PROGRAM OVERVIEW: BARBELL
One of the unique things we have here at PFP is our Olympic Weightlifting Team. Weightlifting is a sport known throughout the world and in the last 10 to 15 years has gained a lot of momentum and attraction in the United States. With over 1 million members in the US, it has truly built itself into something special. Here at PFP, we love to foster weightlifters, new and old. The first step is our barbell assessment, where we meet a new prospective lifter for our team and either view their current technique or teach them for the very first time. Once that process is complete, we enroll them in our Intro Program. Now that may sound like it’s only for beginners, but I assure you it's not. We label it the Intro because it contains all of the essential pieces to help and solidify the core principles of weightlifting: strength, speed, movement consistency, patience, and fun. So let's talk about how it does that.
Making Gains
In order to make gains in a weightlifting program, we must steadily increase our overall strength. In the Intro, just like many other programs, we apply the rules of progressive overload when it comes to our strength work. By strength work, we mean squats, deadlifts, presses, rows, and many other barbell and dumbbell resistance movements. These movements allow us to increase our muscles’ size and strength. To progressively overload our bodies means that we steadily increase the demand on our bodies so that they can build strength over time. There are so many ways to do this but a simple example in the Intro program would be how we improve our back squat strength. In the early stages of the Intro, our back squat repetitions per set are relatively high, 3 sets of 10 repetitions. These higher repetitions serve to increase the size of our muscles (hypertrophy), which concurrently makes our muscles stronger. Then, as the program progresses, the repetitions per set drop. This is when the lifter can gradually increase the number on the bar, which will effectively make them stronger.
Increasing Speed
Speed comes from a combination of increasing strength and movement consistency. Weightlifting requires a lot of coordination and timing from our bodies. This comes from being as consistent as possible with how we move ourselves and the barbell together. The fun saying we have in weightlifting is “slow is smooth, smooth is fast”. By this, we mean that as a lifter is learning their technique, they may begin by being very slow and deliberate with their movements. They’re feeling every position as they move through the lift, or, as we do it in the Intro, we isolate parts of the snatch and clean and jerk to solidify and build good positional strength and coordination. As the program progresses and we build our strength and movement competency, we can increase how much force we apply to the barbell and how smoothly we can move the barbell. These two components combine to make us move faster and more efficiently.
Where Patience Meets Fun
Let’s finish and talk a little bit about patience and fun. Yes, it seems odd to have those things paired, but I assure you it makes sense. Not so surprising to find out but weightlifting is difficult. Not only are you trying to build strength, which takes its own level of patience, but you are learning complex physical actions with your body. It takes time to do this, sometimes more or less for others. The Intro program is all about learning what the pieces of the weightlifting puzzle are and then combining them into the picture that is the snatch or the clean and jerk. Weightlifting takes patience and forces you to give yourself grace when learning it, but when it finally comes together, it is so much fun. At PFP, you get to learn and lift with a great group of people who you may even call friends, and at the end of the day, that’s what weightlifting is all about: getting stronger and better with your friends.
Book an assessment today, and we will see you in the gym!