Disclaimer: This post is about the Olympic lift known as the snatch. If you happened upon this post looking for something else, shame on you. Also, I'm going to be saying 'snatch' a lot in this post, so get all your giggles out of your system and when you've composed yourself we'll continue on...
A little piece of my soul dies when someone says they don't like to snatch. I think it's really a lack of understanding. They have just never felt the magic of a perfect, or close to perfect, snatch. Not to say that I have ever done a perfect snatch or that I will ever do a perfect snatch, but I'm pretty sure I've done some that were really good and that were better than some of the really crappy ones I've done. And I've done many, many crappy, pressed out, caught on my toes, arms bent way too early, jumped off my kneecaps, flat out ugly snatches. No one likes an ugly snatch. http://youtu.be/rroMc2WqzUw
I admittedly wasn't a huge fan of the snatch the first few times I did it. It was just another new "CrossFit" thing I had to learn, at which I was a hot, struggling mess. In the beginning it was just me and an empty bar trying to figure out how to get it from the ground to over my head with a wide grip while keeping the bar close and not lifting it around my stomach and what the hell do you mean "scarecrow arms"?!?! It was complicated and awkward and felt clumsy and unnatural. Hook grip, what? Ouch. But... my zombie finger? How can I hook grip?
Somewhere along the way I decided that lifting heavy things was the one part of CrossFit that could be my happy place. I came to the realization pretty early on that I wasn't going the CrossFit Games unless I bought a ticket, I'd never be a gymnast again, pull-ups and muscle-ups were so far down the road that it was comical to even think of trying them. Me working on pull-ups is what I like to call an AMRAP extended arm hang. Burpees were hard, running was tedious, jumping rope was painful and tiring, and if I only focused on how much I sucked at all of that I would have left every class feeling defeated and like I was a failure.
When I realized that I was pretty strong, despite my other shortcomings, I started to hang on to my ever increasing squats, presses, and deadlifts and feel good about those things. Then I wanted to get better at all of the lifts and be super awesome at all of them, and figure out the Olympic lifts, which I found much more complex and mysterious. I'd watched weightlifting a little during the summer Olympics, but I didn't really know much about it as a sport - the rules, the structure of competition, weight classes - and it's still an ongoing learning process for me that I actually really enjoy.
When I moved to DC and started adjusting to a new box I found that the programming didn't focus as much on the Olympic lifts as I had gotten used to and, as I wasn't able to go to as many classes as before, I think I only got to snatch twice in the first few months. I was having serious snatch withdrawal. I missed snatching. A lot.
I traveled to Richmond in October of 2012 to watch two athletes from Brickhouse compete in a meet and was seriously bitten by the weightlifting bug. I decided then that I was going to compete one day too, and if I wanted to work on my lifting I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. I found an unsanctioned CrossFit Olympic lifting meet that was being held at a local DC CrossFit box and thought it would be a good way to get my feet wet and start to figure out the world of competitive Olympic Weightlifting. One of my coaches at DCF gave me a basic lifting program, I started dedicating all my gym time to lifting, videoing my lifts, and watching as many videos as I could find and comparing what I was doing to what those lifters were doing and trying to figure out how to lift that way. I even bought some weightlifting shoes (albeit ones no serious weightlifter would buy).
Videoing myself was actually one of the most helpful things I did early on, especially since I didn't have a dedicated coach watching my every lift. There were things I was doing that I would have never been able to fix without having the video. I could go to one of my coaches and say, "I keep missing out front, what am I doing wrong?" and we could watch the video and realize, oh I'm looking directly at the ground every time I catch the lift - no wonder I feel like I'm falling forward. I know in the first two months that I wasn't doing everything right all the time, but what I was doing was getting in reps. Spending time on the platform with a bar in my hands. Learning to focus out in front of me and not look at the ground. Figuring out the difference between pulling the bar over my head (like in the ugly snatch video) and pulling myself under the bar. Feeling what a bad lift felt like. Falling on my butt. Failing. Over and over and over again. All these things were helping me get ready for that first competition, but there was still so much to learn.
When I realized that I was pretty strong, despite my other shortcomings, I started to hang on to my ever increasing squats, presses, and deadlifts and feel good about those things. Then I wanted to get better at all of the lifts and be super awesome at all of them, and figure out the Olympic lifts, which I found much more complex and mysterious. I'd watched weightlifting a little during the summer Olympics, but I didn't really know much about it as a sport - the rules, the structure of competition, weight classes - and it's still an ongoing learning process for me that I actually really enjoy.
When I moved to DC and started adjusting to a new box I found that the programming didn't focus as much on the Olympic lifts as I had gotten used to and, as I wasn't able to go to as many classes as before, I think I only got to snatch twice in the first few months. I was having serious snatch withdrawal. I missed snatching. A lot.
I traveled to Richmond in October of 2012 to watch two athletes from Brickhouse compete in a meet and was seriously bitten by the weightlifting bug. I decided then that I was going to compete one day too, and if I wanted to work on my lifting I was going to have to take matters into my own hands. I found an unsanctioned CrossFit Olympic lifting meet that was being held at a local DC CrossFit box and thought it would be a good way to get my feet wet and start to figure out the world of competitive Olympic Weightlifting. One of my coaches at DCF gave me a basic lifting program, I started dedicating all my gym time to lifting, videoing my lifts, and watching as many videos as I could find and comparing what I was doing to what those lifters were doing and trying to figure out how to lift that way. I even bought some weightlifting shoes (albeit ones no serious weightlifter would buy).
Videoing myself was actually one of the most helpful things I did early on, especially since I didn't have a dedicated coach watching my every lift. There were things I was doing that I would have never been able to fix without having the video. I could go to one of my coaches and say, "I keep missing out front, what am I doing wrong?" and we could watch the video and realize, oh I'm looking directly at the ground every time I catch the lift - no wonder I feel like I'm falling forward. I know in the first two months that I wasn't doing everything right all the time, but what I was doing was getting in reps. Spending time on the platform with a bar in my hands. Learning to focus out in front of me and not look at the ground. Figuring out the difference between pulling the bar over my head (like in the ugly snatch video) and pulling myself under the bar. Feeling what a bad lift felt like. Falling on my butt. Failing. Over and over and over again. All these things were helping me get ready for that first competition, but there was still so much to learn.
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| Snatching in my first competition - and oh, looks like I'm looking at the ground... |
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