Takano Weightlifting

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Optimal Squat Frequency for Weightlifters: How Often Should You Squat? | SportsEdTV Squatting is essential in weightlifting not just for leg strength but for hormonal stimulation, endurance, and overall performance

WHY THIS EXERCISE?

It’s not unusual to see videos of new lifters online performing specialty exercises that are programmed in many cases to solve a specific weightlifting problem. I’d like to at this point differentiate between fundamental exercises and specialty exercises. Fundamental exercises are those that all weightlifters should be programming into their training. On the other hand specialty exercises should only be programmed to solve specific weaknesses, whether strength or technical.
Since most beginners have both technical difficulties and strength challenges, the training must include fundamental exercises and a fairly large variety of specialty exercises. As athletes become more advanced and more specialized the variety of fundamental exercises begins to shrink. Noted weightlifting training scholar Robert Roman has proposed that lifters at the highest levels will eventually only perform sn**ches, cleans & jerks and squats.
I am currently in the process of organizing around 100 exercises that I’ve used to train athletes over a 50 year span. The plan is to eventually provide videos of them along with information to answer the following issues:
• Do they actually solve your problem(s)
• What is the best rep/set/intensity scheme
• How often should they be programmed in the weekly cycle.
• When should they be discontinued from the training program
The initial impetus for this undertaking was born during a conversation that I had with Harvey Newton many years ago. We talked about the need for an exercise glossary. At that point it would have had to be developed with written descriptions and photos. The current availability of video will enable this project to be even more descriptive and available.
While watching lifting queries that pop up online, I often wonder why any given exercise is programmed. I understand that with self coached athletes, the variety of exercises to which they may be exposed is probably limited. For those with online or less experienced coaches, the same may be true. Some coaches prescribe a given specialty exercise because it has always worked well for them, even though it did not always address a situation in need of a remedy.
In a few cases, a certain coach may have tied his or her identity to a specific exercise e.g. power clean from blocks, pause squats. An athlete coached by this individual may or may not benefit from the exercise in question, but it is programmed anyway. This can lead to a waste of time and energy.
In some cases, a particular exercise or variation of a common exercise is viewed in the training of a popular world champion. The reaction may be, “So this is what’s missing from my training.” Shortly thereafter legions of underinformed lifters are adding the exercise to their training programs.
All lifters must realize that their training programs must change over the course of a career. My attempt to provide some enlightenment about the functions of various specialty exercises should provide some assistance with making the best modifications.

https://sportsedtv.com/blog/weightlifting-treat-the-lifts-as-skills

Weightlifting: Treat The Lifts As Skills | SportsEdTV Treat Olympic lifts like skills, not exercises— each rep is a chance to master technique, not just move weight.

TALENT ID AND COACH MATCHING

For decades USA Weightlifting and its previous incarnation, AAU Weightlifting, have conducted the program in a rather haphazard manner with varying degrees of success. We were once regarded as a world power in weightlifting because the U.S. won the team titles at the World Championships and Olympics from 1946 until 1955. Even the most casual observer of history must realize that this span coincided with the global recovery from World War II. From that point forward our appearances on the medal stand began to dwindle. Save for a few historical happenstances like our introduction of women’s weightlifting to the world stage or the boycott of the 1984 Olympics by the Eastern bloc, our international medal count has been dismal. Even our recent slight upswing in the medal count has largely been the result of more stringent enforcement of the anti-doping code, and not because of any improvements in our strategic approach to the development of weightlifting talent.
If we were to be considered strategic, we would currently be seeking out talent for the 2032 Games. Although we’ve dabbled in talent identification it is time that we were thinking about developing a system for removing some of the randomness from our development program.
Although there is great potential talent scattered randomly throughout our very large nation, it would be best to consider holding talent identification events in close proximity to the coaches with a long history of training athletes for international competitions.
An organizing committee might quibble over the details, but tests such as short sprints from a supine position, pullups per 30 seconds and medicine ball wrestling could be implemented with the results being evaluated by a panel of expert coaches.
After testing takes place, the athletes and their parents can be assembled for an orientation with the local coaches in attendance. A long term pathway for the aspiring Olympians could be laid out along with whatever perks or swag that USAW might make available. At the conclusion of this orientation, a short list and a long list of athletes might be revealed and arrangements made for the initial training.
Of course USAW would be responsible for providing oversight for both athletes and coaches.
This need not take place initially on a grand scale. It can be started as a pilot program which would then be evaluated and the details ironed out. It should be viewed as an addition to the current non-system that is currently in place. If it succeeds, it can then be replicated and expanded.
Just a thought regarding an effort to make our development process a little less random and more strategic.

