Fave Things Friday: Olympic Weightlifting

And for this week’s edition, I’m sharing my favorite thing to do in the gym and that is … (drum roll) … Olympic Lifting 🏋🏻‍♀️

So what does that even mean? The Olympic Lifts are the Snatch and the Clean & Jerk — which I’ve demonstrated so beautifully (if I do say so myself) here.

Man, I love these lifts. Not because I’m particularly good at them. Mostly it’s because they’re so damn technical and require a ton of power and coordination — two things I (as an endurance athlete) don’t have as much of. And you know I love a challenge!

In fact, it’s the challenge that draws me in. I could spend years doing these lifts and still have a lot to learn — and many lifters do just that.

But also the explosiveness of these lifts is a bit more interesting and fun to me than Powerlifting (which includes the squat, bench press, and deadlift). There’s just something about powering a big weight from the ground to overhead in one (Snatch) or two (C&J) movements that gets me all jazzed up.

So as you can imagine, I get REALLY freaking excited when I’ve got an Oly Day on my training schedule like I did today. I’ll take every chance I can get to drill these out.

Today, it was sets of 3 at a manageable weight with a full reset after each rep in order to practice setting up the lift. The devil’s in the details — but that’s a huge part of why I can’t get enough of these lifts.