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    Team Crossfit is pleased to announce a collaboration with the P.H.A.T. Elvis Weightlifting Club to bring a competitive Olympic weightlifting program to the Woodland Hills area for EVERYONE.  The program/class will be coached by USA Weightlifting Hall of Famer Bob Takano who has been on the coaching staffs of 17 U.S. teams to international competitions, including 4 world championships.  His lifters have established national records, won national titles and medaled at international competitions.

    Click here for Coach Takano's Biography

    Olympic weightlifting will develop an individual’s ability to general prodigious amounts of power while performing the most skillful lifting movements as contested in the Olympic Games. There are 7 women’s bodyweight classes and 8 men’s bodyweight classes contested in competition.  The goal of this program is to develop a competition team.

    The program will be open to ANYONE and they may train five days per week. The club will be open between 1pm - 4pm, Monday through Friday.  You can come in at any time in between to work with Coach Takano.

    To puchase membership for this program, please visit, email or call us at 818.992.7502

    << CHECK OUT MY MONTHLY OLYMPIC LIFTING CLINICS >>

    Friday
    Aug132010

    One Perspective on U.S. Olympians

    Two incidents took place this week that got me to thinking about who has a great perspective on the state of U.S. Olympic athletes. One of the athletes that is involved with my strength and conditioning and weightlifting program is a two time member of the U.S. Winter Olympics team. On Tuesday she walked in and was accompanied by two people I’d never met before.
    “They’re from USADA (U.S. Anti Doping Agency) and they’re here to take a sample,” was her introduction of the pair.
    On Thursday I was visiting an athlete at a fencing club to plan a strength and conditioning clinic for the next week. I brought up the USADA incident to him as he is also on the athlete’s list for having been on several World Cup teams. He told me that a few months earlier he had taken a couple of days off of training and just happened to show up at the club when USADA showed up to take a sample. He felt he was lucky to have been available, as a missed sampling visit could lead to a suspension.
    What occurred to me at that point was that who knows better the conditions under which U.S. Olympians train than the members of the USADA sample collection staff. Most of them are probably not particularly interested in how athletes train, but they do get a great perspective on the facilities available, the types of equipment, the types of training regimens, and the coaching involvement.
    No other group of people in this country regularly visits the training facilities of Olympic athletes. They even visit their homes on some occasions.
    What I’m wondering now is whether or not anybody at USOC is taking the trouble to de-brief these people to find out what some of our athletes’ needs are and what might be done to improve conditions.
    Those of us who have been involved with Olympic sports for years have always felt that the bulk of the leadership of U.S.O.C. was out of touch with the plight of the athletes. It has always seemed that there were several degrees of separation between the athletes and the folks calling the shots up at U.S.O.C.
    What better way to find out what’s really going with our athletes than to de-brief the USADA collectors?
    Then I thought maybe the management staff of USOC could each spend a couple of weeks a year giving a break to the USADA people and doing their jobs while they get de-briefed.
    What a thought!
    Just a thought.

    Tuesday
    Aug032010

    Just A Little Planning Meeting about Planning

    Never a dull day.
    Crossfit Football honcho John Welbourn stopped by Team Crossfit today with some questions about training program planning, and how a plan should be modified for older and heavier athletes.
    We went over the training parameters that are of greatest relevance such as number of reps, number of reps per set, number of sets, training days, training day frequencies, weekly volumes, and mesocyclic volumes, not to mention selection of exercises, grouping of exercises and exercise frequencies.
    A great way to spend an hour or so talking shop about one of my favorite topics.  John promised to get back to me with his “homework” for a grading period.  Yikes, I can’t get away from acting in a school teacherly manner.
    Anyway we talked about possible clinics or info products for the planning of training and how to direct the focus.  We’re looking for this to develop into something of interest to functional trainees of all types and weightlifters as well.
    That’s the newest plan!

    Friday
    Jun252010

    Jumping and Jumping Tales

    This is a reprint of a Takanotes column published in IOL magazine in 1976. The information is still relevent. I’ve added some jumping stories at the end in italics.