HOW ABOUT A TRAINING CAMP?
For all too many of us we’ve come to believe that online training or coaching is a sufficient substitute for live in-person training. This belief does apply to some disciplines. In those areas where a lesson can be taught virtually and then practiced without supervision or oversight, online training can be quite effective. In many disciplines, however, nothing is nearly as effective as live in-person coaching and training.
I was therefore heartened the other day when I received a communication on Messenger from one of the very first interns at the Takano Weightlifting gym. Clancy Benton, a Louisiana native, was one of a trio of interns when I opened the program in 2014. Clancy returned to his home state and opened his own facility and began coaching weightlifters and athletes interested in improving their performances. He later sent one of his coaches, Jade Hernandez, to my intern program and they both helped out at a course I taught at Redline Athletics near New Orleans in 2016. Our contact since then had been sporadic, but then came the communique.
The light bulb that had been lit in Clancy’s mind was the prospect of putting together a training camp for weightlifters and their coaches. Although fairly young in the sport, Clancy had come to the realization that nothing could beat the human experiences that take place in a training camp environment. His proposal was to have coaches and athletes gather for a four day camp where athletes could be coached by different coaches, and where coaches could interchange experiences and presentations by veteran coaches could be made available.
I think that this venture could be of tremendous value for the participants and Clancy and his organizational staff. As coaches and athletes we do too much of our work in our own silos and aside from competitions and the occasional clinic, we never get the chance to interact and exchange information. At clinics and camps this type of wisdom often gets passed around at meals and late night gab sessions.
A training camp would also enable athletes to be scrutinized by different coaches and in this way, some seemingly impossible training issues can be solved by a wider
panorama of coaching experience.
Another proposal that Clancy is considering is bringing in some of the older members of the coaching fraternity to widen the experience and to enable networking between some of the newer coaches and the veterans before their coaching knowledge is lost. Apparently Clancy has been paying attention to my periodic admonitions that the greybeards are dropping and some effort must be made to harvest their wisdom before it is eternally lost. I’ll be helping out on this aspect.
Anyway I’m heartened to see this step being taken by one of the younger members of the coaching fraternity, as we need to start considering some pathways to develop and enhance the body of knowledge available for the sport moving forward. Thank you, Clancy for taking this step!

https://sportsedtv.com/blog/from-gym-prs-to-platform-success-the-journey-to-weightlifting-mastery

From Gym PRs to Platform Success: The Journey to Weightlifting Mastery | SportsEdTV ChatGPT said: Weightlifting is a uniquely solitary sport where new lifters must overcome the intense pressure of performing alone under the full focus of the audience.

