 So did you know James before you did a podcast with him? Do you guys have any history or was it the first time you really met him? Yeah, so no, I met James long time before I did the podcast with him. Just he was actually doing a talk. This is way before James. I think James had about 16,000 followers when I first met him. Okay. And he was talking at BodyPowerExpo and a girl that I know there was like, look, come and listen to this guy chat. And I went into this hall and sat down at the back and he must have had about 100 people there. And I sat and had a watched him. I just messaged him after the after he finished and just said, bro, I really enjoyed, you know, your talk because he's such a funny guy. And the points he was getting across were great, but in a very easy format. Totally. And then it was about six, I guess, six months after that point, like he messaged back and said, cool, man, thank you. He was in Ibiza and I was in Ibiza. And both our followers are like, you and James need to hang out. And we ended up meeting up in Ibiza, had a night out, and then the rest of history had been good friends since. Oh, very cool. I'm trying to remember when I first linked up with you two. Shit, I think I found you. 2018. It was a while ago, yeah? Yeah, it was a Sunday. I don't even remember. Do you remember what it was? I don't know if I saw a video or something you were talking about and I just liked the content that you were putting out. And I think at that time I was looking for somebody in the Olympic lifting space. That I thought was putting out really good information. And I began following you up to that. And then since then we've been kind of bouncing back and forth, trying to get you on the show. So I'm excited, dude. Excited to have you here. Thank you. You came a long way, man. Yeah. Oh, I've been pinballing the world at the moment. Yeah, Denver, I saw your stop in Denver look fucking brutal. Did you see his video? No. Oh, yeah, it looked nasty there. I've just been in Banff and I was like, right, this place is cold. And then got off at Denver, I was like, whoa, next level. They made us walk off the plane. I was like, I'm going to freeze before I get there. They were like spraying, probably spraying the plane with hot water or what are we talking about? Yeah. Really? Yeah. Well, you're in San Jose now. Not too cold out here. Beautiful. Yeah, so we wanted to talk to you about Olympic lifting as it relates to the average fitness kind of health and fitness consumer. Now we've been in fitness for a long time and Olympic lifting, nobody did it outside of actual Olympic lifters. Then CrossFit came along and popularized some of the lifts. And as being a trainer, I understood the value of Olympic lifts. I also understand the complexity of Olympic lifting. And one thing that always stood out to me was, you know, if you took like a power lifter and a bodybuilder and Olympic lifter and you had them perform athletic endeavors, the Olympic lifters always seem to be just phenomenally athletic. It just has a very functional type of strength and ability. And so I think there's a lot of value for that kind of training. But I think you also, and correct me if I'm wrong, need to approach it with a high level of caution and make sure that you do things properly. For the people who may not be quite aware, what exactly is Olympic lifting? What does it consist of? What does it look like? What makes it different? Yeah. So Olympic weightlifting is made up of the two competitive movements, which are the snatch and the clean and jerk. And then as you've mentioned, I think through, there's various different exercises and stuff that we'll use in terms of the training to develop our ability in Olympic weightlifting. But then there's much simpler movements, like the power snatches and the power cleans, which you'll see more commonly used in any sports that are looking to improve power output or in crossfit and more simplified movement of the snatch and the clean and jerk and using a competitive format too. Now, you said power. What's the difference between power and strength? I'm sure we have listeners right now who hear the two and think of them as being interchangeable, and it doesn't help that power lifting is called power lifting. Exactly. Even though they're showing strength and power. What is the difference between power and strength and how do they work with each other? Yeah, so for me, it's exactly like you said with power lifting. Power lifting should be called strength lifting, and Olympic lifting should be the one that's referred to as the powerful movement because obviously we're producing the speed element of Olympic weightlifting that makes it a hell of a lot more powerful than power lifting. So for me with the exercises that you'll have in Olympic weightlifting, they do say that it's one of the fastest movements in sport in terms of the snatch and how quickly it's executed. So that's the powerful element of the Olympic list for sure. So strength would be I'm lifting something heavy. Power would be I can lift something quickly and explosively. Now, how would the average person, how do you think the average person would benefit from that? Why would somebody even want to develop any level of power? Or, you know, let's take a step back. Does getting stronger automatically contribute to more power? No, not necessarily because this is the thing where when you say you start comparing bodybuilders or power lifters against Olympic weightlifters, you can be extremely strong and have an incredible back squat or front squat or deadlift and that not carry over into the Olympic movements. And I think one of the biggest reasons why that doesn't necessarily happen is because of the flexibility and mobility required in the Olympic lifts as well. Which is why, you know, you can put me up against, say, you know, Bass, for example, Sebastian and look at the number sees moving but we've tried many a times to get him to do the Olympic movements and he can't get it going anywhere and this because we've got to need to produce a lot more force over a short distance of time. So that being said, what are some of the prerequisites that you look for or you tell? Someone walks in the street and they're like, okay, this sounds great. Olympic lifting sounds like something I should be doing or should consider. What are some of the things that you're telling them they need to do first or what are you looking at as a coach? Yeah, so the first thing for me before I'm almost getting into Olympic weightlifting, I'm looking at how that they can move. So I'll do with any of my guys that I'm coaching or even online, they have to complete a fundamental movement package if you like. First, before I'll even think about sticking a bar in their hands and this is one of the biggest things with Olympic weightlifting, people get in and they go straight to pick up the bar and go, right, let's learn how to Olympic lift. Whereas they missed that huge and most important bit like I've mentioned about moving well first before even thinking about touching a barbell. So sometimes I can spend up to two, three weeks with an athlete or with someone that's come in the door and gone, honor Olympic weightlifes and they teach me just trying to get them to be aware of their body and getting all the positions that we need to be in when we're Olympic weightlifting for it to be most efficient and only then do I just go and stick a bar in the hand and start teaching them how to do an overhead squat, for example. Now what are some of the movements that you'll look at and have them do? Like a squat assessment or you have them do looking at wrist mobility, what are the things that you'll look at? Yes, one of the key things is obviously overhead mobility and upper thoracic mobility. So that's bringing hands up and behind the headline. That'll be a huge thing that we'd look at and then