When I played football in high school, I absolutely hated the end of every practice. Want to know why? Because our coaches made us finish each practice with some kind of conditioning work. This was old-school football, where they believed practice was supposed to be 50 percent teaching and 50 percent beating the crap out of us to toughen us up. So we had to do some kind of conditioning session at the end of each day, and it usually involved running and doing a lot of up-downs. Now that CrossFit has become so popular, most of you know what up-downs are. You just call them burpees, that’s all. I’ve never done a CrossFit workout in my life but trust me, I’ve done enough burpees to last ten lifetimes. Most football players have.

I hate running. Actually, I hate almost any kind of conditioning activity. Whenever people hear the word “conditioning” used in athletic discussion, they mentally connect it to some kind of aerobic/cardio activity. When you talk about an athlete who is “conditioned,” they assume you’re talking about somebody with a big capacity for running, biking, swimming, or something like that. A person who can run a five-minute mile is more conditioned than somebody who runs a nine-minute mile. Basic stuff, okay? I started hearing the term “metcon” a few years ago when CrossFit really started taking off, and I don’t think I need to give a lengthy explanation of what it means since half the people reading this are probably CrossFitters. In a quick nutshell, metcons are high intensity workouts that are designed to improve the athlete’s…metabolic conditioning. They often involve some running, rope skipping, and high-rep work with kettlebells, wall balls, etc.

So let’s invent some new vocabulary here. When we think about the basic type of conditioning you get from running, lots of cardio, metcons, etc., let’s call it “standard conditioning.” In other words, we’re talking about the most straightforward type of “getting in shape” stuff in the exercise world.

Now, let’s look at a different angle on this. When you use the word “conditioning” and you’re talking about a weightlifter, it’s a reference to an athlete who can effectively complete a lot of heavy lifts with very short rest breaks. If you’re a well-conditioned lifter, it means you can snatch or clean and jerk multiple attempts that are fairly close to your 1RM with very little time between them (around two to three minutes at the most). It doesn’t have anything to do with running or other metcon activity. We’re specifically talking about lifting weights, and the ability to hit several near-maximum lifts with minimal rest time following each one.

So we’ll invent another piece of terminology. We’ll call it “weightlifting conditioning” when we’re looking at the type of capacity I just described.

We’re going to take a look at these two areas. Standard conditioning and weightlifting conditioning aren’t the same thing. Having one of them doesn’t guarantee you’re going to have the other. I’ve got pretty good weightlifting conditioning at this point. I only wait around three minutes between all my snatches and clean and jerks in training, usually not even sitting down. But if you asked me to go out and run a mile, I would probably make it about six hundred meters before I collapsed and started sucking wind like a big trout flopping around on a sidewalk.

It goes both ways though. Believe me, I’ve worked with a lot of CrossFitters in recent years who obviously have a solid level of Standard Conditioning from all their running and stuff. But when we’re working the O-lifts and we start pushing the weights up, you can see the fatigue setting in. These are people who can rip through a metcon without even thinking about it, but they’re ready to take a break and get a drink of water after six or seven sets of heavy snatches with two to three minute rest periods.

This article isn’t going to be a lengthy analysis of physiological pathways and systems. It’s not going to be about VO2, cellular respiration, biosynthesis or Krebs cycles. I want to look at this whole thing in a different way that will give you some new ideas about your own training and maybe a new understanding of this area. Let’s start by changing your perspective on fat people.

Leonid Taranenko

The biggest official clean and jerk of all time is 266 kilos (586 lbs). Yeah, you read that right. A Soviet weightlifter named Leonid Taranenko clean and jerked 586 pounds in 1988. If you check the current world records in weightlifting, you’ll see the all-time record listed as 263.5 kilos (580 lbs.) by Iran’s Hossein Rezazedeh. This is because the sport of weightlifting has changed its competition weight classes over the last twenty years. When this was done, they wiped out all the records in the old weight classes and started over with new ones. So you’ll see Reza’s 263.5 as the current world record because that’s the most anybody has done since the weight classes were changed, but Leonid Taranenko’s 266 from 1988 remains the heaviest C&J of all time.

