Hello!
Glad this community was created. I've been interested in lifting for a long time now. I'm currently doing 2x Olympic weightlifting workouts a week (working with my coach) and 2x bodybuilding/accessory workouts a week which I program myself (my coach knows I am doing this). I'm a big fan/proponent of evidence based training. I'm happy to be here and I'd be happy to help out where I can.
Hey thanks for stopping by! I knew there were some people here that missed this type of community from Reddit so glad to see it getting a little bit of traction already
How difficult has it been to learn the Olympic lifts? If the average guy wanted to learn them how much coaching would it take? I've always been curious but not nearly brave enough to attempt it without some professional help
I definitely missed this type of community!
The Oly lifts are fairly technical. I managed to teach myself and got fairly far, but nothing beats working with a knowledgeable coach. I think the hardest thing about them is that there are little subtle adjustments that can make a big difference like foot pressure pulling off of the floor. If you want to teach yourself there are lots of good resources. Catalyst puts out some fantastic content.
This is me too, really seems like a blast and like a great way to expand one's repertoire of movements and capabilities, but I just tend to be injury prone, plus now old, so I've always been gun shy about self-teaching the Olympic lifts. And man, I have taught myself so much stuff across a wide range of domains lol.
Sadly I'm just also way too cheap (broke) for a coach. Bring on the AI form trainer!...? But then again, maybe it hallucinates, I try its bad advice, and turn my spine into an accordion...
Bodybuilding + Olympic is a great combo imho. You get explosive power and size, but even more importantly, bodybuilding provides the opportunity to work on the smaller supporting muscles, preventing injury.
I started in CrossFit but I’ve been doing dedicated weightlifting and strength training alongside metcons almost since I started (aka “competitive programming”. There is definitely not enough time in CrossFit dedicated to the lifts.
Bodybuilding + Olympic is a great combo imho. You get explosive power and size, but even more importantly, bodybuilding provides the opportunity to work on the smaller supporting muscles, preventing injury.
Agreed! Especially on the supporting muscles part. And especially at my age (51)I feel like the BB workouts are helping to hold everything together. It's also a fun change of pace from solely doing strength based workouts.
I started in CrossFit but I’ve been doing dedicated weightlifting and strength training alongside metcons almost since I started (aka “competitive programming”. There is definitely not enough time in CrossFit dedicated to the lifts.
Also agreed. I've not done CrossFit, but I've seen several people say that they needed to do dedicated work for certain lifts if they wanted to see them improve.
What do you mean by "competitive programming"? Is that just working specifically towards CrossFit events or whatever or do you mean something else?
Tl;dr combo of strength, cardio, metcon, and accessory; https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=CLarKn-XkLo
“Proper” or “classic” or whatever you want to call it CrossFit is one workout per day, in a class setting. So you show up do some warmup, primer, workout, cool down and mobility, and done. The workout could be a classic CrossFit 5 rounds for time metcon, or it could just be 8 deadlifts building in weight, or it could be a 5k run. This style of training can have tremendous benefit to general population.
As CrossFit gained popularity, competitions emerged, including of course the CrossFit games. To prepare for these competitions, some semi-professional athletes began doing multiple CrossFit metcons in a day. However, it is patently obvious (except to the CrossFit diehards) that practicing your clean and jerk either only at submaximal load in a state of cardiovascular exhaustion is not going to materially improve the performance in comparison to a normal progressive overload cycle. Hence, multiple metcons in a day fell out of favour for programming combining a traditional, but low volume strength cycle (which could lean towards powerlifting or weightlifting) with dedicated skill progressions in the “gymnastic” movements, cardio, and traditional CrossFit style high intensity multimodal workouts, all in a single integrated program. The pros continue to do a ton of volume compared to what most people can handle in terms of time and volume.
I don’t actually compete, I just know that with my athletic background (I don’t have one) and my age (I’m not 19) I can’t put on reasonable strength or skill without dedicated time for it, but I also like doing metcons.
Sounds like a great split! I'm looking forward to transitioning this summer from a rock climbing / calisthenics + kettlebell split into a climbing / bodybuilding split. Looking forward to beefing up my joints and looking good without a shirt on again!