AuthorA 20 year old fitness enthusiast and dedicated Olympic style weightlifter. I am a Level 2 Weightlifting coach, Powerlifter, and non-competitive Irish dancer. I'm determined to live a healthier lifestyle and take care of my body whilst influencing other young people to do so. I never doubt my ability to achieve something; I just change what I'm doing until I succeed. Archives
May 2021
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Problems Weightlifters face4/4/2017 Some of the people who read my blog may already be familiar with the sport of Weightlifting, if not check out my other posts to learn more. For those who compete and lift, you will understand that there are negatives and things that you do hate about weightlifting. This goes for other sports too, there are bound to be negatives and positives. In this post, I am going to discuss the things that I dislike about Olympic Weightlifting. Lifting during the winterOne of the main things I dislike about Weightlifting is when i'm training during the winter. I love the winter and all, especially when it snows but not when I'm too cold to train. The bad thing about Weightlifting is that the bars you lift with are made of metal which causes them to be freezing cold during this time of the year. Also, loading the bar is difficult as disks and anything else metal is cold. Lifting a cold bar often puts me off a lot of the time as it can hurt my hands; causing me to be distracted and fail any attempts. Its simple to say that you should wear gloves, but then you've got the problem of your hands becoming sweaty and you gloves slipping against the barbell. Layering up when training is also important in the winter, except I don't like lifting with a lot of clothes on. This is because I feel that a lot of layers can affect my performance and flexibility which can negatively impact my pb attempts. When lifting you can also get very hot so wearing layers isn't always best. Loading the barIf I'm training on my own, I'll often have to load the bar myself. That's part of the sport really, plus it can help you develop quick thinking when adding up plate numbers. However, that's not to say I like the job of loading. Yes its often tedious, but yes it needs to be done. If you're working on increasing your personal best, you'll be loading weights on to the bar quickly to build up your poundages. But when loading yourself and lifting in between, you can start to fatigue which can have a negative impact on your performance. I've noticed if other people have loaded the bar between lifts for me, I've had more energy to lift the weight rather than using my energy to load the bar itself. Don't get me wrong when I say loading is boring, I appreciate loaders at competitions as I understand that it has to be done. If I'm loading and lifting at the same time, sometimes I can begin to forget which weights I'm suppose to be putting on the bar. ChalkIf you're like me and you lift, you'll understand the importance of chalk when training. Except chalk is rather messy and I hate it. Chalk is great to prevent you hands from slipping on the bar during lifts and is great to increase your grip with heavier poundages. However, when wearing black clothes to lift in, chalk suddenly becomes your worst enemy and doesn't want to get off your clothes. I've often bought a brand new pair of black leggings, worn them to lift in and afterwards they're practically white! Chalk can get all over the platform, bar and weights too. If chalk gets onto the weights and barbells, it agitates me a lot as often its very difficult to get off and makes equipment look dirty. Being put offI hope this one isn't just me, I dislike this a lot though. I'll be lifting in a silent room, all prepared to achieve my new personal best, concentrated and just about to pick up the bar. When suddenly someone I know will walk in and start having a conversation with me! I'll have to drop the bar as i'll lose my focus and wont be able to successfully lift. In competitions most of the time the room is silent unless your team/ coach is giving you encouragement. Some lifters like a lot of noise and aggressive speech, but I don't as everyone's different. I mentally encourage myself and can find it more difficult if someone is shouting something down my ear whilst I'm trying to not drop the bar on myself or the audience. Unless you're a lifter, you won't understand the amount of focus it takes to block out everything around you and still remember what you're doing. Not achieving a PBI think this can apply to other sports, not just weightlifting. But when I decide that I want to try to gain a new personal best, I manage to psych myself up and feel confident that I can lift the weight. Depending on the few lifts beforehand, I may feel positive that I'm going to get the lift or completely discouraged. But when it comes down to me and the bar, its up to you to take on the challenge and beat yourself. After not succeeding at beating my PB, I sometimes become so mentally frustrated as I had the confidence I was going to leave the platform feeling happy. This causes me to try and try again until I'm so physically fatigued that I can no longer even pick the bar up. Sometimes I can feel satisfied with the weight I've managed to lift but sometimes I feel sad and negative; as if its the worst thing in the entire world. Fairly recently I got really annoyed after not being able to achieve a new PB, this funnily resulted in me yelping, throwing a tantrum and kicking my bag across the platform. The screenshots from the video really capture the stages of what happened haha. Afterwards, my family and I all laughed at the sight of my frustration. Atleast I didn't throw the bar! Thanks for reading this post, I hope you can understand some of the problems us Weightlifters face and that you can relate. Please check out my other posts about Olympic Weightlifting here:
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