Training Principles

Making progress in Olympic Weightlifting is no easy thing. As any beginner soon finds out, the sport presents immense difficult and ongoing challenges. The first challenge is to learn all the exercise variations in the training plan and develop basic movement competence. Generally, new lifters find this pleasurable and exciting. A reasonable level of skill can be developed within 100 training sessions, provided the athlete has access to quality coaching, but achieving excellence takes far longer. The second challenge is to learn how to train effectively. In many ways, this is a harder task that almost always involves making many mistakes, suffering injuries, and learning the difficult process of injury rehabilitation. Importantly, athletes must appreciate the limits of tolerable training stress and learn to regulate their training, recovery, nutrition, and lifestyle. Although athletes often learn lessons the hard way, quality advice from a coach who understands the bigger picture will significantly reduce training problems. The third challenge is to develop the mental skills required by the sport of Olympic Weightlifting. This is perhaps the hardest task, and one which athletes often fail to achieve even after 5 years of training. It definitely helps the athlete to have role models to follow and mentoring from a coach who has an intrinsic understanding of performance psychology.

Here are some principles to guide your training effort:

1. The Specificity Principle

Specificity is the foremost principle of sports training. The principle states that athletes should train in a manner that mimics the specific energy pathways, technical skills, environmental conditions, and psychological demands of their sport. In terms of mimicking the technical elements of Olympic Weightlifting, this includes characteristics such as body positions, bar velocity, movement timing, range of movement, balance, and mental skills. You can only learn Olympic Weightlifting by doing Olympic Weightlifting. Developing strength by performing non-Olympic Weightlifting exercises generally has little value.

2. Adaptation

Training is a process of applying increasing levels of stress to cause further desired adaptation. In Olympic Weightlifting, the desired physical adaptations include changes in the musculoskeletal, nervous, and endocrine systems. The most obvious changes are increasing bone density and muscular strength. The underappreciated change is the development of the brain and peripheral nervous system, without which the acquisition of necessary skills and coordination would not be possible. Athletes also adapt to the psychological stress that heavy Weightlifting imposes.

3. Autoregulation

When training frequently with high effort, the athlete must take into account soreness, pain, or feelings of unusual fatigue. This means the exercise schedule needs to be frequently adjusted to rest specific body parts or reduce intensity to allow for extra recovery. For example, if a wrist feels sore, it must be rested that day, and any exercises that would further stress the wrist must be replaced. Injury is the greatest cause of athletes failing to progress, and tends to appear after athletes reach high levels of performance in training and competition. Autoregulation means that athletes must learn to self-monitor and take action to reduce levels of stress when physical and mental fatigue becomes apparent. Athletes must also learn how to recover from periods of high stress to restore normal body functioning.

4. Quality

Quality training occurs when you are motivated and focused, make the best use of your training time, perform lifts with precision and fluency, and pursue achievable objectives. It is also when your training gives you a deep sense of satisfaction, growing confidence and a sense of personal development of both mind and body. Quality training is not about constantly pushing yourself hard, battling to achieve objectives, worrying about progress, or becoming frustrated with results. Your state of well-being, body and mind is crucial to your success. Quality training leads to longevity in the sport, and this is immensely important in the quest to fulfil your ultimate potential.

5. Steady Progress

It takes time for athletes to understand that it is inadvisable to rush progress toward results. Sometimes, inexperienced athletes will enter into periods of training focused on increasing strength to accelerate progress. For example, an internet search for ‘how to increase squats’ will reveal all manner of materials promising to increase your squat rapidly. Although attempts to rapidly increase strength may yield short-term gains, the results are often short-lived and can lead to injury that causes long-term loss of form. For example, a sudden increase in squatting workload often leads to soreness in the knee tendons, adductor strain, lower back strain, and knee joint inflammation. This can have a lasting effect, resulting in performance going backwards, a phenomenon called ‘maladaptation’.

Similarly, attempts to improve at a faster rate in the Olympic lifts by regularly exceeding prescribed training intensities are doomed to failure. What tends to happen is fatigue, loss of form and frustration. Frequent high-intensity training generally results in loss of confidence in technique, increased likelihood of injury, and frustration.

Making progress is about making small, steady, incremental improvements in training methodology, not by making quantum leaps.

6. Frequency of Training

Because the adaptation process in Olympic Weightlifting is difficult and full of traps, beginners should always start with low levels of training stress. It is perfectly acceptable for beginners to start on a training frequency of twice per week. How soon they should be permitted to increase to three times per week depends on many factors, including available time, fitness level, age, lifestyle, family responsibilities, and work or study commitments. There is no sense in athletes asking for a 3-day-per-week training program if they can reliably make only 2 sessions per week.

As an athlete shows signs of adaptation and continuing interest, training can rise to 3 sessions per week. This may occur after 10-20 sessions if the athlete’s physical condition and lifestyle commitments permit. However, there is no hurry. The next step, increasing to 4 sessions per week, can be problematic for many and lead to a decline in motivation and well-being. However, if athletes have completed over 200 sessions, continue to enjoy their participation, have time available, and wish to progress towards competing in high-level competitions, a training frequency of 4 sessions per week is permissible. Training 5 sessions per week or more is justifiable only for athletes who are emerging as high-level performers. At this level of commitment, an athlete must make considerable lifestyle changes to cope with the demands of training stress. They must also be closely monitored to ensure their well-being.

7. Good Decision-Making

A training program is a necessary component of organised training, but blindly following one is no formula for success. Although training programs have built-in strategies, the athlete’s condition changes day to day. The athlete and coach must constantly make sound decisions regarding intensity, training load, and the nature of the exercises to be performed. Training plans must be frequently altered to ensure the best outcomes, and decisions can only be made DURING each session.

It is difficult for athletes to make such decisions due to a lack of objectivity. If athletes are forced to make decisions on their own, as is the case when the coach is not present, they should receive prior guidance on how to do so. Coaches also have difficulty determining appropriate intensity as well. The key to success is that the coach must have a good understanding of the athlete and be well-informed about how athletes adapt to training.

8. Work on Weaknesses

Training should focus on achieving planned objectives and working on weaknesses that ultimately limit their performance potential. However, athletes have likes and dislikes and often focus their training incorrectly.

The issue can be complicated by dwelling too much on weaknesses, which can confirm in the athlete’s mind that the problem is fixed or immutable. Thus, need athletes coaching support that builds confidence and does not pick them apart. Athletes need encouragement to be patient and follow a good process, as that is the only way to improve weaknesses.