What is a good morning?

The good morning is a compound movement working the back and hamstrings. It is used as an assistance exercise for strengthening the posterior chain.

With the bar on your back, bend forward at the hips until your torso is parallel to the floor, then return to a standing position. In other words, take a bow with a weight on your back!

Why is it such a great exercise?

The good morning is an effective way to strengthen the back. It also requires confidence and control to perform well, which are useful skills to master.

Although it might look a bit dangerous at first glance, it is perfectly safe if performed with proper technique and an appropriate weight.

Good mornings have been a standard assistance exercise in olympic weightlifting for many decades. Heavy good mornings and concentric good mornings have been popularised for powerlifters by Westside Barbell.

How to perform the good morning

Practise this movement with just a barbell until you are confident with the technique and body position.

Step 1: start position

Take up a position as if for a back squat: legs slightly wider than hip width apart, barbell across your back resting on the traps (top of shoulders) not the neck.

You can experiment with different stances; a wider stance will work the hamstrings more while a narrow stance will work the lower back more.

Grip

Your hands should be as close to your shoulders as is comfortable (this will vary with your flexibility).

Position of barbell on back

Breathing

As in the deadlift, take a deep breath and hold it throughout the lift or at least until you are on the way back up. This breathing technique creates intra-abdominal pressure which helps to stabilise the spine.

Step 2: bend forward from the hips

Start the movement by bending forward from the hips, keeping the knees soft. Think about pushing your butt out behind you.

Legs

Keep your legs almost straight, with a slight bend in the knee so that they are not locked out completely.

Back

Be careful not to round your lower back; maintain the curve in your lumbar spine. (Note: there is such a thing as a rounded back good morning but this is not in the scope of this article as it has specialist applicability.)

As you bend forward, the bar is held in place on your shoulders by pushing your shoulder blades back and your elbows up.

Push shoulders and elbows up

Head

Keep your head in a neutral position. This means that as you bend over, your gaze will be directed towards the floor, not ahead of you.

Don’t be tempted to look up in an attempt to keep the bar on your back; the bar will stay in place if you keep your shoulders back, elbows up and a slight curve in your lower back.

Step 3: descend to parallel

Bend forward as close to parallel with the floor as you can go without rounding your lower back. For many people, this will not be quite parallel as they will be limited by hamstring flexibility but try to go for maximum range of motion rather than maximum weight on the bar!

Remember to keep the head neutral all the way down, keeping the bar in place with shoulders and elbow position.

You should feel a stretch in both the hamstrings and lower back in the bottom position of the good morning.

Step 4: return to standing position

Reverse the movement back to a standing position, maintaining the position of the head and back. Make sure you bring the hips back in fully before starting the next rep – in other words, stand up straight.

Concentric good morning

A concentric good morning is a variation of the standard good morning exercise, where you perform the second half of the movement first. You start in the bottom position, almost parallel to the floor, and lift the bar to a standing position.

The idea is to mimic the position of the back in the deadlift, but to focus more on the spinal erectors than a normal deadlift would do by taking a lot of the leg power out of the equation.

Concentric good mornings are usually used by powerlifters as a back assistance exercise or as a training alternative to the deadlift (as some advanced powerlifters do not deadlift very often).

How to perform a concentric good morning

Set the bar to the correct position in the rack. You will need to be able to lift the bar with a flat back, so don’t set the rack too low if you don’t have the flexibility to get into that bottom position.

Concentric good morning - start position

Take up position under the bar as you would with a normal good morning. Lift the bar, driving up against it leading with the shoulders until hips are fully extended and you are standing up straight.

Concentric good morning - top position

Then return the bar to the rack in the bottom position, being careful that you rack the bar properly before letting go.

How to use the good morning in your training

The good morning functions as an assistance exercise for the posterior chain, especially the lower back. It is a good option on days when you don’t deadlift but need a back exercise.

If being used as a back assistance exercise, good mornings can be done with light-to-medium weights for 6-10 reps.

If being used by a powerlifter as an alternative to the deadlift on a ‘heavy’ day, heavy weights for 1-5 reps can be used.

Good mornings can be used in warm ups (with light weights of course, maybe just a barbell) to warm up the back muscles. They can also be used as part of a barbell complex, for example: front squat – push press – good morning.

