The "Chit Chat" Thread

[Hawkpeter]

It would probably be short sighted of me to make too much of an article about behind the scenes posturing for election of the new IWF board and presidency gien there would be so much that isnt reported in media, but its hard to look past an article about a person I dont know much about, Mr Al-Mana from Qatar. I would have thought Mr Jalood would receive much of the support from Asia, but having read this I may have been wrong. Support outside one's own continent will be critical.

[Hawkpeter]

Egypt's Mahmoud Hassan goes 172, 175 then jumps to 193 for a Youth WR attempt at 89kg and makes it.

[strapping]

in the absence of a IWF youth worlds thread and reddit cancer

clap emoji copypasta SHOULDER INTERNAL ROTATION clap emoji copypasta IS NOT clap emoji copypasta ELBOW REBEND clap emoji copypasta

thankfully it was just one red but good grief, the judging here has sometimes been even worse than usual (by usual, I mean post 2020/2021 asian senior championships)

[strapping]

It's been a while since we've had a technical discussion on this forum, it's mostly been news and elite sport competition discussion. I'm looking to gather some thoughts, musings, anecdotes on this topic. Happy to have any thoughts or experiences, I think it's an interesting case.



A lifter of mine is formerly a racquet sport player who many years ago managed a pretty nasty glute medius tear with concurrent neurological symptoms. He has largely returned to normal function and is working with a WL physio for rehab, doing physio prescribed rehab stuff like offset jumps, hip bridges and so on.

However, he has lost a lot of sensation/proprioception in his legs and has a history of anterior hip osteoarthritis. Masters lifter, father of a baby and gym owner (my boss lol) so his training is a bit inconsistent, but we make things work and he's in comp prep right now.

Hip OA symptoms largely triggered by life stress and poor sleep, can be mediated somewhat through warmup but it is a hard limit for intensity on flareup days. Max tolerable intensity is ~65% on those days, whereas good days he can do 10 reps on 90+% (total session volume) with no issues during or after.

The efferent drive to the legs is perfectly fine and he has great reactive leg strength, but poor maximal strength/proprioception in the legs. Years ago before he worked with me, he rack jerked 140 with about 110 for FS and clean. Pre-dad era.

On a technical basis, he struggles to manage being over the bar enough vs being over the bar too long, and struggles to use his legs/quads during the finish. He also struggles to simultaneously finish the pull, versus not getting "stuck" at the top of the pull. So when he pulls long he gets stuck, when he transitions quickly he cuts the pull and leaves it forward.

In terms of motor control stuff, he tries to approximate the feeling of the leg drive through managing his balance and torso position, but it's an approximation.

Tempo medium grip (between snatch/clean) snatches and no 2nd pull snatch/clean to parallel have helped with developing a finish and transition from different approaches.

Not looking to change things within the next couple of weeks up to comp, but thinking of future direction of training/education. He's a great student, learner, experimentalist and quite technically minded (after all, he puts up with me), so we'll be happy to try things out.

For the next block, I'm thinking of having him work off multiple different block heights and experimenting with moving the centre of pressure a little further forward during the pull for developmental exercises.
For preparatory training, I'm thinking pulls on 2.5kg plates and maybe emphasising single leg work in tempo for low-moderate reps. General strength and muscle mass is his relative weakness regardless of technical stuff, so there will be an extensive GPP phase.

hot take: training regular people for weightlifting is harder than training elite athletes

[Hawkpeter]

The block work might best be accessorized with a lot of halting reps at knee and hip height.

Might also benefit from programming a lot more isometric work in general because its not just actually joint and connective tissue pathology, its the fact that the pain sense can very quickly uncouple from what is actually going on in the deeper structures.

[strapping]

He doesn't have any pain associated with the lack of sensation, no lower limb pain or numbness. He just can't feel it. Dunno if that's what you meant.