BIG GUYS TEND TO PROGRAM FOR BIG GUYS

Here’s an item to think about if your coach has been a competitive lifter for five or more years and has not taken the time to become truly educated about best coaching practices. You probably know this, but if you don’t, don’t be afraid to ask which bodyweight classes in which your coach competed. Furthermore it might help to know in which class he or she had the most success.
Another consideration is that there is an athlete’s perspective toward the sport and a coach’s perspective.
An athlete’s perspective is, out of necessity, a selfish and self-centered one. The athlete will receive the greatest gratification out of a a successful career and therefore needs to be well aware of the tunnel vision approach. A coach’s perspective on the other hand needs to be much wider and much deeper since the coach will be encountering a much greater variety of factors, many of which will turn out to be problems for which a solution must be configured.
When weightlifters turn to coaching without an extensive immersion in coaching methodologies and practices, they will naturally emphasize the factors that worked best for themselves. Many of these approaches will work effectively, but chances are that they will not comprise the best strategy. This will probably occur because the talent levels or preparatory work or both of the athlete/coach and the athlete do not match.
In my experience, larger athletes tend to program for large athletes and smaller athletes program for smaller athletes. What then results is that big guys write big guy programs that are ok for big guys, but fail to provide sufficient stimulation for little guys. Little guys write little guy programs that when given to big guys don’t allow for sufficient recovery.
So why does size matter?
One of the basic factors of physiology is the ratio of volume to surface area. The volume of living tissue performs metabolic activities. The surface area of the living tissue, however, affects the rate because reactants and products can only enter or leave via the surface area.
As an example, if we consider a 1 cm3, it has a surface area of 6 cm2 or a surface area to volume ratio of 6:1. If we increase the dimension of the cube to 2 cm on a side, we have a volume of (2x2x2) 8 cm3. The surface area then becomes (2x2x6) 24 cm2 resulting in a surface area to volume ratio of 3:1. So as organisms bodies get larger, the volume increases faster than the surface area. The exchange rate of materials slows down and therefore recovery slows down.
If I were to write a standard training program I would reduce the volume as the bodyweight classes increase. For women I would use the following groupings:
Group 1: 48 and 53
Group 2: 58 and 63
Group 3: 69 and 77
Group 4: 86 and +86
For men I would use the following groupings:
Group 1: 60 and 65
Group 2: 71 and 79
Group 3: 88 and 94
Group 4: 110 and +110
Group 1 would have the highest volume and Group 4 would have the lowest volume.

https://sportsedtv.com/blog/weightlifting-periodization-explained-how-volume-drives-results

Weightlifting Periodization Explained: How Volume Drives Results | SportsEdTV This article explains how training volume is structured in weightlifting periodization to maximize performance and peak at the right time.

IMPRESSIONS FROM A LOCAL MEET

Last Saturday I had the pleasure of attending a local weightlifting meet. I hadn’t seen live lifting in a while as I’ve been retired from active coaching. It was therefore invigorating to watch some lifting. The competition, Muscle Mayhem, was ably conducted at Barbarian Barbell, the gym run by my former athlete, Emmy Vargas.
It provided me with an opportunity to reflect on the contributions being made by some of my former athletes and/or students in some of my coaching classes. Emmy is taking a leadership role by leading her own Barbarian Barbell Club, teaching USAW coaching courses and putting on competitions. Chris Amenta is another of my former athletes and his team was well represented at this competition. Chris is the president of the LSO, conducts competitions and also teaches USAW coaching courses.
Also present was the Polaris Weightlifting Club coached by my longtime assistant, Toby Skinne. Toby served as my intern, moved up to assistant and eventually took over the team when I retied. As expected his lifters did well.
One coach whose name I’ve forgotten, is now the coach of the UCSB weightlifting team. He was a student in a USAW L1 course that I taught in San Barbara a couple of years ago and through that course he was connected to the UCSB coach, Alison Parakh, and now he’s taken over leadership of that group and his athletes’ perfomance reflected what a good job he’s doing. Mike Tromello and his assistant Jeff Goldberg are the coaches at Precision Barbell and they were both involved in L1 courses that I’d taught previously. Their athletes also lifted very well on Saturday and are benefitting from their leadership.
It's very rewarding to see my former athletes and students taking active leadership roles in the local weightlifting program and getting their athletes moving in the right direction.
I was also able to observe some new clubs in the program and watch how their coaches were dealing with the competition dynamics. It was obvious that they were in need of some coaching leadership to emerge. Sometimes leadership is slow to emerge, and other times the circumstances just force the development of one individual to fulfill that role. It is an interesting situation to observe.
Quite a few years ago I was doing some coaching up at the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and got the opportunity to speak with one of the suits. He explained that the big shots at USOC had finally figured that it was the development of coaches that kept sports moving on a long term basis. “Athletes,” he said, “were only around for a quad or two, but coaches stick for decades.” I was stunned that this realization had finally dawned on them. It was short lived, unfortunately, and things returned to normal.
That realization is still true, however, and the reason that local and national programs thrive is that coaches keep developing athletes and bringing them to competitions.
I’ve coached thousands of lifters and for the most part only a few close friends and relatives will remember their deeds. The coaches that I’ve had a hand in developing, however, have current relevance and continue to make a difference in the state of the spot.