Taranenko lifted this weight at a competition in Australia a couple of months after the 1988 Olympics. He was held off the USSR’s Olympic team and didn’t get to compete in Seoul. Nobody knows exactly why this happened, but rumors have always circulated that he failed a drug test. Anyway, he was in the best shape of his career at this time, so a special competition was set up in Australia specifically for him to break the world record.

Now, let’s take a look at how this situation applies to our discussion of conditioning. Taranenko was a superheavyweight lifter, and he weighed 325 lbs. at the Australia competition. I’m fairly certain that most of you would have called him a fatty if you would have seen him at the time. Sure, he had massive legs and shoulders, and it was obvious that he was a powerhouse. But he also had a big round protruding gut, no doubt about it. If we could have taken him out of the competition, transported him in a time machine to the present day, and sent him walking into a CrossFit, everybody in the gym would giggle at him and call him a fatass behind his back. Every coach in the room would tell him he needs to lose weight.

Let me tell you about what Taranenko did at the Australia meet. In the snatch, he made all three attempts with (in kilos) 195, 205, and 210. In pounds, that’s 429, 451, and 462. In the clean and jerk, he made 245 kg (540 lbs.) on his first attempt and then jumped straight to the 266 (586 lbs.) on his second attempt. He made all of these attempts, and then passed on his third clean and jerk attempt because he had already broken the records he came there to get. But here’s what I want you to understand about this. Leonid was lifting considerably more than all of his competitors at this meet, which means he had to follow himself after every attempt. For those of you who don’t know how weightlifting competitions work, there are times when an athlete has to take back-to-back attempts if the order of the competition happens to fall that way. If you’re competing in a meet and you’re lifting more than everybody in the whole contest, you’ll have to follow yourself after each of your attempts. When you follow yourself, you’re only allowed two minutes of rest according to the rules of the sport.

The rules used to be different in the 80s. Back then, athletes were allowed three minutes if they followed themselves. But still, that’s not a lot of time. So the point I’m trying to make here is that Leonid Taranenko, with his 325 pounds of bodyweight and seemingly sloppy physique, snatched 429, 451, and 462 with only three minutes of rest between each lift. Then, he clean and jerked 540 and 586 back-to-back, again with only three minutes of rest.

People, this is one of the most amazing examples of weightlifting conditioning in history. First of all, it’s almost incomprehensible that a man clean and jerked that much. Seriously, try loading 586 lbs. on a barbell someday and see what you can do with it. This is a feat of strength beyond the limits of normal human existence. But the fact that he executed all of these massive lifts with tiny little three-minute rest breaks between each one? The ESPN cameras followed him in the back room while he waited between his attempts, too. He wasn’t stretched out on the floor getting oxygen pumped in. He was pacing slowly around the room, not sitting down and not breathing hard (until after the 586). Hopefully, this makes you think differently about the whole “fatass” thing. With his massive gut that would make the CrossFit coaches of the world shake their heads in disgust, this athlete showed a level of conditioning that nobody has been able to equal over the last 26 years. The “looking good naked” idea has become extremely important to the general strength-training public, causing any athlete with a round gut to be dismissed as a fatty. But it’s important to understand that massive weightlifters like Taranenko have physical capabilities that most people can’t even fathom. Guys at this level are the best in the world. Hell, they’re the best in the history of the world. That fact overrides what they look like naked.

But could he run a mile?

Taranenko’s performance was staggering, but he’s not the only superheavyweight who has demonstrated this type of conditioning. Remember Hossein Rezazedeh, the Iranian lifter who holds the current world record of 580 in the C&J? He actually weighed about 30 pounds more than Taranenko, at a height of 6’1. Being 6’1 and 355 lbs…those are definitely statistics that would qualify a person as “obese” on most height/weight charts. I’ve stood close to Reza, and he looked every bit of that 355. His gut made Taranenko’s look like Rich Froning’s six-pack. And like Taranenko, he followed himself (with only two minutes of rest) when he set his record mark of 580 in the C&J. It was at the 2004 Athens Olympics, and his C&J attempts were (in pounds) 551, 580 (failed on the clean), 580. As I said…two minutes rest between each one, at 355 bodyweight with a gut the size of Alaska.

