05.07.10
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 6:45 am by Colin McNulty
I completed the British Weight Lifting Association’s (BWLA) Assistant Club Coaches’ Course this weekend, and thought it would be nice to write up a few things about it.
It was a 2 day course, all day Saturday and Sunday, and teaches you how to coach the basic Olympic Weightlifting lifts, specifically the Snatch, Clean and Jerk. Whilst it is predominantly a practical course, it doffs a cap to health and safety obviously, a bit on stretching, warm-ups and downs and scheduling (or programming if you prefer that term). As I said though, it is mostly a practical course with some time watching demos of the lifts, plenty of time to personally practice the lifts in small groups of 3 or 4, and a lot of opportunity to coach others.
In terms of assessment, there was a practical test where we had to stand up in front of the group and go though the BWLA method for teaching the Power Clean, including a personal demonstration and also coaching a student. Additionally there’s a 90 minute written exam at the end, which has been sent off for marking, so I’ll have to wait to hear back on how I did on that. It didn’t escape my notice that I was the last to finish the exam! The point being, that this isn’t just a “Certificate of Attendance” course; t is assessed both practically and academically.
We were very lucky to have as our instructors, 2 very experienced lifters who have both lifted on the international stage and refereed at a world class level: Suzy Trebillock and Eddie Halstead. It was a privilege to benefit from their experience.
It was a useful course and I do recommend it. As a Level 1 course it gives the basics of how to breakdown and teach the Olympic lifts. There is a follow on Level 2 course, which is the full BWLA Club Coaches’ course which is over 2 weekends, but that is more theoretical, looking more a physiology and programming rather than practical hands on coaching.
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03.07.10
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 7:30 am by Colin McNulty
I’m looking forward this weekend to attending the British Weight Lifting Association Assistant Club Coaches Olympic weightlifting course, which is being hosted by Crossfit Manchester.
Whilst I’m not sure I have any specific ambitions to become an Olympic weightlifting coach, it’s certainly a skill that’s worth having, and as the course is happening on my doorstep it’d be pretty stupid not to take advantage of it. It should be a good couple of days. I’m hoping that learning to teach the Snatch and Clean & Jerk, will also have a knock on affect on my own performance and ability to coach myself, as and when I find myself lifting on my own
It’s also possibly going to be an opportunity to use my new Pulse LiveScribe smart pen. I mentioned these marvellous devices a month or so ago and finally got round to buying one. It’s fair to say that everyone I’ve shown it to so far has been suitably impressed and can immediately see its appeal and a myriad of uses. I predict that in 10 years time, every student will have one, maybe even every salesman and every manager. I can honestly see a market that stretches to 100M+ in size. It truly is that revolutionary. I’ll let you know how I get on with it.
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03.04.10
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 6:26 pm by Colin McNulty
Here’s the video I took at the British Masters last week:
Sadly I only got the first half as the video camera died half way through, grrrr.
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30.03.10
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 6:36 pm by Colin McNulty
Thanks for all the messages of support, I can confirm that I did win my category at the 2010 BWLA British Masters Olympic Weightlifting championship finals this weekend.
I was expecting to be lifting against Anthony (Tony) Down, from the Empire Club in Bristol, but it turned out that he came in overweight for the 77kg category at 78kg, which left me lifting all on my own. (I weighed in comfortably under at 75.9 kg.) All I needed to do was get a total and I was home and dry. To be clear then, here are the relevant rules:
- To qualify for to be able to compete, you must lift the qualifying total in a BWLA officiated (3 judge panel) competition in the previous 12 months. I did this when I lifted a 165kg total in the Northern Masters Weightlifting Competition in 2009, which is the qualifying standard for Mens Group 1 (35-39) in the 77kg body weight category.
- On the day then, you must open within 15kg of the qualifying total, so I had to open with a minimum of 150kg. I opted for easy openers of 65 Snatch and 90kg Clean & Jerk. I could/should have opened 5kg higher on each (70 and 95) which was my plan had I been facing Tony, but there was no point risking it. Especially after my recent shambolic training performances.
- You need to get at least one Snatch and at least one Clean and Jerk to make a total.
That’s it, all I needed to do was get my openers and I was the winner. Sadly I started the video camera too early and it ran out of juice (I may try to send it back as a full charge only lasted 70 minutes!) so I only got a video of the snatches, which I may upload at some point. I’ve pondered whether this default win detracts from the occasion? But the way I see it, it means I actually won it back when I lifted 165 at the Northern Open, as I was the only person (apart from Tony) who made the qualifying weight, I just didn’t know it yet!
