I’m not going to use any funny stories or references to get the ball rolling for this month’s article. No lead-in humor, no spicy tales to fluff up your interest…sorry. We’re going straight to work this time, because this topic is going to make us roll up our sleeves.

I want to talk about a common idea I’ve been hearing from Olympic weightlifters over the years. It’s the idea of focusing on getting stronger instead of working on the technique of the competition lifts. The discussion of this approach gets thrown around a lot in forums, coaching conversations, etc. Basically, here’s how the thought process works. I’ll write it as though it was actual spoken dialogue from a lifter: “I want to focus on getting stronger. I know how to do the snatch and clean and jerk. My technique in those lifts is pretty solid at this point. I just need to gain strength if I want to increase my total. So I’m going to do a training cycle where I put a lot of emphasis on squats, heavy pulls, clean/snatch-grip deadlifts, RDLs, pressing movements, etc. I’ll gain wicked strength by working the hell out of these things. When I’ve put thirty kilos on my back squat, I’ll see a huge jump in my snatch and clean and jerk weights.”

See what I mean? I’ll bet you’ve probably either worked this philosophy yourself or known other lifters who were adopting it. This approach is what makes lifters decide to do “strength cycles” or “squat programs,” or something else with a similar name. When athletes use one of these training methods, they’re basically reducing their emphasis on the competition lifts and pounding the crap out of their squat workouts. They’re not going after a lot of heavy snatches or clean and jerks, opting instead to work those movements in a lesser capacity so they can squat and pull their brains out. This is usually viewed as a temporary plan. The athletes design a strength cycle that lasts eight weeks, twelve weeks, something like that. It’s usually not done right before a competition, more like an “off-season” idea. And the goal is to have massive improvements in pulling and squatting strength before starting a new cycle where the competition lifts are once again the top priority.

We’re going to take a look at this subject and examine how beneficial it is to an Olympic weightlifter. The question will be this: do strength cycles help? Will a squat-focused program that adds twenty kilos to a lifter’s front squat actually improve the snatch or clean and jerk? There are different ways of looking at this and, as always, individual characteristics will vary from athlete to athlete. But if we just take a general, for-the-masses look at this training idea, we should be able to generate some useful information. In fact, I’m going to coin a new term a little later that might eventually become standard vocabulary in weightlifting. Wouldn’t that be cool? For crying out loud, if Will Smith can get the word “jiggy” added to the dictionary, I sure as hell ought to be able to contribute some new lingo to the iron world. Keep reading and I’ll let you know when I’m about to unveil it.

Bull and Dean…

Let me start by telling you about an old training experience of mine. Back in the 90s, I trained in Washington with the Calpian weightlifting club. The best lifter in our gym during that time period was a guy named Dean Goad. Dean was in his mid-twenties then, and he had been an Olympic lifter since he was around twelve. He was a National Champion, World Team member, Pan Am Games medalist, etc. In other words, he was one of the best male lifters in the United States. In the old 82.5-kilo class, his lifts were around a 140-kilo snatch and 182.5 kilo clean and jerk. That’s a 308 snatch and 402 clean and jerk at 181 bodyweight for you pound people. One hell of a lifter, no doubt about it. I believe his best back squat was around 250 kilos (551 lbs).

Now, in 1995, our club gained a new lifter. He was a world champion powerlifter named Bull Stewart. Bull competed in the 242-pound class and he was absolutely one of the most muscular, amazing physical specimens I’ve ever seen. He looked like a professional bodybuilder (I think he had done a few shows on the side, incidentally). In competition, Bull had squatted close to 900 pounds, benched well over 500, and deadlifted around 825. He was one of the strongest guys in the world, plain and simple. And the interesting thing about him is that after winning seven or eight world titles in powerlifting, he decided he wanted to convert to weightlifting and make the Olympic team. It was his dream, and he joined our club to learn the Olympic lifts and start competing.

Bull gave it his all and trained with us every day for a good solid year. He was a hard worker with a friendly, humble attitude and I loved having him in the gym. Our coach, John Thrush, started him from ground zero and tried to build his Olympic lifting foundation. After a year of concentrated training, Bull’s best lifts were 120 kilos in the snatch and 145 in the clean and jerk (264 SN, 319 C&J in pounds) at the same bodyweight of 240 pounds. These are respectable weights, more than most lifters can do after a year of training. But they obviously weren’t the type of lifts Bull was hoping for, considering his strength level prior to starting the sport. When he was focusing on the Olympic lifts, he could still squat and deadlift over 700 pounds any time he wanted to. Nobody could match him in that department. After Bull, the next strongest guy in our gym was…Dean Goad.

