Last month’s article took a broad look at competition planning. We examined some of the important issues a competitive weightlifter must address such as how many meets to compete in within a given year, anticipating distractions, and prioritizing which competitions are most important. That was step one. This month, we will be taking baby steps forward to the next step in the planning process.

Once a competition has been chosen and put on the calendar as one of your priorities for the year, it’s time to plan out a training cycle that will produce the best possible results at the contest. For the sake of example, we will assume that the contest we are training for in this article is a national championship, top priority-type of situation. In other words, this is a meet where we want to hit the biggest lifts in our capability. This is not a training meet, and we will be specifically devoting a large time period to get ready for it. The qualifying total has already been made, the meet is a few months away, the travel arrangements have been figured out, the boss gave us the time off work, a neighbor has agreed to feed the dog while we’re gone, and it’s time to get in the gym and rock and roll. Now, once all of the general decisions have been made about how to approach this meet, the question that remains is how can we make sure that we are physically and mentally ready for a peak performance when the day of the contest arrives?

Training too hard in the early stages of the cycle will lead to peaking too early, and the contest will be a disaster. Not training hard enough will leave you soft and under-prepared on meet day, and the barbell will feel like you’re hauling a 500 pound anchor off the bottom of the ocean when you pull it from the floor. Because you’re a saucy little fireball and you’ve seen all the Rocky movies, your first inclination is simply to go to the gym and train absolutely as hard as you can every day. Push yourself to the maximum each time you put on your shoes, go to failure every day, try new personal records every week...I mean we’re really going wild animal-style for this one, right?

You can train like that if you want to. Most likely, your body will feel great for a few weeks and then, most likely, you will run into a brick wall. Fatigue, injury, mental burnout and emotional destruction will leave you curled up in the fetal position and crying like a teenage girl whose mom just confiscated her Twilight books because you decided to train like a pack mule with no ideas about how to use patience and intelligence. Hey, don’t feel bad if I just described your training life. I’ve been there and made every mistake I just listed, and then I ran into a coach who knew how to build champion weightlifters the way Jackson Pollack knew how to paint and get drunk.

Program design, friends. That’s what we’re talking about this month. Next month, we finish the trilogy with a look at how to structure a basic training week. And as always, we will provide information that will be beneficial to hardcore weightlifters and generalists alike.

First, the preamble...

Since 1992, I have been a member of the Calpian Weightlifting Club and coached by John Thrush. Because of this, much of the information I provide in these articles is heavily influenced by the "Calpian method." However, it is always important to mention that there are many weightlifting coaches out there and several of them have found different ways to effectively train athletes. I hate to use such a tired cliche, but there are many ways to skin a cat. This article would be just as credible if it was based on the methods of Gayle Hatch or Bob Takano. No coach has a monopoly on successful training methodology. But the Calpians have been one of the most accomplished weightlifting programs in America for twenty years and John Thrush is clearly one of the greatest coaches in the sport. That’s why this information starts where it does. It is also crucial to state that the ideas in this article are not only from the Calpian approach. Several ideas from different coaches and programs will be used.

Now, down to business...

I’m a big fan of putting training plans down on paper. Most athletes like it when a coach gives them a typed program that tells them exactly how they will be training during the weeks leading up to a contest. Before the typing starts, let’s get three important questions answered:

1) What weights does the athlete want to lift at the contest?

2) How many days a week will the athlete be able to train?

3) How many weeks are there until the contest?

We’ll use a hypothetical lifter named Terry for this article, got it? The questions will be answered for Terry’s particular abilities and circumstances.

1) What weights does Terry want to hit? Currently, Terry’s best official competition lifts are 105 in the snatch and 140 in the clean and jerk. At the contest we’re training for, Terry expects to lift 110/145. His best back squat is 195 kilos and his best front squat is 170 kilos.

2) How many days a week will the athlete be able to train? Terry will train five days a week for this contest (Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday)

3) How many weeks are there until the contest? There are twelve weeks.

One way to approach Terry’s training is to set down a week-by-week loading schedule. This schedule tells us how much weight Terry will be lifting in training in the SN, C&J, rack jerks, squats, and pulls during the progressive weeks of the training cycle. For example, let’s say we wanted to plan out the loading for his SN, C&J, and Back Squat. A graph for his loading schedule might look like this (sets and reps- 3x1 means three singles, 2x2 means two sets of two reps, 3x5 means three sets of five reps, etc.):

	Snatch	Clean &Jerk	Back Squat
Week 1	86 3x2	120 5x1	160 3x5
Week 2	88 3x2	122 5x1	165 2x5
Week 3	90 2x2	124 3x1	170 3x3
Week 4	93x2	126 3x1	174 3x3
Week 5	96x2	128 3x1	177 3x3
Week 6	85 3x1	115 3x1	181x3
Week 7	98x2	131 3x1	184x3
Week 8	100x2	134 2x1	188x2
Week 9	103x1	137x1	192x2
Week 10	106x1	140x1	195x2
Week 11	108x1	143x1	185 2x1
Week 12	meet week

NOTES:

- These lifts are not all supposed to be performed on the same day, obviously. In next month’s article, we will examine how to properly plan which exercises are trained on Monday, Tuesday, etc. This chart is set up to mean that sometime during week one, Terry has to snatch 86 kilos for three sets of two reps, C&J 120 for five singles, and back squat 160 for three sets of five.

