I wanted to take an opportunity to give direction to those who are writing their own programs or are writing programs for others on a basic structure for an Olympic Weightlifting workout. I do not view programming as top-secret as everything I create as a coach was first taught to me by other coaches, and those coaches were themselves taught by their coaches. In this post, I am going to give a brief tutorial on how I structure a Monday or Wednesday workout for my athletes, which tend to be medium to heavy days focusing on snatch or clean variations.
I break workouts usually in 4-6 pieces. I include the primary classic lift for the day, a direct assistance exercise for that lift, a squat variation and midline and shoulder assistance exercises. Depending on the training cycle I may include a warm-up movement or lighter variation of the lift I am trying to focus on for that day, and a pressing movement. For today, I will include those movements and the reasoning why.
For teaching purposes, I will structure a possible snatch-centric workout. If I am using a warm-up movement, it would be something like snatch balances or overhead squats or a complex involving similar movements. I won’t go into reasoning here behind what I would choose or why, but I like athletes to support a moderate to heavy bar in their catch position before moving on to snatches or snatch complexes. Usually we are looking at about 3-5 working sets here.
The second movement is the heart of the workout. Here it will be a snatch or snatch complex, and fairly heavy. I want at least 20-30 minutes of a 90 minute work focused on this portion. I want athletes to take their time and pay close attention to the finer points of the lift. Using TrainHeroic software I can easily program how many sets I want the athlete to take in total, including warm-up sets and back-offs. In regards to back-offs, I do believe each piece of the workout should end on a make, so back off sets are a must for this portion of the workout.
After the focus lift of the workout is done, the next exercise is an assistance exercise that complements the focus lift of the workout. Snatch pulls and deadlifts or variations of them are a typical go to for me. Butcher Barbell athletes are very familiar with the dreaded Snatch Pause Deadlift. Typically, I want the assistance exercise chosen to be programmed at a higher intensity but lower volume than the focus lift. For instance, if I program snatches at 80%, I will probably program snatch pulls at 85%. I don’t put a lot of volume in because I keep the intensity of this exercise high.
After these three exercises, we begin to see some mental fatigue in the athlete so I try to keep the rest of the workout a little less technical while keeping the intensity high. Squats and presses are saved to the end for that reason, usually with squats first then presses. If I am programming a lot of snatch exercises in a workout, I won’t program a snatch grip press. I will save the volume on that wrist position and instead program a close grip bench press or jerk grip standing presses or push presses. For squats, without putting a lot of thought into it, typically I program back squats on Monday, Front squats on Wednesday, and alternate Back and Front squats on Friday depending on the training cycle.
Workouts always end with midline work and shoulder stability work. Midline includes both abdominal exercises and lower back/glute exercises like back extensions on a GHD machine or banded steps. Shoulder stability exercises are usually banded exercises like face-pulls, pull aparts or banded external rotation. I like to program 3-5 sets of 3-4 exercises, again dependent on the training cycle and the athlete.
This is just a brief overview of where I have found success for my athletes and myself. I have not included any specific warm-up, stretching or cool down information here as that tends to be very athlete specific. I am more than happy to answer programming questions, so feel free to email me at butcherbarbell@gmail.com.
-Stephen Butcher
Sign up for the Train Heroic Team Here