Why you should add Olympic Weightlifting to your program
When it comes to physical performance, what does it take to place an individual in the ‘athletic’ category? One measurement that could be used to judge this is RFD (rate of force development).
In scientific terms, it's how fast the contractile elements of your muscles develop force. It is a measurement of explosive power or how fast an individual can produce force. Think about it, if an athlete can produce force quicker than their counterpart this would mean that they reach their goal faster.
Olympic Weightlifting x RFD
How does your rate of force development benefit from Olympic weightlifting? To increase your RFD you need to use a combination of different exercises in a high-velocity manner with a manageable load. For example a Clean & Jerk or Snatch and their derivatives. Olympic Weightlifting is a useful exercise to help increase RFD because they involve ballistic whole-body movements that require the body to produce large amounts of force in a short period of time. The skill it takes to get a 100kg barbell from the ground to your shoulders becomes exponentially more difficult if the entire movement is slow.
Training Plateau’s x Olympic Weightlifting
There are many contributing factors to what causes a training plateau. It could be a lack of fatigue management, errors in programming, you haven’t increased the load or your body has become accustomed to the movements in your program and you need a different stimulus for adaptation. The wonderful thing about weightlifting is it’s usually not a skill many people know how to do or execute. It’s also a sport judged by how much you can lift above your head, so by nature, it's heavy lifting. Learning how to execute a power clean or snatch pull is a skill that takes commitment, consistency, and discipline. This might be EXACTLY what you need in your next program to bust through a training plateau.
Olympic Weightlifting Workshop
The biggest barrier to adding this style of training into your next program is actually learning how to execute the movement in a safe and fun environment. This is the foundation of what built the Olympic Weightlifting Workshop, which will be held at Science of Fitness. The head instructor Artemio, who has trained alongside olympians and is coached by the Australia Head Weightlifting coach, wanted to bring a foundational workshop to introduce and teach the right mechanics to lift heavier, move faster, and best of all, learn a new skill.
If you want to enhance your power output in your next training program, feel a little more confident moving under a barbell or learn a movement that you didn’t think possible for your body - grab your ticket now. We’ll see you at Science of Fitness on the 21st of May for our first-ever introductory workshop to weightlifting - you’ve got this!
Buy tickets here.
