Ernest Hemingway is my favorite writer of all time. His personal life was almost as legendary as the books he wrote, filled with great victories and plenty of sad moments as well. When he won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954, he was still enjoying the success of his novel The Old Man and the Sea, although his health and mental condition had already started a slow descent. Right around this time period, an interviewer asked Hemingway, "What is the best early training for a writer?" This was a terrific question and it gave the world a chance to hear something valuable from the master. Ernest’s answer was, "An unhappy childhood."

If that sounds difficult to understand, read a book about Hemingway’s life (preferably the one written by Carlos Baker) and it will all make sense after a while. And if you’re patiently waiting for this particular article to actually start talking about strength training and weightlifting, I’ll oblige you now. Ernest’s quote about early training for a writer makes me think about lifting. Specifically, it makes me think about the physical and mental qualities that can identify someone as a potentially successful weightlifter. What are the things that a coach can look for that will function as early predictors of high weightlifting ability? Are there specific combinations of athleticism, flexibility, body structure, etc. that can give us an accurate idea about whether or not an individual might become a national champion in the snatch and clean and jerk? In other words, what should a coach look for in a potential trainee? What are the attributes that should make you approach a gym rat and ask if he/she has any interest in learning how to be a weightlifter?

I’ll give you four of them. Ernest was married four times, so the number seems appropriate.

To Jump and Jump Not

Many of the top international weightlifting programs of the last thirty years have used jumping ability as one of the absolute highest determinants of weightlifting potential. If an athlete has natural jumping ability, then that athlete already has a large advantage in the sport of weightlifting (and most other sports, actually). This ability can be measured in a variety of ways. The standing long jump, standing vertical jump measured by a Vertec jump measurement, box jumping for height, and a variety of other testing methods will give an immediate indication of the athlete’s explosive power and potential lower body strength. Now, when a 6'5 basketball player can dunk on a ten-foot rim with approach steps, this can be misleading. When I was a strength and conditioning coach at Northern Arizona University in the early 90s, many of our basketball players were shocked to find out that their vertical jumps only measured around 28-30 inches on a Vertec. These players were all over 6'5 and they could perform all kinds of acrobatic dunks on the court, but their vertical jump measurements were relatively unimpressive. Their dunking ability was mostly related to their height, arm length, and run-up acceleration into takeoff of the dunk. Most of the top vertical jump numbers came from the athletes on the track team, as they often possessed much greater explosive power in the lower body.

The reason for the close connection between jumping ability and weightlifting success is the jump-like movement that takes place in the pulling phase of the snatch and clean. When an athlete is completing the pull of the Olympic lifts, the mechanics of the body are very similar to the mechanics of a standing vertical jump and, obviously, explosive force is essential in both activities.

Now, if you read a lot of weightlifting message boards on the internet, you’ll know that many coaches are perpetually engaged in a biblical war of annihilation over the proper terminology to describe the pulling movement of the snatch and clean. Some coaches want to refer to it as a "jumping motion." Some coaches want to refer to it as a "catapult motion." On and on it goes, and almost nobody ever agrees on anything. But regardless of whether you want to refer to the pulling motion as a jump, catapult, ricochet, crossbow, slingshot, uppercut, jump-down-turn-around-pick-a-bale-of-cotton, or whatever, it is clear that jumping power is a valuable weapon to the Olympic lifter. I once taught a high school weightlifting class and one of the students was a sixteen year-old young man who was approximately 5'7 and 160 pounds. He was a skateboarder, borderline juvenile delinquent, and a very clear candidate for the Most Likely to Get Kicked in the Head Award. But he was naturally springy, he could nail a standing backflip at any moment, and he thought weightlifting looked cool. So after a few recruiting speeches and a few threats, I convinced him to give lifting a shot. Two years later, he went to the Junior National Championships and made a 102.5 snatch and 137.5 clean and jerk in the 77 kilo class.

There are countless other examples in our sport just like this. Shane Hamman could do backflips. Many of our top female weightlifters have gymnastics backgrounds. Nicu Vlad had one of the highest tested vertical jumps at the Olympic Training Center. The list goes on. If you want to find out if you’ve got a potential stud on your hands, start with the hops, homie.

