not freaked out or gotten despondent. I have taken it one day at a time, and already good news has come back. After seeing the doctor, getting an MRI, and seeing an orthopedist, there seems to be no question that the injury was relatively minor - no damaged vertebrae. I actually have a theory that my bone density is very high compared to most people, considering I have never broken a bone (unless you count the lacrosse stick to the face that broke my tooth in half), and I don't believe my parents have, either.

As for the American Open, I admit that before I couldn't wait for it to come so I could show off how much better my lifts have become. Now I keep wishing I had more time, since I missed my week of very heavy pulls, and my peaking cycle is thrown off by what was essentially a week completely off and probably more before I'm back to normal. Every workout, every exercise, even every rep is precious, and I want to get the most out of them that I can!

On a side note, I was very happy with the way the general diagnostic process went. Mike Walters suggested I get an X-ray, and my doctor instead set me up to do an MRI, just in case (this is a good thing!). The MRI practice was helpful, courteous, and quick. I had all appointments the same or the next day after I called. The only part I was NOT happy with was the orthopedist. The man was interested solely in treating current symptoms and didn't really care about long-term health. He dismissed all the findings in the MRI - minor issues with the discs - as not worth dealing with. When I mentioned one activity where I have pain that might be related, he suggested taking an Advil and heating the area in advance. Sure, that would make it less painful each time, but it would never fix the underlying problem. He didn't care, and probably didn't know, how to do anything about it. When I asked when I would be able to lift normally again, he barely even examined me, and said that the vertebrae were protruding normally (there is obvious swelling). He told me to use pain as a guide, which is correct, but I already knew that. He didn't try very hard to work with me; the most he went out of his way was to offer hooking me up with a physical therapist and to give me a two-page packet describing neck stretches. The most information I got from him that I didn't already know was that the discs bulge inward, which is consistent with the type of positions my neck has been in wrestling, at work, and in my general posture. Worst of all, he was clearly talking down to me, and gave little credence to my concerns, not to mention he explained recovering from basic muscular sprains as if I were a child.

Whew. Glad I got that out of my system. I'll have to call my doctor tomorrow to let her know what I thought of the orthopedist. And don't count on me missing the AO next month! I will be a strong contender this year!

If you are an athlete with Olympic aspirations, you need to visit the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. Period.

You can only train so long, day-in and day-out with your coaches, or alone in your basement as the case may be, before your long-term vision begins to dim and you start to feel like you're just going through the motions. The vast majority of us only dream of reaching Olympic competition - there are no guarantees - and we spend hours and hours, nearly every day, sometimes feeling no closer to our goals than when we started. Inspiration is important, and we need to remind ourselves that we're not busting our asses for nothing.

Enter the Olympic Training Center - even better if you can do it with an ID and a magnetic keycard. Visit the Hall of Fame, walk the Olympic Path, take a tour, even climb Pike's Peak (the wrestlers do all the time!). With 140,000 visitors yearly, the OTC is the face of the US Olympic team. On any given day you can watch the best of the best training and preparing for international competition. Imagine what it's like to be one of these athletes, with access to the best training and recovery facilities, and with the entire country looking up to you.

This past weekend I competed in the Rodger DeGarmo Memorial/World Team Secondary Qualifier at the OTC. Far eclipsing the competition, for me, was the chance to (temporarily) live under the same conditions as the people I am trying to emulate. Free, healthy food at all hours! Visitors on tour gawking at you through windows. Great facilities, equipment, and inspirational statues. Admittedly I'm not as big a fan of dorm-style living as I once was: it's nice to have your own room in your own home. But this is the lifestyle you imagine when you think of Kendrick Farris, Michael Phelps, or Henry Cejudo (who??).

A few personal notes, in the competition I did well in the snatches, going three for three with 114kg/118kg/121kg. That's my highest opening weight yet, plus two meet PRs, and my first perfect snatch session since January. Clean and jerks were not as pretty: I made my opener at 146kg, but missed both attempts at 151kg for technical reasons (tricep touched the knee on the one clean, and a soft catch on the other jerk). Even so, 146kg is my highest opener yet, and 267kg is a PR total in the 77kg weight class - 272kg is my best at 85kg. Not only that, I made my snatches despite significantly varied waiting periods between attempts, and my new total bumped me up to 30th in line for the World Team after the first day of competition.

As always there is more technical work to do, but I am clearly stronger than ever before, and I am still making good progress in training. We didn't really even peak for this meet. My schedule looks relatively open for the next few months, and the American Open is my real target...

In the long-term, like any other sport and even life itself, a lifting career is filled with ups and downs, steps forward and backward. There are times when we abandon our goals when downturns come our way and the valleys obscure our view of the hilltops. There are even times when it feels like we've entered a convergence of valleys and nothing is looking up. In all cases we should beware actions borne of despair, and we must not lose sight of our goals. This isn't to say that we should never switch paths, or that it might be true that we can't achieve what we set out to, but many have bailed on what could have been successful ventures because they were disheartened.

Lifting has been difficult for me the last couple of weeks. I have been tired, my technique feels like it is backsliding, and I'm finding it harder to see myself making the gains I expected even a month ago. Couple that with a bit of a difficult time period in my day-to-day life, which coincidentally could be contributing to lackluster lifting, and it's difficult to keep my head high. Ostensibly I know that this is normal, and that I will find my way to higher ground as long as I keep striving to do what I know is best (or to learn what is best!).

But don't worry about me. I have definitely set a high bar for myself, for sure, but I've always been a person who went and did my own thing, and I don't dedicate myself halfway. A scene from House, perhaps the only TV show I regularly watch, has a doctor telling an air force pilot: "I've known a few people who had dreams. One thing they all had in common was, they got laughed at, and they didn't care." That idea resonates with me, mostly because I am unorthodox in my approach to life, and it's nothing new for others to think I am strange for it. I wouldn't be unusual to stop because I didn't think I could finish, but I'm definitely too stubborn to quit because things aren't always looking up. I have no idea how well I will end up doing in the end, but I can guarantee that WON'T do well if I quit.

As usual, it seems I have just given myself another pep talk. I hope it was insightful!

Friday, July 3rd concluded the week-long ECG annual weightlifting camp in Moorestown, NJ. I and about 29 other weightlifters lifted twice a day, every day starting the day after an opening meet at Fairleigh Dickenson University. For my third time attending, I thought I'd do a quick rehash.

We began with the Garden State Games, where we each got our own coach from a group taking a senior coach course in conjunction with the camp. I think I made it pretty easy on Tyrone, who had me write down my warmup sets since I already knew my plan and essentially had only to help load my weights, let me know how many attempts remained before I went, and decide for me what weights to attempt in competition. He must have done a good job, as I went five for six, snatching 117kg (and ALMOST 121kg) and clean and jerking a PR 155kg for a PR total of 272kg.

The next day started the real work. Sunday through Thursday was the same routine: meet at 9:45am for dynamic warmups, 11:45am for our first lift, and 5:15pm for the second (times varied slightly, and the less advanced lifters had their second lift earlier). Weigh-ins were every day to make sure we were eating and drinking enough: I lost 1.5kg the first day and 0.75kg the second, but managed to gain it back by the end. There was no skimping on the volume during the lifts; if anything, we did more reps with heavier weight each workout than usual. I won't say this even came close to the difficulty of some of the wrestling camps I've gone through, but it was a hefty challenge for body and mind to lift heavy weight with our best technique when our bodies were overtrained and our minds wanted to quit. I did manage a couple of PRs over the week, most notably a 113kg snatch double.