    What with the establish­ment of the biathlon there is no question that the single most important com­ponent of modern weight lifting is an explosive pull. With such a stress on pulling, the Bulgarians and Russians have devel­oped and refined the mod­ern pulling technique known as the double knee-bend. This particular technique is basically a series of leg and hip movements de­signed to get the bar into a position for maximum ex­plosion. This position is reached when the bar is approximately at mid-thigh the weight is on the balls of the feet, and the back is at the optimum angle for a quick extension. Take a look at some of the sequence photos of the top international stars that you’ve seen recently in IOL, and you’ll notice that they all hit a position where the bar is at mid-thigh or higher just prior to top explosion.

    If you study these pho­tos very closely, you’ll notice that the optimum pulling position is very close to the starting po­sition for a vertical or standing long jump. Ob­viously the Europeans are very cognizant of this as they incorporate a great deal of jumping training into their programs. This has to pay big dividends since the top of the mod­ern pull is very nearly just a jump with the force transferred to the bar rather than maintained as vertical flight.

    Of course other lifters have long incorporated some form of jumping in their training too. Back in the early and mid 1960 “s when most western lifters did little more than sim­ply lift weights in their training, many people were amazed to find that the Japanese lifters spend a great deal of their warm-up time doing frog jumps, vertical jumps and stand­ing long jumps. The effec­tiveness of these movements can be attested to by the fact that the Japanese lifters of those days were notoriously poor pressers and superlative quick lif­ters .

    South Korean weight lifter Shin Hee Won is also a tremendous leaper and must incorporate a lot of jumping into his training. At only 162.5 cm. in height Won can leap up and grasp the rim of a standard bas­ketball hoop.

    World’s super heavy weight champion Alexeev, a former volleyball player, is another great jumper. Certainly his lifting must be a function of his ability to perform a ver­tical jump of over 76 cm.

    There is thus little question that the world’s top lifters do a lot of jumping, and most of them are very proficient leapers. Those of you readers interested in increasing your totals should already be doing some jumping in your training if you are serious about competition. The beginning of the work out is the best time to do these movements as your explosiveness is at its peak. They also serve as a good means of warming up the joints and muscles for the heavier lifts to come.

    THE BEST WAY TO JUMP— The Bulgarians figure that the best way to practice jumping is to have the lif­ter jump from the ground up onto a platform that is adjustable in height. They feel that a top lif­ter should be able to jump from the ground up onto a platform set at nipple height. You can use this as a guideline to see how you match up with the bet­ter lifters. If you have access to an adjustable platform you can use it to determine whether or not your jumping ability is improving. Keep track of any improvements you make in your training log and see if you can notice any correlation between them and your pulling ability.

    Jumping up steps is an­other way to keep track of your ability provided that you jump on the same steps during your train­ing.

    Standing long jumps will give you a good ex­plosion work out. By con­centrating on a sharp back snap and a powerful leg drive, you can very close­ly approximate the type of movement used in pull­ing.

    These preceding move­ments are included hope­fully as a means of im­proving your jumping a-bility and hence your pull­ing ability. They are cer­tainly not the only way to improve, but they do pro­vide means by which one can easily measure prog­ress . Jumping games (most notably basketball and volleyball) are also of great value though they present less of a control­led situation and can be inconvenient without a sufficient number of play­ers.

    Just as a final word to the wise, try to do as much of your jumping as you can in a good pair of well pad­ded shoes, and on a soft surface like a lawn. The impact upon landing from a maximum effort vertical or horizontal jump can cause a great deal of trau­ma in the bones and joints, something that should be and can easily be avoided.

    In those days we used the nipple height as a standard to see if we were explosive enough (please remember that all of this refers to males as there was no women’s weightlifting in those days). Most of us could jump up to a platform about halfway between the navel and the nipples.

    One day in the training hall at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984, we ended up having an impromptu jumping contest up onto stacked blocks. The two highest jumps were by Albert Hood (56 kg and 150 cm) and Guy Carlton (110 kg and 185 cm) who both jumped up on to heights even with their clavicles!

