Herrera

Alfredo Herrera is a watchful man. His lips only part in absolute necessity, and 
the words he speak only take the form of Spanish and Russian, with a few 
English phrases thrown in here and there. He is a man of vast experience, a father 
modern weightlifting. He has coached lifters across the globe, and brought the 
Cuban team 5 world records in his first year of duty.  He has also brought gold medals to the Columbian national team, and is an expert in the Soviet weightlifting system, of which he had a huge part in creating.  While others claim depth of experience and concrete knowledge,      their form, their words, their philosophies, all crumble to dust beneath his steely eyes. 

Today, he sat in our small gym and watched me, among other lifters, attempt 
their workouts with great caution, as we all felt his gaze across our bodies.  The gym             eminated thick clouds of unbreakable focus. To say I felt anxious would be a complete and    utter understatement. My only wish was for this little old man, who has coached champions astruly groundbreaking as Pablo Lara, to approve of my attempts, and my discipline to the spor 

Snatch after snatch, jerk after clean, my mind was blank, and my gaze unbroken. 
As the rain poured in record deluge just outside, I knew nothing but the bar. 
Straight and true, I did not miss. I could feel the eyes of the doctor. His 
stare, his sharp mind exploring me, testing me, forcing the best from my 
muscles. 

That day I knew no fatigue, only the bar in my hands

At last, at last the weight was, for the final time that day, perched perfectly 
above my deep split, and deliberately I stood. For a moment I held it there, proud I had not

missed before this god of weightliftng.  It was true.  I had not missed a lift.  They weren't the

heaviest I'd done, nor the most solid, but I had not missed, and I was proud of that.  I brought the bar back to the platform again, and began to unload the plates in silence.  

When I finally worked up the courage to look at Dr. Herrera again, he hadn't moved, and 

somehow expected our eyes to meet.  His lips parted, and for a moment, the world around me dissapeared.

"Good.  Very good."  

My soul jumped from my body.  Approval.  I had gotten approval.  The rain may pour, my 

knees and hips may ache, but I had gotten approval from this god.  

To all who may be interested, I didn't stop there.  Dr. Herrera came and watched my workout the next day too, where I proceeded to solidly snatch 87kg, a Personal Record for me by 2kg.  90 is right around the corner, I can feel it.  Maybe next week, at last, I'll throw more than 

200lbs above my head in one fantastic lift.  

The Evening

This is a place of family, a tight knit community of strong and dedicated people. Tonight we lift, hard and heavy, and then we dine, on Maine's finest delicacy: fresh lobsters from beneath the black waves. We devour the large red insects, slurping out the smallest pieces of protein dense muscle, splattering brine across our shirts and shorts, laughing as we crack the toughest shells and knaw at cartilage. We young litters eat the most, in fact I personally had five of the crimson beasts. It was a meal fit for a king and large enough for the court.

And as the sun goes down, Ivan hands out carefully kept Cuban cigars from a polished mahogany case. German and Nick take them eagerly, clipping them with careful touch and bathing their tips in fire. They puff slowly, savoring the foreign taste in their cheeks.

Then, Ivan pours the rum, a Guatemalan rarity one would never find on US soil. Its from his private collection, an eclectic variety of expensive liquors from around the globe. The lifters sip and puff, and I sit and feel the cool yet remarkably humid evening air. We talk of lifting, and heavy weights, yet as the sky grows dark we forget about that world for a bit. Our aching knees and sore hips vanish from our minds, and amongst the coming night we are free from the kilos, released from beneath the bar.

In this place, just a shallow dip into maine's vast borders, we live in a world all our own. The red plates, the boiled lobster, and cigar smoke make our lives, and allow us to live in peace with ourselves and those who share our love.

We are together, under the bar, and the rising moon.

57 Squats

I rose with the sun this morning, my back under the bar as the orange rays came gently peaking through the garage door windows.  The time had come again, to strain my tired legs under volume few would dare to undertake.  57 squats.  Fifty, freaking, seven.  I cringed at the sight of it on my little sheet of paper, scribbled "6/22 morning w-out."  Was a missing something?  Did I write one too many sets across this little sheet?  Alas, I would be a champion, and thus I would squat.  

I won't lie, the sheer volume made a wimp out of me.  I remembered the feeling of fear when for the first time in my life I crawled under 140kg and forced it from the hole.  It did not compare to the ending doubles on this fateful day.  Two doubles of 120kg, a weight I could easily squat after 20, even 30 reps.  But 50?  After 50, it felt as if I were atlas, with the world on my shoulders.

