Quite recently I decided to give weightlifting a go. I contacted a coach, joined a club and even bought my own equipment to train with. I’ve been doing this for about 3 months maybe. I am an ex powerlfter and I competed unequipped in an IPF affiliate in the U.K. I weigh about 80kg give or take a couple of pounds depending how much I eat.
Anyway, since starting weightlifting, interestingly, I have noticed a steady increase in my upper body maximal strength. Now, my focus is not on my upper body and I pick exercises with some degree of dynamic correspondence to the Jerk. Mainly my upper body pressing work now consists of push presses, snatch grip behind neck presses, close grip incline presses and maybe some flat close grip presses occasionally. In addition I do lat and back work.
Maybe it is the reduction in overall volume and reduced fatigue in the upper body, allowing fitness to express itself, or perhaps there has been a global improvement in neural efficiency. Either way quite recently I have done the following:
Push Press; 105kg x 5 reps (did this yesterday, only 2nd time doing it recently) and I suspect I could have done 110kg
Snatch Grip Behind Neck Press, Paused - 80kg 5 x 5 (roughly bodyweight), I have added 7.5kg to this over the past 3 - 4 weeks! I was really surprised by this
Close grip bench, paused, 125kg 5 x 5, again gone up by nearly 10kg
Weighted Pullups: 30kg x 8 reps, gone up by 10kg
Now I have been training for a long time, and although the above numbers aren’t huge by any standard, considering my training history I find the improvements to be quite significant.