COMP PREP
Things to get you thinking and help your prepare ahead of your next competition.
You’ve got 3 attempts in snatch and clean & jerk in competition, how on earth do you decide what they are?
Main Considerations
1. Know what you’re trying to get out of the event; whether experience, a particular total, or ranking. This should guide decision making
2. Know your heaviest ‘consistent make’ number. Generally speaking you should be very confident with your first attempts (normally between 90-95% 1RM)
Experience of the athlete plays a huge part here and for those new to competing at LEAST your first attempts want to feel ‘safe’. For a more experienced athlete working towards a specific outcome, attempt selection will be determined by a blend of
a) how heavy can you confidently open
b) how big a jump can you handle between attempts
c) what do you need to put on the bar to get the result?
Lastly but also very important: don’t bullshit yourself and expect to take attempts without evidence from recent training that they are realistic
An important part of competition-specific preparation is to know and practice your ‘jumps’; the warm up loads you will take on your way to your opening snatch and clean & jerk. Some tips to work through if this is new to you;
-the goal here is to get to your opening attempts feeling ready and energised, which means hitting the sweet spot of enough but not too many warm up sets
-the jump in load from set to set should reduce as you get closer to your openers, until the last 1-2 jumps are the same or only slightly more than the increases you plan on taking from one competition attempt to the next
-some loads you might want to do for more than one set, or more than one rep (especially the lighter ones)
- it’s normal to complete more sets and take smaller jumps for snatch compared to clean & jerk
Take time to try a few options and identify a warm up sequence that works for you. Having this practiced consistently in training sets you up with an established process ready to go for competition, and one less thing to worry about on comp day.
Your competition warm up is more than what you do on the barbell; it could even start the day before.
The purpose of a competition warm up or preparation process is to set up the ideal conditions for a ‘good day’ on the platform.
This can include your sleep and fuelling the night before, things you do, eat, drink before arriving at the competition venue, and then everything you do before touching the barbell.
It doesn’t need to be complicated, but by having a practiced and known competition process
-you have the physical benefit of having done what you know helps your body perform at its best
-you have the psychological benefit of getting yourself into the right mindset to perform
-you reduce mental stress on comp day by not having to make decisions, you just follow the process already laid out
-you take away the risk of distraction and trying something new for the sake of it
This practice starts in training (especially before sessions with heavy singles) and any less significant competitions, so that once you get to the big ones all you need to do is execute.
As you progress in weightlifting you’re likely to settle on what naturally feels ‘right’ in terms of the length of rest time you take between heavy attempts in training. This is all well and good until you go into competition where everything happens against the clock, what everyone else does will impact how much time you do or don’t have, and this is changing in real time.
Knowing your ‘ideal’ rest periods is great, while also understanding that you still need to be prepared to take heavy attempts both closer together, or further apart than this.
Being prepared means practicing in training; both taking heavy attempts with less rest than you’d choose, and more. This gives you physical exposure to all scenarios, but I’d argue the real value is in the mental work. It’s a lot easier to believe you’ve got this when you have evidence from training that you can still make lifts even when you’re feeling gassed or cold.
The thing about competing that we don’t tend to do in training, is a whole lot of nothing for 10-30 minutes between finishing snatches and starting clean & jerk warm up (exactly how long the gap is will be dependent on how many people are in your session, and where your attempts fall in relation to other’s).
It sounds kinda nice right? Oh cool I can just chill for a minute then carry on. Problem is now your hype train has pulled into the station and the driver’s gone missing. It’s not unusual to get back on the bar for clean & jerks and feel exhausted from a big old adrenaline dump. This is likely to heightened if you were particularly nervous about snatches, or if they went particularly well and you got all kinds of excited.
How do we combat it? It starts with emotional regulation during snatches and working to stay more in ‘walking up a hill’ less ‘on a roller coaster’ zones. In terms of practical strategies, as always it takes practice but here’s some ideas
-if you’re a big responder to music, use it strategically to bring you down asap after snatches, then back up as you get into clean & jerks
-save your sugary snacks until you’re nearing the end of snatches, so the glucose goodness is in your bloodstream at the most useful time
-if you like caffeine, also take this later (‘mid workout’ rather than ‘pre workout’)
-stay on your fluids
So you can lift big during team training surrounded by your mates and the music blaring? So what.
Love it or hate it, competing is going to put you out there on a 4x4, on your own, in relative silence, with everyone watching you.
For many athletes this is one of the scariest aspects to competing, and learning how to cope, and then thrive in that environment is going to be a huge contributor to enjoying being a part of the sport.
Exposure is key- not knowing always makes it worse. Watch other people compete to observe the process, and practice competition conditions in training;
-move from one area to another to take your heaviest lifts (like going from warm up to comp platform in competition)
-take your heaviest lifts with people watching (including sitting in front of you)
-take your heaviest lifts with no music playing
The rest is mind games, whether strategies to calm you, or amp you up to perform on your ‘stage’.
No matter how prepared you are, missing in competition happens for everyone eventually, both in warm ups and competition attempts.
Being able to handle it well is a competitive advantage, while not… could spiral to the whole comp becoming a bit of a hot mess.
Considering ahead of time what actions to take for every potential scenario means you can’t be caught out unexpectedly, and if something does go wrong you can default to actioning the relevant contingency rather than stress thinking about what to do next.
Considerations include
-being really clear on the target outcomes of the event in order to determine whether sticking with the planned attempts or making changes best supports achieving these
-living in reality, and being honest about what numbers are physically feasible for you to lift right here right now
-knowing what will support you best mentally after a miss
-knowing what physical things (if any) to do after a miss
A lot of this can be at least practiced in training, and even just considering what to do if xyz happened is helpful in preventing an ill-timed meltdown.
It feels a bit yucky to think about, but surely screwing up comp day unnecessarily is worse.