The snatches went very well and I easily power snatched the 65, then the 70 and finally did a full squat snatch (though had to chase it across the platform!) for 75. Which considering my body weight of 75.9, was less than a bag of sugar away from a body weight snatch. To be honest, now with hindsight, I regret not opening at 70 as I’d originally planned, as I reckon there was a snatch PB in the offing (current PB is 77).
C&Js didn’t go quite so well. The 90kg opener was trivial, but then I made a mistake and jumped straight to 100kg. It seemed like a good idea at the time, 100kg is an =PB lift for me, and 95 meant nothing so going for it seemed the right thing to do. In reality, the 10kg / 11% jump in weight caught me off guard and I dropped both my 100kg attempts. Note to self: 5kg increments only in future.
So I finished with a 165 total (70 + 90). But I suppose the real question is, how would I have done if I’d been facing Tony? Tony it turns out is a very nice fella. Well of course he is, he’s a 5 year Crossfitter! We shared a warm up platform and generally encouraged each other throughout. It is hard to say what would have happened as it turns out that his personal best total of 177 is exactly the same as mine!
Tony got a 70kg Snatch and 100kg C&J, and he was competing against a Scotsman in a close run race, so on the face of it, he would have beaten me. However had we been competing, I would have started at 70 snatch, which I got, as I got the 75 and reckon I would have got a new PB of 78. Similarly I’d have started at 95 C&J which should not have been a problem, and I reckon the smaller 5kg increment would have seen at least one of my 100kg lifts come off which I’ve got several times before, giving a 178 total. But then, maybe Tony would have lifted differently if he was against me? Who can know, it’s all academic.
I do know several things though. 3.5 years ago I was a fat couch potato who hadn’t done a jot of exercise for 15 years and now I’m British Champion at an official Olympic sport. How does that happen?!? Here’s how, and I owe a debt of gratitude to all involved:
- I decided to change my life, but I didn’t know how.
- My mate Ian Sturrock put me onto Crossfit.
- Mark Beck and Karl Steadman opened Crossfit Manchester and filled it with a great bunch of supportive people.
- They got me on the Zone Diet which has morphed into more of a Paleo Zone.
- Mark especially has coached my weightlifting form over the last 3 years and always selflessly gives his time to coach me when I’m at a competition, and generally be helper extraordinaire. I am very grateful and would definitely not have done it without his help and support.
So what’s next? I think I’m going to take some time off the weightlifting focus and get back to more regular Crossfit for a while. Crossfit is a whole load of fun, dropping snatch after snatch whilst training on your own (when I’m away from home) is not. As a result, I’ve left the gym I go to in Cardiff: Aspire Fitness, especially as my contract should be finishing up shortly. They’re a nice bunch down there, and I’m sorry to leave them.
There are 2 things to aim for I think, one is the European Masters Championships. I need a 182 qualifying total so need to get my snatch up to 80 and clean and jerks up to 102. But it irks me that both the 2 biggest Masters competitions of the year: the British Masters and the Northern Masters, are outside the qualifying window for qualification. That’s bad planning! Also there’s the simple fact, that if I wait a couple of years till I’m in the 40-44 category, the qualifying total comes down to 172, which is much more doable, lol!
The second thing is the the English Indoor Rowing Championships (EIRC), which I’ve had my eye on for a couple of years, but always chosen the weightlifting in preference, as often they are both on the same weekend. I’ve got my eye on the 500m title, which if I can make the 75kg lightweight category, I could win easily. Judging by this years numbers my personal best is 7 seconds faster than the 1st place time! So I need to be good this Christmas and not pile on the pounds if I’m going to make 75kg by 3rd week in Feb.
Anyway, it was an exciting weekend and I’m currently very chuffed. I’m sure the feeling won’t last long.
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24.03.10
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 7:34 pm by Colin McNulty
Well the British Masters Championships are this weekend, and if I’m not ready now, I’ll never be. Which is to say, I’m not ready now! I hate preparing for competitions because I’m *never* ready!
This week’s lifting went ok, but could have been better. The highlights are, on Tuesday I managed 3 out of 6 snatches at 70kg (154lbs), which was disappointing but not terrible. And today I managed 2 out of 3 Clean & Jerks at 95kg (209lbs) which again was just ok, not fantastic. I also bailed on the WOD I had planned today due to a slightly twingy back; no point in risking injury this close to the comp.
