Welcome to a blog dedicated to Weightlifting. Or rather, welcome to the mash of jumbled thoughts and opinions my mind has become, as a result of weightlifting.
When I refer to weightlifting, I don't mean to refer to what YOU see in the gym. You know, those gorillas with huge muscles curling, benching, posing, swearing, and chugging water from gallon jugs and wearing shredded sleeveless shirts while they hit on small women in short little spandex shorts. That's not weightlifting. It just....isn't.
Weightlifting is actually a sport, specifically the ONLY barbell sport contested in the Olympics.
Hence why most people call it, "Olympic Weightlifting." Crazy eh?
Anyway, I didn't make this blog to describe the sport, or educate the uneducated. If you don't know the details, look them up. This place will only serve as a release for my thought, feelings, frustrations, triumphs, and opinions on this ridiculous lifestyle. That's right, this sport isn't just a "sport," but a way of life. The best of the best live to lift, and lift to live. Their lives revolve around kilos, workouts, expectations, and competitions. Their souls have firmly entwined with the chalk coated bar. We lift twice, sometimes three times a day. We squat every day. We squat deep, deeper than anyone you've ever seen. So deep that you may watch us and be surprised as we stand up again. We jump under bars weighing more than our bodies, and the best of the best do so with double, sometimes even triple their own weight. We are crazy, and live to lift more than anyone else.
But who am I? Well, besides being a weightlifter, name is Seth. My relationship with this sport is strong, but not overly long in the grand scheme of things. I've been weightlifting for about a year and a half. Before I became a weightlifter, I worked out regularly (in more traditional style) for around 5 years. One cold winter day I decided to attempt the infamous exercise, the clean. I sucked, but for some reason, after I'd fallen and failed over and over, I wanted to do it again. So I came in the next day, and tried again. Hours passed, as I tried to catch the bar deeper and deeper in the hole, my legs aching, my knees popping and twisting. Then, when I felt confident, I gave the bar a little shove over my head in some ridiculously bad excuse for a split jerk. Then, after throwing the weight to the floor, I did it again. For a long while the clean and jerk was all I was brave enough to try. I was scared of the snatch.
Eventually I got a coach, Carl Wallin. He brought me my first real programming, sparse though it may have been. He also coaxed me into my first full snatch, one of the greatest feelings I can recall. I lifted with him and his little team Wednesdays and Saturdays, doing mostly doubles of each lift, then squatting.
Under his coaching, I lifted in my first competition, a small meet held in Vermont. I lifted in the 69kg class, and totaled 125kg (snatched 50, clean and jerked 75). Nothing to be proud of, other than the fact I actually totaled.
Oh, have I mentioned that I'm 5'11"? That means I'm as skinny as a string bean. At this height, I should be in the 105kg class, or even the 105+. I'm a little low, to say the least.
As I began to lift more, something struck me, hard. I LOVED this sport, and I wanted to be, more than anything, a champion. Every day I practiced the lifts, every night I stayed up into the wee morning hours watching videos from the Olympics, the World's, and various other competitions in which the best of the best threw down against eachother, moving weights seemingly as heavy as the earth itself. I was addicted, awestruck, and filled with an unquenchable desire to win.
Today I train with my new coach, Ivan Rojas, at Risto Sports. I live in the gym, and lift 6 days a week, twice a day. Ivan is my coach, my friend, my "father" and one of the greatest men I've met in my life. He's been everywhere, Bulgaria, the Soviet Union, Cuba, China, Germany, and anywhere else weightlifting makes its home. He knows his stuff. His programming is bullet proof. High volume, carefully calculated percentages which virtually guarantee constant, injury free success. He vowed that if I was determined, he could take me to a world champion level. I believe him, and am willing to get there, or die trying.
In less than a year I've gone from a 50kg snatch to 87kg.
75kg to 102kg.
And I weigh 75kg, which is still extremely light, however is much closer to my final goal of 105.
So that's it, my life, my journey, my inspiration. Actual goals will probably reveal themselves in later articles. For now, though, know that I am a determined lifter, more determined than anyone you've ever met. I will lift with the greats someday, I know it. I won't stop until I cannot fathom the weight I've thrown over my own head. I will lift the bar, or be crushed under it. My form will be impeccable, unstoppable, perfect.
Why this blog? Well, as I end this simple introduction, know one thing. Weightlifting is in a way, poetic. It is as much mental as it is physical. It reveals weakness, inspires thought, demands discipline. The kilos suck the spirit and mind from me, constantly demanding rock solid character and image. To lift, you must be sharp, and mentally unbreakable. This blog is the release of that mental tension, in poetic form. To write is to release, and understand. Most of the time, as I type, I come to stronger realization of what drives me, and what my true being is really composed of. Words on a page, as is an elite lifter, are powerful things.
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