Listen, it should be obvious that these guys didn’t have huge levels of standard conditioning. I don’t want to make any bad assumptions, but I think it’s safe to say that neither Taranenko nor Reza could have run a five-minute mile or completed a hard metcon. But those weren’t the demands of their sport. They had to have phenomenal levels of conditioning, just a different type from what you normally think of. Looking at their bellies and dismissing them as fat slobs shows a complete lack of intelligence about athletic performance. These guys could do things no other humans in the history of civilization could do.

Let’s apply this to you. If you’re a beginning/intermediate weightlifter, the weights you’re handling in the snatch or clean and jerk are probably well below the limits of your overall strength capacity. Your technique is still in a learning phase, which means you’re not lifting weights yet that are heavy enough to really push your physical boundaries. When you’re more advanced and you’ve had a long period of progress and skill development, the weights you’re lifting will be much more taxing on your body.

In other words, let’s take a male athlete who is 5’11, 180 lbs bodyweight, and has a pretty solid strength level (350 back squat, 400 deadlift, etc.). When this guy is learning the snatch, he’s probably going to be spending a lot of time lifting 130 lbs., 150 lbs., 170 lbs., etc. He can’t snatch any more than this because his technique isn’t proficient yet, and 170 lbs. isn’t going to be enough weight to really fatigue him because his overall level of physical strength is way above that. However, after time has passed and his skill development has improved, he’s going to be snatching 200 lbs., 220 lbs., 240 lbs., etc. These weights are going to push his physical limits a lot harder, and he’s going to feel more fatigue from his attempts.

If he trains with six-minute rest breaks throughout this whole process, he obviously won’t feel much exhaustion when he lifts. Nobody gets too tired after they sit on their ass for six minutes. But if you force him to maintain two to three minute rest periods throughout his training, that’s a whole new level of work. Anybody with half a brain in their head will understand that there’s a ton of conditioning involved in this. It’s just a different type of conditioning, as I’ve said.

To finish…

Developing a high level of weightlifting conditioning should be one of your main goals as a lifter. There’s no complicated way to do it…just make yourself stick to two to three minutes between sets in the gym. If you’re a competitive lifter, it’s very likely that you’re going to need it at some point. You never know exactly how much time you’re going to get between your attempts at a meet, so it’s good common sense to prepare for short breaks.

You’ve all got different goals and demands in your training. Some of you are CrossFit competitors, which means you need to have a blend of standard conditioning and weightlifting conditioning (leaning more towards standard). Some of you are competitive Olympic lifters, which means weightlifting conditioning is your highest priority. Some of you aren’t competitive athletes at all, but you want to improve your athletic performance through the kind of training we examine in this magazine. If you want an academic understanding of the body’s functions in regards to conditioning, there’s no shortage of research out there. This article, however, is a nuts-and-bolts look at an aspect of weightlifting that many people don’t understand.

People who are cardio nuts are all going to look at a guy who is 6’1, 355 lbs. and say, “That dude is disgusting. He needs to lose 150. lbs just to be a normal human.” Yes, that might be true in the perspective of ordinary life. Believe me, I’m not saying it’s a good thing to go through your 40s, 50s, and 60s weighing 300+ lbs., but this article isn’t focused on preventing diabetes or lowering your risk of heart disease. It’s about athletic performance, and the components of athletic performance aren’t a one-size-fits-all area. Terms like “conditioning” and “work capacity” aren’t blanket terms that apply to every sport the same way. If you’re an athlete or a coach, this is one of the biggest things you have to learn. Clean and jerking 500 lbs. is something most people can’t even wrap their minds around. That’s why Performance Menu is here, brothers and sisters. To broaden your mind.