GH Reflection

My genius hour question was: how much could I increase my maximums in the Olympic lifts of the snatch and clean & jerk?  I was able to increase the snatch 10lbs from 135 lbs to 145 lbs, and I increased the clean & jerk 20 lbs from 165 lbs to 185 lbs. This is a total of 30 lbs between the two lifts which is pretty good for a time frame of approximately 1 month.

Torokthiy's training program had a lot more volume than any of the programs I was using before.  Volume is the overall amount of weight lifted, so per session I was lifting more which obviously worked out for me.  Whereas the both programs used about the same number of exercises per session, Torokthiy's program had more sets and reps per exercise, which is the factor that accounted for the increased volume. The program is actually a 12 week program and I completed the first 4 weeks for the genius hour project.  I'm thinking I will keep going with the program for the full 12 and see how far I can go with it. Given my own increases in this short time, I can see why this guy won gold in 2012. 

What was nice about the genius hour project was that I got to incorporate something I liked into our school program.  Despite the hiccups and stresses of completing the tasks associated with the project, I think the training actually helped to manage the stress.  I think genius hour is a good idea to incorporate into classrooms.  In addition to benefiting student productivity, I think it helps the relationship in general between students and teachers.  It shows that teachers are willing to give on their end of things by allowing students class time, something that is valuable to the teacher, to do something that is important to them and doesn't really have anything to do with the curriculum which the teacher is responsible for. Similar to how, for me, the training was a stress reliever, I can see how incorporating genius hour into the classroom could be a stress reliever for students.  It gives students a break from the demands of the curriculum and as a result can decrease their stress, increase their well being by letting them do something that is important to them and makes them feel good,  and help build confidence since they will be developing whatever skills are associated with their genius hour item.

I had hoped to include the videos of me completing the lifts in this post, but the files on my phone are too big to email myself so I took screen shots of the videos to show the lifts in progressive stages of completion:

185 lbs Clean & Jerk

 

145 lbs Snatch

 

And that's all, folks.

GH Reflection

Movie trailer is complete.  I used Windows Movie Maker to create a .wmv file which was embedded on the Genius Hour Trailer page without difficulty.  At one of the lifting sessions I had another lifter take a couple pictures and some video with my phone.  The videos were in .mov format so I had to use an online converter to get them into the .wmv format.

I didn't use any words for the trailer but that was on purpose because I wanted the watcher to grasp the idea without a narration. The music was used by a wrestler, Bill Goldberg, back in the late 90s/early 2000s and sounds pretty epic so I thought it would be good background music for a 'journey', which is what training for anything is.  The pictures of me lifting are representative of the progression used in completing both lifts.  I was going for a combination of a Rocky type training montage and to show the progression of the weight from the ground to the start of me trying to get it over my head without showing whether or not I could actually get it there.  Maybe it would have been a better idea to use only video and actually do a training montage but the videos at the beginning, middle and end were intended to show me getting ready to try the final lifts interspersed with pictures of the training to get there.  The trailer ends at the point of lift off and maybe there's some suspense about whether or not the lift was completed. 

I actually enjoyed completing the trailer.  I went over 30 seconds with it, but it felt kind of like I was telling a story with it so I guess that was hard to do in just 30 seconds. Anyways, on to the next...

GH Reflection

Things went pretty well from a training standpoint up to the time I attempted to record maximum lifts in both the snatch and clean & jerk.  I would say I completed 100% of the training sessions.  I did miss a couple of days in favour of watching Blue Jays playoff games but I made up for those days by doing training protocols for the session I missed plus the regularly scheduled session on the same day.

The training method I used from the 2012 Olympic gold medalist, Oleksiy Torokhtiy of Ukraine, resembles that of a Soviet style training program.  In competitive weightlifting, the Soviet Union was the dominant team pretty much from the 1950s up until the disintegration of the USSR and since then Russia and the former USSR satellite countries have remained strong.  Two main programing styles prevailed during that time, one coming from Russia and one from Bulgaria.  Here is a quick breakdown of  main differences between the two systems based on what I've learned:

Russian style

• Many support exercises used in addition to the competition lifts
• Variation in loads used.  Weights used in training are based on percentages of a lifter's 1 rep maximum. Percentages used are from 50% - 100% with the majority of loads used falling in the range of 70% - 80% of the lifter's 1 rep maximum
• Periodized training cycles. Throughout the macrocycle (eg. 1 year), there will be multiple smaller cyles (eg. 8 - 12 weeks) with their own goals and varied intensities.

Bulgarian style

• Primarily uses few lifts: the competition lifts and a squat variation (back or front squat)
• Little variation in loads.  Weights used in training are consistently at or near a lifter's 1 rep maximum. The majority of loads used are around 90% of the lifter's 1 rep maximum. 

In short, the Bulgarian style used heavier weights more often (all the time) and fewer exercises in a very linear progression.  Once you could lift 200 kg, you tried to lift 205 kg.  The Russian style used used lighter weights but weights that were heavy enough to create a training response, focused heavily on technique which was facilitated by using the lighter weights and cycled their lifting schedules in a way that promoted longevity as opposed to burn out.   To visualize it, think of the Russian style as a series of rolling hills trending upward while the Bulgarian style is more of an upward sloping linear graph.

GH Reflection

So, what is Olympic weightlifting?  It is a sport where athletes compete in two lifts with the ultimate goal of picking up a barbell of weight off the floor and getting it over their head.  The athlete competes in two lifts and their result is the combined total of their maximums in both lifts.  The first lift is the clean & jerk in which the athlete picks the weight up off the floor and gets it over their head in two motions - first the clean and then the jerk.  The second lift is the snatch in which the athlete picks the weight up off the floor and gets it over their head in one motion. The name Olympic weightlifting comes from the fact that the sport is an Olympic event and distinguishes it as the sport apart from resistance training for health or aesthetics, powerlifting and strongman competitions.

