COACH JEREMY’S

UNSCARED WEIGHTLIFTING MANUAL

2018

PART 1: THE LIFTS

BASIC PRINCIPLES:
A movement like the snatch consists of a lot of 'moving parts'. Positions of the body, how
to exert force into which direction, etc. All these parts moving in sequence make up the
groove or rhythm of the movement. All these moving parts and the timing of these parts
have to be correct so that speed and strength are properly expressed in a snatch, clean or
jerk. Moreover, many faults in those moving parts or the timing will change the direction
of either the barbell or the athlete. Understanding this means understanding the
importance of having proper groove and proper directions, so that you can lift safely and
efficiently.

Key point 1: The Groove

The 'groove' as I refer to it is the rhythm, timing and consistency of the movement all put
together. If the groove is off, the lift will possibly become unpredictable, unsafe and
inefficient.

Key point 2: Up and Down, not Forward and Backward

The direction of the barbell and the athlete should be mostly up and down. Any excessive
forward/backward movement of either may again make the lift unsafe or inefficient.

Key point 3: Jumping, not Hinging

Olympic lifts have jumping mechanics. They are a combination of a lot of moving parts
but they are definitely not a hinge. Stop trying to turn a snatch into a kettlebell swing by
forcing people onto their heels and emphasizing the hip action all the time.

Key point 4: One Trick Ponies & Cookie Cutter Coaching

It is important to understand that there are many coaching and technical styles, many
lifters with different limb lengths, preferences, strengths and weaknesses, joint types
and so on. This means that as a good coach, you can’t be a one trick pony. You have to
understand that it’s often okay if an athlete’s snatch looks vastly different from that of
another athlete – and sometimes not.

The only way to do this properly is to think in cause-and-effect, rather than right-or-
wrong. This requires more insight and understanding, but allows you to better
individualize your coaching instead of going for a cookie cutter approach that may be
sub-optimal or even impossible for some athletes.

Key point 5: Positioning & Structural Integrity
Proper positions in a lift are important mostly for two reasons. The first one is structural
integrity – basically meaning how ‘strong and safe’ that position is. Suboptimal structural
integrity requires more strength or additional movement to compensate. The second
reason that proper positions are important is that they influence the direction we were
talking about in key point 2. Also keep in mind that one position can greatly influence
the position that comes after it.

Key point 6: Mobility

We want adequate mobility to hit and control the presumed ideal positions mentioned in
key point 5, or the most realistic approximation thereof.

GUIDELINES FOR POSITIONS:

Snatch - Starting Position:

• Weight on the middle of the foot.
• Shoulders and knees slightly in front of the bar
• Eyes forward
• Flat/slightly arched back
• For most people, a foot stance that is wider than their deadlift but more narrow
than their squat. Toes slightly out. Keep in mind that foot stance tends to vary
more than all other aspects.

Snatch - Clearing the Knee:

• Weight slightly more to the back but still on the midfoot
• Torso clearly over the bar, shoulders still in front
• Shins close to vertical

Snatch - Power Position:

• Knees slightly bent, hips slightly bent
• Shoulders over or slightly in front of the bar, not behind
• Weight still on the midfoot right until the actual second pull

Clean - Differences in Positions

• The narrow grip will put the power position slightly lower.
• Foot stance is roughly the same, but may be more narrow, depending on grip
width.
• Hips tend to start lower because of the more narrow grip width.
• Because of the relatively heavy weights used in the clean, the torso may be more
horizontal when clearing the knee. That is fine, as long as the athlete gets the bar
back into proper power position after clearing the knee.

The Jerk - Front Rack Dip & Drive

• The torso should be vertical in the dip and drive.
• The hand should be closed around the barbell, with the athlete getting some
leeway in keeping the barbell either close to the start of the fingers or closer to the
wrist.
• Elbows can point wherever people want, although they are generally lower than in
a front squat, on the condition that the barbell stays in solid contact with the
front of the shoulders.

 • Foot stance is generally narrow with toes pointed fairly straight forward.
Deviations are sometimes necessary because of ankle mobility issues.