As I said, Dean could squat around 551 pounds at the most. He usually never went that heavy, either. His normal squatting range around that time was usually somewhere in the 220 kilo range for reps, if my memory is correct (485 pounds). I don’t know what he could deadlift because we never did them. But it doesn’t matter because the point I’m making is that Dean wasn’t even in the same galaxy with Bull Stewart in squatting or pulling. Bull was superior in any raw strength lift you want to name- back squats, front squats, deadlifts, pulls, bicep curls, calf raises, military press, whatever. However, he couldn’t even come close to Dean in the Olympic lifts. Dean could clean and jerk 170 kilos (374 pounds) with ease absolutely any time he wanted to. Bull couldn’t clean and jerk within a country mile of that weight. A big part of his problem was flexibility, obviously. He had the extreme muscular tightness that comes with years of squats and benches, and sitting into a comfortable bottom position was major trouble.

Still, his bottom position was only one of his limiting factors. As I said, Dean’s best snatch at this time was 140 kilos. As strange as it might sound to say this, Bull wasn’t strong enough to pull that much weight over his head. Even if he would have had the bottom position to catch it, I don’t think he would have been able to get 300 pounds that high. His snatches with 264 pounds made that clear, judging by the way they looked and the effort he had to make. This isn’t an insult to Bull, obviously. It’s just an honest assessment of his lifting. So…that leaves us with an interesting dilemma when we think about strength cycles, squat cycles, “focusing more on strength than technique,” and all the other stuff we mentioned earlier. Was Bull’s superhuman strength doing him any good in the Olympic lifts? When lifters talk about going on squat cycles and putting more emphasis on getting stronger, they’re hoping to get the type of strength Bull Stewart possessed. But even with his incomparable level of overall body strength, he couldn’t snatch or clean and jerk anything close to a 180 pound guy with a 500ish back squat, even after he had been practicing full-time for over a year. How does this make sense, and what does it tell us about the value of using huge squats and pulls to improve our competitive Olympic lifting totals?

Time for my big moment…

The answer to these questions lies in the understanding of TECHNICAL STRENGTH. That’s the big new terminology I told you I was going to reveal…technical strength. You might say to yourself, “That’s nothing new. People have used phrases like that before.” Wrong, butthole! It’s mine, mine!

First, let me explain what technical strength means. It’s actually not a complicated thing at all. Just follow along with me for a second here. When people think about getting stronger, they typically think about using lifts that have commonly been considered “strength lifts.” These are movements where technique is relatively simple, and the athlete can load up maximum weights and just push like hell to stimulate extreme muscle growth without having to worry about precise little technical nuances. Squatting is the king of all strength lifts, along with other simple movements like deadlifts and military presses. Athletes think that if you want to get stronger, these lifts are the ones that will do it.

This is where I think we see an imperfect understanding of how to improve in the competition lifts. For some reason, many people think you aren’t working on building strength when you’re doing snatches and clean and jerks. They have this odd belief where they think snatches, cleans, and jerks are just technical exercises where the weights aren’t high enough to really build strength. Brothers and sisters, this is where we’re losing sight of the fact that you ARE building strength when you do snatches and clean and jerks. You’re building technical strength. In other words, the muscles and connective tissue in your body are being strengthened in the exact pattern of the snatch, or clean and jerk. When an athlete performs these lifts, the body moves in a very precise, specific way. We all know this. Once the lifter has mastered the technique of these lifts (which takes years), the best way to get stronger in them is by doing them over and over and over. It’s a matter of accumulated strength over a long period of time. This is a fancy, long-winded way of saying that the way to gain snatching strength is to do thousands of snatches. Remember, when you’re doing a snatch or a clean and jerk, you’re lifting a barbell with weight on it. That’s a strength movement. It’s not a simple movement with lots of 45s on the bar like a squat or deadlift, but it’s still a strength movement. It’s just that you’re building a different type of strength from squatting or pulling. You’re building technical strength. And technical strength, my friends, is the path to bigger competitive totals in Olympic weightlifting contests.