Powerlifters and olympic lifters in particular will benefit from heavy good mornings such as 3×3, but anyone who wants to build lower back strength will find these useful. Just remember not to compromise range of motion for more weight.

Watch a video demo of the good morning and the concentric good morning

More from gubernatrix

How to deadlift
How to front squat
Assistance exercises
Why you should full squat

What do we mean by one rep max?

Your one rep max is the heaviest weight you can lift for a single rep in the chosen exercise. So for example you might want to find your one rep max in the squat or maybe the clean and jerk.

There are several reasons why you might want to do a one rep max session:

Curiosity – just what is the maximum amount of weight you can lift?

Programming – if you are following or constructing a programme based on percentage of one rep max, you need to know what your one rep max is. Online calculators that work this out from your 5 or 10 rep max are not particularly accurate – it’s better to do a proper test yourself

Training effect – going really heavy, up to your max, has a useful training effect. Max singles require the maximum amount of neurological and muscular coordination, effort and force you can possibly muster. Your max lift should be the lift where you recruit the most muscle you possibly can; getting to this point will make you stronger.

But your max is a different animal (and a different number) depending on factors such as whether you have worked up to it over a period of weeks or months and what type of environment you are in.

Powerlifters or olympic weightlifters for example talk about their ‘training max’ and their ‘competition max’. The training max is the maximum amount they have lifted in the gym – which usually means a safe, familiar environment with no pressure and no judges. The competition max is the maximum amount they have achieved at a meet – in an adrenalin-fuelled competitive environment.

Some lifters do their best lifts in competition; some do better in the gym.

Non-competitive trainees who have tested their max usually mean the most weight they managed to lift on a particular day. They may or may not have prepared for that max day.

Dan John offers some amusing but insightful definitions of max here.

For the purposes of this article, I’m talking about testing your max on a given day in the gym. This is not something you need to prepare for specifically.

I do a session like this when I need to know my training max for a new programme. I’ve just done one recently because I’ve had a few months off and I therefore don’t really know where my strength is at the moment.

It should be noted that I did not walk back into the gym after three months and immediately perform a max test. I spent about a month easing back in first!

When are you ready for a max test?

Going to your one rep max is not something that most people should be doing every week. If you are an advanced trainee, this could break you quickly, and if you are a complete beginner, there are better ways to use the time.

I’d say you need to have a good few months training (at least) under your belt before it is worth doing max singles. I didn’t bother doing them for several years.

There are two simple reasons for this:

1. If you have not been lifting for very long, your single won’t represent your best effort. It takes time and practise to develop the necessary neuromuscular coordination to make your best lift your first and only lift. I explain more about why this is the case in the article What is Strength? Beginners tend to do their best lift a few reps into the set. For beginners, a 5 rep max is a more helpful indication of strength.
2. You need to be solid in your technique in order to do a good single in the first place. If your technique is not good, you won’t be getting an accurate reading of your strength. Many people need to spend months working on mobility and flexibility in order to achieve a decent squat.

However if you have been training for a while and you are confident with your technique, it could be fun to try your one rep max.

How to test your one rep max

If you’ve never done it before, it’s not as scary as you think! It is also not a standard process, it very much depends on how you best operate. The objective after all is to get your max, not to do a particular number of reps at a particular weight or ‘work your heart and lungs’ or whatever.

The process is simple. Here’s a summary.

• Do a thorough warm up: first a general warm up for the body, then some warm up sets in the lift you are testing.
• When you are warmed up, start doing single reps.
• Take as much rest as you need fully to recover between efforts.
• Increment the weight in whatever amounts you feel appropriate for you.
• Keep going until you cannot complete a rep with good form.
• You’ve got your training max. Go forth and conquer!

Warm up

It is helpful to get your muscles warm and your heart rate up a bit. You’ll want to do some mobility work to loosen up and work out any kinks. Keep it all very light.

Once you’ve got everything going, it’s time to do your warm up sets in the target lift. This is the area people are most unsure about. You need to prepare sufficiently for a very heavy effort. But you don’t want to expend too much energy on the warm up as you want to put it all into your max effort.

The way I work it out is using number of reps. Other people might use percentage of target max or some other method. It doesn’t really matter, so long as you get an effective warm up.

