My Honest Thoughts of the Chinese Methods.
I’ve been studying their methods for a few years, with occasional trips to China to explore more. Their success intrigues a lot.
Having learnt how they do things, I can attribute their success to a few factors;
- The ability to work really hard and sacrifice things for a greater goal.
- The good balance of work and play.
- A central system that takes care of everything for the athlete while they’re training.
- The close interaction between coach and lifter.
- The clever variety of exercises selected and usage (*)
However, I’m not quite sure about certain exercises they choose to use and the loading. My coach and I have discussed this before and we don’t really agree to certain things the national coaches like to use. There are 5 of them and they all have their own methods. Liao Hui’s coach’s a bit peculiar. He doesn’t quite drop much exercises and continues to use a rather high range of repetitions. It seems to work for Liao Hui. Some Russian lifters do this as well as demonstrated from the recent Junior Weightlifting Games in Penang, Malaysia. For those who were there, did you like training in the barn? Hehe… we didn’t even have fans the last time.
For my coach, as it approaches competitions (3-4 weeks) , he likes to do more classic lifts, followed by 110-120% of pulling for 2-3 sets of triples, block high pulls and some jerk drives (my jerk is horrific) coupled with overhead balances. Bodybuilding work except pull-ups and rows are completely cut out. Meaning no bench presses, no more good mornings, no more heavy deadlifts, no curls and stuff. In the last week, its all about classic lifts to 100% and some triples in squats. Block high pulling is emphasized and mostly pulls to 100% of snatch/clean without touching the floor. He says this is to reinforce my the pulling position but not overly tax the back. 1 day before the competition, all we do is some bar and technique work for maybe 30 minutes in the morning and sleep, read a book, relax the whole day.
Some things are really a bit odd, but like I said as long it works!
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There are 2 Comments to "My Honest Thoughts of the Chinese Methods."
Kirksman. Love your stuff. This is extremely insightful & myth busting.
Thanks,
Craig
Do you guys ever do conventional deadlifts or is it just clean and snatch deadlifts?