It was suggested to me by our talented editor Yael that I write an article about “dumb” weightlifting questions. A better word would probably be basic. Here are a collection of questions you might be embarrassed to ask someone in person and my quick answers.

Do I need knee sleeves? Which ones should I buy and where do I get them from? Oh yeah, how do I get these things on? How often do I need to wear them?

Probably not. Start without them and focus on establishing proper mobility, warming-up adequately before training, and training with appropriate intensity, volume and frequency. If you’re doing all of these things and still have achy knees, try neoprene sleeves. Wear them for squatting, cleaning and possibly jerking, and ideally only on your heavier sets. To get them on, make sure you have the right size. Then just slide them on up.

Do I need weightlifting shoes? Where do I get them?

If you want to do the lifts properly and safely, weightlifting shoes are a good idea. There are two primary points of lifting shoes: a hard, flat sole and an elevated heel. The former improves your stability and maximizes the transfer of generated power into the bar. The latter increases the range of motion of the ankles, allowing you to sit into better squat positions with a more upright posture to establish the structure needed to snatch and clean. You will need to order them online. Try ordering a half-size smaller than your street shoe. They should be snug enough that your foot doesn’t move in them, and when they’re new, err on the tight side because the leather will stretch out a bit with use. Invest in good shoes—they’ll last a long time and their lifespan can be extended with repairs and resoling.

What are some basic weightlifting etiquette rules in the gym and in competition?

Don’t do anything that will distract a lifter. The big ones are not walking or standing in front of a lifter when he or she is lifting or preparing to lift and being quiet during those times; this goes for the gym and competition. Keep your phone on silent.

In the gym, always ask to use equipment or space even if you think another lifter is done with it; they may be using it again momentarily.

As much as possible, don’t step over barbells. This is a nit-picky one, but it’s considered by many to be a sign of disrespect for the bar. Similarly, try not to walk across the platforms when in transit in the gym if possible; try to walk in front or behind them if you can.

Don’t lift at the same time as another lifter, especially if they’re nearby. It’s distracting for the lifter, and a coach can only watch one lifter at a time.

Be respectful of equipment and the facility. Use equipment properly and put it where it belongs when you’re done. Clean it off when appropriate.

Don’t coach other lifters unsolicited, especially if they have coaches. And don’t contradict that lifter’s coach or be disrespectful if an athlete does ask you for advice. You may be wrong, and you may very well be missing an important part of the story.

How often should I train? Like how sore can you be and still show up?

How often you train depends on many things, such as what you’re training for, how advanced you are, and how old you are. That said, you can train when you’re sore. In fact, moving is the best thing you can do for soreness. If you’re really sore, don’t train as hard, but do something. Training frequently will improve your ability to recover.

I get to do lots of heavy-for-me doubles and triples, but the weight’s still relatively light... how many weeks/months/etc. until this actually starts helping me with my sport?

The weight not being remarkably heavy doesn’t necessarily mean it’s not helping you improve your athleticism. Also, if the weight feels heavy for you, it’s heavy. There’s no magic numerical threshold where training suddenly becomes effective. It would be like saying the weights a 125 lb woman are lifting are not effective because they’re less then the weights a 225 lb man are lifting.

What are light weights with many reps vs heavy weights with few reps doing to your muscles? Which is better for building strength?

Depending on how light and how many reps, they’re developing muscular endurance and/or encouraging sarcoplasmic hypertrophy and strengthening connective tissue. Heavier weights are generally improving neurological function to increase strength and power and encouraging myofibrillar hypertrophy. The latter is better for increasing strength, but both have their places.

Lifting Large ;) - so all the cues of "get back up top", "shoulders back up top", "keep the bar tight to the body" etc etc etc are all great, and I must be doing them wrong, but I feel like my lady friends are still in my way. Especially during pull exercises. *cringe* nothing more embarrassing then doing a pull right into your ta-ta's in a gym full of men....... Please help! I need to learn to keep my lady friends in check so I can continue to lift bigger weights! - of a different kind ;)

Invest in smaller sports bras, which may be uncomfortable, but more comfortable than collisions with a barbell. You can also double up on sports bras. Basically, strap those things down as tightly as you can. In the snatch or clean, your mechanics need to improve. You need to move your body out of the way of the bar on the way under, and your lady friends are considered part of your body. Try some tall snatches and tall cleans to practice. If you’re hitting them on pulls, add more weight so you can’t high-pull it.

How do you determine whether an athlete should stick with their bodyweight/weight class, increase to a heavier weight class or decrease to a lighter weight class?

First you have to evaluate how competitive an athlete can be at the current weight class. The height of a lifter relative to the weight class will largely determine how effective he or she can be. You can see how you stack up with other lifters in your weight class casually, or you can actually find height ranges for each weight class put together by Soviet researchers.

Next you have to consider how easily a lifter can gain or lose weight. For some athletes, moving weight classes will be prohibitively difficult, in which case the issue is moot. Also consider how a lifter feels at a given weight. An athlete may seem to need to increase a class or decrease a class based on height, but when it’s tried, the lifter feels terrible and doesn’t move as well. This has to be considered along with the height indices to get the full picture.

Is it better to do two-a-days a couple days a week if you're training in another sport, to have extra rest days, or would you just stick to 3X Oly and 3X other sport?

Most athletes who have reasonably sound training, nutrition and rest regimens can handle training 5-6 days/week, so the two pursuits can be split into individual days. Double days would be appropriate if combining two relatively short workouts, or if scheduling outside the training itself requires compressing the training into fewer days per week.