Split Jerk - Landing Position

• Front knee should be over the front heel.
• Back knee should be behind the hips.
• Torso is slightly (!) inclined forward.
• Barbell stays over the shoulder blades.
• Athlete has some leeway in terms of head positioning. I personally prefer a very
obvious head-through position. Adjust your athletes at your own discretion
depending on what feels better and gives better results. Looking down is generally
not accepted but can work very well in some cases.
• Toes point forward / slightly (!) inward.
• Back leg is (slightly) bent. The degree of knee flexion may differ.
• Feet width should be roughly the same as the dip/drive phase, however, technical
styles differ.

WARMING UP:

A warming up serves several purposes. Most people are aware of things like 'warming up
the joints' and 'getting your heart rate up', which can be achieved simply by moving a
joint and getting active. That is what I refer to as a 'general warm up'. Spending 3
minutes on an assault bike at an easy pace, doing a small complex of squats, romanian
deadlifts and push presses, etc.

In weightlifting-specific training, the movement pattern needs to be 'woken up' as

well. Just like you wouldn't just go into a max effort squat like that, don't do that with
weightlifting either. You need to 'feel out' the movement before you actually start putting
in strength, which gets harder if the movement is more complex.

Keep in mind that the more complex a movement is, the more time should be spent on
'waking up the movement pattern'. Also remember that warming up functions as
technique training as well – don't let people get sloppy just because they're working with
a stick or empty barbell.

I generally distinguish two ways of accomplishing the 'specific' warm up.

Drills:
These are usually either small parts of the upcoming movement or relevant drills. Just
jumping and bouncing could be considered a drill, if people have horrible jumping
mechanics and rhythm. It may be a good idea to specifically instruct people to do certain
drills during their warm up to fix their technical issues.

Technique primers:
As Greg Everett from Catalyst Athletics calls them, technique primers are exercises that
focus on a specific element of the movement to come. Example: Do a few sets of muscle
snatches at a certain weight before you do the actual snatch, so you ‘warm up’ the proper
vertical pull that needs to be used in the snatch.

In practice, a combination of drills followed by a short technique primer (focused on an

individual or group's common weak point) works fine and takes very little time.

 COACH JEREMY’S

UNSCARED WEIGHTLIFTING MANUAL

2018

PART 2: TEACHING

CUEING OLYMPIC LIFTS
Earlier, we learned about the overal ‘groove’ of the olympic lifts, as well as about
different positions and how they influence lifts. Now, we have to apply this to the real
world. In an earlier UCC session, you’ve already gone over some of the principles like
types of cues (tactile, verbal, visual) but we will go a bit more in depth and see how we
can apply all this to the snatch, clean, jerk and variations.

There are countless cues and you could make them up on the spot if you felt that they
would help the athlete in question. This raises a lot of questions. How do you know what
cue to use in which context? How do you prevent overcueing? How do you get better at
this whole thing?

These issues go for every movement, but become more challenging in a complicated
movement like a snatch.

Here’s a step-by-step guide towards a train of thinking that can help you in cueing.
Although by no means is this ‘the’ way to coach, internalizing these steps will at the very
least give you proper toolbox to start with, or expand on your current toolbox. A lot of
the below text applies to non-lifting movements as well. It is at your discretion when you
think an element is appropriate.

Step 1: Observing and contextualizing 


Look at what’s happening. Look at the overall flow of the movement and rhythm first.
Does something look ‘off’ or is there a blatant problem? Does everything seem fine? Place
the thing you see in context. Keeping the bar close in a power clean is important for a
competitive weightlifter and may deserve some time devoted to correcting that. But what
about a martial artist with very limited training time? He just wants more power in his
legs and hips. Carryover to a full clean for example, is less relevant, so is it really worth
taking some of that valuable, little training time to correct it? Remember the triaging
that was discussed in an earlier UCC session, which falls under the contextualizing part.
Decide whether you want to reinforce something (“Good! Again!”) or correct something,
the latter leads you to step 2.

Step 2: Reverse engineering 


When you see a symptom that needs correcting, it can help to reverse engineer it into a
cue. Reverse engineering means analyzing backwards from an endpoint to arrive at a
starting point. Here’s an example:

• I notice the athlete missing his snatch in front, even though I know he is strong
enough to support the weight overhead.
• This means the athlete placed the barbell too far out in front.
• This could mean the barbell swung out in front instead of keeping it close.
• I take a closer look in the second rep, which confirms that the barbell swung out
in front.
• I need to cue the athlete into keeping the bar close.

