Three Lessons from a Powerlifter’s Experience in Weightlifting
As you may or may not know, I recently took a considerable hiatus from powerlifting. For the past 4 months, I’ve been snatching, cleaning, and jerking, instead of squatting, benching, and deadlifting. This really was for no other reason except wanting a break from powerlifting- ever since my first meet in January of 2015, it’s been meet to meet to meet. I never took more than a week off, and it was rare if I actually took the whole week off.
However, as I began researching programming styles for weightlifting, watching videos, and learning technique, I realized I could gain so much more from this than just a break from powerlifting.
So, I took it as a huge hands-on learning experience, figuring out ways to directly translate anything weightlifting- related to powerlifting and coaching powerlifting.
(Disclaimer: I just want to remind you that I have had all of 4 months in weightlifting, with one coach. I am by no means an expert. Think of me more as a hands on observer.)
Here’s what I learned:
- A weightlifting mindset is to an American powerlifting mindset much like how an almost every other country daily mindset is to an American daily mindset.
Many American powerlifting programs are heavy on the accessories, and have relatively short building periods before peaking. There are many 6, 8, 12, and 16 week programs that are quite popular in the powerlifting community, creating a short term mindset where a lifter is essentially going to test quite often in the course of a year.
However, in other parts of the world, people are more adept to adopting a long-term mindset, working to create a bigger future. This can be seen in not only weightlifting programs, but also Eastern European and Asian powerlifting programs where a lifter may be building for 12, 24, or 36 months in order to continue improving on technique, rather than being concerned with how much they can lift now (but we’ll get into that more in a bit).
Think building long term success rather than flaunting frequently in the short term. This can be a lifelong endeavor, don’t expect to have everything down in your first few years.
2. Technique over everything.
It’s not about how much you can do, it’s about how you do it: proper form is the most efficient way to move through a given range of motion, so why not practice it consistently?
That way, when you get to your 80 or 90+% ranges, your body doesn’t automatically go into a non-efficient movement pattern you need to work harder to move through, while also increasing your chance of injury.
I was practicing the snatch and clean and jerk 4 times a week- whether it was the actual lift or a variant, so I had no choice but to learn and adhere to proper technique.
I never had a lifting coach of any kind up until March of last year, so any and all techniques for every lift was basically self taught, with the help of Youtube. Because of this, I knew my technique needed help in many areas, and I had many weak points which i needed addressing. I also knew that I had too big of an ego to lower my weights for an extended amount of time.
Once I started weightlifting, I had no choice but to use lighter weights and work on my technique, breaking down the lifts and figuring out when to activate a certain muscle group and when to adjust body positioning rather than just focusing on getting the weight up. Ego can be difficult to break, but it’s almost always worth it to do a reset when needed.
3. It’s possible to train a certain lift or body part every day, given the correct percentages and variations.
I basically squatted and practiced the snatch and clean and jerk 4 times a week, and my recovery was fine. I’m not saying everyone should and can do this in powerlifting, but it can be possible to increase lift frequency without affecting recovery too much.
For example, no one would ever think of squatting, benching, or deadlifting twice in the same day before Sheiko popularized it in his style of programming. The main difference between his programming and more direct American programming is that his average intensities are rarely above even 72% during non peaking phases.
This method not only allows for greater volume to be spread throughout the week, yielding more hypertrophy, but also greater technical mastery of each lift, since it is practiced more often than 1–2 times a week.
Just to reemphasize, this is not for everybody, and should be dealt with very carefully and under a watchful eye using sub 70% (average) intensities if attempted.
There are a few more lessons I learned from weightlifting that I purposely left out, and that’s simply because they’re such big ideas that I think they deserve their own article, so be on the lookout for those in the near future.
To close things out, I would highly recommend weightlifting to anyone over powerlifting. In regards to overall carryover and benefit into everyday life, weightlifting is so much more beneficial than powerlifting.
From objective point of view- one discipline involves increasing and maintaining overall mobility in all areas of the body, brings together power and strength, increases stability and work capacity, and essentially forces proper technique, where the other discipline involves putting your shoulders in what could be an uncomfortable position (painful for many), arching your back while pressing horizontally, and only focuses on strength.
Most people will see much more benefit from weightlifting carrying over into everyday life vs powerlifting. That doesn’t mean powerlifting is bad, or that weightlifting is the end-all, be-all, but in my opinion of working with many gen pop clients with no prior disciplinary bias, I can see why weightlifting is still the premier world strength sport.
If you really want to master something- whether it’s on the coaching side or the performance side, it really pays off to study a different, related discipline for a while to see what you can learn, and to come back to your main discipline with a new point of view and a refreshed mindset.
