I hope that you now know your WHAT, for if you don't and you lift for cosmetic reasons, you are wasting your time on this blog. If the reason you lift is not to feed your soul, but your ego, and to look or appear "cool", the information below and further is not what you seek. If on the other hand, lifting completes you, makes you who you are and gives you a sense of purpose, I invite you to learn the truth.
Asking around will mostly get you the low hanging fruit. And it comes with a risk to curb your hunger for knowledge by feeding you noise (just like most answers in the post). However, a lot can be learned by searching and looking. At times we don't even need to search, as it is right there in front of us. We just need to cultivate a curiosity of WHY things appear the way they do. And what is stopping us from mimicking or reproducing them.
Let's look at a couple of world class "loaded movers" in action and try to understand what going on. I am partial to Olympic weightlifters from China and absolutely mesmerized by the effortlessness in their movement with mountainous loads.
A lot is going on in these videos. And different people will notice different things. But some things cannot be unnoticed...
Observation #1: During periods of peak tension (either horizontal or vertical), the lower abdomen region (just above the pelvis, i.e. the "base") is at its NARROWEST.
Observation #2: The INTEGRITY of the whole body and especially the torso region is stupendous. The core overall moves or changes shape very little during the movement from start to finish.
Observation #3: There is an element of ease or virtuosity exhibited during the execution of the lifts. In other words, these athletes look rather COMFORTABLE with the weights.
I will try to explain these three observations over the next few posts, starting with the first one. Observation#1 (i.e. of the "base" narrowing) obviously does not line up with the rather popular "make your base wide" advice advocated by most coaches. Even by one of the most popular websites dedicated to Olympic Weightlifting in North America.
But I will ask you this..
Does it look like they are making their base WIDE?
Like with anything that is out of the norm, it gets noticed and questioned. Hopefully, you observed this too but may have attributed it to genetics, age, drugs or something else modern-worldly.
But what if I told you that the answer/reason is something much simpler?
What if, the answer was known but was forgotten?
What if to brace, you neither have to "suck in" or "push out"?
What if the question: "Do I suck in or push out to Brace?" is the wrong question to ask in the first place?
What if, instead of needing to ask, you knew how to brace?
No, I am not heading towards the age-old "sucking in" vs "pushing out" argument that has plagued the fitness industry for a really long time.
I do not deal in answering questions with puzzles. However, it is only when we know what has failed so far, can we begin the quest for the unknown.
So I will give you a quick glimpse of the past...
Continued in part 3