Working on olympic lifts
Olympic lifts are great exercises. Are they magic that will make u a super jumping and running monster? no they are not. But they do work on your coordination as to how your muscles fire. Because it requires that you extend all your joints (ankle, knee, hip) in a coordianted fashion to maximise the explosion of the bar upwards. Its been called "jumping with weights" and thats exactly what it feels like. Like throwing the weight to the ceiling! there are 2 main lifts in olympic weightlifting.
1. the Clean (from floor to shoulders) + Jerk (to over head)
2. the Snatch (floor to overhead in 1 motion)
Here are pics of me working on my "power clean" catching the bar in a half squat.
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comments: My arms bend too early ( look at picture 2, my arms have started to bend THATS BAD they should be straight still, there is a saying "when the arms bend, the power ends"... power is ending at picture 2 when it should be at its maximum). My feet spread to far apart when i catch the bar on the shoulders... im working on these things:) will update!
Life Lessons from sports 3 - Discipline (part 2)
Discipline is a huge factor for succes in any aspect of life. One of the things that i gain most from my parents is discipline. When i mess up, there is a price to pay (caning, scolding, other bad stuff). Im too old for some of that now, but the need for discipline does not get less as i get older but rather it increases exponentially. One day i will have my own family and children. If I live a life that does not order my priorities, does not use my limited hours of the day well, and is not purposeful, its not just i that suffers, there will be people counting on me that are horrbily affected as well. I believe that good fathers who are responsible and loving toward their families, can solve many of the world's problems (divorce, wayward children, violence in the home - outside the home too! etc, unplanned pregnancy) i fully plan to be one of those fathers.
Sports is a great place to learn discipline. As an athlete, each day....each traning session....each piece of food i eat... is a chance to get better...or a chance to get worse. An egg makes us better cos its perfeect protein (all the ppl who worry abt cholesterol in eggs tend to be really physically weak) a piece of cake just adds to our tummies and makes us slow. A well performed exercise or technical drill makes us better, a sloppily performed one makes us worse. We have to UNLEARN the sloppy technique befrore we can progress. So lazy exercise makes us worse. The descipline of constantly making wise choices transfers over to life. Its tempting to get sloppy on training late in the day after doing lactic acid tolerance kind of stuff. But i remind myself that doing things sloppy makes me worse! and i keep FOCUS (i thought the abstract art below was a pretty nice "focus" illustration) and do things right.
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