    Several reliable witnesses have told me that they’ve seen my 62 kg lifter Nghiep Dinh jump on to a platform that lined up with his chin!

    In the old P.H.A.T. Elvis days Nghiep, Franky Valdez and Thien-an Nguyen would have jumping contests trying to jump over the trunk of Franky’s Chevy Nova with a running start. I didn’t see too many bruises. I believe most of their attempts were successful. (Note: Franky’s Nova was not lowered. It was stock!).

    Friday
    Apr162010

    201 EUROPEAN WEIGHTLIFTING CHAMPIONSHIPS (April 2 - 11, 2010: Minsk, Belarus)

    The European Weightlifting Championships just concluded and the results certainly validate the blog that I posted after the 2009 World's Championships in Korea. The new world order in weightlifting has the power shifting to Asia. No world's records and very few European records of any type were established in Minsk.

    Once the Europeans were a recordfest (at least on the men's side), but now the meaningful continental championships is the Asian Championships or this year, the Asian Games scheduled for November.       
    figure 1 - Turkey's Taylan Nurcan is the European record holder in the clean & jerk

    The entertaining discussions should come from the "The Answer is Drugs!" crowd who have long espoused the concept that the Europeans have better drugs and undetectable drugs. What happened? Did the Europeans just give everything to the Asians while they abstained?

    Of particular interest - In 1983, the Soviet Union condemned the idea of allowing women's weightlifting competitions five years before the first women's worlds. 2010 finds the Russians winning the European women's team title while former Soviet Republic Belarus finishes third.

    Note: For those newer readers not familiar with weightlifting numbers, the first figure after the lifter's name is the weight of the top snatch, the second is the top clean and jerk and the third is the total. The total figure determines the ranking.


    Women's 48 kg   

    1) Taylan Nurcan (Turkey) 90--118*--208 (European senior record clean & jerk )
    2) Marzena Karpinska (Poland) 83--96--179
    3) Saziye Okur (Turkey) 78--95--173


    Women's 53 kg   

    1) Aylin Dasdelen (Turkey) 88--120*--208 (European senior record clean & jerk)
    2) Boyanka Kostova (Bulgaria) 87**--112**--199*** (European under 17 records)
    3) Valiantsina Liakhavets (Belarus) 87--111--198


    Women's 58 kg  

    1) Nastassia Novikava (Belarus) 105--133--238* (European senior total record)
    2) Romela Begaj (Albania) 96--111--207
    3) Marieta Gotfryd (Poland) 96--110--206


    Women's 63   

    1) Sibel Simsek (Turkey) 110--134--244
    2) Svetalana Tszarukaeva (Russia) 114--130--244
    3) Roxana Cocos (Romania) 99--130--229


    Women's 69   

    1) Oksana Slivenko (Russia) 117--145--262
    2) Meline Daluzyan (Armenia) 115--145--260
    3) Shemshat Tuliayeva (Belarus) 115--129--244


    Women's 75   

    1) Svetlana Zabolotnaya (Russia) 129--156--285
    2) Nadezhda Evstyukhina (Russia) 127--155--282
    3) Hripsime Khurshudyan (Armenia) 122--151--273


    Women's +75   

    1) Tatiana Kashirina (Russia) 135--162--297
    2) Olha Korobka (Ukraine) 123--150--273
    3) Volha Kniazhyshcha (Belarus) 116--141--257


    Women's Team   

    1) Russia 2) Turkey 3) Belarus


    Men's 56 Kg   

    1) Vitaliy Derbenev (Belarus) 118--138--256
    2) Smbat Margaryan (Armenia) 109--146*--249 (European youth record clean & jerk)
    3) Tom Goegebuer (Belarus) 116--138--254


    Men's 62 Kg   

    1) Erol Bilgin (Turkey) 139--165--304
    2) Antoniu Buci (Romania) 135--165--300
    3) Zulfugar Suleymanov (Azerbaijan) 132--162--294


