Certifiable

Last week Matt and I attended a USA Weightlifting Level 1 Coaching Certification.  My score on the final exam was 95%.  Matt, 98% (spread is within the test's margin of error, but I easily admit Matt's easily 3% better than I am.)  Our level of satisfaction with the course, instruction and weekend overall:  exactly 0%.  I now know why the United States fails so miserably at weightlifting on the world (i.e. olympic) stage.  The material was dated, the instruction poor at best, the facility cramped and the barbells junky and few.  (the food is terrible and portions are small!)  Could have dealt with far worse space/equipment if only there was good material or decent instruction, if only we were learning anything at all.  Anything at all.  Really, there was not one thing to feel good about, save that I had a good friend along with me.  Tuition, travel, lodging, food...all down the drain.  One thing after another to let us down.

Pretty much everybody knows, or should know, a good athletic foot position is toes-forward.  Early on many people squat with their toes turned out so that their knees can track over them.  Knees-out helps the femurs generate torque and lift the caboose--it's a squat.  Toes-out solves the torsion problem positionally but the position presents a big compromise: now your feet are in a not-so-athletic position and you run the risk of motor-patterning a bad foot.  Ideally, one squats knees out over straight toes, generating torque muscularly and maximally.  This requires strength and flexibility and those can take some time to develop.  We tolerate less-than-ideal foot position to keep the knee safe and maintain balance, but we're ever cultivating more umph, better mechanics.  Never under the delusion that it's ideal.  Try this:  stand with your toes forward and heels down.  Squeeze your belly and your butt.  Relax.  Now turn your toes out and do the same thing, belly & butt.  Get it?

Right.  So.  Day one lesson, lesson one.  We had not even gone over a dead lift, you know, the way you pull the bar off the ground (only later did we realize we would NEVER COVER THE DEAD LIFT.  Imagine teaching someone to dive w/o making sure he knew how to swim or even put on trunks) when someone asked about the feet.  Strong woman, eager to learn, worried she was too duck footed.  Matt and I glanced at each other.  We both had an uh-oh kind of feeling from the classroom.  Instructor says:  Oh yeah, you gotta let your toes point out.  And then demonstrates a "good" toe-out position.  Yeah.  See if I have straight toes, I get pulled forward. (BECAUSE YOUR FLEXIBLE AS A 2x4 YOU CLOWN)  More demonstrating, AS IF HIS OWN SHITTY MECHANICS were proof everyone else needs shitty mechanics too.  Oh my god.  Matt and I were in a race to show a good toe-forward, torso-upright squat, avec balance.  Matt beat me to it (3%) and his squat is better anyway, but I can squat with my feet forward, knees out, torso upright, and balanced.  I know I can b/c I've been working at it for a goddamn YEAR (or more).  Guy in our group kinda went pop-eyed at Matt's pretty-near perfect squat and promptly left our group.

There was an assistant coach who squatted with knees in.  No lie.  Lots of people do, but none that call themselves weightlifting coaches.

They didn't like how Matt throws his head in the snatch (he uses it to open his hips better than you've probably ever seen hips open).  It is true that often this will lead to pulling the bar away, but Matt does not.  They still wanted him to fix it.  It became clear by the end that they could find no other fault, so they held on to the one they thought they found.

The only thing they could coach me to do was "shuffle my feet," that is, they wanted a wider landing position.  Fair enough, but plenty of drill work is done in the jumping stance (this was all empty barbell work).  And if you remember a Coach's Eye vid I posted a while back, I diagnosed my own (what I thought at the time) foot fault.  Actually as I've been studying/thinking through the problem, I think I'm so right-dominant that under load, my right foot shoots (shuffles, their word) out farther 'cause it can.  I've since seen it in some other (much stronger) power cleans.  My point here being, I got plenty of things to work on but my coach this weekend wasn't really up to the job.  If he was even aware of having a job.

They look down their noses at CrossFit (despite the fact that 80% of the class trained at boxes).  I knew they would and am not really troubled by it per se.  I try to live and let live and honestly, I think weightlifters are some of the most athletic humans to ever roam the planet.  But the "you can't do 30 snatches" criticism of CrossFit is stupid.  AND I find the doctrinaire debates so enervating.  Yawn.  CrossFit has it weirdnesses, but it has pretty much saved the sport of weightlifting in America.  The sport of weightlifting doesn't know it.  Watch Froning do Isabel.  You can do 30 snatches if you're fit enough to do 30 snatches.  Turn your toes out it will help balance you, if you can't get your torso upright.

There was no, I mean NONE, talk of conditioning.  Just lift weights.  with your toes out so you can balance.

The cert was in East Stroudsburg.  That's in the Poconos.  So is the Pocono International Speedway.  There was a NASCAR race on the same weekend.  The gene pool in the Stroudsburgs is more like a test tube.  Add to that the world's largest spectator "sport" whose main corporate sponsor is big tobacco and it's very easy to assume natural selection can be not so selective.

There's gotta be a big take away from the weekend, even if I have to go meta-meta to find it.  Right??  I'll keep thinking and let you know...

Dicky Betts played an outdoor concert.  Sound system so bad, I couldn't recognize one song.  Local cover band doing all the Journey hits.  And Billy Joel.  I'm really starting to worry myself, how my disgust of Billy Joel is starting to wane.  Seriously.  But I'll save it for another post.  Or, better, maybe not.

Thought I might get into some nutrition stuff today, but that's probably enough.  I'm over it, have recovered.   HG and I have been pretty serious OUTLAW followers for the last two weeks.  Loving it. What I really love is having my training partner back.

Last one:  in the classroom they showed a clip of Pyros Dimas in London setting world record in the snatch.  He happens to throw his head out the back of the building.  One student commented; no engagement from instructor.  Shoulder shrug.  Later, in a little quizz-ish back and forth (that was so 8th grade and annoying b/c it was them and totally could have worked if it was cool and edifying but whatever) instructor asked "what can happen when you throw your head back in the jump?"

Matt: "world records."