Hitting the Weights gives you Energy!

Weight lifting gives me so much energy. Energy to go the extra mile. Energy to take the weights to the next level. Energy to accomplish my goals. Energy to do anything I wish. You can literally feel the energy coursing through your veins throughout the day. It’s a great feeling. It’s like igniting jet fuel. It’s that good.

Progressive Overload

Progressive overload is a simple concept, simply meaning that with each successive workout you increase the demands placed on the muscles. You do this by increasing the amount of weight lifted or by increasing the number of reps in the set. You have to convince the body that it NEEDS to build muscle. To do this, you have to continuously push the envelope. Doing 25 push-ups a day for a year is NOT encouraging the body to build muscle. It is instead encouraging the body to condition the muscle it already has in place. To get muscle growth you have to progressively increase resistance.

Strength Training Excuses

So many people are concerned with how strength training will impact their body shape. Most common excuses for avoiding strength training are:

1. I don't want to get big and bulky.
2. I need to lose weight and burn more calories.
3. (from women) I don't want to get "manly".


Endurance Athlete: athlete who competes in sports where the length of physical exertion is greater than 10 minutes continuously without a re-set or break. Examples: Road cyclists, marathoners, triathletes


Strength  Athlete: athlete who competes in sports where the length of physical exertion is less than 10 minutes continuously without a re-set or break.  Examples: Weightlifting, Sprinters, Volleyball, Boxing, Football, Track cyclists.

The T-Town OLY OPEN is Today!

CrossFit T-Town is very excited to announce Tulsa’s first annual Olympic Weightlifting Meet on Saturday April 12, 2014.

The meet will begin at 8:00 am on Saturday morning and each lifter will be given three attempts to reach a max snatch and clean and jerk weight. Divisions are broken down by age and weight class. This meet is a USAW sanctioned weightlifting meet however you do not have to be USAW registered athlete to compete. The cost is $45 for USAW members and $50 for non USAW members. We are capping attendance at 30 people so do not delay, make sure to register today.
Download the T-Town Oly Open Registration form here: Oly Meet Registration

Competitions are broken down by age and weight. Age and weight classes are below:

School Age	Junior	Senior	Masters
17 and under	18-20	21-34	35 and above

Competition age is based on the athlete’s birth year. Determine your age on December 31, and that is your competition age for that year. Example for 2011: An athlete born in 1994 has a competition age of 17 and is a School Age athlete. An athlete born in 1993 has a competition age of 18 and is a Junior athlete.
What are the weight classes?

Male

50 kg*	56 kg	62 kg	69 kg	77 kg	85 kg	94 kg	105 kg	105+ kg
110 lbs*	123 lbs	136 lbs	152 lbs	169 lbs	187 lbs	207 lbs	231 lbs	231+ lbs

Female

44 kg*	48 kg	53 kg	58 kg	63 kg	69 kg	75 kg	75+ kg
97 lbs*	105 lbs	116 lbs	127 lbs	138 lbs	152 lbs	165 lbs	165+ lbs

*indicates a weight class only available to youth athletes
How do weight classes work?
You need to weigh-in at or below your weight class. If you are a male who weighs-in at 84kg, you will be in the 85kg weight class. If you weigh-in at 85.1kg, you will be in the 94kg weight class.
A little background on how an Olympic Weightlifting Meet is run: 
The athlete gets three attempts in the Snatch, followed by three attempts in the Clean & Jerk. At the start of competition, the athlete will give the officials his or her opening weight for each of the lifts. The athlete’s opening weight should be a relatively easy weight, something the person knows he or she can successfully complete. Order is essentially broken down by weight on the bar, with broader divisions based on the above mentioned age and weights. Within an athlete’s weight class, the athlete will be going in order based on bar weight. When the athlete’s name is called, they have 1 minute to lift, and they will get a warning at 30 seconds. After the athlete completes the opening attempt, they give the judges their next weight attempt. Order will continue to progress by weight on the bar. Sometimes depending on the second weight the athlete chooses to attempt, they might be following themselves and if this is the case, they will have 2 minutes instead of 1. If the athlete misses an attempt, their options are to either repeat at the same weight, or go up – there is no going down in weight!
If you have any questions please feel free to contact Christina Merlo at cmmerlo@gmail.com or call 314-210-0964. We look forward to see you at this great event!

Triple Extension

“Triple extension is caused in much of Olympic weightlifting by the hip extension literally lifting the feet into a plantar flexed position, without much or any help from the calves and triple extension is often done simply for the lifter to move his feet to a different catch position rather than add to the force driving the bar”

Build a Platform

This is an easy design for an eight-foot square platform that will stand up to your heavy training for a long time to come. Protect your floor, your weights, and your knees by lifting at home on a proper training platform.

You'll Need

• Four sheets of 3/4-inch CDX plywood
• One sheet of AB or AC plywood
• One 8' x 4' horse stall (rubber) mat
• About five tubes of industrial-strength adhesive
• Calking gun
• 1 ¼" wood screws
• Drill
• Reciprocating saw

Optional/optimal

• Square


• Chalk/string straight line drawing tool

Construction

1. 
   

   Lay it out.
   Lay two sheets of CDX plywood lengthwise side by side in the direction you will face to lift.
2. 
   