obviously squat mobility to be most efficient in the Olympic lifts you need to be able to sit as deep as possible in a strong and upright position. So those would be my key areas and then in terms of specific areas that need to have the mobility to be ankles, hips, upper thoracic and shoulders. What do you see most of the issues when someone comes in and wants to work with you? Where do you typically say, okay, this is a common one I need to work on? Is it the thoracic? Thoracic's one, but that generally comes to you can have people that come in from a sporting background that have done bench press, et cetera, and they're very tight in the upper back there and that will restrict them, but I'd say more commonly, hips. For not many people, although in a sport specific background like CrossFit, weightlifting, you will see people doing full range of squats, but the general public out there will not know what a full squat looks like. Same thing we see when we would train people in gym. Do you think that because also you're allowed to wear like lifted shoes, right? So it kind of like supports that if you have not the most ideal ankle mobility, you can kind of get away with a little bit more of that way. Yeah, well for sure when that's one of the most popular questions is like, is it worth getting Olympic weightlifting shoes when you start out? And for me, weightlifting shoes are far more important if you're a beginner than they are for an expert because they do give you that level of stability and with the raised heel obviously means that that ankle doesn't have to be as mobile as it would do in flat shoes. So I'll always recommend it for people, but with it always being new shoes brought out people always go for that quick fix. They're like, okay, I'm going to get the weightlifting shoes and I'm all of a sudden going to have amazing mobility and be able to do a great score. As we do it's like in any sport, a new golf club comes out. You're like, oh, yeah, that's going to help me hit it 10 yards further. It's that quick fix, you know, and it doesn't, you can't do that with mobility. Where would you rank in terms of complexity? I know where I would rank it, but I would like to hear from you. Where would you rank in terms of complexity of all the resistance weightlifting modalities, right? Powerlifting, bodybuilding and all the different types of exercise. And then you have Olympic lifting. Where would you rank it in terms of complexity and skill level or skill needed? Would you rank Olympic lifting at the top in terms of just because of the speed and the form needed? Yeah, I think for sure looking from an outsider's point of view in an Olympic weightlifting you go even just watching it, you go that's obviously the most complex one, but as I've spent time working with powerlifters, working with bodybuilders just to broaden my understanding of how they train, there's also a huge element of complexity and the technique behind those movements as well which for the average viewer they wouldn't recognize that. So I'd say there's the elements of technique for all of them, but I think because of the time taken for the Olympic lift to happen, it being so short, it is probably the most cool. With that and the joint mobility required for Olympic lifting, right? You can get away as a powerlifter and a bodybuilder and do half reps and shorten range of motion on many movements. Obviously if you're powerlifting you have to at least break the 90 in a squat to get the lights, right? But other than that you could get away with shorter range of motion or Olympic lifting. I mean to me that's the real complexity of it is that it requires really good joint mobility that I find or at least I found training clients for decades those the average person that walked in the gym just didn't have that and I'd spend months sometimes longer trying to get them to be able to take a joint through full range of motion much less teach a complex movement like Olympic lifting. I look at it as like the pinnacle of generating power but also like the stability element has to be there too. So you have to be able to move incredibly well, incredibly fast and be able to stabilize it all at the same time. So you know those three things have you worked with a bodybuilder and a powerlifter and how would you say like they differ in terms of like trying to then teach them an Olympic lift like what are some of the barriers there? Yeah well I think just going back like you said around you know getting them to move well first and have that stability element and this is one of the biggest things for me when it comes to mobilizing for Olympic weightlifting is you can be mobile and be flexible but then we need for Olympic weightlifting need to be mobile under load and therefore that's one of my biggest approaches in the way that I mobilized for Olympic weightlifting is you have to do the exercises under element of load or a much higher level of resistance than what you would get doing a static stretch necessarily which is why for me using exercises like soft press doing the actual overhead squat is the best way to actually improve that so people come to me and they go sunny I can't do an overhead squat I can't break parallel and 9 times out of 10 I'm actually asking them just to work through the range they can even just with a little bit of load and then over a period of time you're able to get lower and lower into that position without doing any magical exercise it just takes time actually going through that range that you've got and then okay I can go a little bit lower this time but what happens is people go right this is my level of range that I've got and then they go I'm just going to start stacking on more weight and that range gets shorter and shorter and shorter whereas I always say to my guys right let's do this with a 20 kilo bar until you've got a full range we don't go any heavier than the 20 kilo bar and then you end up developing the strength and stability through the full range rather than someone gets to you know they can power snatch 40 kilos for 50 and all of a sudden they get pushed into a compromising position that results in them hurting themselves and this is one of the biggest things where you see so many injuries in Olympic weightlifting because people are dropping into positions that they haven't got that stability and strength in first. So I'm curious because mobility has become such a buzz term in the last decade in our space and up has popped all these different certifications and techniques and there's different camps on what is the best way to increase mobility what do you think about things like are you familiar with FRC or Kinstretch, Aldoah, are you familiar with some of those? No, not completely. I know you said you wrote like a mobility course correct? Now are all the exercises, are they all done with like load and challenging range of motion or do you have some body weight movements that you're doing and you try and intensify them? With some metrics? Yeah, what does some of it look like? Yeah, so for me like the exercises that wouldn't be in so intense is what I'd like to call glides. So I'm starting to work on for example the knee tracking over the toe in the bottom position okay but I'm not necessarily in my squat I may just be putting weight on top of my knee and working on tracking knee over toe so that's what I would refer to as more of a glide and would be a low intensity movement. Just getting the body used to moving into the range that we're going to want it to do with 100 kilos eventually and then the more intense ones would be sport specific like I said the overhead squats the socks press which I'd say is extremely complex for a lot of people to do that again is then starting to build that stability overhead through that range. You mentioned time you know how it takes time which 100% completely agree and when I think of you