In other news, I was bang on the weight limit this morning, for the first time this year, and with just days to go, not a moment too soon! It’s taken me 3 months to loose the weight I put on in December and get back to what I was in November and was bang on 77kg (12st1 or 169 lbs) this morning. Here’s my weightloss graph for this year:
All hail the mighty Zone diet which comes through for me again. After this comp, I’m going to try some experiments with my diet. I foresee a lot of milk in my immediate future. 
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20.03.10
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 12:09 pm by Colin McNulty
As many people have noted from my earlier post, snatch practice for the British Masters has not been going well. Dropping six 70kg (154lb) snatches in a row, 2 weeks before competition day, is never a good sign.
So this weekend, with 2 sessions back at Crossfit Manchester, I desperately needed the experienced eye of my Crossfit Coach Mark Beck to sort out what on earth was going wrong. First the result:
Friday: 2 out of 3 snatches at 70kg successful.
Saturday: 3 out of 3 snatches at 70kg successful!
(Plus I did the daily Crossfit Manchester WODs to follow, of course.)
To say I’m pleased and relieved is an understatement. In fact, I’m looking forward to the possibility of having a good crack at a new PB come competition day. Current PB is 77kg, so opening at 70 looks achievable, giving 2nd and 3rd lifts of 75 and 78 if all goes well.
What was the magic ingredient? Simply finishing the pull. It’s probably one of the hardest things to get right in the snatch: when to stop pulling up on the bar and when to start dropping your body under the bar. Clearly I’ve been dropping down too soon and Mark’s guidance to make sure I properly come up on the balls of my feet, actually feeling the weight there, definitely made the difference.
Simple huh? The point is, that even if you workout on your own, it’s worth making the effort to get to your closest Crossfit Affiliate, at least once a month say, just to get that bit of expert coaching that can work wonders to your form.
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18.03.10
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 8:35 pm by Colin McNulty
I’m pleased to report that my hamstring tweak had mostly cleared itself up by Tuesday, so I was able to train as I’d intended. There was still a little soreness there, but 98% there. However, that didn’t prevent the disaster that was Tuesday’s snatches!
Tuesday followed my normal routine of snatches for 45ish mins then some form of WOD. I’d hoped to recover from last weeks debacle, quickly move up to 70kg and pop out 3 good 70kg snatches. Well, that turned out to be ridiculously ambitious! I only succeeded in dropping six 70kg snatches in a row, and pretty must destroying what little confidence I had in doing them.
I think that over a year of working out on my own in Cardiff at Aspire Fitness, with no one to watch my form, has really taken its toll on my technique. After the BWLA British Masters, I think I need to go back to the drawing board with my snatch. Even now, 3 years on, they still don’t feel right and there’s too much variability. So it looks like I’ll be starting at 65kg in the comp.
Not wishing to do myself another injury this close to the comp, I finished with a named Crossfit WOD: Annie. I scaled it by dropping the first round, making it: 40-30-20-10 of double unders and situps, which I achieved in 9:57
On Wednesday things got a bit better. Clean and Jerks are harder to cock up on technique and I worked up to three good 95kg C&Js, which will be my starting weight, making a total of 160 to start with, which is more than the 150kg minimum starting total for my category. If you don’t know, your starting total must be at least the qualifying standard minus 15kg.
I followed this with a derivation of Crossfit 3D’s WOD from the other day:
AMRAP in 10 minutes of:
- 3 x 60kg power cleans
- 6 push ups
- 9 kettle bell swings @ 16kg
In which I managed exactly 8 rounds. Again this was scaled down after 40 mins of clean and jerks and so as to not do myself a mischief.
In other news, my weight *just* about on target but I still have a few pounds left to loose. Fingers crossed it won’t be a major drama. I’ll post up a weight chart from 1st Jan next week. To be honest, I’ll be quite happy when this competition is over, I’m deep in the “why am I doing this” stage of preparation, but I know I always go through this, it’s just you mind playing games with you. Ho hum.
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10.03.10
Posted in General Colin McNulty Stuff at 9:07 pm by Colin McNulty
Well Tuesday didn’t go at all well! Snatch practice was meant to be a simple matter of getting confident with my opening lifts, but it couldn’t have gone much worse. I dropped 3 out of 6 attempts at 65kg and dropped 2 out of 3 attempts at 70kg. Honestly, I should be getting every lift at these weights. I think months of training alone with no coaching is taking its toll. :-S
I still need to lose 5 lbs in the next 18 days so I finished up with a small Crossfit style metcon workout of my own devising. I included burpees as punishment for my failure at the Snatch, lol:
21 – 15 – 9 reps each of:
- 24″ Box jumps
- Pull ups
- Burpess
For what it’s worth, my time was 12:38.
