I have basically trained like a powerlifter the past 10 years or so. I love the sport, as well as the overall hypertrophy it’s given me. In the past year or so I have also really come to admire the grace and agility of weightlifters, and I’d like to see if I have any talent for their lifts, the clean and jerk and the snatch. However, I’m not ready to drop benching and DLing or to use squats only as assistance work; in short, in an ideal world, I’d like to keep cultivating the strength and mass I’ve developed from focusing on PL but also be able to move quickly and gracefully like WLers.
But, part of me feels like lifters kind of need to pick a horse and ride it instead of trying to train for two sports at once, and that I’m setting myself up for stagnation at both if I try to do that, especially since the C&J and snatch require a great deal of technique work early on, preferably with a coach. I’d appreciate any thoughts or experiences. Thanks PS - sorry if I’m overlooking a prior thread addressing this. I see lots of threads comparing PLing and WLing, but not trying to train for both during the same training cycles.
@drewc64 has a log on here building a super total. You can do both, just don’t burn the candle at both ends. If you plan to compete in one, don’t expect to be top end strong at the other during that time. If you aren’t competing, train wherever you want.
Also, if you have zero experience in the sport or haven’t ever tried to do a C&J or a snatch, you might want to have someone coach you through this. Oly lifts are hyper technical and very difficult to perform properly without an experienced eye watching. Hopefully some oly lifters will chime in here as I have little to no experience with these outside of recreation.
1 Like
Search for “supertotal” in the forum you’ll have at least 2 templates of programming IIRC by Thibaudeau and Dan John
Perfect. This is exactly the kind of thing I’m looking for; not sure how I missed these articles. Thanks!
You can do it @nealcam
What is your time frame that you want to compete? If you are wanting to get on the platform ASAP, you could train oly lifts up to 3 times per week and squat & bench another.
Or… if you want to move bench press to maintenance mode, a well executed snatch scheme loosens up the whole body and effectively primes the CNS to jump right into some heavy bench presses.
The only thing you’re going to really struggle with continuing is deadlifting.
Now, on the other hand. If you just want to learn the lifts for fun, you could hit them twice a week and squat bench dead the other two times.
Don’t snatch after a really exhaustive bench / tri day. The lockout can be awfully risky.
I strength train a lot more now as I realized it to be a limiting factor in my lifts. That and age…
Get in touch with Wade Johnson. He competes at a high level in both sports
For right now, it’s basically for fun; I just want to learn to properly execute the lifts. Once I get that down and start adding weight, it’s conceivable I’d want to compete. Right now, I’m doing something like what you’re describing here: 2 days a week I focus on the squat, bench, and DL, or some variation thereof such as incline press or Romanian DL, and on the other two days, I’m focusing on trying to get the patterns down for the snatch and clean and jerk. So far I’m having fun with it. Once life returns to normal, I’ll probably seek out a weightlifting coach to help me with technique. For now, I’m just recording myself with my iPhone and comparing to videos like Glenn Pendlay’s series on Youtube. I know that’s not nearly as good as having a live trainer, but it will have to do for now.