This example is simplified, but illustrates the train of thinking and shows us that, in this
particular case, the ‘bad catch’ was just a symptom of something earlier in the movement.
Understand this principle and you can look at someone missing a lift and say “okay, this
and that was off, let's break the movement down into its constituent moving parts and
see where the problem originates from”. This may seem intuitive, but it's often not. If
someone gets under the bar in a snatch and missed the lift, it's very tempting to look at
the catch, since that's where they missed the lift. Although the catch may be the problem,
the problem often starts earlier in the movement. It is therefore important to look at the
total rhythm of a movement, and not just one single position. Looking at separate
positions usually happens after assessing the rhythm, by zooming in. “Zooming in” can
be an effective part of this process. Look at the big picture when someone does the first
rep of a set, then look at specific positions/body parts/motions in subsequent reps. An
experienced coach, especially when you’re familiar with an athlete, may see the problem
after one rep, but it can be necessary to simply zoom in on separate moving parts. Going
back to the earlier example, perhaps the “swinging the bar out in front” issue was already
created somewhere way earlier in the movement, possibly even in the starting position!

Step 3: Deciding on a cue

• Visual, verbal and tactile cues are all fine and have their place, but when it comes
to details in positions: Don’t be afraid to use tactile cues a lot. This is especially
important with beginners who simply don’t know what to feel, especially if they
have bad body awareness. Consider this, putting your hands on them and pushing
them into a proper starting position can take you literally 5 seconds, which is a lot
less than telling them “Chin up, balance more forward… no, a little more back!
Arch your back more, hips a little higher- no, that’s too high, a bit lower!” and so

 on.
• It is impossible to write a 100% guide on how to decide what cue to use, and this
is where trial, error and experience come in. Here’s a few pointers to keep in
mind when deciding on a cue. External cues often work better than internal
cues. “Lock the elbows” tends to work better for holding a weight overhead than
“engage the triceps”, although that does not rule out that the latter CAN be a good
cue.
• Don’t overcue. Overcueing means using a cue so much that people start messing
up. If you give people 5 cues, they might end up confused. Another issue with
overcueing is telling someone a good thing so often that they end up
exaggerating it into something bad. Placing a barbell behind your ears in a jerk
could be a good cue… Until you tell them three more times and they lose the
barbell behind them.
• Emotion can improve memorizing and internalizing information. This means
that invoking laughter or stress or anything else can be a good thing. Examples:
Some people don’t extend their knees in the second pull of a snatch or clean,
which makes the whole thing look like a Michael Jackson move. ‘The Michael
Jackson’ is now a thing among weightlifters and CrossFitters in Utrecht. This
means that “stop doing the Michael Jackson” is now a valid cue. Is someone
smashing the barbell away with their hips? I will tell them to stop fucking the bar.
Inappropriate? Possibly, but they won’t forget about it. A few years ago, someone
told me in a high pull to “pull the bar up to your titties”. I still remember that
exact conversation to this day. “Hit yourself in the boob” (snatch high pull),
“Spread your legs” (foot repositioning when catching a clean/snatch) and “go
into the receiving position” (pushing the hips back when lowering a weight) are
cues I have all used succesfully. Note that you don’t have to use inappropriate
humor, it’s just part of my personal style as a person and coach. It goes without
saying that it depends on your athlete whether this will be productive and
amusing or simply agitating. Which brings me to:
• Develop your own coaching style. Who you are, how you communicate, the bond
that you have with your athletes and the environment where you coach all come
together in a unique setting. Master it.
• Think in cause-and-effect, not in right-or-wrong, as we discussed earlier. Which
brings me to: Be flexible. If one cue does not help, use a different cue. Or a
different one. Or a different one. Or- you get the point. Don’t get hung up on one
cue just because it works often. It also means that you have to adjust your tone or
type of cueing to the athlete in question. The aforementioned “stop fucking the
bar” can lead to an amusing and relaxed training environment, or to athletes
feeling extremely uncomfortable around you.

 • Accept that sometimes a person cannot be guided into a proper movement
straight away. Sometimes you just need to walk away and let the person wrestle
with the barbell for a bit, or even extend the technique improvement over a lot of
sessions. Stimulate athletes in their ability to correct themselves as well. Example:
A muscle snatch that ends on the toes will have the athlete self correct into a
proper, vertical movement instead of banging the bar out in front.