The Torrents of Stretching

So...the kid can jump. He can do snappy roundoffs and a ten-foot standing long jump and he can get on top of a 48-inch box. Great! Now, we need to find out about flexibility.

Any exposure at all to Olympic Weightlifting will make it obvious that good flexibility is mandatory. However, weightlifting flexibility is somewhat specific. When most people think about flexibility, they tend to look at general positions that are commonly regarded as strong indicators. Can the athlete do the splits and get all the way down to the floor? Can the athlete do a back bridge and get the hands close to the feet? Can the athlete get on his/her knees and bend backwards until the head touches the floor? These are great positional tests and they can certainly make it clear how limber the person is.

But "weightlifting flexibility" is measured in a much simpler way. How flexible is the athlete in the actual positions of the snatch, clean, and jerk? For example, let’s say you have a young woman who can do the splits. That’s terrific. But it’s more important in weightlifting to find out how flexible she is in a deep squat position. Can she sit down into a full squat and demonstrate all the important elements? In other words, can she sit her hamstrings and butt down on her calves, keep her heels flat on the floor, and push her knees forward with her torso upright? This is the absolute most important measure of flexibility in Olympic Weightlifting, and many people tip over like a drunk on payday when they try it for the first time. Other flexibility tests are interesting and they have their place in basic physical assessment, but the full-squat test is absolutely Numero Uno if we’re talking about the Olympic lifts.

After the squatting flexibility has been determined, the second most important area is the positions of the shoulders and elbows. To put it more simply, we’re talking about lockout. When you (the coach) start working with a potential trainee, one of the first things that needs to happen is an overhead lockout with a broomstick or empty bar. You have to know right away if the athlete has straight bone-on-bone lockout. If those elbows straighten out naturally and that bar looks like it’s being supported effortlessly by the athlete’s skeletal structure with a nice wide chest position, then you know you’re in business. If the athlete extends the empty bar overhead and you’re looking at the chicken-wing crooked lockout that we’ve all seen at some point, then it’s clear that you’ve got your work cut out for you.

I was talking to longtime US coach Roger Nielson once and he told me that he remembered the first workout of Jeff Michels, who went on to become one of the strongest American lifters of all time with a 188 kilo snatch and 222.5 kilo clean and jerk in the old 110 kilo weight class. Jeff began lifting when he was very young and I asked Roger, "Could you tell that Jeff was going to be great when you saw his first workout?" Roger told me that it was obvious Jeff "had something special" because he was able to sit down in the bottom position of a snatch with a bar over his head and it looked like he was born there. If you ever get a chance to see any footage of Jeff’s top lifts, you’ll see what Roger meant. His natural level of weightlifting flexibility put him miles ahead of his peers from day one.

Video Games and the Collapse of American Masculinity

I think that sounds like a great title for a book, don’t you? It sounds a little gender-specific, but let me explain where I’m going for the men and the ladies too. When a coach examines a potential lifter, I think one of the most valuable traits to look for is the evidence of some general physicality. In other words, you want to see people who have had some kind of vigorous bodily development in their background.

I’ll give you a personal example of what I’m talking about. My father was a rugged, old-school coal miner from Kentucky who refused to let his sons grow up soft and weak. From the earliest days of my memory, my brother and I were required to be involved in some kind of physically taxing activity. This usually came from the work we had to do around the house. Spending our afternoons in the backyard swinging a heavy axe over and over while we split firewood, turning wrenches while we helped him work on our cars and home repairs, digging ditches in our yard to install a sprinkler system, things like that. We weren’t allowed to sit inside all day and play Call of Duty. Our job was to complete the grunt work of our family and when we had free time to play, we jumped on our BWX bikes and pedaled like maniacs or we went to our friends’ houses to wrestle and pound the crap out of each other. To put it simply, most of our childhood involved hard work, even if we were playing. By the time we got old enough to join sports teams at school, we were already used to sweating and getting sore.

