Latest Articles, How-to’s, and Guides on Weightlifting

All lifters are required to wear a weightlifting suit (also known as a “singlet”) in competition, The suit looks very much like the one that is used in wrestling competition (see the sequence photos in Chapter 1 for examples of lifting suits). It covers at least a portion of the lifter’s hips and all of…

Weightlifting is not an expensive sport to get started in. You need some basic personal equipment and a gym in which to train. Most people already own, or can very inexpensively obtain, much of the personal equipment they require. When it comes to a training facility, you can either join an appropriately equipped gym or…

From the 1960’s through the mid 1970’s seven Japanese lifters set a total of 30 world snatch records. Two of those lifters, Yoshinobu Miyake and Masashi Ohuchi, astounded the weightlifting world with their prowess in the snatch: Miyake with eleven world records and Ohuchi by snatching a world record in the 82.5 kg. class weighing…

Athletes will often ask about the correct foot stance for the pull. The answer given by most coaches is that the best stance is the one from which the athlete can jump the highest since, they argue, the final explosion in the pull is like a jump. There is a lot to be said for…

Most lifters assume a foot position in the jerk that is similar to the one they use in the pull. The most common position is the so called “jumping” position, the same position that the lifter would assume in order to achieve a maximum standing-jump height (usually about the width of the hips with a…

While not technically part of the subject of weightlifting technique, proper breathing is an important part of weightlifting. Although weightlifting is considered to be an anaerobic activity, it does increase the body’s need for oxygen far more than most activities that are considered to be aerobic. What makes it anaerobic is that the activity of…

The common advice given to the beginning lifter with respect to grip width in the clean is that the grip should be “shoulder width.” This generally means a grip that is wide enough to position the inside of the hand just outside the shoulders when the bar is resting on the lifter’s shoulders. Individual grip…

We will begin our analysis of weightlifting technique with an explanation of what the athlete is doing when he or she performs two Olympic lifts, the snatch and the clean and jerk (C&J). These are the lifts performed in weightlifting competitions (the winner being the athlete who lifts the most weight in both lifts combined).…

As indicated above, most lifters use the same grip for the clean as for the jerk (i.e., a width between the insides of the hands from 16″ to 26″, with most lifters using a grip in the 17″ to 22″ range). A narrow grip in the jerk places less strain on the muscles of the…

Optimal hand spacing in the snatch is dependent on a number of factors, and, as stated earlier, there are trade-offs in the selection of a grip width. There are often “rules of thumb” given in various weightlifting manuals for selecting the width of the snatch grip. For example, one text suggests that the distance between…