“So you’re JUST lifting now?” A fellow gym member asked me this question about a year ago, and it left me bewildered and confused. What does ‘just lifting’ mean? Either this person had no idea what it takes to snatch and to clean and jerk, or I was overestimating the time and commitment needed to perform these Olympic lifts. Maybe I was missing something?

Let me back up. You see, I’m one of those older Master level lifters, who found weightlifting late in life, so I’m just scratching the surface of this wonderful sport. I spent most of my 20s studying to be an attorney, working, and partying with my friends. I spent most of my 30s building a family with my husband and settling down. I never considered myself an athlete and weightlifting was not only something I did not understand, but something that I didn’t even know existed.

It wasn’t until my late 30s when I found myself extremely out of shape and weighing 250 lbs. that something had to give. When I was 38, I joined a local gym, Swagler Strength & Performance, and found a coach, Jamie Swagler. Within two years I was 100 lbs. lighter and I had found my way into CrossFit and in front of a barbell. For the first time in my life, I was working out with a purpose. I was setting goals and breaking them. The learning curve was fast and furious. I enrolled in local and national CrossFit competitions and found myself at the top of leaderboards. It was addictive and ego-inflating.
And then something happened. Thinking that I knew something about weightlifting, I participated in my first local weightlifting competition. I look back at that competition now and smile. If you have never lifted on a competition platform, you should. It’s an extremely humbling and amazing experience all at once. The moment when I walked onto the platform for the first time, alone, without music or friends cheering me on, it felt like what I imagine walking into fire would feel like. I thought I would be sick. Thankfully, a coach who was at the meet and who is now a good friend, Jim Storch, walked me to the chalk bowl and to that platform. Now I can look back and smile.

I realized at that first competition how much I didn’t know about weightlifting and how much I wanted to learn. The first of those lessons was that weightlifting is its own sport. It requires its own type of training. I love CrossFit and I always will, but lifting the heaviest snatch or clean and jerk that you possibly can, within only three attempts, simply requires different training.

Training the Olympic lifts requires more than just raw strength. It demands precision, technique, timing, balance, speed, coordination, power, and explosiveness, all at once in a matter of seconds. The heavier the lifts are, the more easily they are missed by the slightest flaws. The snatch and the clean and jerk demand core stability, flexibility, and strength in all parts of the body, including the core, legs, back, and arms.
 
Am I saying that you can’t progress in the Olympic lifts if you are a CrossFitter? No, absolutely not. There are CrossFit athletes that have solid weightlifting technique and lift heavy weights. I am saying that CrossFit athletes train differently than weightlifters. And make no mistake, ‘just’ lifting five days a week is most definitely a workout. It requires as much endurance, coordination, speed, physical strength, and mental fortitude, if not more, than interval or cardiovascular training.

Am I saying that weightlifters don’t need to do cardio or interval training? No, absolutely not. I add cardio and interval sessions into my weekly training to keep my body feeling well-balanced, and to help to maintain my weight. However, cardio and interval training is not the main focus of weightlifting. If the heaviest snatch or clean and jerk is your goal, then running miles and miles every week isn’t going to get you there.

There is not much I can compare to the difficulty of law school or the intense experience of taking the Bar Exam, but I have found myself telling my coach on occasion that weightlifting is comparable to both. It challenges overall physical strength and performance and mental fortitude in a way that demands more than “just lifting.”

So, if you are transitioning into the world of weightlifting and find yourself being asked if you are “just lifting,” try to remember that the people asking the question might not understand what weightlifting is or what it requires. Try to remember, as my coach says, that “people just don’t know what they don’t know.” And just politely answer, “No, there is no such thing as just lifting.”