NERD OUT WORKOUTS with Shane Robert

NERD OUT WORKOUTS with Shane Robert

There is a dad at my daughters' school who trains the Olympic lifts. We saw each other on one of the first days of kindergarten. He was wearing an Eleiko shirt and I was wearing an Elite FTS shirt. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve seen people wearing lifting shirts out in the wild so we were drawn into conversation, hoping that we had found a kindred spirit in one another.Finding someone tonerd out about training with is rare and awesome, so I was more than happy to talk weightlifting, even if it hasn’t been my focus. I do have a bit of background in the classic lifts (I have been a USA Weightlifting Sport Performance coach for years) and I love watching clips from contests, so I felt I could hold my own.It wasn’t long, though, before he was pushing for me to start training the lifts again. 

I brushed this off for two and a half years.It’s been over a decade since I trained the lifts as anything more than a passing fancy and the thought of, essentially, starting over was not appealing. Anyone who has spent time snatching and clean & jerking knows how challenging it can be to learn the technique. Since I do have experience with the lifts, I wouldn’t be starting completely from zero, but a dozen or so years have passed and I am older, stiffer and have much less available time to devote to re-learning the lifts. 

Then, earlier this year, one of the other trainers at my gym started to train them herself. I don’t know if it was FOMO or just feeling stagnant with my training at the time, but seeing someone do the lifts in person made me want to start training them again.Despite my misgivings as stated above, that’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the last few months since around May. 

I’ve kept my training pretty simple since I need to get my technique back, but never want to stray too far from strength. Here is how a typical week has been looking for me: 

This week for example, my training will break down like this

If all of the reps look and feel good on the main movements, I increase the load by 2-5 pounds the next time. If there were any misses or technically questionable reps, I keep the weight the same for the next session. Simple progressive overload. Squats are currently pretty light, but I am focusing on speed and use a velocity tracker to make sure that none of my reps drop below .5m/s. Each week just progresses up in weight based on the speed. 

This is a high frequency program, both in the number of days per week and of the lifts. I don’t usually advocate for so many training days, especially for people with normal lives to contend with. In this case I think it’s acceptable. Much of what I am doing is about (re)learning technique, which lends itself to frequent practice, and the actual stress is not as high as it might seem on paper. The weights that I am handling are quite low compared to my strength potential, in some cases well less than 40%. Take for example snatches. My best snatch grip deadlift is 475 for 3. Doing multiple days per week of snatches with less than 200 pounds just doesn’t stress my recovery much. 

On the other hand, if I get careless with my recovery, this plan can still start to get away from me. Making sure I am eating enough, getting adequate sleep (which can be a real challenge these days) and not getting greedy with trying to progress too quickly are all essential. I also have to listen to my body. If I come and things feel creaky or slow, I will lower the weight or cut the volume  or pivot entirely and do something less stressful for the day, like sleds or kettlebells. This is a massive difference from the first time I trained on these lifts. I wanted to progress so badly that I completely ignored my body and pushed through everything. I could get away with that when I was 23, to a certain extent, but that is no longer the case. 

The lessons to take from this program for readers, whether they are training the Olympic lifts or not, are as follows:

1. When trying to learn a new movement, frequent practice is essential.
2. Don’t let ego get in the way of progress. Start as light as needed to set yourself for success
3. Understand the stress and recovery demands in and out of the gym. Build your training around what you can reasonably recover from. Don’t build recovery around training.