On the last day we had a competition amongst ourselves: the Yankees vs the Rebels. Each Yankee was pitted against a Rebel, with or without handicaps, and our score differences were added together to see which team lost and had to do the Chicken Dance. Even though we were all exhausted, many of us hit PRs and made some hard-fought lifts. Personally, I didn't put up nearly as good numbers as I expected, and I only barely eked out a win over my competitor Jake Rebman. Jake is a young lifter from Lancaster who had a few kilos on me, and I admit I thought I would mop the floor with him. With a few judgement calls not in my favor, Jake power cleaned 132kg and I did 135kg in the first part of competition. Even though it was turned down for dropping below parallel, I did hit 138kg with better technique than any such heavy power clean I've ever done. In the second part, double back squat plus push jerk behind the neck, Jake pulled ahead of me at 140kg when I tried and missed 141kg. We were allowed to continue until we had two misses in a row, so I dropped the weight a tiny bit and made it, and finally passed him by the time he dropped out. At that point, the Rebels and Yankees were trading leads with only two of us Yankees still going against three Rebels. I managed to stay in, picking weights just high enough to take the lead, making a go-ahead 148kg and only one other Yankee (Jesiah) and one Rebel (Ben) remaining. I can't describe how incredible the lifts were that they made, especially Ben (doing double front squats plus split jerks) who looked like he wasn't even going to complete his squats and still managing to make incredible jerks. I tried 150kg (my very, very old PR in this lift) and missed, and then tried and made 149kg, but accidentally split with my back leg and it was turned down. Jesiah saved us with one last, difficult lift, and Ben couldn't keep up.

Now that it's all over, I did learn quite a lot of technique and I my lifting has certainly benefitted. But I'm not surprised to say that the best part of the week was all the people I met/spent time with. First and foremost was coach Joe Hanson from Florida, a Marine Force Recon veteran whom I met at this same camp last year. We roomed together and had quite a few discussions that gave me new ways of looking at familiar things, and he is an excellent coach who seems to rub off on everyone he comes in contact with. Good luck, Joe, especially on your upcoming wedding with your sweetie-pie Dana!

I also met Valerie Walters, a young-un at just 12 years old, who is already showing a lot of heart and dedication in all of the hundred different things she is doing. With new PRs at camp and a lot of potential ahead of her, she could easily be a force to be reckoned with in the sport if she sticks around. I met her 15-year-old brother Jeff, a Junior Olympian with aspirations to compete in the 2016 Olympics. For his age, Jeff is pound-for-pound one of the strongest lifters I have met, and I'd love to be there cheering him on towards his goal. All of the coaches I worked with were great, and I know I challenged them with my relentless need to know why we do things (sorry, Rob!). I hope they all know that I listened to everything they had to say, even if it conflicted with what I thought I already knew.

So it was with "a tinge of sadness" that we left for home when it was all over. Hugs went all around, and I know we're all looking forward to our chance to do it again next year. For me, personally, I'm a little disappointed I didn't hit many big PRs, but I feel better about it knowing how much better a lifter I am now than at this time last year. The next meet will probably be the Roger DeGarmo memorial, which also happens to be the World Team secondary qualifier, and several months later my third American Open... These will be great chances for me to show how far I've really come.

I'm already home, back at work, and I have a bronze medal roughly 3.5" in diameter hanging from my bookshelf.

A bronze medal for a third place finish in my first ever Senior Nationals, the top annual meet in the country? A rare feat, you might say, which is technically true. There is no question I am happy, and the moment I learned I was a bronze-medalist was absolutely incredible, but I still know that my award is more a result of luck than of the incremental progress that led me to my new best total for a national meet of 261kg.

In my last entry I mentioned my very modest goal of making four out of six lifts, which would show a noticeable increase in my ability to handle a meet with many lifters attempting similar weights to my own. I even predicted as low as 260kg with such a performance. It seems I couldn't have guessed better if I had tried - I made exactly four of my six lifts and my total was only 1kg higher than the minimum guess. I lifted in the B session (while there were only six 77kg lifters in the Nationals, there were many more in the Pan Ams), and managed to beat Jonas Westbrook, my only other competition in the session. I made my opening snatch of 111kg, then (predictably?) missed my second attempt of 116kg after a wait of at least ten minutes. I came back and made it easily. Then, while warming up in the clean and jerk, my heart started pounding and I began feeling dizzy after standing up with my cleans, even though my technique was pretty good. Out on the platform I made my first clean at 142kg, and I tried to catch my breath and stave off my dizziness before the jerk, but my arms bent so much that the lift was turned down. I came back and made it, but I clearly didn't have much more in me, so we finished with a successful 145kg.

I left the session happy enough, but disappointed. I really did feel like I could easily have snatched more than 120kg that morning, and I was flustered with the way I felt during the clean and jerks. At this point we've decided it was probably dehydration and an issue with me letting my weight get too high between meets, but I had really wanted to go for a PR of, say, 155kg, and the warmup weights had been as easy, if not easier, than they had ever been. I did meet my minimum, but totaling 15kg less than you felt you could have is not a good feeling. I had guaranteed myself 5th place with not much hope of anything better. So, of course, we went out to eat.

Just to see how it would go for everyone else, and to see some top international lifters in my weight class, I went with my family to watch the 77kg A session. Most did an impressive job, including Ivan Cambar of Cuba, a sixth-place finisher at the 2008 Olympics. All four of my competitors snatched more than I did, and, unlike many big meets I've seen in the past, almost all the lifters made most or all of their snatches. The first surprise came in the clean and jerk, when Oleg Danilov, opening with 145kg to complement his 118kg snatch, missed three attempts in a row and was out. The excitement was tempered a bit when David Boffa made 147kg look like it was made of styrofoam, and when Walter Soha easily made his opener. Both finished well with 268kg and 271kg totals, respectively. It looked like we were going to see a repeat of last year's American Open when Lance Frye opened with 165kg.. and missed his jerk! Then, he missed his second clean, and, in a moment where it seemed everybody's hearts stopped, the unbelievable happened when Lance's final jerk attempt crushed him underneath it and he stormed off the platform. Lance is my teammate, and I felt for him - that could easily have been me the way my first jerk went - but, wonder of all wonders, I was third place! I practically fell forward in my chair in disbelief. Leo found his way up to me to tell me I was needed below, and I found my very first USADA chaperone waiting for me at the door. It's funny how novel the urine collection procedure can be, and I much prefer the victory drug test to the collegiate version of the random drug test I was used to. My brother snapped pictures of me walking back from the test room, but he missed his opportunity to capture me on film walking down the hall proudly carrying my sample over my head.

I am excited about the result, but I feel much tempered with the knowledge that, for one, last year I would only have placed 9th with such a total, and, for two, I had a legitimate shot at first place. It's not even true that I am not consistent at my heaviest weights - most training test days where I hit PRs I tend to miss one or two lifts max, and my successful lift rate at meets is over 70%. But it really is true that I still have further to go before I can compete as well in a national meet as I can in a local meet. Leo hasn't given me a new workout plan yet, but it is my expectation that I will be training taking even larger jumps between attempts (I believe I missed the 116kg snatch because I had gone in the back and taken 100kg and 107kg and that the 9kg difference was too much for me) and waiting for more time.

It's all over, and I'm happy. The next meet is at FDU to start off camp, and then another meet in good old Frederick in August. Maybe we'll see 275+ over the next couple of months...

Two weeks, four days, and fifteen workouts to go before my first ever appearance at the top annual nationwide meet, the Senior National Weightlifting Championships. Today I booked plane tickets. My brother and my parents have already booked, and my other brother and his wife will probably be doing the same anytime now. It looks like ten different people, including Christy, will be taking time off and spending a lot of their free time and money just to watch me lift in person. As always I am eternally grateful for their support, but mostly it boggles my mind that they would deem my "hobby" as important enough to make such an effort. There is little I could say that could express how excited I am to be doing this, and less I could say or do that would reward them appropriately.

In line with my last blog entry (did I mention I feel like a tool for having a "blog?"), patience is hard to come by these days. A couple weeks ago I saw my teammate, Veronica Aguila, qualify at last for the American Open in superstar fashion. Jordan Rosen did the same a couple months earlier. Now they enter the long period between of eternal waiting before they get to enjoy the fruits of their labors. So many things can happen in that time, and hours will be spent imagining what weights might be lifted on the big stage. The same for me, as I qualified months ago - and I THOUGHT I qualified over a year ago!

If you look at my meet totals since last year, they paint an odd picture: 247kg (April '08), 257kg (May '08), 241kg (June '08), 256kg (September '08), 245kg (October '08), 249kg (December '08 at the AO), 263kg (January '09), 258kg (March '09), and 270kg (May '09). It's easy to try to draw conclusions from the numbers alone, but I'll be the first to say that they are deceptive. My 257kg from May last year was a very good meet for me, and probably 7kg more than I deserved. By the end of the year I should have been totaling mid-250s, but I was a victim of my own inconsistency. By January this year, I was very clearly ready to be lifting 260kg or more, and we had played it conservative in that Baltimore meet where I finally qualified, making six for six easy. By the Arnold I was ready to be lifting upper-260s, but I wasn't ready to do it on a national stage. Now, I don't really have a good excuse for not making 270kg. Really.