Is it better to go through bulking/strength and cutting/maintenance phases or just to stay close to your weight class while training? Which will yield the greatest net strength/power gains?

I prefer lifters to say close to their weight class limit. You can still alternate strength-emphasis phases with more classic-lift-emphasis phases (as normally occurs in weightlifting macrocycles), but you don’t want to treat it like bodybuilding and gain a huge amount of weight just to cut down. There is really no off-season in weightlifting, so the scheduling is much different, making such swings in bodyweight much tougher and less effective anyway.

How do you get the bar to the hip on cleans? The only way i can manage is a very minute break at the elbows. It feels like a much more solid position because i'm able to hit much higher but i know that will only go so far as my biceps will eventually not be able to pull.

Ideally you can keep the elbows straight and the arms relaxed and still have the bar contact closer to the hips. The three basic parts of this are having a wider grip, retracting and slightly elevating the shoulders near the top of the pull, and staying over the bar longer. These things will all allow the bar to come into contact higher on the thigh.

I can power clean way more than I can front squat. What's my problem?

You need to squat and clean more and power clean less. This is a much simpler problem than many people in your position believe it to be. More emphasis on squatting will increase your squat strength. More emphasis on power cleans will just increase the gap. Back off the power cleans for a while and do only cleans until you improve the ratio.

Can I still do 2 or 3 conditioning workouts a week?

You can do whatever you like, but understand that the greater the specificity of your training, the greater the rate of improvement will be, and the greater the ultimate degree of development will be. Aside from that, your body will be able to handle a certain total amount of training in a given period of time. Doing 2-3 conditioning workouts per week means the amount of weightlifting training will have to reduced to accommodate this, which means less progress in weightlifting.

How beneficial are overhead squats?

How beneficial or necessary they are depends largely on the athlete in question. For newer lifters, they’re very helpful if not completely necessary. For more advanced athletes who are technically proficient, adequately mobile, and are strong in a manner specific to weightlifting, they may be completely unnecessary.

Will knee wraps make me stronger?

Technically, no. They will allow you to squat more by helping you rebound from the bottom position. Squatting more weight will help you get stronger generally speaking. The caveat is that the additional strength you develop in this manner will be incomplete in a sense because the wraps will reduce how much muscular force is needed to perform the movement in the lowest position of the squat. This is not necessarily a large amount or a problem, but you will notice a significant difference with and without them.

How often should you max?

It completely depends on the level of athlete, the goals for the training cycle, the date relative to competition, the size and age of the athlete, etc. During competition or pre-competition training mesocycles, a lifter may take max attempts multiple times per week. During preparation mesocycles, it’s likely a lifter will not attempt max lifts for as many as 4-12 weeks. Obviously there are different programming styles, and some would have you taking max or near max attempts 3-6 days/week indefinitely. Each athlete needs to find what approach is most effective for him- or herself.

What is the best jerk method? Squat style or split style.

The split jerk is by far the most common choice of competitive weightlifters for very simple reasons. It allows a lifter to get fairly low under the bar while still being able to stand again, creates the broadest base of support possible in all directions, requires the least flexibility, and has the largest margin for error. The power or push jerk must be more precise in terms of barbell placement overhead and body position and the bar must be driven higher. The squat jerk requires the same kind of precision of bar placement but also a degree of flexibility that few lifters possess, along with requiring a huge amount of leg strength to be able to stand from potentially a dead stop at the bottom of a squat with a weight that you likely just struggled to clean.

Should you snatch or attempt to snatch if you have limited overhead mobility and a crappy squat?

You can do light snatches or power snatches to start working on the mechanics, but you should not be lifting heavy weights (even relatively so) if you don’t have a structurally sound overhead and squat position.

In terms of developing/perfecting form...when/how do you differentiate between those who need to improve by just performing the full lifts more frequently, and those who need to supplement with auxiliary lifts/work to address weaknesses?

Case by case ultimately, but I don’t believe any beginner who is in that much need of technical learning or improvement should be just doing the classic lifts. Even Ivan Abadjiev, the coach who created the “Bulgarian system” has said explicitly that it’s not appropriate for kids and beginners. New lifters need to perform the lifts, of course, but accessory work like squatting, pulling and pressing variations will always have a place in their development. Generally, the newer the lifter, the smaller the volume of the competition lifts and the greater the volume of accessory work.

It seems I'm everything but explosive & am more slow twitch! How should I approach weightlifting to get the best results?

Basically the same way as everyone else, you just won’t ever be as explosive as someone born with a higher ratio of fast-twitch muscle fibers. You can help yourself a bit by reducing or eliminating slow-twitch training (e.g. endurance and high-rep work), doing more explosive accessory work like jump variations, and training with lower reps, always focusing on maximal concentric speed.

Does weightlifting make girls look manly?

No, testosterone does. The majority of women will never have enough testosterone to have truly masculine physical development without exogenous supplementation. Additionally, “manly” is a rather subjective description. If by “manly” you mean having any kind of visible musculature, then yes, weightlifting will probably make you look manly over time. However, I would say that, while not unheard of, this is a severe opinion and women, from my perspective, look better and still completely feminine with some muscle. Women with no muscle don’t look more femine, they just look prepubescent. This aside, it seems horribly depressing to me to think of foregoing an activity you may love because of an unfounded fear of a few uncultured men potentially not finding you attractive.