As for today (Wednesday), well that was a complete bust. I had felt a twinge in my hamstring doing deadlifts at the weekend, and so eased off. Well whilst I didn’t notice it at the time, I must have aggravated it on Tuesday, as it is slightly sore even to walk on at the moment. I think discretion is the better part of valour and so I’m going to take it easy. The last thing I need is a proper injury 2 weeks before the comp!
In other news, I’m working on a Crossfit post that has literally taken hours to put together. It’s probably the most useful Crossfit related post I’ve ever done on this blog, something I’ve been thinking of doing for ages and I can’t wait for it to be finished so that I can post it up! It’s even better than the Named Crossfit Workouts (the girls) post I did ages ago, that I still haven’t got round to updating yet. One day…
Anyway, this post will be ready in the next couple of days, it’s going to be awesome. 
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04.03.10
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 12:43 pm by Colin McNulty
I’ve started seriously thinking about the BWLA British Masters Olympic Weightlifting Competition at Lilleshall (I came 2nd last year) at the end of March and how I’m going to prepare for it. For reasons I won’t bore you with, I’ve not done as much lifting as I should have done in preparation for this competition. It’s too close to the comp now to actually consider improving strength really, so I’m just going to focus on technique and get my confidence levels up for what I want my starting lifts to be.
The rules say that you must start within 15kg of the qualifying standard, which was 165kg for the 77kg M1 category. So starting at 150 would be an easy 60kg snatch and 90kg clean and jerk. I think I’m going to do a bit better than that and work towards 65kg and 90kg as starting weights, and see how it goes this month, I may up them both to 70kg snatch and 95gk C&J openers. I do need to be confident of getting a total though, so will err on the side of caution if training this month doesn’t go smoothly.
My aim for training is to not try anything that will cause me to drop a lift in the next 4 weeks. I want to go into the comp with utter confidence that I can lift my openers, then just increment each one by 5kg say on the day for the 2nd and 3rd lifts. That would mean if all goes perfectly (ha, when does that happen?!?) my current PB’s of 77kg and 100kg are in range.
With that in mind, my training this week was:
Tuesday
Hang Snatch and Snatch: 2×40, 2×45, 2×50, 2×55, 1×60
Snatch + 2 Over Head Squat: 2×60, 3×65
Snatch Pulls: 3×70, 3×75, 3×80
Then ½ the Crossfit.com WOD, which was 8 rounds (I did 4) of run 400, with 90 second rest between runs. I only did half as I’m not that used to a lot of running and I had brand new Evo Viva Barefoot running shoes and didn’t want to over do it first time out.
They are Vibram FiveFinger substitutes, as I don’t have the right shaped feet for Vibrams (boooo!). Certainly, they have not a lot of sole to speak of and you do feel a lot more of what you’re walking on. They’ll take a bit of getting used to, but should help the Pose running that’s for sure.
Wednesday
Hang Clean & Jerk + Clean & Jerk: 2×50, 2×60, 2×70, 2×80
Clean & Jerk Singles: 3×85, 3×90
I followed this with a Crossfit WOD from a few days ago: Row 5k. I’ve never done a 5k row before, in fact the most I’ve ever rowed has been 2000m, and only once at that, so this was a bit daunting! In fact, it went better than I’d hoped. Each 1000m split was faster than the one before, and I had enough left to end with a bit of a sprint, finishing in a respectable (I thought) 20:28. Will have a go at beating 20mins next time.
Actually the biggest battle at the moment is making the 77kg (169lbs) weight category. I’m down from a portly 13st5 after Xmas to 12st7 as of this morning, so only 6 lbs and 3.5 weeks to go. Should be no problem, as long as I can continue to be good, hoho.
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02.02.10
Posted in Crossfit Workout & Exercises, General Colin McNulty Stuff, Olympic Weightlifting at 8:07 pm by Colin McNulty
Today I did Saturday’s workout from the main Crossfit site, it looked fun:
Seven rounds for time of:
- 95 pound Power snatch, 7 reps
- 95 pound Snatch balance, 7 reps
- 95 pound Overhead squat, 7 reps
95lb doesn’t compute too well to kg, and at the last minute I had an inkling that it could be harder than it looked (the rafts of DNFs on the main site was the hint!) so I plumbed for 40kg, which is exactly 1/2 my body weight at the moment.
I’m glad I did, man that sucked! Lifting half body weight over head 147 times was never going to be easy, and do to resting after each exercise, I actually ended up doing 7 more Snatches (to get the bar up for the OHSs). It was a pretty poor time of 32:55 and I was whacked at the end. That’s the longest Crossfit workout I’ve done in a while.
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