T Nation

Olympic Lifting

Christian Thibaudeau Coaching
#1

Not sure if this is the right forum but, I would really appreciate thib’s voice in this as I know he dabbled in Olympic lifting.

So I went to my gym today and saw a group of teens being coached by an olympic lifting coach. I actually went to him and asked if he knew Coach Poliquin(he kinda looked like him actually) and said yes and assumed he read Poliquin’s stuff. So he asked if I was interested in joining, I asked if they compete and he said some of the guys were champions in their weight classes. So he said, If I was interested, the session costs $40, 2 times a week. Now, he said, its the off season and they’re actually trying to go back to basics and trying to progress to the actual lifts since some of the guys are begginers and for now, the sessions cost $15.

So coach, I’m thinking of joining since I kinda like the idea of doing OLY. My question is, for anyone who was coached or an actual coach, is $40 reasonable? Too much? or actually a bargain?

#2

dabbled?

#3

Well… there are two sides to the coin…

  1. Personal trainers normally charge a lot more than 40$/hour. Around here few charge less than 50$ an hour and when I was in San Diego some would charge as much as 150$ an hour. And that doesn’t even include the elite coaches who can charge up to 2000$/hour!

So in that regard 40$ is fairly cheap

  1. I trained for 5-6 years as an olympic lifter and during that time I lifted in 4 different clubs… none of them ever charged anything for training.

My suggestion would be to:

a) look for an actual olympic lifting club near you… it will assuredly be less expensive

b) if you don’t find one and have the budget to spend 80$/week on training, then do it… at least try a few sessions to see how you like it

#4

BTW, here is a list of olympic lifting clubs in ontario:

http://www.ontarioweightlifting.ca/clients.htm

#5

[quote]Christian Thibaudeau wrote:

  1. I trained for 5-6 years as an olympic lifter and during that time I lifted in 4 different clubs… none of them ever charged anything for training.

[/quote]

Heck, Pierre Roy’s coaching at the Centre Claude-Robillard in Montréal and he doesn’t even check for membership. And you get to train with all the national team and some of the olympic team as well…