   Glue it together.
   Spread adhesive.
3. 
   

   More plywood.
   Lay two sheets of CDX plywood crosswise on top of bottom sheets.
4. 
   

   Clamp it down.
   Screw sheets together 2" from edges, 16" apart, around perimeter and along insides edges of top sheets.

Swimming and Lifting

I have been swimming a lot lately. Thanks to my coach Okie Dennis Berry, I started to think about swimming as a great active recovery workout. There is a huge similarity between lifting and swimming. In Olympic lifting, you significantly improve when your body is positioned correctly and the bar is traveling in the most efficient trajectory. Swimming is no different. Our body replaces the bar (our body is the load we are moving), and the “bar path” is typically our hand trajectory. But swimming has an added component. We swim in water, in horizontal position. The closer we can keep the body to horizontal, the more we minimize drag, which in turns means less energy required to move the weight load over distance.

Want REAL Results???

There really is no secret to becoming FIT! Here are the things I do everyday of my life.

Weightlifting: Lift weights 3 times a week. Focus on then big lifts: Deadlift, Squat, Press, Cleans, Jerks, & Snatches. Focus on the functional and gymnastic accessories: pull-ups, dips, push-ups, muscle-ups, box-jumps, & kettlebell swings.
Conditioning: Sprint, carry, run long distance sometimes, row, swim, yoga, bike, & play sports.
Follow a program and listen to your body: Train it hard almost every time you step foot in the gym. Those with specific goals should follow a legitimate program focused on that specialty. A general Crossfit program can do wonders for 99% of you and also serve as GPP compliment to any sport-focused program.
Make sure you rest: Everyone should have at least one full rest day, some need more. For those that hate being inactive, you can spend time on active recovery: do some yoga, walk, hike, and do other outdoor low-intensity physical activity. Remember that you must take rest at some point.
Eat a clean diet: Lots of quality protein and fat. Tend to stay lower carb consisting of starchy veggies, some fruit, and sweet potatoes. Athletes can use higher carbs as activity level will demand.
Manage lifestyle factors: sleep, stress, & recovery

Squat Clean 315lb (PR)

Full Squat clean @ 315lb

I barely missed the jerk this time.

OLY Lifting

Olympic lifts have no equal for developing speed, flexibility, coordination, total-body strength, and muscle. Every single muscle in your body will be worked to lift more weight than you’ve ever lifted. Also, because you’re doing all of these exercises with such speed, you’re recruiting every Fast-Twitch muscle fiber, which has the greatest capacity for increased size and strength.

Stay Strong

This is a poster that has been hanging in my gym for the past three years.

LIFT WEIGHTS

Teach Safety

Most people don't know how to properly lower a weight safely. As coaches, we do our best to teach you to lift weights injury free, and we need everyone to keep safety in mind when lowering weights. This will drastically reduce the risk of injury for you and those lifting around you. This will also reduce the wear and tear on the equipment you use. Nobody wants to continuously replace weights and barbells.

Workout of the day

Clean, 1 rep
Bench press, 1 rep
Overhead squat, 1 rep

Power Clean 275lb (old PR 295 squat clean)I tried to go for a new PR and do it with a power clean. 300lbs x 3 attempts = FAIL





Bench Press 360lb (old PR 365) I tried to go for a new PR of 375lbs x 1 = FAIL






Ovehead Squat 265lb (old PR 255)

Load The Bar

I believe high volume OLY lifting with a moderate to heavy load is the best way to improve your technical proficiency. When you’re too tired to muscle the weight, your body has to be efficient or the weight’s not going up.

"Isabel"

Snatch 135lb 30 reps for time: 2:27 New PR

Then track work with the running group. Track Tuesdays!
800m warm-up, 800m, 600m, 400m x2, 200m x2

Step up the weight

Instead of chasing an improvement in your Angie time of 4 seconds, try performing a workout you know and load where your time begins to significantly drop off. Can you perform 30 clean and jerks with 135lbs in under three minutes? That load should be 155 or 185 pounds. Go out and start failing all over again. This time make it heavy, because everyone is getting good at running and pull-ups.

"Grace" & 400 meter records

30 Clean & Jerks for time @ 135lbs:
2:25 PR (previous time 2:36)


Then I did the track work at Rogers 2 person team relay 10 x 400m
Everything felt great and after the workout we did a 400m race.
My time was 1:02 (400m) PR (previous time 1:04)

Squat Clean & Jerk

85% of 1RM 3x3

SNATCH

The snatch is one of the two olympic weightlifting events (the other being the clean and jerk). The essence of the event is to lift a barbell from the platform to locked arms overhead in a smooth continuous movement. The barbell is pulled as high as the lifter can manage (typically to mid chest height) (the pull) at which point the barbell is flipped overhead. With relatively light weights (as in the "power snatch") locking of the arms may not require rebending the knees. However, as performed in contests, the weight is always heavy enough to demand that the lifter receive the bar in a squatting position, while at the same time flipping the weight so it moves in an arc directly overhead to locked arms (the quick drop). When the lifter is secure in this position, he rises (overhead squat), completing the lift. The lift requires not only great strength but also a high degree of shoulder flexibility, excellent balance, and speed.

Courtesy of Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia