Hello friends and internet randoms, Happy Tuesday. I’m still riding a high following this past weekend, when I attended the USA Weightlifting Level 1 Sports Performance course (whew) in Washington, DC. As of about two minutes ago I am officially certified, having just passed the online test. Last Friday I also set a date to take the NSCA CSCS exam. After literally years of putting off studying and opting for less intimidating certifications (ones that don’t involve a thick textbook worth of preparatory material), this summer I finally buckled down and went for it. If all goes well, I’ll have met many of the goals nearest and dearest to my heart by the end of the year, which would be an awesome way to start 2020. Fingers crossed.
The whole crew!
Anyway… back to weightlifting! An unfortunate consequence of two days packed with focus and intensive coaching is similar to that of cramming for a college final - it’s easy to forget everything you learned less than a week later. I didn’t get around to writing this post yesterday, and already I feel wisdom nuggets seeping from my brain. In an effort to combat this effect, I am taking two actions:
Action 1) Reflecting and documenting on my greatest takeaways from the course - mostly for myself, with the hope that anyone reading this is able to glean something useful from my experience. This includes learning at 7:10 am on a cold, windy morning that the metro does not run until 8:00 am on Sundays. (After momentary panic, I still made it on time.)
Action 2) Commit to observing coaching sessions at Rose Gold Athletics on a regular basis, about twice per month.
… which leads me to Take Away Number One:
Amanda keeping a close eye on pause drills.
1) No book, podcast, Instagram exercise demo, research summary, article, or any other hands-off experience replaces the value of being physically present to observe a highly experienced coach. While I found the lecture content of the course to be valuable and well formatted, the majority of it was not ground-breaking for a moderately experienced coach or trainer. Having attended various certifications throughout the years, it is not hard to notice that the same foundational exercise science material is always presented with relevant variations for the specialization at hand.
Stuff like (and I paraphrased my notes here):
Power comes from the center of the body and moves out, beginning at the largest joints before moving to the smallest joints.
When it comes to programming and loading, always use the minimum effective dose. Along the same lines, well-executed progressive overload involves minimally and gradually introducing increased weight.
Periodization! There is a rarely a good reason not to keep it simple.
You MUST prioritize recovery if you want to accomplish any sort of performance goal - starting with sleep, nutrition, and making adequate time to cool down. Because, as my old track coach used to say “If you don’t cool down, you might as well never have run.”
… and so forth.
Michael McKenna, head instructor and owner of McKenna’s Gym, and Amanda Rose, assistant instructor for the course and owner of Rose Gold Athletics, did such an incredible job of giving all twenty participants in-depth, one-on-one coaching. This is where the true value of the course became evident. For each drill and lift we performed, they were on us like butter on toast. Cuing was precise, straightforward, persistent and interactive, all the while providing enough psychological space for athletes to process and adjust as a necessary means of learning. A compliment was only to be received when it was well-earned (and let me tell you how freaking fantastic it felt to hear “beautiful!” “perfect!” or “8 out of 10” after using every last brain and muscle cell for the past twenty reps just trying to execute a half-decent clean pull).
Which leads us to Take Away Number Two:
2. Positive reinforcement, not negative reinforcement.
Pre- lift breathing and bracing exercises
This might not mean what you think it means. It does not mean: be a cheerleader, act like the athlete is doing everything right even when they’re not, or batter the athlete over the head with encouraging but insincere statements that are offered in bad faith. People are intuitive and read right through that bullshit (provided they give a damn, and aren’t in the business of fooling themselves, too). I have to catch myself on this all the time, because I believe that my tendency as a coach is to be too encouraging. Not because I want to be a cheerleader (I don’t), but because I have a strong desire to acknowledge effort when I see it. I don’t want someone to become deterred when their seemingly fruitless persistence is not getting them where they want to be, because I know that their work will pay of eventually - even when they don’t see it in the moment. I know that sometimes it is helpful to have a trusted external source reinforce a patient, farsighted perspective in the midst of a frustrating training session. That said - there is a critical difference between acknowledging effort, and reinforcing a faulty movement pattern that may be slowly digging them into a hole. It may seem obvious not to conflate the two, but sometimes it’s easier said than done.
So, what do we mean by positive reinforcement? Simply put, telling someone to do something rather than not to do something. This is anchored in sports psychology, and is based on the way our brains are wired. People are far more receptive to being given a task than being told not to do something.
For example, if someone is struggling with bar path as soon as the bar leaves the ground, it is unhelpful to cue “don’t let the bar get away from you”. Even if the athlete recognizes their tendency to chase the bar, they probably don’t know how to solve it - plus, whatever cue they have been given before has yet to help (obviously). The athlete may become frustrated, and being told not to let the bar get away from them is likely met with the thinking “I know! But I don’t know how to fix it.”
So: Instead, maybe, pause the athlete in their set up, adjust positioning and lat engagement (or whatever), and then have them do lift offs with a focus of pushing the knees out and back, staying over the bar, or feeling the legs load with the bar locked in tight. (But not everything at once… pick one thing. Just one!)
Take Away Number Three:
3. Flair the lats.
Witnessing a beautiful snatch.
