Great series of videos from Rippetoe on StartingStrength.com

This one is with Rippetoe interviewing Tommy Suggs:

Other videos show interviews with sports stars and other weightlifters, discussing their approach to strength training.

“Always put your heavy stuff [lifts] first”

At the end of the Part 4 video, Suggs says “always put your heavy stuff [lifts] first,” meaning, after you’re comfortable with form in the olympic lifts, concentrate on strength training (absolute strength, aka, the slow lifts: squat, deadlift, press). Since you also want to maintain form and not regress on the snatch & c&j, do your heavy squats & deadlifts first (earlier in the day or first in the workout) and then do form maintenance on the o-lifts.

A few months ago I remember reading Jim Schmitz’ book (& watching the DVD) on Olympic Weightlifting.
I enjoyed both. One thing that stuck in my mind that contrasts with what Suggs says above is that Schmitz seems to advise people to do the olympic lifts first, THEN do the heavy slow lifts (Squat, Schmitz’ favorite — the Clean Deadlift & Shrug). I’m trying to find the exact reference where Schmitz says this but, I can’t find his book (moved recently & my stuff is still all over the place).

Schmitz was a USA Olympic Team coach in the 80′s and early 90′s. Suggs is a dude form a few decades before that.

Perhaps, they’re talking about different levels of athletes here? Schmitz’ book is for Beginners & Intermediates. When Suggs says “put your heavy stuff first” above his general context was about Elite lifters back in his day.

“Вес взят” ["Weight conquered"] – Soviet Olympic Weightlifting documentary

Documentary from the archives of GosTeleRadioFond (semi acronym for State Television & Radio Fund).
Date Produced: USSR, 1976
Director: P. Paters [or is it Peters? Patars?].

The beginning mentions Paul Anderson & his visit to the USSR for competition/exhibition in Olympic Weightlifting. It proceeds to talk about how after Anderson’s visit, which was super popular with local fans, Soviet trainers started looking across the country for someone who can match or beat Anderson. They found Yuri Vlasov. It proceeds to interview Vlasov (the guy with the beard in the video still above). He talks about how he was in college around the time when he started seriously lifting. He studied during the days and trained in the evenings.

At one point, Vlasov says that leg strength is the most important for success in weightlifting. He says, that’s the conclusion he came to by observing Paul Anderson.

Next, they discuss Leonid Zhabotinsky. In part 2, they discuss Vasiliy Alexeev.

Some overdue reading

Practical Programming for Strength Training, by Mark Rippetoe & Ron Kilgore, 2nd Edition, p.10:

There are many weight training books for sale…. Follow the recipes, they promise, and you will be as good as the Spurs and as ripped as Vin Diesel…. Copying… successful programs without understanding why they were successful is never a good idea.

I made this mistake especially the first few years of trying to learn how to lift weights. In my case, I mostly tried to blindly copy workouts from body building magazines (whose main purpose was to sell ad space for the supplement industry) and a few books from chain book stores. After years of very lame results and a few over training / bad form injuries, a friend recommended Rippetoe’s Starting Strength & a blog called stronglifts.com. Both of these sources advocated a novice[1] program that focused on a few big exercises (the stronglifts.com author has since altered his program a bit), like the Squat & the Deadlift, and increasing the weight by 5 to 10lbs per workout while squatting 3 times per week until a plateau is reached. That ended up being the most successful approach for me. Since then, I’ve considered Rippetoe’s stuff as pretty reliable overall and more valuable than most books on the subject at the typical B&N or Borders. Can’t wait to read more of this book!

Incidentally, chain stores, like Borders, don’t carry Starting Strength. I wonder why. Is it because a chain store’s distributor (bulk sales source) is essentially a monopoly & demands too high a cut from the publisher? Is it bad marketing on the part of the publisher? Is it a deliberate tactic, to market the book via word of mouth, Crossfit affiliates, etc? Is it an ideological commitment on behalf of the author to be “indy” and not rely on “The Man”?

1. “…the amount of weight lifted or years of training do not classify a trainee’s development,” Practical Programming for Strength Training, by Mark Rippetoe & Ron Kilgore, 2nd Edition