CORRECTIVES
Correctives are exercises that you assign to an athlete to fix a problem in their lift,
sometimes on the spot. You could replace a programmed exercise with a corrective
(essentially scaling them) or have them incorporate it in their personal warmups. You
could have them do it for a few minutes before they go into the programmed exercise or
you could combine it together with another exercise. In theory, any exercise, drill or
variation can be used as a corrective. There are no limits to this, provided that you
clearly instruct what you want from this corrective and that it actually serves its
purpose!

For now, let’s stick with a few principles.

• Context. You don’t want to waste energy on correctives right before an athlete is
going for his last clean & jerk on a competition (even though there might be
situations where it is useful). However, it is absolutely fine and maybe even
recommended to simply not let an athlete participate in the programmed exercise
but do a corrective instead. Obvious example: Don’t let at an athlete do a full
snatch if they can’t even do an overhead squat.

• Correctives are usually used to fix a specific part of the lift, which means that the
more complicated an exercise is, the less likely it is that this exercise will serve
the purpose of the corrective. Let’s say that an athlete swings the bar out in front
during the first pull of a clean & jerk, somewhere between the floor and the hip.
Would you use heavy, full cleans to fix this? Or would you let the athlete do clean
deadlifts with an empty barbell instead, moving slowly? The latter is easier and
slower and takes less energy. It is also easier to coach. So place it in context, keep
it simple and keep it efficient. A corrective can be a substitute for the originally
intended exercise, or used as an intermezzo to finetune one or two things before
the athlete goes back into the programmed exercise.

Below you’ll find a few examples of correctives and in what situation to use them. You
can find the names of unfamiliar exercises in the exercise library on
www.catalystathletics.com

Technical issue: Corrective exercise:

Athlete has a ‘soft’ catch in the jerk, often
having bent elbows.
Athlete let’s the hip rise too fast in the
liftoff of a clean. (“stripper booty”)
Athlete jumps back in the snatch.
Athlete gets on toes during the first part of
a snatch
Athlete does not put the front foot forward
far enough in a split jerk
Push press for overhead strength or tall
jerks for more aggressiveness in the catch
position.
Clean deadlift to a 3 second pause at knee.
No feet snatch. (where the feet stay in
place)
Slow motion snatch deadlift, to practice
balance.
Jerk balance (also known as quarter jerk).

 COACH JEREMY’S

UNSCARED WEIGHTLIFTING MANUAL

2018

PART 3: STRENGTH & SPEED

STRENGTH
Strength can be defined in many ways. We could talk about how hard a muscle contracts
and how much force it produces. However, we know that contracting a leg muscle hard
does not make a good squat. Reasons for that are explained below. In the context of
weightlifting, we will simply consider ‘strength’ to be the force that the body can produce
to make a proper snatch, clean, jerk or related exercise. Some people will say that
‘weightlifting is all technique, it has nothing to do with strength’. Greg Everett,
weightlifting coach from Catalyst Athletics had a great comeback for that. He
sarcastically replied; “Yes, that’s true. If your technique is good enough, you will negate
the laws of nature like gravity and strength becomes completely irrelevant!” His point
was clear: Strength AND technique matter. Strength gives you lifting potential, and
technique makes sure you express that strength in lots of weight in your snatch! A few
basic principles when it comes to strength, most of these are very general, while others
are more specifically relevant for weightlifting movements.

• Although muscle size plays a role, strength is mostly neurological. Compare

muscle size to the quality of a car, and your brains/nerves as the driver. It’s great
to have a high end racing car, but it won’t do you any good if you don’t know how
to drive it. More muscle mass means more strength potential, especially in more
advanced athletes.
• Keep in mind that you need to express strength quickly in weightlifting. The
type of muscle fibers that allow more explosive strength grow mostly from
explosive, lower rep training. Typical high rep bodybuilding training may give
you “less efficient muscle mass” in that sense.
• Strength is utility specific. It’s a concept that can get very complicated but really
boils down to this: Being a strong squatter does not make you a strong deadlifter.
Having a strong barbell row does not guarantee a good pull up. There are many
reasons for that. Technique proficiency, leverage around joints, limb lengths,
neurological efficiency in certain patterns, and so on.

