On Saturday morning at Indianapolis Fitness and Sports Training in addition to our usual cast of fitness clients and athletes, you’ll find Grant “Rufus” Gardis working with his young weightlifters and athletes on our weightlifting platforms. When he’s not certifying coaches for USA Weightlifting, Rufus does amazing things in working with several of our IFAST regulars and athletes in regard to weightlifting technique and sports performance, and we consider it an honor to have him as part of our team. You’ll be hard pressed to find a better weightlifting coach.
Rufus’ young lifters recently competed successfully and well-beyond expectations, and I was so impressed with his methodology that I had to interview him to find out how he got such great results.
Bill: You just got back from competition with a couple of you lifters. How’d they do?
Rufus: I was really pleased with the results of both of my athletes. They lifted well and more importantly their technique was really good. Of course like everything else, the technique could have been better, but for what I would consider beginners, it was really, really good.
To give you a little background on my two lifters Ryan is 15 years old and competes in the 77 kg weight class. Kevin is 14 years old and competes in the 85 kg weight class. They both started serious weightlifting training about 9 months ago. The focus of their training has been on perfecting the technique of the snatch and the clean and jerk. The boys’ last competition was December 17, 2011. At this meet, Kevin totaled 92 kg and a bodyweight of 73.95 kg. Ryan, competing at a body weight of 71.44 kg, totaled 115 kg. On May 19, 2012, Ryan totaled 151 kg at a bodyweight of 76.6 kg and Kevin totaled 122 kg and a body weight of 79.7 kg.
In my mind, these are huge jumps considering their training loads for the past few months.
Bill: That’s impressive progress for beginning weightlifters. Can you outline how you approached their training?
Rufus: In January at USA Weightlifting Junior National Championships, I had the opportunity to speak with Zygmunt Smalcerz, the National Coach for USA Weightlifting, at length about how they develop weightlifters in his native country of Poland. He told me then that 14 and under and beginners cannot lift weights any heavier than 50% of their body weight in the snatch and 100% of their body weight in the clean and jerk. The point being that the idea is to perfect the technique of the lifts. Also, in other conversations with Dragmir Ciorsolan, himself a former national coach for USA Weightlifting, he told me that the first two years were all about technique. Never about strength. He would always say the strength will come.
I decided to put their words into practice. Starting January 1 of this year the boys and I embarked on our journey. During this time we focused on the technique of the lifts and on corrective exercises. We also used this time to work on our core, hip, and shoulder stability. We included push-ups , pull ups, single leg work, and various presses from a split squat position. Any lift or lift related exercise was done for 5 reps and all other pressing squatting exercises were done for 8 to 10 reps. We limited the number of sets to no more than four for each exercise.
As you can see, we did a lot of volume, and the lifts were kept in accordance to Zygmunt’s recommendations. We did vary from these recommendations on Saturdays when we train at IFAST, and I would let the kids go up in weight until they either missed or the technique broke down. A lot of times, I would have a predetermined weight which they could go up to, usually about 80 or 85% of their maximum, and we tried to get 3 or 4 sets at this weight. Once again, I let technique be the judge.
The amazing thing to me was how few lifts that we missed. Even when doing five repetitions with a snatch or clean and jerk we weren’t missing. The technique may not be exactly what I wanted, but we were missing any lifts.
It was during this time in late January or early February I picked up a book entitled “The Talent Code”. In this book the author describes a system that he calls deep practice. Now, this deep practice is nothing new. It’s a system of breaking down a skill into several parts and perfecting each part and going on to the next part and then putting the parts gradually together to form the whole skill. It is used by musicians to learn new songs they want to play, by tennis players, soccer players, and even the Marine Corps uses this technique when teaching soldiers how to shoot a rifle. As best I can tell, even weightlifters throughout the world use this the practice with their beginning weightlifters to perfect the technique of the snatch and clean and jerk.
What we did was nothing really earth shattering once you stop and look at it. We quit looking at the result and concentrated our efforts on perfecting the technique. We started with each athlete just practicing a movement with no weight, literally just with air. We just practiced getting into the positions and moving the imaginary bar perfectly. When they made a mistake, they’d repeat the movement until it was correct. Once that became consistent, we put a light bar in their hands and let them practice the movement. At this point, we didn’t worry about speed of the bar or the speed of going under the bar. It was all about the technique. As the technique improved, we added a little more weight to the bar. Proceeding each set with the loaded bar, the kids did 5 to 10 repetitions of the movement they were about to perform just using air. We called this modeling. If a rep wasn’t perfect using the weight, we went back to either modeling with air or just the empty bar. The weight on the bar was of no consequence. The other thing I noticed that was amazing to me was that once they really bought into what we were doing, they became more and more focused on the technique with each training session.
I think the important to reiterate that we didn’t look at the end result as being total amount of weight lifted. For us, the end result was the perfection of the rep or of the movement. The one time that that we did go for a true maximum was the Saturday before the competition and that was only to find out what we would do in the meet.
Bill: What is the big take-away from your experience with this programming that other coaches can utilize to improve their own programs?
Rufus: The idea that I hope one would come away with is that we need to focus more on skill development as opposed to the end result which, in the case of our weightlifters, would be the total weight lifted. My kids still have a long way to go to perfecting of the technique. My plan is for approximately the next one and a half to 2 years to stay with this program. Along the way we will be competing in meets but the focus will always be technique before strength.
Bill: Thanks Rufus… See you next Saturday.