know resistance training exercises I can rank them in terms of risk versus reward and oftentimes some exercises have they're very safe when done properly but if you move them outside of improper form by one or two degrees they become very dangerous and other exercises that may not be the case for example a dumbbell curl I can be off my form can be off by 10% I'm probably not going to hurt myself but I noticed with Olympic lifts if you're off by 10% your risk of injury is extremely high which is probably but if you do it right it's not dangerous right which is probably why it takes so much time when you want to take your time when you get a new person coming in no experience Olympic lifting otherwise healthy right how long typically do you take does it take before you have this person do Olympic lifts with decent load how long does that process look like and be totally honest yeah it depends what we call decent I definitely say age would come into a huge factor of it in terms of what I'd be looking them to achieve well how long would you take them before they do Olympic lifts with just the bar no experience before you have them do enough with the bar full Olympic lifts if I'd say if they had bad mobility and couldn't get into positions which I think you're referring to I would say it would take nearly a month for them to be closer to producing a good movement pattern with a snatch and a clean and jerk but one of the biggest things with this is as well is how often are you practicing and for me when you're learning Olympic weight lifting to begin with it needs to be at least three times a week to actually start developing a consistent movement pattern because sometimes when you go in your Olympic lifting you stand over the bar and every lift looks different and it's hard to actually develop any consistency, stability through any range if the movement is not consistent a lot so that's why there is that need to really have a coach when you're starting Olympic weight lifting or at least have someone that's consistently watching what you're doing so that you're getting enough feedback to know okay this is in the position that I need to be in do you have a sort of a ritual that you teach somebody coming up even just to approach the bar the grip, where you stand that whole process so they can try and duplicate it as best as possible well you said process there and that's the key thing for me and I think with Olympic weight lifting in general that psychological side of it is a huge factor that people struggle with that isn't necessarily talked about and one of the best ways to me not only to develop the consistency but to overcome that psychological aspect of if I miss this weight it's going to hurt me or if I don't get this I miss my PEB etc is having the process so for me that's a huge part when I'm working with the beginner it's having what I like to call think box and play box and I learned that when I was playing golf and I step back behind the bar and this is where I'm focusing on the technical cues of what my coach or what I'm trying to execute on that session which may be for example staying on flat feet or keeping the bar closer through the middle so I do all my thinking in the think box once I step out of my think box the process begins and everyone will have their own things that they'll do in their process whether it's a flick of their hair whether it's an adjustment of their shorts but that's part of the process so I'll always grip right hand first then left hand and then I get my feet set and then as I step over the bar and I which you know a lot of beginners will you guys will know this is feeling as well and you go oh god this is going to be heavy sort of moment what I do then is I count myself in so I go five four three two one and just purely by thinking about counting I distract myself from thinking about those negative thoughts or the things that are going to prevent me from executing the process well and then when I get to one I just go and that way always having that routine and then I make a lift and I put the bar down and I step back and I go again I'm starting to develop a consistent routine and getting into my setup position yeah something you said just a few minutes ago I thought that was very interesting is you know when you're practicing and you're learning in the beginning especially every lift looks different and I totally know what that feels like I've tried practicing certain you know very rudimentary beginner type Olympic lifts not even the actual Olympic lifts themselves I know exactly what that feels like it's like one and I watch the next one that didn't look like this first one and I have to practice over and over again what role does fatigue play in that in other words are you letting people especially when you're teaching them Olympic lifts are you pushing them to fatigue or is that like a no no because when fatigue sets in I know with other lifts form tends to go out the window yeah and again I think when people think right I'm going to practice my Olympic weight lifting today they think right let's go light let's go with an empty bar and let's do lots of repetitions but if you're doing sets of maybe five reps with a bar by set three or four you're fatigued and therefore you're not going to be executing the same technique and use it just with the bar yeah of course and this is the thing for me and something that when I'm working on my technique with my coach so when we're coming out of like a strength block and now we're working in transition into develop it turning that strength into strength technique phase we're doing maybe ten sets of one rep working on my technique at seventy to eighty percent which is more relative to where I'm going to be working when I'm going towards a maximum lift as opposed to doing five sets of five at forty fifty percent of my best and just drilling it this is so important because with with other resistance training modalities fatigue is a part of the programming like if I'm doing bodybuilding style training and I'm going to go work out I'm trying to get some some somewhat fatigued I'm trying to feel the muscles burn I'm trying to get a pump especially as it become more advanced with Olympic lifting it's a different mentality right it's a totally different mentality yeah that's it so we don't want to be ever practicing technique under fatigue I think in the strength movements that will be doing for Olympic weight lifting either squats the pools yes then we can work in the traditional yeah more traditional compound movements we can work towards fatigue but when we work in technique for Olympic weight lifting you want to be thinking low repetition explode yeah and explode closer to those working percentages that you would be doing during your normal training program and I think that's a big mistake a lot of people do for beginners getting into the sport is where they deem technical practice should take place so you must it must be like nails on a chalkboard for you to watch a CrossFit wad where people are doing Olympic lifts in circuits to fatigue and then sprinting outside yeah how did like is that something that when you look at that are you just going wow what is going on or you consider that a completely different sport because if you did consider Olympic lifting it would be like that for you that's that's a great question and for me CrossFit has been a huge part of my role in Olympic weightlifting you know I started weightlifting in 2005 or 2004 where CrossFit wasn't really a big thing and I've seen the sort of sport develop far beyond weightlifting and then I've seen weightlifting become a part of CrossFit and you know without CrossFit for me I wouldn't really have a job so I think where whereas a lot of weightlifters when CrossFit came about were like what is this sport they're doing terrible practice of the Olympic movements I was like okay