DEUCE Gym Unveils New 8-Week Weightlifting Course

I am not an Olympic Weightlifting coach by trade. However, I have found great joy in Coaching the discipline at DEUCE Gym. 

Weightlifting is usually an austere practice, but the students here bring such excitement and liveliness to their learning that it has rubbed off on me. I look forward to coaching the Weightlifting class almost more than any other. I’ve even smiled a few times during class. 

At Lift Run Hang, a student came up to me and told me that she had ‘fallen in love’ with Weightlifting. This made my heart swell because what she was really saying was that she had begun to believe in how strong she was. Moments of self-efficacy like that in my athletes are the reason I’m in the game and encounters like these have inspired me to bring an Olympic Weightlifting specialty course to DEUCE. 

Weightlifting 101 will hammer in the fundamentals of weightlifting and focus on mastering positions, restoring deficits in hip and shoulder stability, and increasing neural drive and force production. Athletes can expect lots and lots of practice reps at lower intensities before increasing the load on the bar and peaking the Snatch and Clean and Jerk at the end of 8 weeks. In addition to 16 coach-led sessions, athletes will also have access to video movement analysis and individualized programming for any problem areas they would like to address. 

The course is built on four principles. These are important because, without the right approach to training, the most technically proficient program is useless.

WORK ETHIC. You can’t be great at anything if you aren’t willing to put in the work. There are no shortcuts in this life, just years of crushing hard work. Any attempts to cut corners will just make the process longer. 

CONSISTENCY. Consistency is just another way of taking responsibility for what few variables we have control over. We strive to make every set up the same, every lift the same. Posture in movement is an accumulation of time spent in positions. It takes lots of repeated exposures to become proficient.

DISCIPLINE. You have a million great reasons not to commit to this, or to quit once you do. Staying true to the process, and to yourself is the only thing that will yield results.

AGGRESSION. You must attack your training and your lifts with a violence that would surprise the people in your life outside the gym. Go all in. 

The ‘right’ program does not exist. The right mindset will take you farther than you can imagine. Most of my job In facilitating this course will be to instill a training mindset that will take you much farther than 8 weeks out. 

I could not be more excited to have a group of motivated students on the yard Tuesdays and Thursdays at 6:00am working to learn and hone the craft of Olympic Weightlifting.