- Only the SN, C&J, and BSQ were planned in this example chart. For an actual program, the coach would want to plan out the loading progression for all the major exercises the lifter performs.

- Only the top weights of the workout are listed on the chart. Warm-up sets are not included, but they are chosen at the athlete’s discretion.

- In the early weeks of the program, lighter weights are used with a higher number of repetitions. In the latter weeks, heavier weights are used with fewer repetitions.

- The lightest weights at the beginning of the program are relatively light, but they are still above eighty percent of Terry’s highest official lifts. When Terry sees this program, the first thought in his head will probably be that the 86 kilo snatches and 160 kilo squats in the early weeks are not heavy enough. The coach must instruct the athlete that this is a progressive overload program. Using progressive overload, the early weeks of the program deliberately include lighter weights because the athlete is building a foundation of speed and perfect technique through the use of multiple reps. As the weeks progress, the weights will gradually get heavier. This system should put Terry in a position to be stronger, fresher, and more technically sound than he has ever been when he gets to week twelve. The early weeks should also be a time when Terry successfully makes every attempt on his program, which is important in building the athlete’s confidence. In other words, tell Terry that he’s going to get plenty of shots at heavy weights in the coming weeks.

- These weights are all educated guesses at what the athlete’s capabilities will be on a given day. A wise coach will have some flexibility when it comes to watching the athlete and determining how much weight Terry should attempt in the workout. In other words, let’s say we get to week nine and Terry is scheduled to snatch 103 on Monday. Terry is warming up and going through his workout, and he snatches 103 kilos like it’s an empty bar. Terry is fired up, he feels good, and he wants to try 106 to break his personal record of 105. In that situation, my advice would be to put 106 on the bar and let Terry nail it. Even though he wasn’t scheduled to snatch 106 until week ten, you have to strike while the iron is hot. If Terry misses the 106, the coach has to make a decision based on what the miss looked like. If Terry put a slow, dragging pull on the 106 and barely got it overhead before it came down and nearly decapitated him, I probably wouldn’t advise more attempts at 106. I would tell Terry to go back down and snatch 96, then 101, and then possibly another shot at 106 if he is still looking sharp. The main point to remember is that you don’t want to get trapped in the land where your athlete is missing snatch after snatch after snatch, and you’re simply beating a dead horse. Sometimes, Terry might get lucky and nail the 106 after missing it eight times. More likely, he will continue missing and all the heavy attempts will leave him shot to hell for his next workout tomorrow.

- Although it’s important to be flexible, be smart in the early weeks of the program. If Terry is in week two and has just finished his fifth and last C&J single with 122, don’t get carried away and say, "Jeez, that 122 was easy! Let’s work up to 142!" Hold on, Jethro. The 122 was easy because it was supposed to be easy. Keep the leash on Terry for a few more weeks and let him strain against it like a dog who wants to run. When you finally cut the leash, he’ll be primed and ready to explode.

- For those of you who are not competitive weightlifters, this type of loading schedule is something you could use in your own workouts simply to get stronger and make progress. If you want to improve in any kind of measurable task, the theories and fundamentals of progressive overload training can make you better than you’ve ever been. If you’re not an Olympic Lifter, but you like to bench press and you want to get stronger in it, then take the twelve-week cycle we just analyzed and use it for your bench training. You just might break through a barrier that’s been holding you back.

Therefore...

All of this is designed to put Terry in a position where he will compete successfully and make 110/145 in the contest. If Terry makes all of the lifts on his program through week eleven, the coach might want to select his competition attempts as follows:

SN 1- 103       C&J 1- 137
SN 2- 108       C&J 2- 142
SN 3- 110       C&J 3- 145

Several variables could come into play here, obviously. If Terry is at the meet, he has just completed his second C&J with 142 and he has a chance to win the competition with 147, then it’s time to deviate from the plan and put 147 on the bar. Likewise, let’s say Terry’s training hasn’t gone well and he hasn’t been able to snatch anything heavier than 100 prior to the meet. Given this situation, starting him with 103 would be a big roll of the dice. He might get lucky and hit the 103, but smart money would probably start him with a lighter weight that he has made consistently in training. Good coaches don’t set up their athletes to bomb out.

What we can learn from all of this, and what we’ll continue to learn next month in the third installment, is that good planning is good coaching. Knowing when to change the plan is also good coaching. And regardless of the fine points of your program or your particular area of strength training, the one overwhelming idea is that you simply have to be willing to work fiendishly hard if you want to get better. In Greek mythology, a man named Sisyphus was forced to spend eternity rolling a huge boulder up a hill. If he got lazy and relaxed, the boulder would roll down the hill and he would have to start all over again from the bottom. The idea here is that Sisyphus had to apply constant pressure and effort into pushing on the boulder. Any lapse in concentration or moment of weakness led to a setback. This is what training often feels like. This is what life often feels like. Building your business or raising your children becomes a constant battle where it feels like a gallon of effort only produces an inch of progress. It’s difficult, challenging, and sometimes frustrating.

But if you want to look on the bright side, there is always an alternative to all the stress. You can always quit. Just grab that bag of Doritos and head for the couch. It’ll be much easier there, no doubt about it. The only problem is that you’re going to turn eighty someday, and you’ll look back on your life and realize that your biggest accomplishment was owning the entire collection of The Rockford Files. If you don’t want to end up that way, get behind that boulder and start pushing, baby.