The Barbell Life: 2018 Reflection and a look towards 2019

2018 Reflection and a look towards 2019

2018 was quite the year for our team and my family. Our team sent a record number of four athletes to the world championships to represent Team USA, and we sent three youth athletes to the Youth Pan American Championships. We ended the year with one of our youth athletes ranked the #1 Youth in the country, two aiming for world records in 2019, four youth and juniors looking to join Team USA, and two more Seniors looking to represent Team USA. As far as our weightlifting team goes, it’s hard to imagine a more productive year, but we are going to try and produce just that in 2019.

The goal of this article:

· For all of you to learn from our success

· Give you guys some ideas for 2019

· Let you all know what’s up with us

Hopefully a few of you coaches are asking the question, “How are they producing that many athletes?” I mean that’s exactly what I did when I first started coaching weightlifting as a main sport. I looked at who was doing the best, and tried to figure out what they were doing. Heck I still do the same thing even though I am producing the top athletes. I love talking to Spencer Arnold, Kevin Simons, Sean Waxman, and Danny Camargo. Harrison Maurus just snatched 160kg. If you think that I am not going to ask Kevin Simons what they did, then you are crazy. I have zero pride. I only have the desire to provide my athletes with the best coach possible.

The key is to drop the pride, and I know that is a hard one for some people including me. However, I’d rather humble myself, so I can provide my athletes with the best coach possible. It’s a lot better than pretending that you are some great coach without producing any results for your athletes. No matter how awesome you pretend to be, no matter how many excuses you make for not producing, no one is going to believe you without any fruit in your work.

Here’s what we do to create amazing athletes:

1. Culture is #1- most coaches will sell you on some sort of voodoo like program for technique that they are teaching, but the biggest key will always be culture. That doesn’t mean that’s easy to produce. In reality there needs to be a book on producing a championship culture. Maybe that could be Brett Bartholomew’s next project.

If you want a championship culture, you have to assemble a group of athletes that refuse to have limits and refuse to set limits for others. Remember we are a gym filled with World Team Members and NFL Athletes, so expectations are slightly higher than most places. Our Youth aren’t just talking about competing in the World Championships. They are working towards World Records and Gold Medals.

The other aspect of the culture that I encourage is one of fun. I’m not telling anyone how to run their gym. By all means, if you own a gym or barbell club, you can do what you want. I’m just talking about what we do, and what seems to work. We don’t have a lot of stiff rules. We listen to music. We slam bars. We talk junk to one another in a respectful way. We laugh a lot. Weightlifting is daunting enough without adding some stiff rules from the Eastern Bloc countries because they used them in 1970.

The last I checked, we are Americans. If you watch our best athletes on television playing basketball and football, their personalities are bigger than life. They are expressive and intense. Heck watch our sprinters if you want to see expressive. I don’t think that we should make the world’s best athletes conform to another country’s culture. If you don’t believe that our athletes are overall dominating, just watch the Olympics and look at the medal count. It’s time to let our weightlifters become American weightlifters. Of course this is just my opinion. I am not trying to tell any of you how to run your club. I am just defending the way I choose to run mine. At the end of the day, let’s just worry about ourselves and stop trying to make people emulate our own personal preferences.

2. Programming that is both Individual and Uniting- Our programming has a similar structure for the most part. For example, every Friday is ‘Max Out Friday’ where are the athletes will perform the snatch and clean & jerk for a max effort. Now sometimes it will be a complex or a repetition maximum, but the entire team will go hard on that day. Every Saturday is going to be a day focused on strength in the squat and pull along with some accessory work. Now what people do within those days will be individual to them. For example, some athletes have been performing Triphasic Inspired (thank you Cal Dietz) squats, and it has helped immensely. Some athletes have extra work for overhead stability and jerk technique. Some come in early for two-a-days and technique work.

We are also a gym filled with amazing youth, juniors, and seniors, so they are all getting prepared for different meets at different times of the year. That’s why I love the AO Series because I get to coach almost my entire team at the same time, which allows them to bond and support one another. The 2018, American Open Series 3 in Las Vegas is still my all-time favorite meet.

3. A Focus on Technique- we normally coach every repetition of every set even if it’s to tell the athlete that the repetition was perfect. Personally, I believe that positive reinforcement works better when the opportunity arises. This isn’t for our newbies only. This is for our world team members all the way down to our rookies. No one figures this great sport out entirely this side of Heaven at least.

Of course Coach Don McCauley has been the biggest influence on our technique. Of course that continues to evolve based on the individual. I refuse to rule out anything that might potentially help out an athlete. Whatever gets the job done will forever be my motto. Here are a few of the basics that we teach:

· Drive with the legs with the entire foot through the floor for as long as possible.

· Stay over the bar for as long as possible

· Squeeze the bar in with the lats to keep it as close to the body as possible.

· We focus on getting around and under the bar versus a big emphasis on shrugging up and pulling up. When the hips extend, the knees bend!

2019 is going to be an exciting team for my weightlifting team, and for me personally as a coach and athlete. I’ll explain both. For my Seniors this is the Olympic Qualifying Period. We have about 16-months to get the job done or not, so we are in the thick of it. It’s such a different mindset at this point. It’s time to go hard and heavy. It’s time to ignore those aches and pains. Before all of you PT’s chastise me for that statement, it’s a statement of honesty. The battle to make the team is so close. If you take four weeks off at this point, you are probably finished for this quad. The athletes that can withstand the final push are going to be the ones that make the cut. These are exciting times, but a lot of pressure for my young team.

My youth and juniors are set to have the best year ever. We have two that have hopes of battling the Seniors by the end of the year for some Senior Teams. This young group has an amazing mindset with very little limits, and I think that’s the real reason that they are so successful. Morgan and Ryan lead a group of amazing youth and juniors. Since mindset starts at the top, all of my new boys and girls think the same exact way. This makes for an exciting future.

I ended the year with some pretty big statements about cleaning up the high school strength coaching culture. Right now, it’s mainly high school coaches that are trying to double as strength coaches. At first I wanted to fight this and insist that all high schools hire strength coaches. However I realized right away that money wouldn’t allow this. I’ve decided to push standardizing movement and programming to ensure that athletes are at minimum kept safe in the schools. Coach Sean Waxman and I are teaming up to conquer this issue that has plagued our schools for way too long. We have a list of coaches that have agreed to help us with this task as well, so we are ready for the challenge.

Finally, I am personally excited to get strong and healthy once again. I had a total hip replacement five weeks ago tomorrow. Now I am walking and moving better than I have in ten years. It’s like a new lease on life. Kelly Starrett has been a huge help with developing my rehab along with the Marc Pro Device and using MG12 Magnesium Supplements. OrthoCarolina’s Dr. Howe did an amazing job on my hip. I’ve already Front Squatted 140kg/308lb for a Triple, so I love the recovery process so far. My goal is to compete by the end of the year in a Super Total competition, so finally I have something to work towards. Guys it feels so good to drive to the gym looking forwards to training.

Well this is a glimpse into last year and a look forwards to 2019. I hope that we can continue to help all of you reach your goals by inspiring and by teaching. Helping others is the best possible career that anyone can have. When I receive your emails and messages about using our articles and/or products to reach your goals or to help your clients, it warms my heart. It also lets me know that I am doing exactly what God would have me do. Thanks for reading, and I hope that all of you will crush 2019.