now here's an opportunity for me to actually educate the market and like you can't expect if you come in and you've never done gymnastics before right and you have six months experience in gymnastics I guarantee if a gymnast come in and had a look at your technique on a triple backflip they'll be like it's terrible sure yeah okay so people forget how long it takes to actually have good technique in any sport practice so putting that aside and going right it's going to take at least a year two years before people are going to be executing the weightlifting in a good movement pattern and actually going right let's be patient with these guys and get them moving well first so for me if you're looking at a movement that a CrossFit would do i.e. barbell cycling that is a completely different technique that you would use to do a heavy one RM and you do have to separate those two movements when you're watching Matt Fraser or Eddie Hall just doing grace or everything as far as you can which is ultimately just like a reverse curl versus a one RM lift but why always say to the CrossFit guys and that's why you see the the best CrossFit is in the world the likes of Matt Fraser nor Olson dominating the sport is because they learnt how to execute a one RM heavy snatch first before they learnt how to cycle the barbell and the reason why is because they develop an understanding of where that bar should be in relation to the body first explain what you mean by cycle the barbell so cycling the barbell would be multiple repetitions as fast as you can go so the sort of focus when you're cycling a barbell you may be bouncing the bar off the floor to gain the momentum to go into the next lift you tend to turn over which is quite hard to explain the bar from the top right down to the floor as opposed to dumping it and resetting so it requires a completely different system pushing it down yeah you're pushing it down going for speed technique does break down under fatigue it's not it's not there's almost two different things and I think like you said you have to separate so when you saw this you thought oh this is an opportunity and did you go in and start coaching and training crossfitters how to train more like an Olympic lifter in order to give them some advantages yeah I think there was a lot of receptive people in the crossfit community understanding the fact that okay this is a really technical element of what we need to do the people that are teaching us crossfit won't have a deep understanding of the coach Olympic weightlifting and they started to draw weightlifters in and that's where I came in and it wasn't just about necessarily teaching the crossfit community how to weightlift correctly but also help the coaching market out and go this is the process of what you need to be doing with your guys when they first start out and that would be like the main thing that I would love to change in crossfit would be you remember when there was a crossfit course I don't know if you're aware of that but it was like a step by step things that athletes had to do first before they could join into a crossfit class yeah I would love to there to that still be a major thing that if you walk into the door at my crossfit gym okay you need to do five, six PT sessions within Olympic weightlifting coach you need to do the same with a gym class coach before you're allowed to join some sort of prerequisite yeah because weightlift crossfit gets more people in the door to learn Olympic weightlifting than Olympic weightlifting does for a hundred percent I manage gyms for two decades and the squat just the squat rack forget Olympic lifting the squat rack would have dust on it I'd manage a 40,000 square foot gym it would have one squat rack first of all because nobody cared about squatting and then the squat rack was always completely empty well I imagine too it's even difficult to just teach your average person triple extension do you have a hard time with that or is that pretty easy but again triple extension explain it it's such a complex thing and this is like again for me why I think I've been successful in the teaching of Olympic weightlifting in the crossfit market is because I make it a lot much simpler than that and although how you do that yeah of course you can you know bore someone to death with breakforce kinematics bar path analysis of Olympic weightlifting but they come in the door they're going to go ah yeah see you next week you know they're going to be straight out whereas my process of teaching people Olympic weightlifting is to get them to do stuff they already know how to do so once you've got someone in the correct start position my focus is on getting them to think about jumping when they jump they squeeze their glutes their legs hit full extension and they rise up onto their toe all things I'd want them to do when they're snatching but when someone goes jump you go yeah sunny I know how to do that no problem bang and all of a sudden you've got them doing something much more similar to what an extension looks like in a snatch or a clean without them even knowing what a first full second pull or triple extension is so this is this is what I'm doing when I'm teaching people from scratch is giving them simple things to think about that they already know how to do and that way that learning curve or the point where I can get them from walking through a door not knowing what a snatch is to doing a good looking snatch in 40 days happens that's a great keep let's keep going here I like that that's a really cool I've never heard anyone explain it like that let's let's break the triple extension down like that let's say you've you've now got me you I'm in the starting position you've taught me to jump kind of squeeze my glutes like walk me through all the way through that okay let's do it so once we're in our set position I've got myself feet normally again in terms of if I was telling someone where where did my feet go in my set position I go where would you go if you're going to jump as high as you can that's where you're going to produce most vertical force we want vertical force in snatch cleaner there's where your foot position is like a vertical jump test like you're reaching out of course that's where you'd want your feet so great now we want the bar to stay as close to center of gravity as possible so as close to the body if the bars away from us it makes it very difficult for us to imply force on the bar and therefore I say okay make sure the bars touching your shins at the start because that's going to be over midfoot and as close to the body as possible and then for me it's about getting them to get the bar to mid thigh where we want to explode okay without it getting away from you so I IQ keep the bar touching and push the floor away with the legs okay so we're touching now until the bar gets to mid thigh and then from here is where we want to explode this is where we want change in speed as opposed to outright speed from the floor so I'm very much like speed is not your friend when you learn a limpid weightlifting I'm like let's go nice and slowly because unfortunately people go online they go on YouTube and they go okay snatch and some Chinese guy pops up and he lifts so fast you miss it in a blink and they go that's what I need to do no don't do that don't do that let's take it slow let's learn how to walk before we can run so now the bars touching we're at mid thigh and now they're thinking about jumping as they jump the bar still fires out the hip crease because they hit full extension and now the bars accelerating vertically great now what we need to do is to get into our receiving position so my cue is catch but prior to even talking about and teaching them this part I've already taught them where their catch position is so then it becomes the focus of thinking about touching touching touching jump and catch and therefore