Recently one of my former interns contacted me about an opportunity he was being presented at the gym where he worked. The opportunity was to teach a weightlifting class for beginners that would meet one day a week (Sunday) for eight weeks. He had even written up some training programs that he might employ. He was asking for my advice. My advice was to try and get the class expanded to two or three days per week.
This led me to think about the situation where someone thought that a meaningful weightlifting course could be implemented with one meeting per week. Weightlifting is not like many other activities where once a week practice could lead to some reasonable progress. Unless you are a world class gymnast, diver or comparable elite athlete, the snatch and clean & jerk are complicated, challenging movements to learn and master. And that should be the primary task for a novice lifter—learn and master the snatch and clean & jerk.
Defining the Task
For those that have never pondered it, the task facing the novice is to learn three motor patterns that require a certain level of coordination that may or may not be present in the body of the beginning athlete. In the process of doing so, the athlete will learn to respond to signals sent from the bones and muscles to the brain and to initiate appropriate responses. This process requires a great deal of repetition for the average novice. During this learning sequence, the athlete should have the technique monitored by a coach who can provide immediate feedback.
Examples
Most golfers, even beginners, would never hesitate to practice their golf swings on a daily basis. They understand the need for the repetition, and whether they realize it or not the neural connections between the brain and the muscular body are being heightened and reinforced. Basketball players practice jump shots daily to improve those connections and daily repetition is the norm for instrumental musicians who are trying to master a different set of neuromuscular connections.
Think of snatches and cleans & jerk the same way.
There is a difference, however!
Most novice weightlifters are not in sufficient physiological condition to practice the classic biathlon on a daily basis without incurring fatigue that would severely disrupt the motor patterns as the week progresses. What to do?
There other movements that help to develop motor patterns that are helpful for weightlifting. These can be practiced on intervening days while allowing the muscles to recover from the fatigue initiated by snatches and cleans & jerks.
These exercises include sprinting from a supine start, vertical jumps, standing long jumps, standing triple jumps, sequential one-legged hops, two-handed medicine ball tossing overhead and back, and two-handed medicine ball tossing forward. All of these movements incorporate motor patterns very similar to the ones involved in the classic lifts.
Recommendations
The novice can practice snatches or power snatches, cleans or power cleans, power jerks or split jerks and squatting on Days 1, 3 and 5. The daily sequence might be:
o One snatching movement
o One cleaning movement
o One Jerking movement
o One Squatting movement
The four exercises can be practiced for four to five sets of 2 to 4 repetitions. The weights employed should be heavy enough to require proper technique and should be done under the supervision of a coach.
On days 2, 4 and 6 the supplemental, non-weighted exercises can be employed to develop athleticism, proprioception, kinesthesia and to increase the overall physiological demands on the organism and thus prepare the athlete for greater workloads in the future.
The most elite weightlifters in the world train six days per week with heavy weights, but they did not start out that way. They used manageable loads directed at developing optimal technique and preparing the body for greater loading in the future.