When I was a kid playing high school football in a small town, I once asked my coach about what college players were like. We lived in East Jesus Nowhere, so I had never seen a big-time athlete up close, but my coach had played college ball back in the day. I’ll never forget his answer when I asked what these monsters were like in real life. He said, “The first thing that blows you away is how BIG they are. The second thing that blows you away is how FAST they are.”
 
I’ve always thought this answer held true for Olympic weightlifters, and the experience everybody goes through when they go to their first national (or international) meet and see elite lifters in action. The first thing that rattles your brain when you’re in the warm-up room at meets like this is the level of muscularity you see. Yes, it’s true that appearances are sometimes deceptive and you’ll occasionally find high-level lifters who don’t have amazingly impressive physiques. But more often than not, a great weightlifter will look the part. Regardless of their weight class, their massive quads and thick traps make a pretty stiff impression when they pop their shirts and shorts off to start warming up.
 
That’s just the part of the show that comes from their physical appearance. Once they start moving around with the barbell, the real whammy hits you. I will never forget the first few times I was in a room with a squad of nationally competitive weightlifters. I simply couldn’t believe just how damn fast they all were. I thought I was pretty quick until I saw these cats. They made me look slower than a caterpillar crawling through a field of peanut butter. I made it my mission in life to get that kind of speed in my Olympic lifts, and fortunately, I was able to gradually develop it and eventually turn into one of those lifters that blows away the newbies.
 
So the real question that comes from this conversation, which is also the subject of this article, is, “How do weightlifters develop freaky speed in their snatch and clean and jerk?” I’ve had this question posed to me several times when I teach clinics. One time, I was talking to an athlete at a seminar who wanted a visual demonstration of a snatch from the hip. I grabbed a PVC pipe and did a few hip snatches, and the athlete looked at me with her mouth hanging open and asked, “God, how did you get that FAST?”
 
I’m not telling you these stories to brag. I’ve been a competitive lifter for almost 30 years at this point, so I’ve developed speed through years of practice. Most athletes who have a reasonable level of athletic talent and two decades of training under their belt will be very quick with the bar. I’m not a phenomenon or anything, I’ve simply become fast through the same process that all veteran weightlifters go through.
 
However, I’ve noticed some confusion in recent years about how that speed development process works. Thanks to a combination of the internet and the recent weightlifting population explosion, we’ve got armies of people running around in this sport asking questions…and often making up their own answers that are wrong as hell.

There are some misconceptions and flawed ideas circulating around these days about how Olympic weightlifters build snappy quickness in their movements. And as we frequently find, many of these misconceptions are being spread by people with websites who pose themselves as qualified experts in the sport, despite their extremely limited list of accomplishments as either athletes or coaches. What I want to do in this article is give you some useful information about one of the most important elements of Olympic lifting (speed), and some cautionary thoughts about what you should do (and not do) when you’re trying to get it.
 
Thinking outside the box, and other stupid crap…
 
Probably the best way to take a look at this area is to examine a couple of specific training ideas I’ve been hearing about more and more in recent years, along with their limited potential benefits and extremely possible hazards. NOTE: These ideas aren’t new. I’ve heard discussion about them for as long as I’ve been in weightlifting. But they’re getting talked about much more in our current era because we’ve got an enormous population of new and intermediate people in the sport right now (fewer than five years of experience).
 
SPRINTING AND PLYOMETRICS
 
Ah yes, using sprint/jump training to increase a weightlifter’s explosiveness and power. This little gem always seems to pop up sooner or later. Listen, I don’t want to make it sound like I think anybody who uses sprint/plyometric training is an idiot. I can understand the basic physiological thinking behind it. Sprinting and jumping are largely about explosive power in the lower body. Getting athletes to pop off a starting line (or onto a box) with a big BOOM! and then continue with snappy leg movement through the duration of a sprint. The idea here is that the power and quickness the athlete is developing will transfer over into the Olympic lifts. If they can build quickness through sprinting and jumping, they’ll have a better chance of becoming quick weightlifters. Okay, sure. I get it. And it’s certainly not a foolish mental process.
 
So here’s some input to consider about this topic. First of all, I’ve been training with top national and international level coaches and athletes for 25+ years, and I’ve never seen any of them who include sprinting or plyometrics as a significant component in their training. Please keep the word “significant” in mind. I’m not talking about doing sprint/jump work during some short off-season time periods when the lifting training isn’t strenuous and there’s no big competition coming up. Some programs do this, more for variety and general physical preparation (GPP) than anything. That kind of work isn’t what we’re referring to as significant. I’m talking about using sprint/jump training as a regular, sustained part of a weightlifter’s training regimen.
 
It sounds good on paper, yes. But you have to remember that sprinting, jumping, and the Olympic lifts are extremely different movements. Of course, there are some general similarities in terms of fast-twitch muscle activation, but at the end of the day, they’re not even close to the same thing. You don’t get better at lifting weights by sprinting. You get better at lifting weights by lifting weights. Weight training has much more benefit to a competitive sprinter or jumper than sprint/jump training has to a competitive weightlifter.
 
The risks outweigh the potential benefits. Pulled hamstrings are a sizeable consideration. They’re common with sprinters, and even more common with athletes who are combining sprinting with heavy squatting and pulling movements. Plus, anybody who has even trained at a high level in weightlifting is thinking the same thing as I write about this. When you’re pushing your body to its absolute limits as a weightlifter, it takes everything you’ve got simply to recover from training session to training session. Adding in sprints when you’re lifting this hard? No way, Jack. I do know a few Olympic lifters these days who are using regular sprints in their training, but they’re local-level lifters with no real national impact. And to state it bluntly, most of them aren’t really training their weightlifting that hard anyway. They think they are, but they aren’t.
 