they're thinking about the they've got the full movement they're happening already without thinking about triple extension power position and all of these confusing terms that people get hung up on when they learn the process of a limpid weightlifting very very cool that's great I'm going to make you shoot that YouTube video by the way absolutely so the catch position are you going to have them start in a squat and like basically find out their depth and you know see what's most comfortable for them so the whole process if we were to rewind before we even get to set a position would be to first of all get them putting a bar over their head in a snatch grip now when they're over and their snatch grip for anyone listening it's the wider position on the bar we're looking for the bar to be over the crown of the head I'm focused on external rotation and wrist sitting back and once someone can get into this position and they're happy then the focus for me is once that bar is there forget about it being over the head and just think about what the lower body is doing because if we get the lower body to take the majority of the load or the load to sink down to the lower body the big muscles do the work as opposed to the small ones right so we're locked out now we're overhead I'm like okay now let's begin squatting and you just got to think about the exact same stimulus as you would do doing a back squat and as soon as you put your brains in the legs thinking about getting them to do the overhead squat then again it's 10 times easier because they already know how to do a back squat What are the most common athletes that come try to get coaching from you aside from Olympic lifters or people who use Olympic lifting and competition do you get lots of I would assume crossfitters would probably be well besides crossfitters you get do you ever do football players do you get football players or soccer players or I think you guys call soccer players football players Rugby is a big one that we get we get a lot of athletes in sprinters etc that come in and they just want more time and more practice on their Olympic lifts but there becomes they're not so bothered about going into full depth squat they're like I just want to learn how to power clean I want to learn how to power snatch because I want to build explosive power whereas like regardless of that what you want to do I still think everyone should have an understanding of how to do the full range movement first purely for the element that when you start to lift maximally in a power clean there's potential that you could get pushed in a little bit further your power clean would be and that is where people start to get injured so I'd always want them regardless of whether they decide to use the power movements as their their training to have an understanding of the full movement and again here comes another problem in the learning of Olympic weight thing because people go right there's the clean there's the power clean they're two different movements but essentially we're doing the power clean as an assistance to the full clean so therefore the movement is very it should be pretty much identical other than the point in which we're receiving the bar is much higher in a power clean than a full clean which is why when you know I'm snatching or when I'm power snatching or power cleaning I think in my head right this is just a high clean or this is just a high power a high snatch so that I'm focusing then on being faster into my receiving position. What are some of the the best complimentary exercises for the Olympic lifts are there specific resistance training movements that you that you really like to have people do squads or yeah stuff like that yeah so if we I think and a beginner or in your first six months to a year of Olympic weight thing I'd always say that your exercise selections actually very small because we want to develop the movement range of movement and if you're getting a beginner to do power snatch power hand snatch power hand snatch from blocks there's all of these different you know movements you need to master too much yeah too much so if we're talking about a basic program for a beginner sort of six six months to a year into their lifting we'd be looking at doing the full snatch and clean and jerk the full pulls so snatch pulls clean pulls which is for people listening in explosive almost like an explosive deadlift and then we'd be going front squat back squat and then once we've got our four basic exercises then we'd add in variation of maybe the power snatch the power clean and then assistance exercises alongside that which I love would be something like good mornings or practicing just the split jerk and the power jerk on their own and therefore now we've got like roughly eight to ten exercises that if you're training three times a week you can make a quite good program out of just using maybe three exercises Monday Wednesday Friday now do you ever do traditional other traditional resistance training exercises like curls or you know a lateral or a barbell row or anything like that? For a more competitive athlete or someone that does train five times a week or seven times a week and they've got time to throw in those extra assistance exercises for sure it does not hurt to do a little bit of a conventional bodybuilding to develop strength and proprioception in other areas that you wouldn't normally go into during the actual lift which again I mentioned however I wouldn't necessarily throw in too much extra conditioning for a complete beginner because like I said the focus needs to be on the movement pattern but for someone like myself I would maybe have like an hour a week where I'm just doing a more bodybuilding base session just purely to develop muscle around joints that are going to be under strain when we're lifting so I've got slightly hyper extending elbows for me doing extra a bit of bodybuilding some barbell curls some bench press to gain some stability over my shoulders beneficial great I'll put that in there but if you're an outright beginner I wouldn't necessarily go into too much depth on that. So you've been doing this now for 15 plus years right and we talk on the show a lot about our personal journeys and weight lifting and along the way there was many paradigm shattering moments or aha moments in our career of like oh shit I've been doing this wrong forever this is the better way to do it there's more things that we like oh man I know I've heard a million times that I should be changing the rep range up but I've been stuck in this once I finally did that oh my god I saw these gains can you recall in your 15 years of Olympic lifting those aha type moments or you know paradigm shattering moments for you where like things really started to accelerate? Yeah so I think you know I do have to throw my mind back a little bit now you know 15 years into the sport but I think one of the biggest things was when I started competing internationally and I was travelling around the world competing at European World Championships and I was getting my butt kicked by all of these other athletes and I was watching what they were doing in training and I'd go back to my coach and be like coach why aren't we doing as much strength exercises as these guys are doing they're squatting so much more regularly than me they're spending a lot more time doing pulls and when I was a beginner or I'd say in my first three to four years of Olympic weight I didn't spend enough time once I had learnt how to snatch and clean and doing basic strength movements which is why now for me although my mobility is great, my technique is very good my weakness is a weightlifter is my strength that's the thing that holds me back Oh really? So I would say like that was a big moment for me in terms of thinking right on my focus as you get better once you master a consistent technique is to