As always you should take my words regarding myself with a grain of salt, because I am biased by nature. But I think I'm a pretty good judge. In one sense, I would consider anything less than a 270kg total at Nationals a result of a major mistake made on my part. On the other hand, my performance at major meets hasn't yet reached that at local meets, so I have tempered my expectations. Generally I don't like to throw out numbers, but I feel safe saying that my goal at this meet is to make at least four of my lifts. That's all. If things aren't going well that could amount to only 260kg, but I can accept that. Everything else is gravy.

From the training end of things, almost all news is good news. Last week played host to some unexpected PRs, especially a 180kg front squat double and a 108kg power snatch single. I was ready to stop squatting after doing 177kg for a double, but Leo wanted me to try more - my old PR double was 172kg (an 8kg PR!) and my old PR single was only 175kg! The power snatch was even more of a surprise: the test was one power snatch plus one squat snatch (to make sure the squat snatch technique was ingrained in my head). I had been battling with overtraining, so I didn't feel my best, but having fixed a recently re-acquired bad habit, I beat my old PR double by 1kg (which had beaten my old PR single, also by 1kg) with a set of one power plus one squat snatch at 105kg. I again was ready to stop, but Leo had me put 108kg on the bar, and I made that too. It's a 4kg PR in a major lift, and I am pretty sure it is an all-time PR for me, even covering my college days, just like that 140kg power clean from last summer beat my all-time best of 305 pounds.

While Christy has requested that I total a rather high number at Nationals (that I will not name), I expect we will play it relatively safe. That means it is unlikely I will be in position on my third attempts to hit huge PRs, but let's just say I wouldn't be surprised if my final total is in new territory...

If you'll excuse the simile, dealing with waiting is not the strong suit of most lifters I know, very much including myself. Rather than go into detail, let's just say that we lifters aren't exactly the cream in the expression. You can also blame Leo for the poor choice of words in the title for telling us "you can't polish a turd!"

Really, I do have a point to get across. I'm all excited because I just hit some good front and back squat PR triples for the first time since 2007. It's not because I had no room for improvement, rather that we didn't focus on overall strength. And my PRs are more significant than the numbers indicate because I wasn't actually testing and for one reason or another could clearly have done more weight. But I'm still a month out from the next competition and two months out from Nationals. Even Leo seems to be daydreaming about the weights I could potentially do on the platform. Not to mention that my power clean has increased and would likely be even higher if I actually tested it. If you read my post about the numbers game, you'll know I can get rather... verbose about the subject. But Tommy Kono did say that if you can front squat it for a triple (I did 171kg today) you should be able to clean and jerk it. Or something like that.

Anyway, my blog is as good a place as any to vent my frustration with not being patient. My guess is that you know the feeling, so with any luck you'll feel empathy for me!

Yesterday I lifted at the Arnold Weightlifting Championships out in Columbus, Ohio. In a sense it went reasonably well, with a 111kg snatch, 147kg clean and jerk, and a 258kg total for first place in the 77kg weight class. But in reality, my two prospective serious competitors weighed in at 85kg (one of the bombed out and the other totalled higher than I did). I missed my second and third snatches at 117kg and 118kg and missed my final jerk at 152kg. While the clean and jerk would have been a big PR, I was definitely hoping to do much more in the snatch.

Just to point out why I was expecting to do well, the week before last was EXTREMELY productive in terms of personal bests. I tested five different exercises: hit at least one PR in every single one of them and didn't miss a single lift. I back squatted 205kg for a double, power snatched 104kg for a double and an overhead squat, clean and jerked 148kg, snatched 120kg, and power cleaned 141kg plus a push jerk double. I accomplished my major goal at this meet of placing as high as I could in my class, but I didn't make it in the top five overall (with its accompanying monetary award), and I ALWAYS want to make the majority of my lifts.

Because I never could leave a meet without troubleshooting what went wrong, here are the things that I think were issues. First, my warmup sequence was not well-designed for me. I take most of the blame for this, because I made most of the choices or didn't speak up when I thought they should have been different. The standard method is to write down your opening weight and figure out your warmups from heaviest to lightest. For example, we expected to open around 110kg and so we wrote 106kg, 101kg, 95kg, 88kg, 82kg, 75kg, 65kg, and 55kg. You expect to take your biggest weight jumps at the light end and do one lift for every three lifts that the competition does on the platform. For me, however, I don't need that much rest - in fact, I don't do as well if I rest too long, so I have been setting things up so that I lift only after every two attempts. In this meet, though, we stayed with the standard three attempts, and we were also in a rush to begin. But then we ended up going too early, and we had to wait longer between warmups, even repeating the warmup at 88kg. Even worse, people missed a LOT of attempts, which only increased the amount of time I had to wait. Finally, my biggest mistake was not making the weight jumps larger. These days I am used to snatching 60kg, then 72kg, then 84kg, then 90kg-96kg, 101kg-102kg, and 106kg. Instead of taking six or seven warmup sets I took nine. Compounding that was the fact that there was usually a good ten minutes between my platform attempts because everyone was lifting around the same weight, and I also did extra snatches at 105kg and 113kg between my first and second attempts and a snatch pull at 118kg before my third attempt. My shoulders were tired by the time I actually got out there!

I'm still working on focusing better out on the platform, and I cut a little bit more weight than I would have liked (what's 12 pounds in a week anyway?), but I definitely think that the major issues were the choices in warmups and my inability to deal with long rests between attempts. For a big meet like this, it is expected. My choices seem to be either to learn how to lift maximal weight with ten minutes between attempts or to get used to taking reps in between. I also think that we should count on certain people missing some reps, because I believe I am much better at rushing through warmups if we're wrong than at sitting and waiting. In the future, I will make sure I stick with the tried-and-true jumps and with the waiting period I am comfortable with. I'm not sure what I need to do to get used to the long, variable waits between attempts... Maybe I just need more experience in big meets. I have only one more meet, the East Coast Classic in May, before Nationals in June.

On a better note, though, we did make some of those adjustments for the clean and jerk session. We waited longer before warming up, and I took no warmups between platform attempts, even when I had to wait ten minutes. And I made every single clean and all but my last jerk. Once again, did I mention that I haven't yet missed a clean at 145kg or higher? I am now eleven for eleven, all the way up to 152kg!

Yeah, so, in the last couple of blogs I was bitching and moaning about having a bad meet at the AO. In the month and a half following, I worked on some of the various issues we saw, including focus and patience. Yesterday was the Baltimore Open, where my sole purpose was to qualify for Senior Nationals, like I should have done at the AO. I told Leo to get me there and didn't worry at all about the weight on the bar. In the end, I went from a three-for-six outing last time to a six-for-six perfect meet including my sought-after qualification and a full 6kg PR total. Not a bad turn of events!

In the training leading up to this I have felt much more consistent and in control than in the past. It was rather clear I could do more weight than I had been, since usually my training weights are quite a bit lower than in competition (not a bad position to be in, in my opinion). It took three tries, but I snatched 116kg the week before (a 1kg PR, and a 6kg training PR) and clean and jerked 146kg (also a 1kg training PR). My focus, though, was on a 259kg total, since that was the magic number. I figured that, if you counted the 112kg snatch I made before my three attempts at 116kg, then I was only 1kg off the total already. I finally felt confident opening the snatch with higher than 105kg. Leo played the snatches at the meet conservative, and had me do 108kg, 112kg, then 116kg. I didn't ask him his reasoning, but I fully agree it was smart to keep the numbers lower and play it safe, since each snatch I made put me in that much of a better position for the clean and jerks. The clean and jerks were rather conservative, too (138kg/143kg/147kg), but he put me in the perfect place to make what should have been an easy second attempt for the qualifying total. Once I made that, it was a no-brainer to go for a PR. Granted, I made some small technical errors that made those lifts tougher than they should have been; otherwise, I would have wanted to go for 150kg.

