USA Olympic Weightlifting

On Friday afternoon, I had the amazing privilege of going to watch the USA Olympic Weightlifting team practice! My trainer Sara at the gym is married to Zach Krych, one of the athletes who is likely to qualify for 2008.

Practice is just in a really big weight room at the Olympic Training Center. There are no weight machines or cardio machines, just bars and weights. As Sara said, "All you need for a full-body workout is this!" However, very few of the weightlifters do cardio -- most of them just lift weights for a couple hours each day. They do have to eat pretty well to stay in their weight class for competition, so they are mostly still in great shape, but just not endurance athletes.

The guys practiced the clean-and-jerk first. Essentially, the athletes pick the weight up off the floor to their shoulders (in front), then they throw it up and jump under it so they can stabilize it above their head. At this practice, they started at 60% of what their highest weight is on a one-rep max and worked their way up to 80% doing three reps on each weight. Sara's husband, for example, started with 100 kg (about 220 lbs) and went up to 135 kg (about 297 lbs) for sets of three. He was doing the highest weight of any of the guys at this particular practice. The guy next to him was about a foot taller than him and was doing about 2 kg less, and that was just because the taller guy had farther to go to get the weight above his head.

The girls came in and started doing their training a little after the guys started and most of them were doing the clean-and-jerk for about 75 kg (165 lbs) for practice. I forgot to keep watching the girls doing the clean-and-jerk, though, because the top two women athletes started doing back squats. This one little blonde girl (she is probably 4'10") went over there and warmed up with squats on sets of six at 150 kg (about 330 lbs)! The highest I've squatted for three sets of six so far is 150 lbs and she was doing 2.202 times that to warm up. The weight was so heavy on the bar, the bar was bending down on either side and bouncing around as she did her reps. Amazing.

Something that surprised me was just how normal-looking the weightlifting athletes are. No two of them are built the same, but they are all built to lift incredible amounts of weight. If you were to see any of them on the street in normal clothes, I guarantee you would have no idea that they are Olympic weightlifters. Even the women look totally normal -- no huge, bulging muscles. Most of them are just beautiful, fit women who just so happen to lift enormous amounts of weight for a living.

Several of the athletes thanked me for coming to watch them lift, which was really nice (especially considering how honored I was to get to come watch them). They said they are so used to watching each other that they sometimes forget that during competitions they'll have a huge crowd watching and it helps them to have an audience, even if it's one person. So that was cool.

If you ever get a chance to go watch Olympic hopefuls practice, take it! I know my jaw was on the ground the whole time and probably would be with other sports, if I know what's going on at all. I have been lifting with Sara for almost six months now and she's having me do most of these exercises, so I just took what I was seeing and compared myself to them and it blew me away. It was a really incredible experience and I hope I get to go back someday.

Here are a few really cool links I found after my experience with the Olympic weightlifters. Check 'em out!

USA Weightlifting Site - If you look at the athlete bios, you'll see more info about the people I got to see practice. All of the men and women listed on this site were there working out. Surreal for sure.

Here are a couple of YouTube videos I found later, too, that show how amazing they are (some of the footage is actually shot in the weight room where they practice):

2006 USA Weightlifting World Team

USA Women's Weightlifting 2006