actually switch your focus as an elite level lifter from improving your technique and it actually becomes to making the more a bigger focus of your training around developing strength and explosive power so when I started shifting my training to more of the boring exercises the pulls and squats as opposed to doing so much snatch and clean and jerk I actually saw a big improvement because again I was like I need to snatch and clean and jerk three times a week to be able to get my movement pattern and I was doing that and actually fatiguing and my body was breaking down from doing so much of the classic movements and the minute I went to snatch once a week and clean and jerk once a week and making the majority of my training the strength base there was a big shift then for me. Now do you where you're at now at your level do you have to still do a lot of mobility work or does just your take care of that for you right now? Yeah it's a good question and people always say to me that you're a sunny where did you get your mobility from but I started when I was 13 years old so I was moving well and I have never had in my whole career any more than 10 days off from the gym so therefore I'm consistently going through those ranges and I've maintained a lot of my flexibility from when I was younger however I will still twice a week be doing either overhead squats snatch balance to make sure I'm strengthening and mobilizing the range that I'm going into in the snatch and in the cleans but people don't necessarily see so much of that because they're like well he's doing overhead squats that's not mobility but in my mind it is because I'm going specifically putting my feet in the receiving position for my snatch for example and I'm taking a slight pause in the bottom position to stretch out and to mobilize under load before standing up oh yeah now how often are you chasing PRs as a professional so I do this thing called Big Friday so Big Friday for me as a competitive weightlifter or someone who's got a big training history in the sport the regularity of PB's is very small you know I haven't done a snatch PB in like maybe two years but I'm training every day towards it and yeah it can be extremely tomorrow typically you'd save them for competitions now typically you'd save them for competitions so for me by having like what I call my Big Friday I'll have one day a week where I'll go maximally in A exercise and not necessarily for a 1RM but maybe for a 2RM or a 3RM and that way it helps you stay I guess excited through training that you're working towards PB's not necessarily and this is the best snatch I've done in my life it's a daily max in hang snatch daily max in squat triple so that way like for me I'm having at least one time a week where I'm getting the opportunity to push myself maximally most people are motivated for fitness by aesthetic goals they want to change the way they look what are the body parts or parts of the body that Olympic lifting really trains as well like if somebody who's listening right now fitness fanatic never really considered Olympic lifting you know how would you sell that to them what are the parts of their body they can expect to see better development from or changes in through doing or incorporating Olympic lifting yeah okay so definitely legs I've got a little tree trunk legs when people look at me they go I expected you to be so much bigger knowing how much you lift but I'd say definitely legs back glutes the development definitely in these areas traps from pools they're getting an absolute beasting when we're Olympic weightlifting but not only that I'd say actually having been able to move well under load in general when you're Olympic weightlifting is a very attractive skill like I said I can go up and pick up bodybuilding powerlifting and jump straight into doing those drills having already learned how to do Olympic weightlifting whereas it doesn't work the other way around so I think that's a very attractive thing in Olympic weightlifting is the fact that you'll then liken yourself much better into other sports or any other training styles having known how to do Olympic weightlifting I think that's a great point I think Olympic lifting in general carries over to almost all sports a little bit where all those other ones has little to no carry over to any sports full kinetic change I mean just you training explosively like that probably protects you if you were to go pick up and play basketball for the day or go play football where a guy like me who trains more strength bodybuilding training most of the time boy am I at risk I get on the beach I go run I pull a hammy almost every time you've got general health down but in terms of functional performance Olympic lifters always surprise the hell out of me I've had them train in some of my gyms and they don't play sports they don't play basketball but then you watch them jump or do something athletic and you're like holy Toledo and I know they've done studies on because we all have a particular capacity for strength but our body limits us to protect our body so like the average person might be able to only generate maybe 50% of the real force that they could generate maybe if they're stressed or scared or really really angry to be able to tap into something like 60% or whatever Olympic lifters consistently test the highest like you guys can tap into most of the strength that your body has which is why I think sometimes when you see an Olympic lifter lift a crazy amount of weight it doesn't always match up with the way they look like you say well he's muscular but geez he's not nearly as big as a bodybuilder but he's lifting like three times as much you know as much weight and it's also getting everything to work in unison too like in comparison that's I was alluding to like a bodybuilder versus like a power lifter like it must be somewhat difficult if they're trying to you know muscle it up you know trying to use their upper body a lot pulling off the ground versus you know just getting that initial force all into the ground through your feet and then using your legs primarily to drive it. Yeah and I think that again that's the when we was speaking earlier about having a bodybuilder or a power lifter come into Olympic where they go yeah I'm strong this is going to be no problem but it's getting them to get the right muscles working you know over the over the little muscles and that's what I'm saying with the cues and when I'm teaching people from basics the focus is on you know getting all the big muscles to do the work and getting that acceleration from from the legs as opposed to you know trying to use the upper body but what will happen is with someone like that who starts doing an Olympic weight of thing they'll get to that point where they're sub-maximly you know about to struggle say when I was teaching bass he gets to 120 he goes right now I just want to use my upper body but that's where the moment has to stop in terms of where the weights you're training to so if you get to a hundred and you start muscling it up but you can can do 110 120 you need to stop at that point so that the movement is the thing that the technique and how well you're moving is the thing that prevents you from going heavier as opposed to your strength being the limiting factor what are some of the most common injuries involved with this injuries and Olympic weight thing well you see I think from an elite point I'd say dislocated shoulders elbows are very common knee injuries in Olympic weight of thing are huge but again for me that becomes I think from repetition squatting repetitions and you know I've in the past had I've had torn both my elbows I've got three dehydrated discs, two disc bulges, one fused vertebrae bone growth over a disc bulge I've had issues with both my knees in the past with information problems etc and that just became that came from