Category Archives: Coaching

Coaching competency in Weightlifting

Posted on by
Reply

Coaching is a very complex role and it takes months of practise to develop a basic level of competency and then many more years to acquire expertise. It is really unfair to expect anyone starting out as a coach to have an in-depth understanding of how to teach Weightlifting skill, design training programs or deal effectively with the range of issues that athletes present. The knowledge and skill to be able to operate effectively as a coach requires the individual to be immersed in an appropriate environment for considerable time and hopefully guided by an experienced hand. People learn to coach when presented with real life situations and it is unavoidable that mistakes are often a natural aspect of learning.

Continue reading →

Self-Care for Better Training in Weightlifting

Posted on by
Reply

It is the eternal problem in training for high-performance Weightlifting that, despite the athlete’s motivation to push forward for improved performance, they are held back by frustrating injuries. It may seem to the athlete that they have reached a limit in their ability to train, a “red line” so to speak, and doubts about making further progress become stronger and stronger.

This article will discuss the factors that an athlete needs to consider when they are making strident efforts to reach higher goals by training harder. The effect of additional stress on the individual can have negative consequences unless coping strategies are consistently employed.

Continue reading →

I need to know your mind

Posted on by
Reply

As your coach, it is always my wish that I can help you to take steps forward to improve your athletic performance in the competition arena. I feel reasonably certain that performance improvement is what you seek and that you expect me to support and guide you to achieve this objective.

My coaching experience, and indeed my experience as an athlete has brought an understanding that, beyond the initial happy days of being a beginner, performance improvement becomes increasingly difficult the higher the goals you seek. Inevitably, performance improvement comes at a cost, and whether you are willing to pay the price will depend on your level of motivation, your resilience and your self-belief. I will work, to the best of my ability, to develop your confidence that if you expend the energy and effort needed, be more exacting in your training process, you will continue to set new personal standards of performance in the competition arena.

Continue reading →

Auto-regulation in Weightlifting Training

Posted on by
Reply

Auto-regulation or self-regulation is an important but not widely understood concept in coaching. For those who might read this post, auto-regulation might be defined as the ability of the athlete to regulate their own training rather than be dependent on the coach to give directions. Of course, for each and every athlete, auto-regulation lies on a continuum between total control by the coach and total control by the athlete of their own training agenda. In the initial stages of learning Weightlifting, the athlete is highly dependent on the coach. However, within 3 years perhaps, the athlete should be able to pursue their training with considerably less direction from the coach. Then if an athlete has 10 years training experience, and has reached a high level of performance, they may largely expected to self-regulate including taking responsibility for the development of their own training program.

Continue reading →

The Meaning of “Push”

Posted on by
Reply

In the context of Olympic Weightlifting, a well-designed training program will provide the athlete with guidance on how to structure training across the week and make suitable changes to this structure on a weekly basis in the lead up to a competition. A really neatly prepared and well thought out training program can have a positive effect on the athlete. It reduces the likelihood of common issues that occur when athletes follow very loose training guidelines or none at all. Here are a few of the issues that a well-designed training program should minimise:

  1. Spending far too much time on exercises preferred by the athlete, and little or no time on exercises not preferred but often most needed.
  2. Going too heavy too often, which results in loss of form and well-being, and the occurrence of injuries.
  3. Failing to vary the training load sufficiently from day to day
  4. Performing exercises in an unhelpful order
  5. Using time poorly during training sessions

But training programs also have significant limitations and without sufficient understanding of these limitations athletes can be disadvantaged.

Pushing beyond planned percentages is an absolute necessity in the training processes but it must be done with a great deal of care and control. The training program, no matter how thoughtfully designed, can never predict the state of well-being of the athlete on any given day. For this reason, the work prescribed by the training program has to be subdued, respectful of the athlete’s physical and emotional health and not too ambitious in its goals. The written training program with its specification of exercises, sets, reps and intensities can never be regarded as anything more than a broad framework for guiding the athlete. Continue reading →

Dealing with anxiety in Weightlifting

Posted on by

For the athlete in Weightlifting, the final 2 weeks before a major competition is a difficult period in which athletes often have a tendency to conjure up all manner of self-imposed roadblocks, issues and limitations. The anxiety produced by the impending competition sets off questioning thoughts about the need for more technical and strength work, and to continue training hard to the last moment. It’s a kind of investment protection issue. The athlete may conclude that they just need to invest more energy and effort in training so as to protect what they have already invested so far.

Surprisingly, the timing of the last maximal session before competition day seems to vary considerably as a result of different belief systems of coaches and athletes. The variance will likely be between 7-21 days before a major competition. Why such a difference in beliefs should exist is a question worth asking but is not the subject matter of this article. Instead, this article attempts to address the anxiety issue that many athletes suffer.
Continue reading →

Mental skills in Weightlifting

Posted on by

It’s 4:00am, the day after an important local event and my mind is too active to sleep. I arrived home yesterday after a 14 hour day of coaching and organising the State Championships in the sport in which I have devoted nearly half a century of life – Weightlifting. Sitting by the home fireplace, I began at last to read and digest the many messages received from competitors, some excited by their performance and some desperately upset. Some messages are easy to answer, some will have to wait as the needed communication is challenging and requires careful consideration. This is the usual situation.

Striving for excellence has always been a modus operandi for me. There is always something more to learn, something more to achieve. However, an important part of going forward to is to reflect upon one’s past, the successes, the failures, the pivotal moments, the opportunities won and lost. Such reflections, however, often occur at an unseemly hour of the day, hence here I am, before dawn, writing this post. Continue reading →

Continuous Improvement in the Training of the Athlete

Posted on by

The task for the athlete and the coach is to work together to continually improve the training process of the athlete over many years. It is highly probable that when this continuous improvement process comes to a halt, the athlete will no longer improve.

From day 1 in the training process, the athlete learns how to train to develop good technique and athletic ability so as to improve results. Initially the learning is fast but as the months and years go by, the rate of learning slows as a result of fewer opportunities to learn something new, or perhaps incorrect assumptions that all the knowledge needed has been learned. To make further improvement then, the athlete and coach must work harder to find solutions to the perfection of the training problem. Continue reading →

Training frequency in Weightlifting: When to add another training session?

Posted on by

I was recently asked “what are the advantages and disadvantages/risks of adding an additional training session per week”. I am sure that readers will attest that this is a common question in some form or another.

In any club that caters for differing levels of experience and ability, it is likely that there are athletes training as little as 2 days a week and as much as as 6 days per week, and some even 9-11 sessions per week. At every level of experience, it is probable that athletes will ask the question ‘should I be doing more?’

The simple answer is of course that it depends on the ‘circumstances of the individual athlete’ but an answer of this nature does not really help. What’s really needed is a number of criteria that the athlete and the coach can consider to determine whether circumstances permit an additional training day.

Here are some suggested criteria for increasing training frequency: Continue reading →

Teaching Weightlifting Skill: 10 Objectives

Posted on by

In the view of the author, the following 10 objectives are critically important in teaching weightlifting skill to beginners. The initial learning of the beginner in their first 10-20 training sessions will have a very significant impact on their long-term technical competency, confidence  and ability to perform under pressure.

Coaches should teach the beginner athlete to:

Objective #1: Lockout and stabilise the bar above the head

Athletes have differing levels of ability to achieve ideal receiving positions due to flexibility limitations. However, it should always be a coaching objective to teach the athlete, from the very first moment of learning, to be able to hold bars motionless above the head and remain in balance. Successful achievement of this objective has long-term implications for the confidence and safety of the athlete in performing limit or near limit weights.

Continue reading →