Because of the conservatism, I never had the excitement coming in of going for a lofty goal, which would have been a 120kg snatch and a 150kg c&j for a 270kg total. But when all was said and done, I came away with only my second six-for-six meet ever. The last time was actually at the same place, but I had chosen very light snatches because, at the time, I had never successfully squat snatched in a meet before - when the weight got heavy I would revert to power snatches. Not to mention the refs gave me a bit of a gift on my last jerk, which should really have been a press out. Oh, and, did I mention that my total yesterday would have gotten me 2nd place at the AO? Yeah...

Before I go, here are some notes on the issues I worked on in training. First, I widened my feet for the pull from the floor. Sounds minor, I know, but coaches had been pointing out my heels need to stay on the floor longer, and I had been noticing that, on heavy cleans, I often "cheated" by shifting my hips back and getting on my toes. This is bad. Very bad. It causes me to pull early, swing the bar out, and crash the clean on me. It's not really fun having 300+ pounds landing on your neck with force. A similar thing was happening with the snatches, though less obvious. Well, the wider stance makes it easier to keep my heels down and doesn't seem to detract from the pull itself, so I can go heavier and still keep good form. I don't remember ever cleaning that much weight that easily (did I mention that I haven't yet missed a clean at 145kg or higher? I am seven for seven!). And, my snatch at 116kg looked ridiculously easy. The change definitely worked.

The other major issue was focus-related. I have had quite a few discussions with people about what I was doing wrong with my focus and what I could do better, and I never really had good answers. I had a small epiphany while training at home last week, which was to repeat a sequence of cues that would take me through the lifting sequence while addressing my weak points. During the snatch, that was, "Heels first, ease it off the floor, then brush high." This mantra helped me drive out other distractions and keep my body focused on the things that were important. It really worked, especially on the snatches. The only thing I changed at the meet was that I added the phrase "pull the snot out of it" in homage to David Miller. Thanks, Dave!

Leo gave me a book to read at the next workout after the AO. It is called Four Days to Glory, by Mark Kreidler, and it relates the stories of high school wrestlers in Iowa pursuing their fourth state championships and their prospective collegiate futures. I believe he is trying to give me some inspiration, which perhaps I am now lacking after what happened at the meet.

Even though it is story about wrestling, a major part of my identity for the last decade, I am finding it hard to relate. The characters have won just about everything at their level, and a constant theme is that their opponents have lost before they even step on the mat. But it seems to me that my own athletic career is entirely different. Everywhere I have gotten has come from incredibly hard work, and even then it hasn't come easily. One of my college teammates told me I was the hardest worker on the team, but I never earned a starting spot. In high school, I did well in large part because I went to extra practices and off-season tournaments. I even found my way into a couple of area and state rankings, but I never placed in the state tournament (which, by the way is THE metric for most wrestlers, even into and beyond college unless All-America status is earned).

I've seen athletes like the ones in this book. I saw Darian Kess, for example, absolutely tear apart his opponents with effortless-looking takedowns. I saw Brandon Lauer win his third and final state championship after an undefeated high school career, tech-falling (think: slaughter rule) the runner-up. I met and practiced with Mike Faust, ranked first in the country for high school 215 pounders and heavyweights at the time, who didn't give up a single takedown his senior year. And perhaps the most impressive of them all, I watched Kerry McCoy, an Olympic silver medalist and now the head coach at the University of Maryland, wrestling collegiate heavyweights and making them look like little kids. Hell, Lance Frye would have gotten a medal at the AO even if he had lifted three weight classes heavier.

I don't think I'll ever identify with the athletes who seem to just win everything in sight. It's funny, because academically I never had so much trouble (I was valedictorian in high school, after all). I did the necessary work, and when I was interested in a subject I would go further, but for the most part I cruised through everything. Athletics were the opposite, but I had a good enough work ethic that in most sports I could do well. Even so, I look back on my wrestling career mostly with disappointment, though perhaps I could say I did my best. I am weightlifting now because I found out I was good at it. I only hope I can come anywhere near my goals.

There is one thing in the story that I do feel, sometimes acutely, and that is the notion that the drive for success is a lonely one. It has nothing to do with whether or not people support you - the wrestlers in the book have practically the entire state behind them - but rather how the demands of a sport and the necessary work will separate you from even your closest fans. I am incredibly thankful to my girlfriend and my parents and my coaches for trying so hard to be there for me. But no matter what they do, it will always have to be me who trains almost every day of the week, and nobody can lift the weight for me out on the platform. My training has often enough put me at odds with Christy, and while she does her best to help me process events and move forward, it's still up to me to keep on going. And while it seems that my friends all but assume I'll be in London in 2012, I couldn't feel like that was further from the truth. In the end, I will be the one who lifts alone in my basement several times each week, I will be the one on strict diets to get my weight down, and I will be the one standing in a sauna sweating off as much as five pounds to make weight later that morning. Maybe it's the same for the top athletes.

Who am I, then? Am I destined to be a champion lifter? Do people ever see me on a level even close to the athletes I mentioned above? What if I don't accomplish what I set out to do? Am I doing as well as I am because there is a lack of national interest in the sport? Are the setbacks I'm encountering the same that all eventual champions encounter and then overcome? And what if I fail? I don't consider myself a "top athlete," and maybe I never will. Besides, maybe seeing myself as an underdog will be the inspiration I was looking for all along...

First things first, I want to thank everybody who was behind me for this meet. An awful lot of my friends, family, and coworkers sent me words of encouragement and watched me as I lifted. I am very thankful you all were there, and it really does help me and make a difference. I also want to thank my coaches and teammates who set me up as best they could for success (and, of course and as always, Mike Walters, for fixing what's wrong with me). Not to mention, they're really fun to hang out and have a drink with after it's all over!

Alright. This is a really tough one for me. I'm still sorting it out in my head. Many of you probably don't know what a "good performance" would have been for me, or what my expectations were, or whether or not I should be happy with how I did. In a sense, I don't either. I will say that, when the meet was over, I was very disappointed. My expectations were admittedly very high. I watched video of myself afterwards, and I was even more unhappy - because the weight looked so easy!

I absolutely expected to get PR snatches and clean and jerks. When I missed my second snatch attempt at 112kg, I was dumbfounded. Now, I knew that my technique was a little off that day and I was on my toes, but it still should have been easy. After my first attempt at 105kg, I told Leo I was hoping to hit 120kg, and since there was a glut of lifters all attempting weights just over 105kg, we decided to do three more warmup attempts in the back: 100kg, 105kg, and 109kg. I made them all, easily. On the video, it looked like 112kg just flew over my head, but I was even more on my toes on the pull, and it swung back and caught me way out of position. Knowing there was no snatch PR in the cards that day, I tried the same weight again, and though the technique was a little better, it was still not good enough.

I guess it's obvious I was disappointed by now. My coaches were, too - at least as much as I was, it seemed, and they clearly felt that I lacked focus. Ellyn sat me down and tried to talk to me about it, but I'm not so sure, even now, that I really heard her. I tried to figure out as best I could why I made those mistakes and how to fix them for the rest of the session. For the clean and jerks, I spent almost all of my time between warmups and attempts running through the lifts in my head, imagining myself performing them with the correct technique. My warmups in the back were, again, easy, and Leo started me with 137kg, which I did with no problem, though the clean didn't feel nearly as good as my snatches had, or even as good as heavier cleans I did two weeks ago. We put 142kg on the bar (Leo was being conservative now.. I really wanted to try to hit 150kg-155kg on my third attempt), and I cleaned it alright. But, when I stood up with it, the bar rested on my carotid arteries, and when I tried to catch my breath and set up for the jerk, my body started to shake uncontrollably, my mind started to go blank, and I had to drop the bar (the coaches were already out running to catch me). I was alright, and thankfully I didn't seem to be too physically affected by it. Leo must have had some surprising faith in me, because he raised the weight to 144kg for my last attempt. The same thing almost happened on the clean, but this time when I stood up, the bar bounced and I pulled my neck out of the way. It's a good thing I've been training my jerks the way I have been recently, because for the first time in a meet I waited with a heavy weight and let myself really get set before I jerked it, and I was rewarded with a good lift that I would never have made even one month ago.

I suppose I know I should be disappointed, because I know that this total is much lower than my current abilities should have gotten me. Maybe if I were better focused on my snatch technique, I would have at least made 112kg, and would have been better mentally prepared for the clean and jerks. Surprisingly enough, even with a match of my old PRs I would have won a medal. Almost everybody did poorly! My teammate Lance was the only perfect lifter, making all attempts at 135kg/140kg/145kg and 165kg/170kg/174kg. Nobody went five for six, and my other teammate in the session, Chris McGinnis, was one of only two lifters to make four attempts. Five of us went three for six, four went two for six, and Justin Brimhall, who was virtually guaranteed second place, bombed out completely, making only his opening clean and jerk! Perhaps it is interesting to note that the 77kg ECG lifters had a 72% success rate while the rest of the class only had a 42% rate, but I won't go into that. I could blame the intensity and expectations of the meet for the missed lifts, but I know that had nothing to do with my own failures, and it doesn't really matter how the other lifters did if I failed to do what I should have done.

Now I'm in a haze of trying to figure out what I was doing wrong and what I should do differently in the future. All of my coaches feel that I was not focused (that's been the buzzword ever since) and that I was paying too much attention to the crowd. Yeah, I looked around at people and played to them a little when I went out to the platform. I did it because, first, it has been my experience that I lift better when I'm lifting in front of people (note that all my meet PRs are higher than my training PRs), and second because it has also been my experience that I lift better when I'm having fun. Even though I waved to the crowd, I still then focused on the weight, running through the attempt in my head before I actually did it. In the back, I was doing basically the same thing! I'm not trying to contradict my coaches, who always give me crap about thinking too much, but it's just not me to ignore what I think I know about myself. I've tried to talk with them about it, but we didn't get very far. What can I say - they are all more experienced than I am, and they're all of the same mind. But then that would mean that I don't understand what my own reactions have been, and I need to be able to do that before I can accept a new, contradictory explanation.

When all was said and done with the meet, and not a moment too soon, those of us from the team that were still around went out. We ate and drank at a total of three different locations, and it really was good, quality time we shared, poking fun at each other and getting all the leftover nerves and general mishmash out of our systems. I brought my borrowed Rubik's cube, which either Leo or Ellyn (I can't remember! Maybe I drank more than I thought...) suggested I could use during the meets as a tool to focus my concentration. We celebrated Leo's 57th birthday, which was the next day (today!), and I drank and ate more, combined, than I had in months. I thought I did an awesome job cutting weight this time around, so I really didn't want to step on the scale this morning ;-). I'm looking forward to coming home and seeing Christy and commiserating with her a bit. Actually, she'll be commiserating with me, and I'll be celebrating with her, because she will have just finished her second-to-last ever round of law school finals and will badly be in need of a drink. There seems to be room in every training and competition regimen for a drink now and then!

I'm on the plane home, now, long after everyone else has left. Looking forward to the future, I'm still not qualified for Senior Nationals, so it's back to making weight at 77kg again until I do. There is a meet in Baltimore on January 17th that's probably next on my schedule. I'm still not sure how we'll fix everything else. But, we can leave that to rest, and I'll sign off for now.

One of the things that's really cool about this sport compared to wrestling is that it is much more relaxed, at least in my experience. I arrived in Arizona without incident and met Leo, Jackie Licata, and Ellyn Robinson at the airport (almost five hours later...). Everything was a joke to us (ie: "I didn't hit him, I just high-fived his face!") as we piled onto the airport shuttle to a rental car and drove to the hotel/venue. The group was more concerned about eating dinner than about preparations for the competition, but then again I'm the only one who needs to make weight.

To me this is all so much different than what I'm used to. On all of my previous wrestling trips, almost everybody was focused on making weight and, to a much lesser degree, on the competition. People might be joking around on the bus, but we're all just waiting until we can weigh-in and be done with it. I remember very clearly many nights running outside in leftover snow drifts, so tightly wrapped in sweats and other weight-loss garments that I could hardly move, trying as hard as I could to sweat off another half pound or so before bed. I remember waking up before 5am, feeling like I barely slept and feeling so cold because my body wasn't insulating itself well anymore, so I could check my weight before getting on the bus with everyone else who had just checked their weight, and people sucking on ice cubes or sipping on an eighth of a styrofoam cup of hotel coffee. And then, of course, there was the standing around and waiting: a whole bunch of wrestlers from all different teams, in a gym, small wrestling room, or hallway, most guys in line for their scales (one per two weight classes, often) wearing only their boxers, shivering, and looking a bit too much like skeletons. It always seemed like it took hours for the officials to get ready and start the weigh-in/skin-check process, which, thankfully, was pretty quick once it got going. There was a rule that you could check yourself on any of the official scales, so if you were over at first, you could try other lines until you made it (most of us were very, very close, so this happened all the time) or, of course, you could try to sweat/spit/piss/crap/amputate it out before they closed. And then, of course, an hour later was the actual competition!

I admit, your coach can help set or change this tone. There are other teams here where people are going much more crazy over this stuff, which you can see easily enough if you just hang out by the weight-check scale. But I don't think that's the best way to go, unless you have to, because your athletes are not, erm, cooperative. Fortunately I have given Leo The Faith on me. Last year at this meet he had me come down to check my weight an hour before my official weigh-in (which was at 8am, so he wanted me at 7am), against my protestations that I was fine and knew what I was doing. So when I was half a kilo light (and he was half an hour late) he finally relented, and I went to my room to have some dry granola.

Anyway, my weight is coming down and we're all relaxed. I'm making sure I'm on a schedule of going to bed at 10pm or earlier so that I can a full eight hours of sleep and still get up at 6am before my 8am weigh-in on Saturday. I lifted yesterday, with Jackie, Ellyn, and Leo all making jokes the entire time, "testing my focus" as they termed it, since all I did was snatches and clean and jerks up to 75% of my maxes. Leo won't tell me what my opening weights will be, and it's not even worth thinking about it too much. It's no good analyzing everyone else in my weight class, because, hey, they can do what they want, I'm just going to try and lift the most weight I can. In the meantime, I'm just going to relax.

And.. we're back, after some computer trouble and me getting the bright idea that my domain registrar might be offering some free hosting. Since my last blog, I went to lifting camp hosted by East Coast Gold at Joe Delago's Moorestown, NJ gym. I must say it went very well, and my ass was kicked by the end, but my thoughts on it aren't very fresh after four months. I have also lifted in a couple of "non-peak" (aka: practice) meets - one at the York Barbell facility in York, PA, and another at Moorestown, the ECG Gold Cup Challenege. Since they were "non-peak," I didn't bother to cut all the way down to 77kg. Both went pretty well and were learning experiences. At York, I snatched 100kg/105kg/110kg and clean and jerked 138kg/146kg, missing the jerk at 150kg. That's a 5kg PR clean alone, and 146kg was a 1kg PR clean and jerk. I saw two very good lifters best me there - Peter Madow and Tom Tryon. Tom is even more impressive as a Masters lifter, and Pete just ran away with the whole thing. The brute strength of the kid is incredible. At Moorestown, on the other hand, I snatched 103kg/108kg and missed 113kg. I missed my opening jerk at 137kg and made it successfully on my second attempt. Going for broke (hey, why not?) we put 147kg on the bar, which I again cleaned but missed the jerk. So.. I guess it was clear what I'd be working on in training :-P. Finishing ahead of me in the class was Mark Kroll, who totaled 254kg to my 245kg. Interestingly enough, since I was the lightest in the class at around 79kg and he was the heaviest at over 84kg, I won best lifter for the entire 85kg/94kg session!

Some training notes: in the weeks following lifting camp my coaches and I pinpointed an error I had been making during my pulls (though interestingly only when I finished the lifts, not when doing only the pulls). In the explosive pull, I get on my toes early and pull very laterally rather than vertically. The end result is that the bar swings out, my timing gets off, and the bar ends up crashing down on me in the cleans or is too far out of position to catch in the snatch. So for about a month or two I focused on how vertically I was pulling on every pull, which had really great results, especially in the clean. After York it became clear that my jerk needed serious work, so I have since been working to take my time after the cleans and really get set for the jerk, then taking a slower, more controlled dip, and driving more on my heels so I don't lean forward. I have also started the habit of doing a jerk at the end of almost every light set of cleans and simulating just the dip on heavier cleans and front squats. It takes a lot of patience, but it really has helped my mental preparation by consistently preparing to do jerks after all my cleans, even if I don't actually jerk it, and it doesn't tire me out at all. As a result, people who hadn't seen me for awhile have told me that they've never seen me jerk the weight this well.