The main takeaways are this:

• Prioritize the thing you want to get strong at. (Example: Clean)
• Followed by the thing that closely resembles that movement, but allows more
force production with less technique limitations. (Example: Clean pulls, clean
deadlifts, front squats.)

Are you strong and balanced?

There are no hard guidelines for ‘how strong’ you have to be to be able to snatch or clean
heavy. Supposedly Akakios Kakhiashvili, one of the best weightlifters of all time, never
front squatted more than he cleaned in training. A strong weightlifter like Dmitriy
Klokov has relatively little difference between his push press and his jerk, whereas Apti
Aukhadov has a way bigger gap, implying that Apti is more efficient with his strength.
Here are some (very, very rough) guidelines for applying strength exercises to improve
your weightlifting numbers.

• Your snatch is usually around 80% of your clean and jerk.

• Your clean and jerk is usually around 90% of your front squat.
• Your front squat is usually around 80% of your back squat.
• Clean- and snatch high pulls are usually done around 70-120% of your best clean
and snatch. (Big variation depending on the level of the athlete, whether strength
or technique are the emphasis, etc.)

I want to emphasize that these are rough guidelines and a dozen factors will influence
how reliable they are. The reason I am still mentioning them is because they can give you
some clues about an athlete’s weakness. If an athlete can do clean high pulls with 170%
of their best clean, it implies that they have serious technique (or front squat/catch
position) issues. If an athlete’s clean and jerk is only 60% of their best front squat,
maybe they should cut down on the squats and invest that energy in more clean and
jerks. Use these ballpark numbers to increase your insight into an athlete’s qualities and
weak points, not as rigid rules for lifting goals or programming.

SPEED
Weightlifting is an explosive sport, and power (the combination of strength and speed)
is necessary to pull a weight up so hard that you have time to get under the bar. However,
there is a time for FAST and there is a time for SLOW. Once again, some basic principles
about speed in relationship to weightlifting:

• Speed should never come at the cost of technique. Rushing a lift can easily lead to
technical errors that will cause missed lifts or bad habits in the long run.
Especially when an athlete is warming up or learning a new technique, doing
things slowly can help them correct themselves and focus on details. Consider
cueing an athlete to do things slowly if they have trouble with a movement.

• Power is especially important in the second pull (exploding up) and third pull
(pulling yourself under the bar) in the snatch and clean, as well the drive and
push-under in the jerk. In the first pull however, there is more emphasis on
control. An analogy that I sometimes use is the following:
o Floor to knee is done in first gear.
o Knee to power position is done in second gear, to compensate for the
barbell slowing down a bit (which is completely normal, since you are
shifting your knees forward a bit, although it should be noted that this
depends on your lifting style).
o Power position to catch is done in sixth gear.
This does not mean the first pull should be lazy. If the weight gets heavy,
there should still be intent to move fast so there will be proper momentum
during the first pull!

• Being powerful (quick as well as strong) requires the intent to be powerful.

Being powerful overall can be taught to athletes by utilizing the CAT principle:
Compensatory Acceleratory Training. This is especially utilized often in squats,
where you simply come up out of a squat with more effort than necessary. You
simply try to get up as fast as you can all the way from the bottom to the top. The
barbell may even be bouncing like crazy on the way up – good! Reasonably
increasing power requires you to train at a high power output. That means
attempting to move a weight as fast as possible, regardless if the heavy weight is
slowing you down.

 • Although the highest amount of power is expressed at different percentages of
intensity, depending on the exercises. As a veeeeerry rough guideline, we're
talking about 60-85% of 1RM, with strength exercises (squats) being on the lower
end or even as low as 40-50% and explosive exercises (cleans) being more on the
upper end. Don’t let this limit your programming however. Remember:
guidelines! In practice, training at different intensities and utilizing CAT will
take care of being powerful. Other than that, being snappy and quick in your lifts
is simply a matter of intent and effort.

• Improving power can also be done with potentiation. This can work in two
ways.
o Do a heavy strength exercise to prepare the nervous system for max effort,
rest for a few minutes to let fatigue dissipate, then use that 'nervous
system priming' in an explosive movement. Example: a few heavy
Romanian Deadlifts, a few minutes rest, some kettlebell swings. This will
improve power production in those kettlebell swings – but only if those
RDL's don't build up too much fatigue!
o Do a lighter set after a heavy set. Example: Do a set of 2 cleans at 85%1RM,
followed by a set of 2 cleans at 80%. The 80% sets should be faster and
have a higher power production.

On a side note, potentiation does not work if the athlete is too fatigued for
the lighter/explosive movements, nor if the athlete is really weak. You
need a base of strength first.

• Forcing explosiveness under fatigue can also contribute to recruiting more

motor units. A method that I like is to slightly pre-fatigue the legs with a set of 4-
6 moderately heavy squats, directly followed by some max effort vertical jumps or
squat jumps. It’s a method used in sports specific training that also teaches your
body to be explosive under fatigue. This is useful for both CrossFitters (because
being explosive under fatigue is a necessary skill for them) and for weightlifters
(because it drives adaptation further, making you more explosive).

STRENGTH EXERCISES
Here’s a non exhaustive list of exercise types that you can use to build weightlifting-
specific strength when programming. Keep in mind that many of these transfer well to
other sports and/or elements of CrossFit.

• Squats: Develop overall body strength with an emphasis on the legs. Mostly have
carryover to the catching positions of the snatch and clean, as well as the drive of
the jerk, but also the strength off the floor. Back squats are used more for general
strength development. Overhead squats for carryover to the snatch, although the
snatch balance is a more snatch-specific and often better alternative. Overhead
squats are great for beginners and people getting nervous in the catch position
however. Snatch balances and their variations are very dynamic overhead
squatish movements that build snatch strength with a very dynamic, speedy, jerk-
like pattern. It builds strength as well as rhythm and timing. Front squats have
more carryover to the clean. Paused variations can either teach proper
bracing/stable positions or develop more position-specific strength. Right above
parallel and at the bottom are common places to pause since many people lack
strength or control in those positions. Split squat/lunge variations can be used
to work on left-right imbalances and have more carryover to most sports, since
they are usually unilateral in nature. They can also provide heavy stimulus on the
hips/legs while unloading the back, since there is less weight used than in a

• Pulls: In the context of weightlifting this refers to pulling a weight off the floor,
not to upper body pulling movements. Pulls build overall body strength with more
emphasis on the legs and back, as well as pulling technique and thus specific
strength for the pulls in the snatch and clean. Clean and snatch grip to
emphasize carryover to the clean and snatch. Paused variations for the same
reasons as with the squat, as well as being able to emphasize technique a bit
more. Common places to pause are right off the floor (holding torso position), in
front of the knee (holding torso position and shifting from ‘push the floor away’
to ‘get your torso upright’) and in the power position (learning a proper power
position). Low hang variations are great for both technique and strength
variations. You start at lockout and then move the barbell down in the same
pattern as you would use when lifting the barbell up. Once you get right above the
floor / under the knee, you go straight back up into the pull. This adds an
eccentric part to the pull, greatly adding to strength of the posterior chain.
(hamstrings/glutes/back) High pulls (to the stomach/chest) emphasize finishing

 the pull. Pulls or extensions (with straight arms) emphasize the shrug and allow
for heavier weights (since the barbell doesn’t have to go up as high). Deadlift
variations allow more weight. Keep in mind that a regular deadlift can be used to
build strength, but has a different pattern than the first pull of a snatch or clean.
Hence, we distinguish the deadlift, clean deadlift and snatch deadlift, whereas the
first has a ‘normal’, hip dominant pattern.

• Push press: It’s a pressing variation that mimics the pattern of a jerk (leg drive
followed by pushing against the bar) and is the basic strength accessory exercise
for the jerk.

• General strength: Any exercise that can shore up weaknesses to prevent weak
links in the chain can work. Common exercises are (barbell) row/pull up
variations, ab exercises, good mornings and back extensions. Some slightly less
common exercises include (bench) presses, pull ups, dips and bodybuilding style
isolation work. Check out the Catalyst Athletics website for a huge library of
exercises with videos and explanations!

