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Assessment and Monitoring with the Olympic Lifts
The Olympic lifts should form an integral part of the strength and conditioning programmes of athletes from many different sports. I find it a real shame that more trainers don’t use the Olympic lifts, the modified lifts or pulls within their training programmes more. In addition to the metabolic cost of Olympic lifting (good for weight management) and the biomechanical similarities of the lifts to a squat of jump pattern, the clients can form a critical part of assessing the strength and power performance of our athletes.
One reason that a lot of clients don’t learn the lifts or modified lifts is because their trainers have never experienced a proper Olympic lifting session. That may be to ignorance or just laziness…. Personal Trainers that don’t undertake the Clean, Jerk and Snatch into their own training programmes will commonly find excuses not to include these exercises in the programmes of their athletic clients. They don’t know how good it feels to get the double knee bend just right, perform an awesome second pull, and the rush of front squatting or overhead squatting under your new PB. Like many things in life, the most satisfying moments come after hours spent on a task or problem. Nobody feels good after getting a new PB on a leg extension! It’s easy. It’s simple. Not even the saddest gym muppet is going to tell his friends that he got a new PB on a fixed path machine. Whereas a new PB on a lift like the Clean is something to be proud of. Cleaning 90 or 100kg because you’ve finally mastered the correct technique after months of practice is something you would want to your friends, girlfriend or business partner about. My business partner has told me about 20 times about his new Clean PB, and the fact that he’s finally mastered the double knee bend.
Another reason is that many trainers exclude these lifts as dangerous or inappropriate for their clients. With correct instruction, good supervision and the knowledge of how to move the client through each of the teaching progressions, almost any client can begin to learn these lifts. But if you don’t know the difference between a clean pull, a power clean, a squat clean or a pseudo squat clean, then undertaken some specific education. Don’t be fooled that you can learn perfect technique for the Clean and Snatch in 2 days. You will need to practice, practice, practice. Don’t want to dedicate a few months to learning the lifts…? Don’t be so lazy! The eastern Europeans would spend 6-7 years to become masters of the lifts. In the news recently, but something that anyone that has read decent books on training will know, is that is will take approximately 10,000 hours of practice to become a master or expert at a discipline. If you want to be an Olympic lifting competitor, then 10,000 hours is your minimum goal. A few months shouldn’t sound that much now!!
Now we’ve addressed why you should use the Olympic lifts, we can also look at how you can use them with your athletic clients.
I am constantly talking about testing and evaluating when I teach many of our CPD courses. How do you know your clients’ weaknesses, what exercises you should select, the effectiveness of your programme and their performance in relation to other athletes in the same sport? Assessments tell you your starting point and how good your are at getting your clients towards their goals. Assessments may take the guise of biomechanical screening or performance analysis, and it is the performance analysis that I want to discuss now.
Low Speed to High-Speed Strength Ratios:
A trainer should be able to compare 1RM scores of low-speed strength tests (Back Squat, Front Squat, Deadlift etc) against high-speed strength tests (power clean, power snatch, jerk etc). These scores will be able to tell you which power lifts to spend more technical learning time on, whether the athlete has an insufficient strength base, or whether the athlete needs more power conversion in their training. Ratios developed by Siff will help to outline where an athlete is and what they need to work on. For example:
Front Squat 1RM 120kg
Power Clean 1RM 80kg
How do these scores sit with what we should predict for our athletes? In evaluating the athlete if they can Front Squat 120kg then we would expect them to be able to convert that 73% of that strength into a Power Clean. This would translate into a score of 87.6kg. We would then feedback to out athlete that they are only achieving 91% of what they should be for the power clean, and should focus on more power conversion in their training programme.
Other examples of performance analysis would include:
• Front Squat should be about 87% of the Back Squat.
• For an athlete that wants to power snatch 100kg, they would need to be able to back squat about 200kg.
• The Olympic Press should be about 73.7% of the Front Squat score.
• The Snatch should be approximately 82% of the Clean and Jerk, or 45% of the Weightlifting Total (Clean & Jerk score plus Snatch score).
Alongside these Siff scores for Olympic lifting and Powerlifting, Poliquin has excellent scores for upper body structural balance. With these types of ratios, the diligent Trainer can assess starting points, calculate weaknesses in the athlete, and monitor improvements with different training programmes. Isn’t that what an athletic client is paying you money for?
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