There's always more, but the big thing right now is the American Open coming up in two weeks. I fly out to Arizona Thursday morning next week, and I'll get a workout in both Thursday and Friday in prep for my session on Saturday morning at 10am MST. I'm almost as focused on making weight as I am on the meet itself. It was fun being an 85kg lifter while it lasted ;-). Wish me luck!

I first started wrestling in 1997, my freshman year in high school, at 145 pounds. That was 11 years ago. Minus my hiatus while recovering from shoulder surgery, I have since competed continuously in sports governed by weight classes. I wrestled as heavy as 184 pounds (while only weighing in at 174) and as light as 143 pounds (my measurements at the time were 40-28.5-39). These days I lift at 77kg (169.7 pounds) and usually weigh 79kg-81kg with a waist size of just under 32 inches (31" on weigh-in morning). I have probably "made weight" well over 100 times and never once failed to weigh at or below the magic number.

I think this qualifies me to tell you a thing or two about how to control your weight.

While a 50-year-old book I have says that it's a myth that exercise helps you lose weight, it's true that participating in athletic activities will help keep your weight down. People, especially my mother, love to tell me that I'm slim because I'm so physically active. Usually they tell me this when I'm on my third lunch of the day. But since my sophomore year of high school I have weighed everywhere between 141 pounds and 205 pounds, purposefully working to get to either extreme. There were times when I'd run or wrestle a little extra to lose weight, but even when I gained weight I didn't actually train any less - I just ate differently.

Don't get me wrong - you really, really, really, really, really should exercise. Both aerobic and anaerobic exercise are necessary to keep you in shape. Weight training is generally anaerobic, but it also has aerobic benefits, Olympic weightlifting especially. It doesn't matter if you are male or female, it is equally beneficial. If you are one of those people who says this sport is bad for your joints overall or says that it is bad for women, I am officially calling you out for being stuck in the 1950s. You may as well have written that diet book I mentioned. You're like the old golf and baseball coaches who thought lifting was bad until Tiger Woods came along and proved weight training makes you better at, well, everything! Also, unless you follow a program specifically designed to do so, weightlifting won't make you gain a significant amount of weight, ESPECIALLY if you're female. Women just don't physiologically tend to build much muscle. Female bodybuilders are taking male hormones. Period.

You can't easily change your body's base metabolic rate, so food will always remain the major factor in your weight. While it's true that the difference between calories in and calories out divided by 3500 is the number of pounds you gain, this deceptively simple equation has made fools out of just about everybody. Everyone sees how they can control calories in, but nobody knows how to affect calories out. So, people read nutrition labels to count calories and fat (because fat equals BAD, right?). They strive to eat less and less, and not only do they tend to fail in the process because it's tempting to cheat or not count calories fairly, but they tend to fail because they're unwittingly lowering calories out! If you normally eat 2,500 calories a day and burn 2,400 (a net gain of 1/35 of a pound) and instead eat 2,000 calories a day and burn 1,800, you're actually gaining weight twice as fast! And don't forget that if you go back to eating what you used to, your body will also burn less than it used to for awhile, and again you'll gain weight faster than before you started. If all you think about is cutting calories, you ALWAYS lose.

But you CAN change calories out. In fact, it's not all that hard! First, you need to be aware that your metabolic rate increases when you eat and then later decreases. If you pay attention, you can actually feel it changing - when it is higher than normal, you feel more energetic, and when it is lower you feel more tired. You tend to feel worse afterwards if you eat too much or eat too crappily. What you want to do is keep that rate as high as possible as much as possible and eliminate the lows. Not only will this help you burn more calories, you'll spend more of your day feeling happy and you'll have more energy. The trick to keeping it high is to eat often enough to get that increase and avoid the decrease by not eating too much at one time. Of course, what is "too much" depends on what you're eating - two McDonalds double cheeseburgers will probably make you feel pretty down, though you could eat the same weight in bananas and feel like a million bucks.

A simple example: in my opinion, a good burrito from Chipotle should have rice, black beans, meat, tomato salsa, corn salsa, sour cream, cheese, and lettuce. That's easily over 1,200 calories. Let's say you eat two per day and only drink water otherwise. If you eat them in one meal, you'll get your 2,500 calories, and you'll spike your metabolic rate and then fall asleep on the couch in a stupor. Since you won't want to even move for awhile or do anything strenuous for the rest of the day, chances are good you just put on weight.
You could eat them in two separate meals, instead. Each time you have one you'll be tired afterwards (unless you have a rather large stomach), but your day isn't ruined (unless you have a rather small stomach). You may or may not gain weight at the end of the day, just because you were able to get up and move around afterwards.
Now what if you cut them in half and ate one piece every four or five hours? After each meal you'd probably feel peppier than before, you'd get more done, you'd move around more, and by the time the day is over you will probably have lost weight.

That's right: the same food, eaten differently, can be used to gain weight or lose weight.

People seem to think that eating five or six small meals a day is the province of bodybuilders and powerlifters, but it's by far the best way to stay healthy, slim, and, even more importantly, feeling good and productive all day. I KNOW it works, because I monitor my weight closely and watch it go up when I enjoy a few too many big dinners in a row, and I watch it go down even when I'm not eating the healthiest as long as the meals are small. The week before a contest, I usually eat MORE. I just eat lots of complex carbohydrates, cut out sugar (and salt, because, sadly, water weighs), and eat almost all day long. I'm not saying you should do that, because that mode isn't really satisfying, but there's an old axiom in all intensive athletics which says that if you're thirsty, you're already dehydrated. I think the same goes with hunger - if you're REALLY hungry, you should have eatern earlier.

But don't take my word for it. After all, it's not like I have any experience in the matter :-P.

With my second appearance at the Maryland State and Potomac Valley Championships in Frederick, I have capped my first full year of lifting competitively with a 39kg improvement. Broken down, that's 22kg more in the snatch and 17kg more in the clean and jerk. It was a good year: I got my first pair of lifting shoes, went to my first national meet, learned to squat snatch, and qualified for Senior Nationals (all in that order). With everything said and done, I have some breathing room and a lot of hope for the future. I'm proud of what I did, and I don't think I could have asked for a better year. I also want to thank Leo for showing me the way, my teammates for egging me on, my family and friends for applauding me, and Christy for supporting me throughout (granted she's probably one of the only people who reads this).

Now I can happily wax philosophical! When I started this whole business, I had dreams of Olympic glory. Not necessarily a medal, but I really wanted to make the trip. What really surprised me was that I received support from the get-go: my old wrestling and lifting coaches, teammates, and friends actually believed I could do it. Truthfully, I still haven't even convinced myself it's possible, but I think it's a worthy goal. With the 2008 Olympic trials next weekend, I had known this year was far beyond my reach, but if Saturday's total had counted on the national level I would have actually entered into the Olympic rankings at 43rd. I'll be cheering on my East Coast Gold teammates: Lance Frye, Carissa Gump, Matt Devine, Hilary Katzenmeier, Gwen Sisto, and any others going to the trials. Both Lance and Carissa have a great shot at representing us on the biggest stage, and I know they would do our team proud. Not like when Leo handed me my ECG 2007 National Team t-shirt and told me, "Now don't embarrass us!"

The 2012 Olympics in London is still my goal, but I also still have a ridiculously long way to go. I'd have to total better than 325kg at the very least to go this year, and there's no guarantee that we'll have ANY slots for the men, let alone that I wouldn't need an even higher total. While 257kg vaults me into the top 20 for my weight class, everything gets a bit more stratified after that. There are holes in my technique and slight stability issues that can be fixed and will likely add a good 30kg-40kg to my total within the next year, but that's still not enough. What about after that?? And of course there's the ever-present threat of injury.

I am not going to bother myself with any of that! Every day I will continue on the best course I can determine until I get as far as I can go. What else can I do?