SPEED EXERCISES
Any jumping exercise tends to work well. Back squat jumps if you want to load it up, and
box jumps/vertical jumps/depth jumps to go unloaded. Sprints can be used a well. There
is really no limit to what you can do as long as there is a conscious effort to move quickly,
although I would recommend to look at specificity. Example: Broad jumps have a
forward movement whereas vertical jumps have a vertical movement – like we want in
weightlifting. Also keep in might that explosiveness under fatigue can be important,
especially for CrossFit athletes, so don’t be afraid to do squat jumps for a lot of reps or
supersetted after a few heavy squats. A superset simply means doing a set of exercise A
and a set of exercise B back to back, without rest. Here’s an example for that:

• A – Back squat: 5 reps at 70-80%

• B – Squat jump: 5 reps, unloaded but with max effort

Do 3 sets with a 2-3 minute rest interval, depending on how heavy the squats get and how
fatigued the athlete is.

On a final note, keep in mind that weightlifting is a relatively monotonous sport and
variety is good for a broad development of the body. Both in CrossFit and olympic
weightlifting, specificity are important, but be wary of a lack of variation. Even in
thorough “weightlifting athlete development systems” like we find them in Germany and
China, there is a big emphasis for young athletes to sprint, play team sports and much
more to build a broad athletic base before they start specializing.

In CrossFit, it is also tempting to fall into the trap of programming CrossFit (the sport)
rather than CrossFit (the concept). Read more in my blog post on this subject:
https://www.unscaredcrossfit.com/blog/item/89-onmisbare-oefeningen-voor-iedere-
crossfitter

 COACH JEREMY’S

UNSCARED WEIGHTLIFTING MANUAL

2018

PART 4: PROGRAMMING FOR GROUPS

PROGRAMMING
There are countless things to take into consideration when programming workouts,
most of which relate to the athlete and goal in question. Others might be more related to
surroundings, like available material. For the purpose of this manual, we will focus on
the first two. You can program for many reasons. Are you showing off how many
exercises you know? Are you trying to entertain athletes? Are you trying to make the
athlete into something you want the athlete to be? Assuming that the goal of the
programming is to make an athlete better, you could judge an athlete on their skill level,
ask them about how often they are able to train, whether they’re injured or what they
want to achieve. Beyond that, there are more complex things to consider, like their
tolerance for training volume, what training environment the athlete needs to thrive in,
and much more.

This gets even more complicated in the context of CrossFit, since we are talking
about groups. This means we are faced with another challenge, since a class of 9 athletes
can mean 9 vastly different answers to all the above questions. You could try to distill an
‘average’ athlete from the answers and program for that, but it leaves us with a few
problems:

• If the skill levels vary too much, some (advanced) athletes will hardly be
challenged while other (novice) athletes will not be able to properly perform the
workout at all.
• If you do not have the same people in your class all the time, there is not really
‘an average’.
• Volume tolerance vastly differs among athletes, as well as consistency at
certain weights. All of the above are likely to be worthy of consideration in the
context of a CrossFit box or any other group setting with shifting member
attendance.

You can solve a lot of the aforementioned issues by doing two things.

• Shift your mindset from doing ‘X sets of X reps at X % of your 1RM’, as is

common in strength training, to working time based. Just allot a certain amount
of time to an exercise. Example: “Spend 20 minutes on sets of 5 on the snatch
high pull. Build up in weight and let technique and time be the limiting factor.”
This leaves a lot of room for ‘adjusting on the spot’.
• “Program for the best, scale for the rest.” – I find the statement to be a bit black
and white, but the concept holds true. In my experience, a solid way to go is to
program for intermediate/more advanced athletes, since you can easily ‘zoom in’

 on a beginner and give them a useful drill on the spot. Doing it the other way
around is harder, since intermediate/advanced athletes already know all the
simple drills – they need work that specifically shores up their weaknesses,
magnifies their strengths or just lets them work hard on main movements.
Beginners will improve on pretty much anything that improves their technique or
strength.

When it comes to the actual contents of programming, there is one aspect that separates
it from traditional weightlifting programming regardless of the athletes: Where olympic
weightlifting generally has a high 1RM as the end goal, the CrossFitter needs a high 1RM
as well as being able to do tons of reps at any percentage of their 1RM in a fast and
energy efficient way. This means we need 2 things aside from having a high 1RM and
generally efficient technique.

