In September of 2006, I hit a milestone clean and jerk (160kg). To celebrate, I took a grand victory lap around the gym. I don’t know how long the lap took, but it was enough for my body to have cooled down. For my next exercise (clean pulls), I didn’t think I needed to warm ..read more

The muscle-snatch-to-standing, typically just called the “muscle snatch,” is a snatch in which the knees and hips don’t re-bend after the pull. When the pull is complete, the lifter uses their upper body to move the bar upward until the arms are locked overhead.   Weightlifters use the muscle snatch (to standing) to warm up ..read more

What sports give us the biggest advantage for weightlifting? From 2010 to 2011, I was the coach at Innercity Weightlifting (ICW) in Boston. Our mission was to help at-risk youth get away from gangs, DYS centers, and difficult domestic situations. Our tool was weightlifting. We taught kids the snatch, clean and jerk, squats, and presses ..read more

Russians and Americans have different approaches to coaching weightlifting. Part of it is cultural, and part of it stems from weightlifting being a professional sport in Russia, and mostly an amateur sport in the US. In the Russian approach, there is the glum reality that weightlifting is truly hard fucking work. Over the years, I’ve ..read more

Weightlifting Magazine recently asked me to write an article reviewing weightlifting shoes that are trendy right now. They sent me two pairs of popular weightlifting shoes, the Adidas Leistung 16’s and the  Position USA P2.1 Blue Suede Shoes. My task was to try them out and write my honest review of them. Here is the result ..read more

Bathhouses are not a part of American sports culture, but they should be. Going to the bathhouse has been a crucial part of my athletic development. Each visit drains me of water, electrolytes, and energy, but the following morning I’m feel refreshed, ready to work, and ready to recover. It’s like a reset switch. A bathhouse is ..read more

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Let’s drop the charade. The “clean sport” fairytale is helping no one. Nearly all Olympic and professional athletes have used anabolic steroids and/or other banned performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) at some point during their athletic careers (gasp for effect).  If they hadn’t, they’d be less healthy, they’d constantly get injured, and sports just wouldn’t be as ..read more

Ilya Ilyin is a 2-time Olympic Champion and 4-time World Champion. After winning the 2012 London Olympics, Ilya took 15 months off from training to let himself rest and recover. At the end of this break, Ilya came to the US to do a series of seminars with Dmitry Klokov, Vasiliy Polovnikov, Nikita Durnev, Zygmunt ..read more

A training cycle for a novice weightlifter should be different from that of an advanced lifter. In this post, I’ll discuss some of the major differences. In the Russian Weightlifting System, weightlifters are ranked based on their weightlifting abilities. These ranks help coaches effectively plan their athlete’s training cycle. The following chart is used to determine a male weightlifter’s ..read more