You’ve all heard of the old Bulgarian program, right? This was the Ivan Abadjiev-directed system where athletes basically did full snatches, clean and jerks, and squats multiple times a day, almost every day of the week, almost always with maximum weights, until they either broke in half or set world records. Not much variety in their workouts once the athletes passed the beginning and intermediate stages. It’s probably the most successful weightlifting program ever, all things considered. These are the athletes from the history of our sport who mastered the Olympic lifts at a higher level than almost anybody who has ever touched a barbell. Just go back and research some of the records they set, and you’ll see what I mean. Why do you think the Bulgarian program was set up the way it was, with almost no diversity and a maniacal focus on full competition-style snatches and clean and jerks? It’s because they had an understanding of technical strength, where they knew that the best way to get better at the clean and jerk was to clean and jerk a lot, for years. Squatting was top priority along with the Olympic lifts, too. The Bulgarian lifters had immense squat numbers. But they didn’t emphasize squat strength over technical strength in the competition lifts. They just found a way to make it all work together.

Other factors, and addendums…

It was probably easier to use a program like this in an old-school Communist country, where athletes had no free will and they were used to just doing what they were told. American athletes often like to have variety in their workouts so they don’t get bored, and sometimes they’ll ask their coaches to change up their routines if things get monotonous. In Bulgaria, I don’t think this was even an option. Maybe variety and giving athletes a choice isn’t always the way to the top.

I don’t want to leave any confusion about some of the things I’ve written here, so let’s throw out a few cautionary additions:

• Am I saying that strength cycles or squat programs are universally a bad idea? No, I’m not. There might be cases and situations where they yield some benefits, although I think there’s always a pretty high risk of underemphasizing the competition lifts in the process.

• Should squatting be a huge priority for an Olympic lifter, along with a few other assistance exercises like pulls? Yes, absolutely.

• Is it easy to get carried away with assistance exercises and start doing too many of them? Yes.

• Are there some assistance exercises that are commonly used in America that have almost no benefit to an Olympic lifter? In my opinion, yes.

• Was the Bulgarian method perfect? No. Nothing is.

• Is it possible to increase your snatch and clean and jerk without increasing your squat? Yes.

• Is it possible to become a high-level lifter by doing things differently than how I’ve described? Yes.

• Am I the first one who ever grasped the concept of technical strength? Of course not. I’m just trying to explain something that many great coaches have known for years. There’s nothing new under the sun, and be careful about following anybody who claims to have a magic secret of weightlifting that nobody has ever thought of. Unless they’ve used it to produce armies of national champions, they’re full of s***. (And the guys who have produced armies of national champions will usually be the first ones to tell you that they DON’T have a magic secret)

The example of Dean Goad’s technical strength over Bull Stewart isn’t the only example I could give you. Mark Henry is one of the overall strongest men in history and he had a lifetime best snatch of 180 kilos at 400 pounds bodyweight. Soviet legend Yurik Vardanian snatched 182.5 at a bodyweight of 181. Mark had a 900-pound deadlift, but Vardanian had a thousand times more technical strength than him. He didn’t get it by doing deadlifts. He got it by doing snatches, thousands and thousands of them for most of his life.

This is obviously another crucial part of the discussion too. Athletes who start weightlifting early will have a huge benefit because they’ve had additional years of building technical strength. If one lifter starts training at twelve and another lifter starts at twenty, the first lifter has eight years of technical strength advantage. That’s a pretty damn big head start. But this is also where we realize that it takes years of practice to become a great weightlifter. This is one of the reasons why weightlifting is a small sport in the US. Most people aren’t willing to invest the time it takes to work to the top.

As an athlete, you have to make a decision about how good you want to be at the Olympic lifts. If you devote part-time commitment to them, you’ll get part-time results. And if you’re fine with that because you’re a Crossfitter or generalist who just uses the Olympic lifts as a component to your training instead of the entire purpose of it, that’s cool. I’m speaking mainly to the people who are serious about getting maximum results in the snatch and clean and jerk. If that’s you, then drill it into your head that you have to obsessively practice a skill to get good at it. You don’t get good at juggling by bowling. You don’t get good at snow skiing by roller skating. You don’t get good at shooting free throws by playing darts. And you don’t get good at clean and jerking by deadlifting. Don’t get me wrong. I love deadlifting. I love petting kittens too, but I don’t expect it to give me a 300-pound snatch.