    Men's 69 Kg   

    1) Inel Miculescu (Romania) 153--180--333
    2) Mikhail Gobeev (Russia) 148--171--319
    3) Mete Binay (Turkey) 149--165--314


    Men's 77 Kg   

    1) Tigran Martirosyan (Armenia) 165--195--360
    2) Krzysztof Szramiak (Poland) 160--191--351
    3) Mikalay Charniak (Belarus) 161-185-346


    Men's 85 Kg   

    1) Gevork Poghosyan (Armenia) 165--204--369
    2) Ara Khachatryan (Armenia) 165--203--3698
    3) Mikalai Novikau (Belarus) 171--196--367


    Men's 94 Kg   

    1) Arsen Kasabijev (Poland) 176--216--392
    2) Rovshan Fatullayev (Azerbaijan) 175--215--390
    3) Artem Ivanov (Ukraine) 180--203--383


    Men's 105   

    1) Andrei Aramnov (Belarus) 195--225--420
    2) Dmitriy Klokov (Russia) 185--224--409
    3) Vladimir Smorchkov (Russia) 193--215--408


    Men's +105   

    1) Evgeny Chigishev (Russia) 205--235--440
    2) Ruben Aleksanyan (Armenia) 195--237--432* (European Under 20 record total)
    3) Matthias Steiner (Germany) 190--236--426


    Men's Team   

    1) Belarus 2) Turkey 3) Poland

    Saturday
    Apr032010

    LOTS OF GREAT INFO FOR THE TRAINING OF ATHLETES

    Just got back from the NSCA Northwest Regional Clinic in Eugene and I was impressed by the line-up that clinic director Katherine Russell put together.

    All too many of the clinics that I've attended feel the need to try and play to all corners of the house, and much too frequently get away from the central focus of strength and conditioning which is to train athletes for performance enhancement. Just about every one of the 12 presentations focused in on information that would be of value to the coach.

    I also have to give great credit to University of Oregon's head strength and conditioning coach Jim Radcliffe. He served as Kathryn's co-host for the event and made all of the facilities and personnel of the strength and conditioning program available for the clinic. Several of his assistant coaches were presenters and we were able to take advantage of his weight room for one of the hands-on sessions. It was there that I saw what I considered one of the true highlights of the weekend.

    According to Jim, the guys with the money were kind of vague about his budget when they were putting the new weight room together, so Jim decided that he would get something truly unique. After contacting a Canadian manufacturer he was able to get these hydraulic jerk blocks which are incredibly cool. I think they send the message that his program is VERY serious about properly training the Olympic lifts. Every lifter I've described these to wants to do a jerk or two off of them.

    Anyway back to the rest of the clinic. We heard presentations about warm-up protocols employed at the Oregon Strength and Conditioning Program. The head athletic trainer went over some of the screening procedures that incoming athletes must go through and she showed some of the results which were very revealing. Scott Phelps gave a great presentation on sprint techniques, while Jason Glass presented well on the development of rotational power.

    Former P.H.A.T Elvis weightlifter Dr. Loren Chiu gave a fact-filled presentation on the science of strength and I'm happy to mention that he never mentioned a thing about muscular hypertrophy. We were also treated to a presentation on the post training restoration protocols employed at the Oregon program.

    I also got the chance to spend some time with Judy Glenney who was one of the very best champions in the first generation of women's weightlifting in the U.S. We had a great time recounting the old days and how the sport has developed over the past three decades. Another familiar face was Tom Hirtz. Tom, the former American snatch record holder (155 at 82.5 kg. bodyweight), was the manager of the training hall at the 1984 Olympics weightlifting venue and I was his assistant. Of course we go back even further than that. I reminded him that we first met in 1967 when he was in the Air Force and they had a team in Southern California that regularly competed against my old Los Angeles YMCA team. We later became team mates. Great to see Tom again and trade stories.

    Overall, it was a great weekend, and I'm glad I had the chance to present as well. Thanks to Kat and Jim for the great job of putting it together.