But, since the year is over and as is my wont to do, I'll make a note here of where I see myself headed. Saturday's meet highlighted two specific items for me to fix. First and foremost, I am going to learn patience and timing on my cleans. Every single clean attempt I did had the bar crashing down on me. In a proper clean, the bar is caught at the moment it is weightless. When I clean, the bar drops a good several inches on me, then knocks me down a good foot further. On a bad attempt, I drop the bar on the way down. On a good attempt, I fall until my ass almost touches the ground, then I front-squat my way out of it because my strength still outpaces my technique by a longshot. It all happens because I start the explosive pull too early and pull the bar too high. Leo has worked with me on this for the last two weeks, and when I do catch it at the right time it feels almost effortless! I did it correctly in warmups for the meet until 110kg or 120kg, but past that I still get too anxious and revert to my old tactics. If I can fix this, it could easily mean 150kg-160kg, and I'd STILL be under any of my numbers-game-projected clean and jerks. The other issue I saw was my stability under the snatches: I could pull the bar plenty high, but I'm just not used to holding that much weight over my head. I'll be going back to overhead squats and I'll start doing snatch balances with real weight for the first time!

And so that's where I am, and that's where I'm going. I met my goal of a 100kg squat snatch by March 14th, and yesterday I met my goal of a 115kg snatch before June. I did want to back squat 230kg, front squat 190kg, and clean and jerk 150kg by June as well, but really at this point all that matters is the technique. If I try too hard to raise my numbers I tend to start creating small injuries, so I will do this right. My next meet is the kickoff to ECG's summer lifting camp at Moorestown, where I'll spend a week dedicated to lifting. There's another meet in York, PA in September, then the American Open towards the end of the year and Senior Nationals a few months after that. If I can build up this technique, the American Open will be my first shot at really entering the elite ranks. Top 5 at the Open and top 10 or better at Nationals will put me on the map. Who knows: maybe I could be looking at 275kg-280kg by then. That could put me in the top 30 overall...

It's official: I'm going to Senior Nationals next year!

Yesterday at the East Coast Classic in Moorestown, NJ, I snatched 107kg and clean and jerked 140kg for a 247kg total, the exact amount needed to qualify for Senior Nationals in the 77kg weight class. Along the way I won gold out of six in my class and picked up the best lifter award for the session (56kg-77kg men), my first trophy!

Honestly, the competition was lighter than expected, so there's only so many kudos to be given out. East Coast Gold hosts another, similar meet later in the year, the Gold Cup Challenege, at which I took 5th place out of thirteen contestants last year. The four people that beat me were Dan DeLago, Jared Fleming, Brian Swedrock, and Chris McInnes. This time Dan and Brian weren't there and Jared moved up to 85kg. I did manage to pull ahead of Chris, who took second, and nobody else came close. Lance Frye would have easily won had he chosen to make weight, but instead lifted as an extra lifter and totaled 325kg. He even made an attempt to clean and jerk 191kg, a would-be American Record for 77kg, but couldn't stand up with the clean.

At the meet I only went four for six, missing both of my openers in thankfully unimportant moments of stupidity. After snatching 101kg and standing up, I forgot to wait for the down signal from the head judge, and I had one of those "oh, crap!" moments as I watched the weight drop and only then heard the judge (Randy Hauer, by the way) telling me to put it down. No, that is not a legal lift, and they turned me down (well, 1 to 2 anyway. Thanks, Vic!). I made up for it though when I snatched 104kg next by holding on for an extra second or two after Randy told me to drop it. On the last snatch of 107kg, the crowd really got into it, which always gets me going (remind me to mention my thoughts on that later). The lift went great, I turned my head to look at one of the side judges while sitting at the bottom, stood up, and again waited the extra second after given the down signal. The crowd cheered with me, a 4kg meet snatch PR for me, and the first time I've done a meet with all squat snatches! For the clean and jerks, I had, to use Leo's terminology, a brain fart on 135kg when the clean crashed on me. I made up for it on the next attempt by doing the same weight easily. I needed a 247kg total for Nationals, and I already had 107kg for snatch, so 140kg went on the bar for my last attempt. The clean was good. The jerk wasn't my best, but it was good, and that's all I needed!

I didn't actually expect much more out of the meet. I managed to bruise a bone in my left hand about two weeks ago, and it has wreaked havoc on my clean and jerks. The problem is that the pain makes it hard to keep the bar in the right position when starting the jerk. Consequently I have missed several jerks in practice and I missed my opening clean when I hadn't missed any at all over the last couple of months, lifting as much as 142kg with no problem. I've also been a bit overeager and gone too heavy too often, so my body needed some rest. However, Mike Walters once again saved the day and loosened up my hand, showed me how to support it with tape, and completely fixed my knee that had been hurting. Without his help there's no way I could have done it.

For my part, I accomplished my goal to qualify. From here on out, I no longer have to worry about making it to national competitions. In fact, as far as I know, local meets don't count for anything anymore except my unofficial national ranking (official ones are only earned from totals at national and international meets and are based off of ALL weight classes). Still, two weeks from now is the Maryland State and Potomac Valley Championships in Frederick, the end of my first full year of competition. It's Tim Guarino's meet, and I told him I'd snatch 110kg and clean and jerk 150kg! Might as well go for broke ;-).

If you've ever picked a weight-training exercise and attempted to increase your personal best, you know that instinctively you want to lift as much weight as you can almost every time you do it. I know I do, and have since I first started lifting in high school. After all, who wouldn't like to say they increase their bench press max every week by 5-10 pounds? The younger and less experienced you are, the more you can get away with this method and the more it will seem to work. But as you get better and older, and especially as you get into more technical lifts like the Olympic lifts, this method starts to fail. After doing the same amounts each week, your lifts will plateau or, worse, start to decrease. Your technique tends to get worse because, well, it's HARD to have good technique at maximum weight! If you watch the top Olympians lift, you'll see they keep amazing form even at world-record weights. Which is, of course, the reason they can lift world-record weights, not to mention they're strong as hell.

What does this mean and how does it relate to training? It means that a good workout is tailored to give the lifter lots of opportunities to lift somewhat lighter weights that train his or her technique and prepares them for days where they get to lift at or near maximum. When done right, the lifter gets enough rest, doesn't injure themselves, and keeps improving technique and strength. It's true that your personal bests might not increase as fast as you want, but since when do you get what you want simply because you want it? I've seen plenty of people lift beyond what they can do correctly every day, and it isn't pretty. How many times in a row can you miss snatching the same weight before it starts to make your technique worse? And, worse yet, training at the edge of your ability all the time almost invariably causes injury.

As a lifter, you (and, if you have one, your coach) has a responsibility to make sure you don't fall prey to this peril. Set limits for yourself BEFORE your workout as to how heavy you will go in an exercise. If your form starts to fail you, stay at a weight where you can do it correctly, and maybe do extra reps. You will still get stronger without lifting at the top of your range. Then you might just surprise yourself on your heavy day when suddenly you can add 5kg-10kg to your old max.

I admit, this is a problem of mine, too. But sometimes I can do it right. It's alright that I didn't get any PRs over a week span - I wasn't supposed to. But it's certainly interesting to note that I've begun cleaning and jerking 140kg regularly, and I can't remember the last time I missed one. We'll see how that translates in the next two meets I have scheduled: the East Coast Classic in Moorestown, NJ on April 26th and the Maryland State/Potomac Valley Championships at Fort Detrick in Frederick, MD on May 10th. I only need 247kg for Senior Nationals next year, and I did 108kg in the snatch and 142kg in the clean and jerk just the other week....

I managed to pull a muscle in my back again :-/. This time it's on the right side of my lower back in a place that's much more central to everyday things like, say, walking and standing. So I'm pretty much laid up on the couch for the day with an ice pack and some Advil. It happened while front squatting: I let up on the tightness in my core for a moment, causing me to wobble, at which point I heard a small popping noise down in my back. I finished the set and put the bar back, but I could tell I had done a little damage so I stopped for the day. Not surprisingly, after icing it after the workout it stiffened up quite a bit. I'll fall behind a bit, but I can make that up like I made up my workouts the last time. I'm most annoyed that I didn't get to do my last set; I was going to attempt a PR double at 17x kg.

Actually, like the last time, this happened in the last week of the cycle when I was supposed to be doing 95% of my maximums. Earlier in the workout I had clean and jerked heavy from below the knees and then did heavy clean pulls, both of which require a LOT from the lower back. I must have tired it out too much to do those squats. Perhaps I should modify my strategy during those weeks by either shortening the workouts or putting more rest in between them.

Today Leo said much of exactly what I said yesterday. I feel oddly prescient.

It also made me very happy because he was commending me for the way I've been handling those things. Earlier he put in his own two cents and said you should actually be able to clean and jerk 80% of what you can back squat for a single (80% of at least 205kg is 164kg, 80% of that is 131kg, a total of at least 295kg, heheh).