Olympic weightlifting is especially popular in eastern European nations (Russia, Bulgaria, etc.) and has gained popularity in North America more recently thanks to crossfit.  Crossfit is a training system that uses variations of the Olympic lifts as part of its very intense workouts.  It has become very popular among those interested in fitness and is how I was introduced to Olympic lifting.  I did an introductory crossfit trial and my favourite part was the strength lifting, which involved learning variations of the Olympic lifts before the actual crossfit workout.  I have never had a great fitness capacity for endurance activities and with the intensity of crossfit workouts and my pretty weak fitness capacity, I decided to get involved with Olympic lifting.  

I'm still very new to Olympic lifting and the thing that has surprised me most is how technical it is. It is a strength sport but you don't pick up and lift any significant amount of weight above your head and not injure yourself without using proper technique.  My undergrad degree is in kinesiology so I'm familiar with biomechanics, which is basically the physics of the human body, and that has helped immensely in understanding the technical points.  My biggest weakness is that I have very poor flexibility so without proper range of motion some of the positions are difficult for me to achieve. 

Up until July, 2016 I had maxed out at 195 lbs in the clean & jerk and 135 lbs in the snatch.  At that point I had surgery and took some time off.  I attempted to get back into it after 4 weeks and things were going slow for about 2 weeks before I decided that I'd probably come back too early and needed some more time off.  So, I took another 3 weeks off and have been lifting consistently again since September 1, 2016 largely without issue.  I'd been getting back pretty gradually just trying to build back a strength base when the Genius Hour project was assigned.  At that point I attempted maximums in each lift and was able to (eventually) complete a snatch of 135 lbs and a clean & jerk of 165 lbs.  I thought it would be a good idea to use the time frame established for the Genius Hour project towards a focused effort to get back to or try and set new maximums.  

To attempt this I will be using a 12 week program available online from Oleksiy Torokhtiy here courtesy of All Things Gym.  Oleksiy Torokhtiy is a Ukranian weightlifter and won gold at the 2012 Olympics in the 105 kg weight class.  I have never used this program before. 

I will not be attempting maximums again up until the end. The style of training uses sub-maximum weights which includes technique focused days and strength focused days.  Obviously I won't get through the entire 12 week program since the project is due in 4 weeks but I will report periodically to reflect on how things are going.

In the meantime, this a pretty cool youtube video of Soviet weightlifting champions from the days when the Soviet Union pretty much owned the Olympics in weightlifting.

Genius Hour Idea

My Genius Hour question is this:  How much can I improve my maximum Olympic lifts of 165lbs in the clean & jerk and 135lbs in the snatch by the time this class finishes?  No,  it's not anything that's going to contribute to world peace but it's personal and if Genius Hour is about a pet project and something I am interested in and passionate about, then right now this is it.

In July I had surgery and took 7 weeks off from weightlifting.  I went back after 4 weeks but quickly found out that I needed to be off longer to be able to tolerate the level of activity that Olympic weightlifting requires.  Before surgery I was maxing out at 195lbs in the clean & jerk and 135lbs in the snatch. Since resuming, I have been able to get back to 135lbs in the snatch but my clean & jerk is sitting at 165lbs. To be fair, I have focused more on slowly building back strength since coming back to weightlifting on the first day of September so my current numbers were my first attempts to max out since then. I didn't want to set a goal of achieving specific weights and attach a limit to this goal, but the time frame posed in my Genius Hour question will allow me to give a focused effort for a specific duration and see what comes of it.

Copyright

Copyright laws protect the original work of authors by restricting the rights of others to use and distribute them.  A formal copyright document is not required to confirm the copyright on a production, the mere act of creating it is enough for a copyright to exist.  Some examples of items that copyrights apply to are books, television shows, movies, music, music videos and paintings.  

The restrictions of copyrights can be modified with permission from the author and there are benefits of doing this.  The benefit to users is that the work is made available to them for use and, for the author, they maintain control of the terms of use.  Other benefits of a modified copyright include the ability of users to build on the knowledge and products that are copyrighted for the betterment of their audience and authors are not tasked with having to grant permission each and every time a request is made for use of their work.  One hub for works of authors that have agreed to modified copyrights is creativecommons.org where the terms of use are made known to users.  

Despite the restrictions of a copyright, a copyrighted work can be used in Canada for educational purposes and thankfully so.  Some teacher candidates from a different time can remember watching film strips in class with a narrated recording from a tape player.  There was almost a conditioned reaction to either fall asleep or goof around with your neighbor.  It was certainly more engaging to watch movies that were current at the time like The Matrix to illustrate points about philosophy or A Beautiful Mind in an abnormal psychology class as an example of what a schizophrenic condition can look like.  These popular culture works were far more engaging than an outdated film strip.  

The most important thing to impress upon students regarding copyright is that they need to know what a copyright is and be aware of what is and what isn’t copyrighted so they can correctly cite works and ideas that aren’t theirs, and by doing so avoid negative and potentially legal consequences.  As educators we should lead by example in this regard and practice the behaviours we are preaching.    

Flickinger, Brad. (2012, January 5). Student_ipad_school. Retrieved from Flickr.com

Campbell, Katie. (2012, October). Students at Computers [Online Image]. 

Retrieved from jyi.org.