New Beginnings

Sometimes triviality is the most elegant property.
Take for example my well loved sport of Weightlifting. To lift a barbell from the ground to over your head, is there any thing more trivial? What purpose is there in the movement of dead weight through which no benefit to others arises?

There really isn't, it is extraordinarily arbitrary.

Yet, is there anything that a man can do that is more badass? To lift a weight for no reason other than to lift it, to prove to others but mostly to himself that he has a strength previously unaccounted for? Is this not marvelous in it's own regard?

Many debate the meanings of life, all of us question our existence. Life is complicated, there is so much in the world. So much to see, so much to learn, to discover, to create, to give. But I do believe that some times it's the simple things that are more worth living for. Sometimes it's worth it to faze out all of the chaos, and allow yourself to focus on something arbitrary. To do things for no reason other than to just do them.

Such is one of the many reasons why I love this sport.

I started weightlifting ~ 9 months ago excusing ~4 months of near inactivity due to school (I make excuses). Progress since starting has been a major struggle with continuous setbacks and hurdles to overcome (this is obviously expected when starting out a new sport as technical as weightlifting). However, I feel like I am finally at a point where I can really begin this journey. Which is the purpose of this post, the announcing of this blogs revival.

I am not strong.
In fact, I am weak!
But I will be strong.
This blog will document said going from weak to strong.

I plan on making a (b)log as I call it. It shall be a training log of my daily lifting sessions with weekly or so longer posts that detail my ideas and thoughts. This won't always be weightlifting related.

For most of my friends, Olympic Style Weightlifting is a pretty major oddity. I hope that through joining me on this, you can gain some insight into a beautiful sport and maybe even try it out yourself! The main purpose of this log is to really look back on.With that being said, I shall begin an introductory post detailing the two competition lifts:

Olympic Weightlifting:

The aim of weightlifting is to lift a maximal weight from the ground to over head within the boundaries of certain constraints. Three attempts to lift any weight of the athletes choosing are given for each lift. There are two lifts in which this display of strength, power, flexibility, coordination and speed is tested. The Snatch and Clean and Jerk.

The Snatch:

The Snatch is the first movement tested in competition. It involves lifting a weight from ground to overhead in one motion. It is a lift that requires great precision, timing and coordination. It is also highly dependent on being very brave and just a tiny bit insane.

< Szymon Kolecki - One of the greatest Snatchers of all time

Generally, you will find that less weight is always lifted in the Snatch in comparison to the Clean and Jerk. This increases many fold once someone gets strong, it is much harder to lift 1 kg heavier in a Snatch at some point than it is for the C&J. I believe this to be the main reason why the Snatch World Records are much more clustered together across weight classes than the Clean and Jerk ones. This is of course mainly due to the nature of the lift, moving a weight to an overhead position in one movement is going to be harder than moving the same weight overhead in two movements.

The Clean and Jerk: 

The Clean and Jerk is the second movement tested in competition. A weight is lifted from the ground to the athletes shoulders in the clean portion, and then to the overhead position in the jerk. It is the lift that is probably more dependent on strength and benefits greatly from a strong squat.

Zulfiya Chinshanlo - World Record Holder for Clean and Jerk in the 53kg Category.

Insane weights have been moved overhead with the Clean and Jerk, it is the absolute most efficient way to do so.





Anyways, this post is long enough. I don't want to get too much into detail on the lifts for now. I'm not really qualified to teach, but I will probably describe them at some point.

Thank you for reading. I hope this blog is of some benefit (or interest) to you!