I'm glad I was alone today, on this humid morning.  My strained yells and bulging eyes would find no one's eardrums, and instead reverberated off the concrete as I finished those two last doubles.  The noise was a purging of sorts.  Rarely do I yell, but today 120kg brought it out of me.  Two, final reps, as slow as molasses, but solid none the less.  I did rise, my legs did not fail me, and 57 reps were at last, in my past.  In revelation I threw the bar from my back, and lay my head back on my tired traps.  The ceiling was all I saw for a couple minutes, blank and white.  Fifty seven reps on nothing but 6 hours of sleep and oatmeal in my belly.  Damn.  

115 kg...not much

Turn up the Volume

Here in Maine, we lift differently.  While others drop heavy singles forward and behind, over and over, we quietly nail triples and doubles with ease, throwing weight above our head consistantly and with perfect form.  Five hundred repetitions per week?  Bare minimum.  We are always lifting.  We don't wait to fail, unsure of our strength, we build it quickly, effectively, perfectly, with repitition, just as the old Soviets did.  And we obtain the same success, as is evident in every competition we wipe through. We are hardened, prepared, un-phased by the heavy stuff.  It is instinctual, the technique forged in the fire of pure, unfaltering, repetition.

Volume is the name of the game.  I learned that quickly under Ivan's coaching.  We as American weightlifters are flawed in believing that heavy singles are what creates success and confidence under the bar.  Failing heavy weight does not teach you how to lift heavy weight, it only severely taxes the central nervous system and will, undoubtedly, cause injury.  In the words of the famous Coach Rojas, "It doesn't matter how much you lift, but how many times you lift."

And the top weightlifting forces around the world completely agree.  Cuba, the Soviet Union, Germany, and other countries all use similar, if not identical systems as the one we (and I), lift on.  High volume is the only way to guarantee success on the world stages of weightlifting, where every lift determines whether you are a champion, or an absolute nobody.  Volume, reps, and constant, unceasing weightlifting will produce champions.

I remember attending a coach certification class in order to obtain my level 1 weightlifting coaching licence.  This class was obviously run through USA weightlifting, a weakling in the sport compared to countries such as Russia, Bulgaria, Pakistan, Germany, and pretty much anywhere else.  The teacher boasted how our program was such a fantastic piece of work, created by top scientists and guaranteed to produce champions.  Yet we haven't had an Olympic weightlifter who's actually medaled at the Olympics in...well...forever.  We, SUCK.  While I stood there, chuckling at her misplaced confidence, I watched her lifters demonstrate their "prowess."  I watched each and every one of them miss single after heavy single, failing in both technique and overall strength.  It was so futile.  I wanted to scream. This country is doomed to failure on the platform as long as we refuse to adapt a different method of training.  Heavy singles do NOT make champions, at least not with our damn programming.  The Bulgarians might disagree, but hey, we're not Bulgarians.  And they were all busted for drugs anyway.

I'll say it one more time.  Volume...is...key.  High volume creates discipline, rock solid technique, and unbreakable mental strength.  It hardens muscles and builds champions from the ground up.  It is brutal, unforgiving, tiring, and uninspiring.  But it works, oh god does it work.

And at the end of the day, when I drop my final weight, to know I didn't miss any reps, even 85-90% triples, is a fantastic feeling.

We Squat, Because We Must

We are calm, as we step underneath the bar.  We make little noise other than a pressured hiss as we force our traps against the cold steel, squeezing tight our shoulders and forcing abdominals in rigid line.  We consider it monotonous, yet crucially necessary.  To be driven into the ground repeatedly, deep into vast realms of hip and hamstring flexibility, maintaining upright posture far below what those around us would consider sane.  We are comfortable in the hole, and powerful coming out of it.  We are precise, empowered, and determined, as the weight oscillates on our back, plates slammed tight against each other.  We do it for the strength it builds, the rigidity it provides, and the confidence it provokes in our being.   Yes, we squat because we must.  It is a brutal contrast to the lifts that comprise our sport. The snatch is an instant of power, a frozen moment of artistic significance as weight is transferred perfectly from floor to lockout.  The clean is comprised of pure power, a testament to the raw force a human being is truly capable of producing.  The jerk is like lightning, instant and stunning, a plyometric clap of godly thunder.  But the squat, the squat remains silently in the background, a nagging piece of lifting monotony.  It brings us back to earth as our celebrations end, and our personal bests fade into memory.  It forces us back down, underneath the unforgiving push of steel and rubber.  And we are forever condemned to rise again and again from the depths of torture and uncompromising weight.  We are pushed down, and we must push back, one with the hand of gravity.  Yes, we rise with the sun, the bar on our back, and throw it off only as we fall into caressing sheets.  As long as we dream of gold draped around our necks, we are condemned to squat.  

My Introduction As Liftm0re

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.