LET THE KIDS GROW

There are two unfounded myths that have done much to inhibit the development of weightlifting as a sport. The first is a fairly well known one that is not as strong as it once was. The second is not is not often stated, but it is practiced and may in fact discourage some participants and/or negatively affect their final results.
The first myth is that weightlifting stunts one’s growth. For many years, poorly informed parents have used this argument to discourage their children from weightlifting participation. Even a casual perusal should put the lie to this myth. If weightlifting training and participation stunts growth, why is there a range of different heights participating in the sport. Weightlifters at the international level range in height from 150 cm to 190. Athletes at this level train more vigorously with barbells than any other group of sportspersons and they still represent a wide range of heights.
The second myth is not openly stated but has an extensive following. It is the practice of requiring junior lifters to make extensive bodyweight cuts in order to fit into a particular bodyweight category.
I actually got swept up into this mythology when I first started coaching juniors back in the 1970’s. I got my young athletes to partake of all the silly bodyweight cuts that were in vogue at the time. After a few years of this practice, I realized that the best approach was to just have my athletes weigh-in without doing any bodyweight cuts. They performed well without going through the trauma of making weight.
Juniors are in a growth stage and making them lose too much bodyweight just to fit into a category for very arbitrary reasons is just foolish and actually can be damaging to their overall growth. I believe that this practice of cutting bodyweight was probably copied from mature athletes competing at the world level in wrestling. The practice spread into weightlifting with no real research every being done on the subject.
I liken the situation to that of young farmers trying to raise livestock for the county fairs. The goal is to present the healthiest, most robust animals for judging. This would not be accomplished by periodically starving them.
We need to realize that mature weightlifters training for major competitions are maintaining bodyweights that are above the upper limits of the class in which they intend to compete. During the preparation mesocycle they are consuming three full meals and two or three smaller meals each day in order to withstand the rigors of high volume training. When the training demands subside during the pre-competition mesocycle, they can recover with lower caloric intakes and bodyweight will naturally reduce. This is normally a far cry from the situation with most junior lifters.
Occasionally you may have a junior who is physically mature enough to consider cutting weight. In that case check to see if the height to bodyweight ratio is appropriate, that the clean & jerk is approximately 125% of the sn**ch, and that hair is growing in the armpits.

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AN EXERCISE NUMBERING SYSTEM AND VIDEO GLOSSARY

In several of our many conversations regarding ways to improve the sport, the late Harvey Newton and I periodically contemplated the idea of a process of standardizing the names and correct performance of the many exercises available for the training of weightlifters. This was brought about due to the inconsistent practice of exercise nomenclature as well as a need to identify best practices within the weightlifting community.
The concept actually had its roots when I used to write a monthly column in International Olympic Lifter magazine called Exercise of the Month. As I encountered different exercises I would write a column about each one complete with either hand drawn illustrations or photographs.
Harvey and I felt that some sort of video glossary would best serve this function. We actually got a start when in 2020 Harvey and a crew led by Victor Bergonzoli came out to my gym in California to record some exercise videos for SportsEdTV, Victor’s sports education website. We shot about 50. Victor repaid me by sending me the completed videos with permission to use them as I deemed them necessary. So some of the work is in the can.
What I plan to do at this point is to open a YouTube channel dedicated to the correct performance of these exercises, along with what problems they solve, how to program them into weightlifting training and when to discard them. I also plan to number them so that they will be universally understood. We’ve also long had an issue with the process of naming new (at least new to the descriptor) exercises. Many individuals have a marketing mentality and prefer to name an exercise after the person they consider the originator. This may not carry any resonance with everyone. I have long felt that exercise names should be somewhat descriptive of the movement itself. Most of them are true to this concept, but a standardized name should help unify our approaches toward training.
In the late 1970’s, I ran across a system used in Hungary and Romania that categorized and numbered the exercises to eliminate confusion on the part of athletes and coaches. Stephanie Armitage, the then chair of the NSCA Women’s Committee, filled me in on some of the particulars as she had actually gone to train in Hungary. Subsequently I’ve modified this system slightly to come up with a version of my own. This will be presented on my new YouTube channel with one video dedicated to each exercise.
The expectation is that it will eliminate some confusion caused by multiple names for the same exercise and to introduce athletes and coaches to some helpful movements that are not currently being used for maximum effectiveness.