And we all know that our society has changed as technology has accelerated. These days, the internet and Sony Playstation have given our youth plenty of opportunities to grow up on the couch. In many cases, young kids can reach their teenage years with virtually no evidence of any kind of development in their muscles or skeletal system. Not to mention the fact that they’ve lived on a steady diet of Cheetos and chicken nuggets since birth. Hard to imagine that we’re not churning out armies of Jim Thorpes, isn’t it? These kids fracture their wrists when they trip on the sidewalk because their bones are squishy little columns of pus. Well, before I turn this into a long-winded rant on the laziness of today’s youth, I’ll get back to the point. Young people (or people of any age) are going to have an easier learning curve in weightlifting if they come to the sport with some form of GPP (General Physical Preparedness). If you’ve done any coaching, you know that it’s extremely easy to see which athletes have some kind of physical background and which ones have none. Weightlifting is a very, very tough sport. Some evidence of core development, connective tissue strength, and bone density are going to help the early training days dramatically, regardless of where these traits were developed.

And finally...

What kind of mental attributes will make a successful weightlifter? This question really deserves its own article, because the answer could be analyzed endlessly. Most people who have trained or competed in Olympic Weightlifting for a substantial length of time will tell you that the mental challenge of weightlifting is just as severe as the physical. As a twenty-two year competitor in the sport, I can honestly say that weightlifting has tested every possible area of my mind and soul. The ability to overcome pain is essential. You’re going to hurt in this sport, plain and simple. The willingness to make a long-term commitment to your goals is mandatory. You say you want to compete in the Olympic Trials, right? What if it’s going to take eight years of your life to get there? Now what? The determination to revolve your life around your training is demanded. How many parties are you willing to pass up and how many relationships are you willing to terminate if they are stopping you from reaching your goals?

These are extreme questions, and not every potential trainee is going to be interested in making a complete, fanatical commitment to weightlifting. Some people just want to work out and the Olympic lifts seem like a fun way to do it. That’s fine. But regardless, there are still certain mental qualities that will make the athletes much more successful if they have them. Let’s put down a list:

- Detail-oriented
- Enjoys constant repetition of the same skill
- Ability to be patient and impatient at the same time
- Willingness to overcome fear
- Internally motivated
- Competitive
- Doesn’t blame others for failure
- Hates whining
- Respects authority
- Enjoys hard work

The presence of each of these, along with some of the physical attributes we’ve examined, are the building blocks of a champion. But there is one more truth to reveal, and it’s probably the biggest one in the weightlifting universe. It’s the seminal element of weightlifting training, both as a competitive sport and a recreational pursuit. It’s the most crucial concept in this sport.

And here it is...

Some athletes have tremendous physical talent and outstanding mental ability. These are the ones that make Olympic teams. As a coach, you’ll get an athlete like this every once in a great while (if ever). The vast majority of the athletes you coach will be people who have a few great qualities and several mediocre ones. You’ll work with some athletes who have phenomenal jumping ability, but they’re mental midgets. You’ll work with some athletes who are incredibly dedicated and focused, but they couldn’t jump over a speedbump if they were shot out of a rocket launcher. You’ll work with some athletes who have perfect flexibility and body proportions, but they don’t really care that much if they make progress in their lifts. You’ll work with athletes who have more natural strength in their first training session than the five-year veterans in your gym, but their emotional problems make them almost impossible to tolerate.

Whatever assortment of positives and negatives the athlete brings to the table, the great coaches are the ones who can always find a way to make people better. The strong kid with the intolerable attitude? A great coach will find a way to develop that kid. The focused athlete with low physical talent? A great coach will find a way to develop that person. The ex-gymnast girl who is built perfectly for the sport but cries every single day in the gym? A great coach will find a way to develop that girl. Great coaches have to possess a fantastic proficiency in lifting technique and program design, but they also need to have the ability to manage every imaginable kind of personality while still maintaining the integrity of their program. Are there times when it’s appropriate to kick someone out of your gym? Absolutely. But those cases are extremely rare, in my experience.

If an athlete has very low physical ability but is willing to stick to it for a long period of time, that athlete will eventually be successful. Remember that if you remember nothing else. Hard times and frustration are guaranteed, but they can be overcome. As Ernest himself once wrote, "The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places." Figure that quote out, and you’ve figured out weightlifting.