This was huge for me, and it was explained using a partner drill. Get the bar in the power position, and depress - don’t retract - the shoulder blades. This should have the effect of locking the bar in toward your body by means of “flairing” the lats. Whether or not you have successfully accomplished this will be determined by your partner: Standing in front of you, they tug on the bar. If the bar flies away from your body by means of your shoulders moving into slight flexion, then your back muscles aren’t doing their job. Reset and try again, playing around until you’ve gotten tighter in the right places. If on your next attempt the bar does not fly away, and you move forward as one unit with the bar still locked in tight, then your lats are successfully flaired. Ta-da! Boom, back tension - a critical component to any lift.
Takeaway Number Four:
4. Fast is bad. Slow is smooth. Smooth is fast. Fast is good.
A teaching phrase stolen from the world of martial arts, this wise nugget serves to call out a most egregious error: using speed to mask weakness. Position is king, position is queen, position is everything - and it must always come first. Advanced lifters don’t miss lifts because they’re weak, they miss lifts due to technical errors. Beginners can get away with bad technique in the midst of neuromuscular pathway formation, their strength and technical capabilities disproportionately matched. Encouraging the introduction of speed prior to solid positioning is creating a band aid which will inevitably deteriorate and fall off. It’s just a matter of time, in the form of plateau or injury - whichever comes first.
Takeaway Number Five:
5. If your [body part] is your weakest link, your [body part] will always be your weakest link.
Hips, knees, back, whatever. This takeaway is not suggesting that working on your weaknesses is useless (obviously, it’s the best thing you can do). This is instead a reminder that strength is relative. Let’s say your back is weak, and evidently holding you back from hitting your next P.R. You then complete eight weeks of dead bugs, rows, resisted back extensions, weighted planks, etc. Your back gets strong AF, you get strong AF, you surpass your previous one rep. Awesome, mission accomplished. Except that training is a cycle. You may not be back at square one, but you are at square two. Square two enters into a training cycle with bigger percentages, and while your back was strong enough to handle the previous percentages, how will it handle the new ones? You’re stronger than you were before, and that got you where you are now. Time to level up and become even stronger, strong enough to handle the new loads that you are introducing. Everything is relative, including strength. Be prepared to come back and re-address weaknesses that rear their head - which you swore was dead - when you take the time to redirect and fix other weaknesses.
And there you have it… five takeaways from my weekend with USAW.
While I could write another essay diving into ten more takeaways, I also have to sleep at some point, and far be it from me not to practice what I preach (just kidding, I have a lifetime of work to do in the realm of training and recovery … and before someone calls me out on my cookie addiction, this is why I leave The Sassy Dietitian to preach nutrition. Also, for the record, I freaking love veggies.)
That said, I will leave you with one more point - not a takeaway per-se, but an opinion that I included on the certification feedback survey. I am including it here because it is a point that I feel strongly about; one that I feel even more strongly about on the occasion that I witness a trainer or coach standing around doing nothing while their client looks like an absolute baboon in the weight room*. Seriously, what is the poor client even paying for? I guarantee it wasn’t for obvious errors in form to go ignored. Anyway, here you have it, my unadulterated opinion in letter form:
“The one thing that I would change is not specific to this course, and applies to the vast majority of certification courses currently offered in fitness/ strength and conditioning - I don't think that a weightlifting coach should earn a certification after one weekend. I feel that this detracts from the significance of the title and lends itself to certifying coaches that should not necessarily be deemed qualified, and perhaps need more time and experience learning. (Honestly, I include myself among this group, and I am not brand new to weightlifting. It is for this reason that I am seeking out mentorship from an advanced weightlifting coach after the course so that I can continue to make a dent in the significant amount that I still don't know!) In other areas of education, a weekend is the same amount of time that corresponds with continuing education contributing to the greater goal, not the ultimate piece of paper that earns the student a respective title.
I would like to see the certification process become more extensive and involve a certain number of hours of observation under a qualified coach, standardized testing of the coach's ability to perform the clean and jerk and snatch, demonstrated ability to work with individuals of all levels, and measured coaching competency.
As an example - for the Russian Kettlebell and Strong First certifications, coaches must pass a standardized technique test for each fundamental movement (graded with a rubric), a conditioning test, and a coaching test. Becoming a Pilates instructor requires 450 hours of observation, practice and lecture, and the minimum number of hours to become a Yoga instructor is 200 hours. The failure rate of these courses is sometimes significant, which results in more reputable coaches and a higher bar - something that everyone could benefit from.
I recognize that every organization operates differently, but I would love for USAW to hold their coaches to a standard looked upon with a level of reverence and respect that makes people think twice before they decide to commit to the certification process. Not to deter potential coaches, but to encourage excellence.
So - all I would ask for is a little more time with all of the same amazing material, and tougher testing standards to raise the bar for becoming a USAW Level 1 Coach. That said, I look forward to learning more from the Level 2 course in the not-so-distant future. Thank you for an amazing course.”
*I am referring here to negligence, laziness, incompetence, or some combination of the three - NOT newer albeit caring coaches who do their best, but have yet to develop the requisite experience to know when to fix every possible mistake. Therein lies a critical difference. Every coach has their ‘off’ days, and I certainly wish mine were fewer and farther between. Indifference as a pattern of behavior uncoupled with any evident desire to change is when all days are off days, and thus become a problem.