too much repetition and as I've got older I know I'm not old but in my training years I am I'm 25 now training 15 years in Olympic weight of thing what I've had to do is reduce the amount of times I'm going through a full range so therefore like I said now where I was squatting seven times a week when I was training at my hardest in Olympic weight of thing to now I only squat three times a week it means that I've managed to maintain not be so injured or have any of these issues and pain problems because I'm not going through the full range of motion as much as I used to before let's say average person listening right now works out fitness fanatic they want to incorporate an element of Olympic lifting how would you suggest that they proceed do they pick which exercise do they pick how should they start where they program into their normal workout yeah so I'd say the snatch is the hardest one to do but I'd say for a beginner that would still be where I'd get them to start you know it's like when you learn to drive a car and they teach you in a manual first before you learn to an automatic they do in England anyway even though the automatic is easier to drive yeah whereas same thing has to happen with the Olympic weight of thing you know so we teach them how to snatch first so the first few movements that I would do in my beginner program on my learns lift would get them to develop the overhead squat so practice with like a broomstick or something like that practice with a broomstick going through that range with an overhead squat and then doing some snatch balance and then I think you know that they have to go straight into learning how to do the full movements because if it's something that they want to do and this is one of the biggest problems with crossfit you want to get into a class where you're you know cycling the barbell and you go it's a much quicker route if you do a power clean or if you do a power snatch however that's going to bite you in the bum six months down the line when you go I really love weight lifting I want to continue to do it but you've got so strong catching it in the power that you don't want to sit down and you resort back to that which is well I totally understand your question the easiest way to get into it or the movements they need to start doing but you have to go all in to begin with and learn the full range first regardless of if you decide further down the line to use simpler formats of the Olympic lifts to progress your training all right so another question with that let's say okay I'm listening to the podcast all right cool I'm going to practice I'm going to get a broomstick I'm going to practice overhead you know squats or snatch do I do that at the beginning of my workout or do it at the end when I finished working everything yeah I love this question and it comes back as well to you know the mobility aspect of Olympic weight if they're like should I mobilize or should I practice my movements before or after because people are like oh you shouldn't stretch before training sure but for me if you can't get in the positions that are required of you in the snatch in the cleaner jerk then you must mobilize first to gain improvement in those ranges before you even think about loading and when you're least fatigued and it's the same way as we'll structure any training program if your goal is to learn how to learn how to do the Olympic movements over the next six months don't do them right at the end of the session where you're already knackered from bodybuilding dinners on the dinner table in 10 minutes and you're like I'll just do a little bit before I head off make it the priority of your training session and I think regardless of whether you're talking about weightlifting whether you're talking about powerlifting or you know you're trying to get more ripped if that's your goal prioritize it in the way that you program your training spend 20 minutes at the start of your session when you're at your freshest when you've got your biggest attention span and then practice it then and then do the less important stuff afterwards now the reality is you know an overhead squat or snatch position with the broomstick as long as you don't have any prior inches whatever is actually generally a whole body mobility movement I mean it gets a hips gets the thoracic gets everything kind of to fire so would you say okay go into the workout do some mobility movements first then do what you're saying and practice it with like slow do you want them to do it slowly with good tension and good form or do you want them to go through and try and do fast yeah so I'd be starting off with 20 minutes of mobility so this is mobilizing the joints and body parts that we need to be mobile have a range through first before we touch the barbell once I've done my mobilizing I would then maybe instead of a broomstick I'd pick up maybe a 10 kilo bar or a technique bar just so we've got sure element of resistance and then I'd be getting like for example today we're going to work on 5 6 to 5 overhead squat with the bar super light get going through the range the next exercise we may be doing would be starting to practice the process of the setup and the first pull and getting them to do the transition of the jump so you're breaking down the elements okay before trying to put the full movement together because that's where people go they look and see the snatch and go oh this is going to be very difficult to actually comprehend how I'm going to put all this together whereas you go learn how to overhead squat learn how to do the force pull learn the transition through the middle and then we sew it together in 6 weeks time then you're laughing I have a question for you so I watch videos on with Olympic lifters and in the squat just a straight up barbell squat back squat and the amount of weight that that these top lifters can squat is literally insane but what really trips me out is you guys are not allowed to use power lifting weight belt right you can't use that how do you brace your core is there a technique or a way you brace your core to be able to handle that much load when you're doing a lift and it's I know it's different from wearing a belt right it's a different type of brace what's what does that look like yeah I think that's that's a really good question it's something that for me you see the majority of people especially that won't be weight lifters the way that they squat is very different to the way that a weight lifter squat and I've been lucky enough to be training with Australian strength coach who's a specialist in power lifting coaches Thor and the way in which he squats is so much slower than the how I squat he squats with a low bar because it requires less mobility and the way in which you know he's squatting he's thinking again really slow throughout the full range of the motion whereas when we're Olympic weight lifting we're almost catching that bounce at the bottom and using that momentum stretch reflex to help us drive up and out the hole now as though that's great in terms of developing speed through the explosive part of the lift I'd say in terms of the way that I'm bracing when I'm Olympic weight lifting is I'm not using my belt when I'm building up to sort of 80% I'd say and I think about bracing in the same way as if I was if someone was to stick my head under water and that's what I always say to people take a nice deep breath and kind of push against your abs as opposed to through your lungs okay when I'm setting and that way then I keep the tension through my trunk as opposed to necessarily in my lungs and that's what I'm pushing out against but you'll see like and why are you drawing the core in and tight are you pushing it out like what does that feel like yeah I'm drawing it in so I'm like punching in the same way as I would do from when you use a power lifting weight belt this is