Consistency



This is video I shot back in 2007 when I paid a visit to the wonderful state of Washington to spend a few days with Melanie Roach and her coach John Thrush. Mel was working very hard to come back from back surgery and make the 2008 Olympic team. I went out to take some video for John for a more in depth look at her technique and to document improvement.

As you will see in the graphs at the end of this video, Mel had made some great strides in her snatch technique and was no longer losing velocity on the barbell like she was prior to surgery. I was able to show her this using video and velocity measures captured via Dartfish. Eventually, Melanie went on to make the 2008 US Olympic team and place 6th in Beijing, snatching a lifetime best of 83 kg and going 3/3 in the snatch. She also set a new American record in the total with a 193 kg total, which included a 110 kg Clean & Jerk. This record still stands, as does her American record of 113 kg in the Clean & Jerk which was set in 1998.

To date, Melanie is the last female to clean and jerk double bodyweight and over in competition. She recently came out of retirement to compete at the 2014 American Open where she placed 1st in the 53 kg weight class, just 3 days shy of her 40th birthday, going 6/6 (67,70,73 90, 94, 97) and posting a 170 kg total. The video of her 97 kg clean &jerk can be found here.

Note the consistency and focus on every lift in this video. There is a quiet purpose to every repetition. This is what it takes to be one of the best the US has ever had.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Form and Function

Image
Way back in 2002, I scanned these images by Howard Schatz from Sports Illustrated (October 14, 2002). A fascinating array of elite female athlete physiques, heights and weights, eh? These are some of the women featured in his book Athlete --a very cool pictorial essay that celebrates athletic form and function.
Read more

It's About Preparing People, not Preventing Injuries

ACL injuries do not happen in a void. People sustain injuries when their infrastructure is unable to manage a specific set of physical circumstances. To describe the mechanism of the injury without the context of the person and their level/type of sport, is to miss valuable insight. In sport, we prepare the person, to the best of our understanding, to meet the physical demands of that sport. We do not just work to prevent one particular injury; we prepare athletes to navigate the total sport physical environment. By "we" I mean the coaching and support staff -- specifically the athletic development staff.  Athletic development (AD) coaches prepare athletes through the development of physical literacy and movement competencies via movement progressions. It is more than strength, power, agility; it is the acquisition of knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors to manage themselves within the entire sporting environment. At the higher levels of sport, AD coaches coordinate wit...
Read more

Strength: Overcoming Tradition & Assumptions

Image
The term "strength" comes with many images and stereotypes. The most common stereotype usually includes intimidating men who look like action figures, in spaces that look like iron jungles. Strength is associated with mass gain, limb girth increases, muscle hypertrophy and maximal force production against an external load. With regard to lower body strength, we speak in terms of multiples of bodyweight (BW), with the ratio of 2x BW historically viewed as necessary and desirable. We have historically trained in terms of 1 RM. There has been a trend recently to adopt a VBT (velocity based training) approach, as we know 1 RM changes on a daily basis and technology now allows us to more finely tune things with velocity as the target within each set. These things can be helpful as we initially learn to measure and document progress. But I think it is important to step back from this narrow outlook, because this view of strength does not serve all of us well, in either the rehab or...
Read more