• Touch and go variations – Not dropping a bar, resetting and restarting a

movement, but ‘chaining’ reps into a speedy and time-efficient cluster so that you
can get more reps done in less time.
• The physical ability and mental fortitude to do many reps at any given
percentage of your 1RM, usually referred to as ‘work capacity’. The same applies
when you are pre-fatigued from other exercises.

Touch and go emphasis can easily be added in weightlifting programming, explicitly

separating ‘push press’ from ‘push press TNG’ for example. Assuming that work capacity
is taken care of through CrossFit classes, this may not be relevant for the weightlifting
classes, although this could obviously be added. Adding EMOMs is an option, but if you
want to take away the pressure from the clock, using complexes can work very well.
Think of longer complexes like ‘2 snatch high pulls + 2 full snatches + 2 snatch
balances’.

CHECKLIST:
All the above merely discusses considerations before you get to the programming of the
actual workouts. I have attempted to make a somewhat comprehensive checklist that
goes through all the considerations, including the ones involving exercise selection and
subjects that we covered in earlier clinics.

1. What type of athlete makes up the bulk of my athletes? People training for general
fitness? Competitive athletes?

2. How often do they train? How much time can they spend on olympic lifting
technique?

3. Are they very focused or easily distracted/bored?

4. How many days a week do I need to program? Consider that having only 1 or 2
sessions means having to focus on the basics, and having 4, 5 or more different
sessions gives a lot of space for assistance work.

5. Will I work with blocks of X weeks or just program by the week? Working with
blocks can be communicated to athletes so that they know what classes are most
relevant for them. For example: I’ve worked with three 3-week mini cycles in the
past. 3 weeks with emphasis on drills and technique, 3 weeks with emphasis on
building strength and 3 weeks with emphasis on heavy weights and maxing out.

6. What exercises will I use and how often? For example: You can rotate several
snatch variations, several pull variations and several drills throughout the weeks.
Every X weeks or so, you take out some (seemingly) less useful exercises and add
in new exercises and drills so the programming stays up to date with what your
athletes need.

7. What rep ranges should be used? Some rough guidelines, although they are not
set in stone: 6-12 reps are typical for hypertrophy training and work well with
building base strength on rows, good mornings and presses for example. Some
exercises are done for way more reps for various reasons, some more ground in

 science than others. Drills are great to do with lots of reps, like 5-10 or so, so you
can really get a lot of practice in. · Pulls are usually done with 2 to 6 reps, with the
lower end emphasizing max strength and getting comfortable with heavy weights,
and the higher end being more fitting for long term strength (and consistency)
building. Squats can be done with anything from 1 to 10 reps, depending on the
goal. More is possible for hypertrophy purposes, but that may come at the cost of
power production and the lower back often fatigues before the legs when doing
long sets. Sets of 3 to 5 are probably most common since they allow for relatively
heavy weights or a lot of speed when using lighter weights. Snatch, clean and jerk
variations are often done with 1 to 3 reps, with some exceptions going up to 5 or
so reps. Keep in mind that when you are emphasizing CrossFit, you may want to
do more than that, for more carryover to actual CrossFit WODs. Jumping
exercises are often done with 3 to 5 reps so you can maintain maximum effort in
terms of explosiveness but again, it’s okay to go way higher for muscular
endurance and CrossFit purposes. Complexes can be done with any rep range,
depending on the goal. Some complexes are very short, like “1 clean + 2 front
squats + 1 jerk” to learn to jerk after being fatigued from a clean. For work
capacity, muscular endurance and consistency, it’s quite okay to do a longer
complex, like “3 snatch high pulls + 3 power snatches + 3 overhead squats”.

8. How many sets should be done? This is influenced by so many factors that it’s
really hard to give concrete guidelines, especially if you are programming for
groups. I have found that working time-based mostly solves this. You could say
“We are doing sets of 3 on the snatch balance, you guys have 20 minutes for this.”
Beginners will simply start doing technique work and letting technique or
‘feeling’ decide how heavy they go. More advanced athletes will quickly add
weight since they know that sets of 3 can be done with roughly 80-90% of their
1RM. They will automatically spend more time in the proper rep range. (Of course
there are exceptions. Some athletes might have to be stimulated to go heavier or
lighter – that’s why there’s a coach present.)

This list is not comprehensive, but it covers a lot of common, important issues when
programming for CrossFit.