I went to a one day Olympic lifting seminar (paid for by my sister Courtney, and Lane, and my good friend Richard Smiley as a birthday/graduation present) today at the local Crossfit affiliate. I have mentioned Crossfit before, they have a really great program, though I would recommend a decent level of fitness before you try them out. In other words, if you don't already exercise, start jogging and doing so pushup and pullups for a few months first. Or learn the ins and outs of weightlifting form, while getting in shape. They are all very nice people at Crossfit, and I am sure they would welcome even he most unfit and have less advanced versions of programs available, but I think you would get more out of it once you have activated and explored your body a bit.

Anyway, the program was run by C.J. Stockel, who is a US olympic coach (or was, or coaches the junior team or something like that), and has a regular job running the gym at a high school in Flowery Branch, GA (not too far north of Atlanta, but outside what I would consider suburbs) and running or being involved with a sports performance gym. I wasn't taking notes during the introduction :) He brought along a kid who he coaches and is now student at GT, and I guess must be working towards the Olympics. I'm bad with names, and I can't remember his, but I will definitely recognize him if I see him lifting on TV someday. We learned the snatch, which I'm still not confident in at all. I need a lot of time with a bar and a platform, the second of which isn't available in most gyms.

The snatch, btw, is where you grip the bar fairly wide while squatted down, and move i jp overhead without stopping. With a clean and jerk, you get the bar up so it is rest on your shoulders, gather yourself, and then jerk it overhead. After lunch we did the clean. My front squat, an essential movement for the clean, was singled out as being particularly good. I'm not nearly as happy about the accolade as I am that I had thought my front squat was near perfect, and I got reinforcement that the feel I have for my body is pretty good. Of course feel is one thing, doing it right is another. Put another way, I seem to know where I am going wrong, even if I don't yet always know how to correct it.

Finally we did the jerk, which is something I never really got before. Now I do. It's actually a pretty nifty little motion, and if you consider power as a function of force and time, then the jerk is the most powerful weightlifting motion of all. It's the fastest, and you can move a crapload of weight with it. You dip down just slightly, then push your heels into the ground and jump and shrug your shoulders up. The bar starts moving up and your feet, which have barely left the ground, split into a lunge position. So while the bar is moving up, you are pushing yourself down under it, with one leg forward, one back, shortening your height. Once your elbows are locked overhead, you drag your front foot back and then you back foot forward. That's it.

After that, we all just practiced what we wanted with some actual weights while they critiqued us. Then the Crossfit guys started getting the Tech weightlifter kid to try muscleups, which are a pullup into a dip, on gymnastics rings. He got it, I came SO very close, I just couldn't get the transition all the way. I was maybe an inch away from having my shoulders in the right position for the dip.

I had fun, it was a good day. And for all you Crossfit-doubters out there, almost everyone there was involved with Crossfit, and they all had nice bodies. The women weren't all the most attractive of girls, but every single one of them had a an awesome body, no skinny fats in this bunch. Of course I would advise everyone to get involved with Olympic lifting, too, but its a bit tougher to get in to. With Crossfit you can learn most of what you need to learn on your own over time. I wouldn't advise trying the snatch or clean without proper instruction.