08.04.09
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 5:14 am by Colin McNulty
I’ve just realised that I never got round to posting up the picture of me and Giles Greenwood, one of the coaches at Bethnal Green. Well here it is:
If you don’t remember me mentioning him before, Giles is the British Record holder for the Snatch (180 kg / 396 lbs) and Clean & Jerk (207.5 kg / 456 lbs) in the 105+ weight category. As such, he’s lifted more than any other British person, since they reset all the records that is.
That photo is taken when he did both those lifts in the 2002 Commonwealth Games, he had less hair back then, though he’s since shaved it all off again. Giles took Gold in the Snatch, Bronze for the C&J and Silver over all. Along with Patrick Atteridge, he’s a dedicated and committed weightlifting coach, with a cutting and typical English sarcastic sense of humour.
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15.03.09
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 1:16 pm by Colin McNulty
Yesterday was my best lifting event yet, by far. To say I’m extremely pleased, is a major understatement. The goal of the day was to lift the 175kg qualifying total, as much as anything, to justify my attendance there. (This is because they let me go, even though I hadn’t managed to lift the 175 qualifying weight before.)
To do this I needed something like a 75kg snatch and a 100kg clean and jerk. Considering my personal best for Snatch was 70kg and I’ve only ever got 100kg on the C&J once before, that was always going to be tough. My recent terrible form hasn’t helped (getting 70kg snatch only 3 times in the last 35ish attempts!) nor was doing my shoulder in last week. On top of that, apparently the rules are that you have to start within 10kg of the qualifying weight, so I had to start at 70kg and 95kg. It entered my mind that I might actually bomb out (miss all 3 lifts) of the snatch!
Still, fortune favours the bold and all that, so after getting up at 5am for the 3 hour drive up to Lilleshall National Sports centre, near Newport, Shropshire I arrived for the 8:30 weigh in and weighed in at 80.3kg. Bang in the middle of the 85kg category (77 – 85kg).
It was basically me and Mark Beck lifting together at the start, and we pretty much took it in turns. I warmed up to two 65kg snatches, and didn’t dare try a 70 in the warm up for fear of missing it and trashing my already shaky confidence. I wanted to go out at least having made all my warm up lifts. I was pleased with the fact that the warm up wasn’t bothering my shoulder at all, so whatever I’ve done to it (it hurts to press the buttons my car radio for example), it wasn’t weightlifting!
Cutting a long story short, I got the 70kg snatch fine, which was a major surprise to me. Sadly my remote control of the camera failed and I didn’t get it on tape. Whilst Mark was doing his 75kg snatch, I ran round to reset the camera and trotted back in time to go out for the big one, my 2nd lift and first go at the elusive 75kg, something I’ve missed twice before in competitions: at the Yorkshire and NE Counties Open, and at the Northern Masters.
I was nervous as hell for the 75kg snatch, but was determined and very pleased when it shot up no problem. New PB, woot! The issue for me has been getting the bar to stop in the right position over my head, so that it’s over my centre of gravity and I can stand up. This time it did and up I popped. I was very pleased. Suddenly however, I was being asked what my next weight was going to be…. I hadn’t given it any thought, the idea that I’d get both my first 2 opening lifts had never crossed my mind! I opted for 77kg, which seemed like the right thing to do.
I can’t wait to get the video uploaded, cos I can tell you, the 77kg was the best snatch I’ve ever done, it was perfect. The bar stopped in just the right place and I got extremely low under it. 77kg, another personal best, and a 10% jump to boot. 28 hours later, I’m still smiling!
After trying to sabotage myself in the warm up for the clean and jerk, by hitting myself in the neck with a 50kg bar, the C&Js actually went very well as well. My opening 95kg was sound and the big 100kg was really great to get up. I failed a 103, but I was past caring by then, I’d beaten my target of 175, instead getting 177kg and was (and am) very pleased with the day’s events. Sadly, the camera failed completely and I missed all the clean & jerks. I’m hoping to get some footage off other peoples flip videos next weekend.
In a final bonus, I was expecting to come 3rd of 3, in the face of competition from a Scottish champion and a Northern Ireland champ. As it turned out, the NI guy came in over weight and so was bumped up to the next category up. The Scottish guy (a very nice fella by the name of Ian Robertson) has been lifting since he was 14 (that’s 25 years) so it’s no real surprise that be won by a large margin. Still, it meant I was 2nd (out of 2, lol) and have another nice trophy to show for it. I’ll get whatever videos etc uploaded when I can.
It was also great to see Pat Atteridge again, as well as the 4 very impressive lifters from his London weightlifting club at Bethnal Green. And last bu not least, it was a pleasure to lift with Mark and see him qualify for the British Seniors, an immensely impressive performance for a 39 year old!
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04.11.08
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 10:30 pm by Colin McNulty
I was ecstatic last Wednesday at getting a 100kg Clean. It’s a land mark point and as Giles Greenwood said: “You never forget get your first 100!” Ok, I didn’t get the jerk, but I was just concentrating on the cleans. And I dropped it a couple of times first, but I got it.
I’m particularly pleased for 3 reasons:
Today I was back at Bethnal Green and I resolved to work on my Snatch technique. No complicated routine, no rush, I just had a simple plan: do a pair of Snatches every 5 mins. Starting at 50kg I wouldn’t move up in weight until I’d done 2 pairs with good form. So how did it go?
50kg was good. 55kg was ok. 60kg was not going well! At 60kg every lift was different, power snatches were popping up by accident as often as not, and I was dropping every third lift. Things were not looking good! Then the break through, in the form of 45 minutes of 1 on 1 from World Masters Champion lifter Patrick Atteridge:
Pat Atteridge and me at Bethnal Green Weightlifting Club
The night was quiet towards the end and I was very lucky to get Pat’s undivided attention, there were several bits of advice that Pat gave me. First, and contrary to what I had been doing, was to relax my arms. I had been tensing everything that I could before the snatch, but Pat explained that you should only tense the muscles that are needed, and everything else should be relaxed. If you’re too tense, you can’t move fast and the snatch is all about speed. Doing this did seem to make a small improvement.
Second was to keep looking up (at about a 30 degree angle) fix a spot on the wall and stare at it. This keeps the chest up and helps prevents shoulders drooping at the catch. At first this decimated my snatch and I dropped 3 in a row, but after 20 minutes I was getting it and was doing better.
The third tip was a total focus on speed, realised by concentrating on catching the snatch in the lowest possible squat. Pat said: “Catching 3 inches lower will add 10kg to your max snatch.” It took me half a dozen goes to really get a deep landing and I was getting under it, but kept dropping the bar forward.
Finally Pat told me to really punch my arms and shoulders up and back at the bottom of catch. That was the key ingredient. It took a few goes to get everything coordinated, and I dropped at this point to singles, but 15 minutes later I was nailing a fast and deep landing. The snatch has never felt so easy!
The 60’s were shooting up, so I jumped to 65, which is an equal PB lift, and I got it comfortably first time. With only 10 minute left till the gym shut I quickly moved to a PB attempt at 67.5 Something went wrong in my head and the first attempt went no where. However the 2nd went up nicely and I nailed the landing. A new 67.5kg PB, woot! I had a couple of goes at 70 in the dying minutes but couldn’t quite get under it properly and lost my balance. Another 10 minutes and I reckon I’d have got that too. Well, that’s something to aim for next time.
Now if I can just get my jerk up to 95kg tomorrow, I’ll be well pleased…
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