One of the major sources of frustration for all lifters is the amount of time it takes to make progress as well as progress's stilted nature. Consider that it is widely accepted (and rightfully so) that a technically efficient lifter can squat snatch or clean more than s/he can power snatch or clean, due to the much shorter distance to pull the bar. You might have to bring the bar two feet higher to catch a power lift as opposed to a squat lift. The only catch is that it requires much more speed, flexibility, timing, and technique to effectively pull off a platform lift in the squat style. That and the more precarious catching position requires far more stabilization strength.

Before competing in this sport, I trained in the powerlifting style while wrestling at Maryland, which means that I not only didn't practice squat-style Olympic lifts but I also squatted and bench pressed loads of weight in ways that ended up giving me major inflexibilities. I'm not here to explain why powerlifters are sacrificing strength and overall athleticism for the purpose of bigger official numbers, but I will say that the powerlifter's squat, which is legal when the thighs are parallel to the floor and keeps the knees directly above the feet while the back is bent forward, is not only rather dangerous but also builds up bad habits and inhibits the body from ever reaching certain positions. The bench press, which of course is the standard "how strong are you?" lift (though I say the squat or an Olympic lift should take its place), is practiced to death by everybody from the average weekend warrior to the top professional athletes. It's the easiest lift to do (just lie down on a bench and do a pushup) and guys like to think that women want a big chest and big arms more than anything else (though, AskMen.com says the butt is the most important, and abs and hips are third and fourth, but the biceps and chest don't come in until 8th and 9th). I could bench press around 375 pounds in college, and that caused the upper-outside part of my pectorals (the ones that attach the chest to the shoulder) to be so tight that I can't fully pull my shoulders back with my arms extended. I can't tell you how much stretching I've had to do to fix that (it's not fixed yet). I've squatted 475 pounds for reps and supposedly could do close to 540 pounds max, but now that I do Olympic-style squats I still have trouble keeping my hips in and my back upright because my knees want to travel further backward and my lower abdominals, the very center of the body's core, are weak because the upper abdominals always did the work.

This all means that I have a LONG way to go before I'm physically and technically proficient in this sport. The numbers game is an addictive method of predicting your potential, and I often can't stop myself from using it to determine just how far I could go if I did finally perfect my technique. One version goes a little something like this:
- Do a max back squat for three reps (I have done 195kg).
- You should be able to front squat 80% of that for three (156kg).
- You should be able to clean and jerk what you can front squat for three (156kg).
- You should be able to snatch 80% of what you can clean and jerk (125kg).
- Therefore, my total should be 281kg.

There are more ways to play it. How about this one:
- Do a max power clean (I did 305 pounds in college, about 139kg).
- You should be able to snatch what you can power clean (139kg).
- You should be able to clean and jerk 125% of what you can snatch (the converse of the 80% rule, 174kg for me).
- Therefore, my total should be 313kg.

See why it's addictive? The last formula would put me maybe 20kg away from qualifying for the Pan American games, the World Team, and other international competition, and I'm not done getting stronger. 313kg would have been a close second at the 2008 Senior Nationals and a championship at the 2007 American Open. The only problem: this doesn't really work. Everybody's different. One of my teammates can clean almost as much as he can front squat, and with women that's especially more likely. I guess we can't just proclaim winners based on their best back squat.

But that's what makes this all the more frustrating. It seems like I should be able to do so much more so I want to pack plates onto the bar, but technique is a dish best learned slow. If I put too much on the bar too often, I'll give up technique to try to power up the bar, and bad habits once learned are much harder to break. Instead I can build up all those little muscles I never used before, work on my speed, flexibility and timing, and watch those numbers creep up. Whenever it seems like I hit a wall, I go to my coach and to Mike Walters (possibly the greatest man on Earth) and they usually find something else wrong that I can fix and make more gains. It's best just to forget about what you SHOULD be able to do and focus on how to get better.

I think that was a pep talk for me more than anything else..

Since I fell behind with the back injury, by the time I got my new workout phase (usually four weeks of workouts, five a week for me right now) I was behind by a few days. Attempting to catch up, I was prepared to lift twice on the next Sunday... but then I got sick with a stomach bug that came with a fever and a rash. It's frustrating, but by resting I got better quickly (two days off total). I'm about to go lift now, and assuming I don't hurt myself or get sick again, I'll be back on track after Sunday. I've had to pull a two-a-day and I've taken almost no days off, which means I've had to lighten my weights a little, but I still managed to pull off some important snatch and overhead squat PRs. I'm off to go maybe get another PR or two!

After doing a very heavy workout as well as a yoga class on Monday last week, the next day you can imagine I was pretty tired. It's been so long since I've last had an injury, so I was a bit overconfident, and I persisted in clean and jerking a difficult weight from the high box, even though my lower back was really tired. Predictably, on the last set I compensated too much and ended up pulling a muscle in my back.

A couple days later and once again I felt healthy. I do several sets of overhead squats with increasingly heavy weights. The second to last set is 110kg: a weight I've only done once before, and that was the week before. Heavy, but no problem. I try to jump to 115kg for a five kilo PR, and find I can't even get stable standing straight up. I miss it: twice. After the second time, I know I hurt my back again. Crap. After a set of RDLs, I attempt to do really heavy front squats, but I can't even do the first set with the pain. Double crap.

Unfortunately this can be a part of any sport, and sometimes the only solution is rest. But nobody wants to hear that... I'm currently on a combination of rest, ice, heat, and anti-inflammatories, and I've had three workouts so far without pulling it again. I can tell it's not quite healed, though, so wish me luck...

But just because I'm hurt doesn't mean I can't set PRs; I back-squatted 203kg for a double earlier tonight!

Last summer I couldn't squat snatch to save my life. I went to East Coast Gold's summer weightlifting camp (in Moorestown, NJ) able to power snatch 100kg and when I tried to squat snatch 40kg I fell backwards. 40kg! A bit of a gap between strength and technique, wouldn't you say? Even when I went to the American Open last December I could only do just over 80kg, with marginal consistency, though I posted a 101kg power snatch at the meet.

Two and a half weeks ago, on February 15th, I squat snatched 87kg from the high box while lifting at home with my girlfriend, Christy. I declared to her then and there that I would successfully squat snatch 100kg within four weeks. In response she wrote on my whiteboard (where I keep all my records, meet results, maxes, and rankings) the following: Adam "Diesel" Beytin will squat snatch 100kg by March 14, 2008. I was at the end of my current lifting phase today and had two single rep sets of squat snatch from the high box. Keep in mind that last Monday I set a PR double record for this exercise of 94kg that even eclipsed my best PR single. Today, I did 95kg on my second to last set, and 100kg on my last, meeting my goal with a six kilo PR more than a week and a half before the deadline. Not to mention that it is harder to squat snatch from the high box than it is from the floor. And, I didn't miss a single rep. This busts the door wide open for another 15kg-20kg jump, because even though the squat and power versions of this lift are even for me, I should really be able to do at least 20% more. I see a very high likelihood that my total will be at least 260kg at the next Frederick meet on May 10th, a week before my one year lifting anniversary. That would mean I added 42kg (almost 20%) in my first year!

Oh, and did I mention I jerked 135kg from behind the neck for an easy double?

Welcome to my weightlifting page! This is a window into a small portion of my life that I put a lot of time into. I would like to compete at as high a level as I possibly can. My first meet was May last year, 2007, in Frederick, MD. Before lifting I wrestled for the University of Maryland, College Park. Until that meet I coached myself for the most part and wrote my own workouts. At the time able only to power snatch and still learning how to squat clean, I posted a 93kg snatch and a 125kg personal best clean and jerk to total 218kg. Since then I have been training under Leo Totten as a part of team East Coast Gold, learning how to fix my technique and solve all sorts of lingering flexibility issues from my previous athletic pursuits. The work is paying off as my squat snatch is finally within 10kg of my power snatch, my clean and jerk is finally climbing compared to my front squat, and I'm definitely getting stronger.

I hope with this blog that I can give some insight on what it's like to train in this sport and discuss training issues as they come up. I hope also to keep informed everybody who is supporting me; I definitely am indebted to all the positive reinforcement I have received. I hope I can make you all proud!