I’ve got personal experience in this area. My first weightlifting coach was a college strength and conditioning coach who incorporated plyometrics into my training program pretty regularly. What do I remember about my time with him? I had terrific jumping ability; that’s for sure. But I also remember a handful of knee and hamstring injuries, and I was underperforming for my talent level in weightlifting. When I switched to a new coach, who was a legendary expert in Olympic weightlifting, I started lifting ten times harder than I previously had been, and any other kind of physical activity besides weightlifting went out the window. What were the results? My total increased 35 kilos in my first year with him, and the injuries stopped.
 
I’m not talking about using sprinting to develop an athlete’s overall ability for other sports outside of competitive Olympic weightlifting. That’s an entirely different conversation, and you can easily make a case for sprints and plyometrics being essential components in this type of situation. We also have to acknowledge that I’m not the final word on all things weightlifting, and there’s always the possibility that somebody more successful than me might have a different philosophy than what I’ve written about here. These kinds of asterisks have to be factored into the conversation. However, I can definitively state that this is the kind of general input you’ll get about this subject from people with a lot of championship experience in Olympic lifting.
 
What’s wrong with simple answers?
 
This is the part where I get to go on an angry rant about something that pisses me off, which is one of my favorite things to do.
 
A lot of people these days don’t seem to like uncomplicated solutions to their problems. They want to become better weightlifters, so they start the training process we all go through to accomplish this challenging feat. Very often, these people develop solid technique in their lifts. They reach a point where they’re doing things correctly, with no more glaring errors in their movements. They might not look like an Olympic gold medalist yet, but they’re definitely doing it RIGHT, and they’re headed in the right direction.
 
At this point, the job becomes simple. You just keep pounding the stone and plowing ahead for progress. Your training program is effective, and your technique is correct. If you want to gain 20 kilos on your total at this point, you just have to put in the years and pay your dues while you scratch and claw for one kilo at a time. You don’t need to change anything. You need to keep doing what you’re doing as hard as you can for a very long time. And during this long time, your already-solid technique will become faster and faster as your muscles get stronger and your technical control of the lifts gets sharper. Eventually, your “solid” technique will turn into “excellent” technique through years of practice.
 
But so many lifters and coaches today won’t buy into this. They bounce around from website to website, expert to expert, frantically looking for somebody who will tell them something they haven’t heard yet or suggest something they haven’t tried yet. It could be a bizarre technical cue or an unorthodox training idea. Anything that sounds new is considered revolutionary.
 
 “New” and “revolutionary” aren’t the same thing. Hopefully, we all agree that there’s such a thing as a bad idea. What I’m seeing in weightlifting in recent years are legions of desperate people. They’re desperate for progress, which is a good thing. But they turn it into a bad thing because they can’t understand the simple concept that big results come with a price tag, and that price tag is TIME.
 
From 1992 to 1998, my total went from 265 kg to 335 kg. I used the exact same training program this entire time. That’s 70 kilos of progress, which took me from being a local lifter to being one of the top 3 athletes in the country in my weight class. The exact same training program for six years, people. No changes, no new ideas, no major adjustments or additions. I did the same thing for six years, and I did it the best I could. That’s what got me to the top.
 
Let’s remember that this article is about developing speed in the Olympic lifts, right? Did I get faster during those years as I increased my total by 70 kg? Absolutely.
 
So, how does it happen?
 
You’re not going to do a snatch correctly the first time you try it. You’re going to have to put in a lot of time and practice. If you’ve got good talent and ability, you’ll eventually learn how to do it correctly, but you still won’t be doing it with maximum speed and quickness. To get maximum speed and quickness, you basically have to do two things:

1) Practice thousands and thousands of snatches
2) Get a lot stronger through pulling and squatting exercises
 
That’s basically it, brothers and sisters. Now, let’s make sure we understand that you’ll continue to learn new nuances about your technique as the years go by. You’ll hear things from your coaches and other athletes, and you’ll read things, and you’ll see things when you watch videos. These things will give you little tips that heighten your understanding of the Olympic lifts. And when you combine them with an increased strength level, the speed will…just happen on its own. Trust me; it really does work like that. I’m not oversimplifying it. I’m speaking from years of experience as an athlete who had it happen to him, and as a coach who’s seen it happen with hundreds of lifters.
 
CAUTION: Those technique tips and training ideas I just mentioned? Not all of them will be good ones. It’s just as easy to hear a bad idea as a good idea. That’s the challenge of this business, knowing the difference between useful input and stupid crap. Sometimes you might not know the difference. It might take trial and error.

In short, this whole pursuit comes down to a few simple steps:

Step 1: Learn to do the SN and C&J correctly.
Step 2: Do the SN and C&J correctly for hundreds and hundreds of reps.
Step 3: Get stronger.
 
There’s such a thing as getting strong enough to overcome your technical problems. Sometimes your technique might be incorrect because you’re just not moving right. But other times, it might be incorrect because you’re not strong enough (in the right places) to move the way you want to. That’s where squatting and pulling come into place.
 
Maybe I’ve just told you a bunch of stuff you already knew. Maybe you don’t agree. Maybe this all sounds good the way I’ve written it, but you’re still running into a brick wall because you don’t think you have the physical tools to pull all this off. These concerns are all legit.
 
It takes years to develop speed in the Olympic lifts. That’s all there is to it. Your question is, “How do I get faster?” My answer is, “Train for ten years.” Sorry folks. This sport isn’t like your iPhone. You don’t get what you want right away. Feel free to look around for somebody who will tell you something different from this, if you want to. You won’t have a hard time finding one. But if you want to become successful the same way all the top lifters have done, make the decision to settle in for a long journey. Gimmicks don’t make you faster. Time and practice make you faster.