Olympic Lift Training Program - Morris Weissbrot

An Olympic Lift Training Program
by Morris Weissbrot

I set up lifting workouts in a manner designed to give fellows the kind of training most have never done before.
For the press – push-presses, incline presses and rack presses.
For the snatch – drop snatches, power snatches, flip snatches and snatches from boxes.
For the clean – power cleans, hang cleans and cleans from boxes.
For the jerk – push-jerks, drop jerks and rack supports.

They learn to use straps and work in six sets of five. If you’re not accustomed to working in high reps on these lifts, they can prove to be quite exhausting.

I also use descending cleans and descending snatches to teach lifters how to control and realize depth. In the descending clean (or descending snatch), you power clean (or power snatch) the first rep, and then sit about six inches lower on each succeeding rep, until you hit rock bottom on the fifth repetition.

Monday

Power snatches, power cleans, technique presses, snatch pulls, and front squats.

Tuesday

Descending snatches, descending cleans, push-presses, clean pulls, and back squats.

Wednesday

Repetition snatches from the floor, repetition cleans from the floor, push jerks, high pulls, and half-squats.

Friday

Snatches from the boxes, drop jerks, rack presses, and heavy quarter-squats.

Saturday

Go for a total on the three lifts, but not all-out. Go for a three-rep day’s best in everything else, but not to maximum.

Try to work on weak points, improve technique and iron out the flaws and faults in your lifting. Lack of flexibility is a common problem in most starting and intermediate lifters, and can be remedied with patient and consistent stretching.