something that you know a long time ago there was this whole debate whether or not you're not your core is less active or more active when you wear a belt then they did imaging on the core and they said oh look you're still activating the core muscles so wearing a belt is perfectly fine and I would tell people it's a different recruitment pattern when you wear a belt you're pushing out against the belt that's the exact opposite of what you want to do when you don't wear a belt right so if you learn one you learn how to squat with a belt on then you take it off it's good you have to like re-learn how to brace your core yeah it is very different it's something that I've not spent a lot of time thinking about but yeah in the way that you know I've noticed in terms of where people wear their belt as well some people wear their belt so much higher than than others the guys with bellies they were powered if this but I'm pushing yeah bracing out against my belt when I'm squatting and then without my belt you'll see it looks like I'm almost like pregnant almost sometimes when I'm lifting because you're bracing in yeah well that's awesome that's very informative and I do think that explosive type movements are an essential part of training I just think that they should be handled appropriately I think you need to be very smart when you go into them because if you don't do them right you can definitely hurt yourself and I don't think you should train them crazy to fatigue I think you need to be very respectful but if you can do that and you're patient you they reap tremendous benefits well one of the things that I have fallen in love with and I wish I've had had somebody like yourself who is who I could go through Olympic lifts and actually get good at it because by no means can I do it very well but I have worked a lot on my mobility I lacked ankle mobility I lacked hip mobility I lacked thoracic mobility and I spent the last and this was you know during bodybuilding times for me I had lost all that and become so focused on my aesthetics that I had lost mobility in all these areas and then when I tried to do a deep squat do any of those things was just impossible so it took almost a year for me to regain all that back and now what I have found is I don't have to do all the you know monotonous type of movements to get to the point where I have the mobility all I have to do is do like an overhead squat if I just make sure that I always keep an overhead squat in my routine that promotes good thoracic mobility that promotes good hip mobility that promotes good ankle mobility and it's like I don't have to really address all these things as long as I make sure to integrate that's my favorite part and where I see tons of value for the average person listening to learn Olympic lifting because if you can get to a point where you can do it and then you and even if you don't care to go compete one day or be great in the sport if you can just keep an element of it in your in your regular routine what it requires mobility wise I just see the the benefits of that for joint health longevity and this is it for me and this is like the the main point for me being that weightlifting can be accessible for anyone the average person they don't need to look at it as a point of a daunting point that I'm going to compete one day and I'm not sure whether I can pick up the sport broken down once you've got your range of mobility like you said can be used in every every person's training a hundred percent even if it's just elements of the exercises and you know that's kind of my role I guess in the fitness industry is to show people that it is fun and then accessible for everyone as long as you can learn how to move well first I've thought differently about it too in terms of like training fast twitch muscles and as we age like that's one of the first things to go and so in order to incorporate that in your training routine I find that even more valuable into the future. Some of the biggest lessons I learned from Olympic lifters and I don't have a lot of experience with the Olympic lifting at all but I did a lot of study and observation mainly because some of the best resistance training studies you'll find scientific studies are done on Olympic lifters they've been studied for a very very long time some of the studies coming out of the Soviet Union were just phenomenal it's a Olympic sport so you have a lot of people far less studies done on bodybuilding or power lifting or other forms of resistance training and one of the main things I learned from Olympic lifting was to treat resistance training as practice. This is a very very different understanding than what I was brought up understanding about resistance training where I was reading bodybuilding magazines it was all about feeling the burn feeling the pumps going to failure getting fatigued then when I started learning about Olympic lifters they would practice the movements like practicing any other skill and I applied that to my traditional exercises where some days I do train very intensely but many times I go to the gym and I'm in there to practice all these exercises and my gains went through the roof my mobility went through the roof I built more muscle burnt more body fat and I applied that as a personal trainer that's one of the biggest compliments I can give Olympic lifting is you guys really understand the science training and technique better I'd say the most forms of resistance training so I really like that approach and the way you think about Olympic way of thing is practicing a movement and you know with anything in terms of like when I was training for Matt Fraser last year and I was just getting into CrossFit at the time and starting to learn the things and he said to me he said Sonny you're not allowed to do a workout or put an exercise in a workout that you can't do well under fatigue so in terms of move well through first before I did that movement under fatigue and that meant initially even though I could do every movement in CrossFit I was making my work ups out of doing like air squats press ups you know very simple movements and I was still getting the required stimulus of a sweaty work out and my heart rate going but I could only then put in so then I'd do that at the end of my session in the first part of my session and be like right I'm going to practice my pull ups and master the movement of the pull up and once I've mastered it only then does it become an exercise that goes into something that I'm going to be doing in a workout or under fatigue and the irony of all of that is because most people listening are like like I just want to look good I just want to build muscle I just want to get lean you get better results that way like I've had clients I want to get better at pull ups I do pull ups once a week and I go to failure and it's okay stop doing that here's what I want you to do put up a pull up bar in your house and I want you to practice one pull up you know every few hours or whatever every day just every day you walk by do one pull up just practice it and then watch what happens within like a week or two they've got you know 30% more reps than they had before and they had better gains from practicing and this funny we treat every other sport this way it's like you're teaching a kid had a you know play soccer to failure you practice that technique over and over again to get really good at it and you guys do that phenomenally so anyway thanks for coming on the show man that's a great point to finish on thank you very much it's been very informative and I'd say the one point that we when it comes to resistance training that we don't like to go into details on is Olympic lifting because we have so much respect for the skill and technique that's involved so I appreciate you coming on the show thank you very much we'll see you on the YouTube now man right on