My method works as follows. I start with a weight I can lift with good form very comfortably for 10 reps. This is an opportunity for me to get the heart rate up, blood flowing and practise the key bits of technique I will need to focus on in the singles. An example of this would be keeping my chest up in the squat. I use the set of ten to really focus on keeping the chest up and driving hard. You want to give your body a chance to practise what it will need to be doing under great stress later.

I then have a rest, maybe 2 or 3 minutes and then do a set of 5, again at a weight where I can get 5 reps reasonably comfortably. Once more I focus on elements of technique that I really want to get right.

From there, I move onto doubles, that is, 2-rep sets. At this point what I’m doing is getting my body ready to feel a really heavy weight. If I went from a set of 5 to a single, the difference in weight would be a bit of a shock. Mentally I might feel that the weight was too heavy. So you get your body used to heavy weights but without wasting energy by doing lots of reps.

I’ll do maybe 2 sets of doubles, again with 2-3 minutes rest in between. Then I’ll start my singles. I start my singles with a weight that is very challenging but that I expect to be able to complete. Psychologically it’s not very encouraging to fail your first single!

I generally take at least 4 minutes rest between single efforts.

If you are testing an olympic lift, the process should be slightly different. Olympic weightlifters generally would not bother doing sets of 5 and 10 to warm up, but will warm up with partial lifts and lower rep ranges. This is because form deteriorates in the olympic lifts much quicker than in the power lifts and it can be counter productive to do high rep sets.

There are specific olympic lifting warm up sequences such as the Burgener warm up which you can utilise to get your technique practise in before moving onto doubles and singles.

Incrementing the weight

Your max effort will be affected by how you increase the weight from single to single. If you make too big a jump up in weight, and fail the lift, you’ve wasted energy on that attempt. However if you increment in amounts that are too small you are wasting energy doing too many lifts before reaching your max.

Don’t get hung up about it – just be sensible. On a lift like squat or deadlift you should be able to increment by at least 5kg until perhaps right at the very end when you might increment by 2.5kg. My own rule of thumb is to increment by 5kg until I get to the point where I really don’t know whether I will make the next lift or not, based on how the last one felt. When that is the case, I switch to 2.5kg increments.

On the bench press, your increments may be smaller, especially if you are female. I tend to increment by 2.5kg for bench press singles. You can get hold of even smaller plates if necessary (that is, smaller than 1.25kg).

Failing a lift

If you fail at a particular weight, usually that is your max. Sometimes though you might feel that the lift was nearly there, in which case you can often rest for a few minutes, come back and try again.

This is your own judgement call. Sometimes you fail and you know that’s it for the day. Sometimes you want to have another go. It’s entirely up to you.

One rule that I have for myself when testing a training max is that I stop when my form starts to deteriorate. If my back starts rounding on deadlift for example, then that is my max lift for the day – even if I still feel ‘strong’.

There’s no point getting yourself injured just for a training max. Where’s the glory in having to take six weeks off for injury?

Of course you should also stop if you are no longer getting your desired range of motion in the lift. If you are testing your max bench press, for example, and you don’t manage to touch your chest with the bar, you should not count this as a max.

General principles

Recover as much as you need to between each lift – you are not trying to get a ‘cardio’ effect from shorter rest periods, you are trying to lift as much as you possibly can. 4 minutes works for me. In my opinion your rest should not be shorter than 3 minutes and can be 5 or over for very advanced lifters.

Don’t expend all your energy on the warm up. It is just the warm up, not the purpose of the session. Everything in the session needs to be geared towards getting that max single.

Have your head on straight. Try not to psyche yourself out but you do need to take it seriously, concentrate, focus and be present in the lift.

Get some help – spotters, or even just friends to encourage you and make you feel better. Doing a max session on your own can be tough and lonely.

Your favourite workout music often helps. If you work out better to music, put some on. Again, the purpose of the session is to get a max, not to make life harder unnecessarily.

Prepare for the day

Exercise some common sense and prepare for the session in advance, in order to maximise your chances of hitting a good number. Have a couple of rest days or light training days before the one rep max session. Get a good night’s sleep the night before and make sure you are well fed and watered on the day.

More suggestions

• How to prepare for a one rep max strength test
• How to warm up for a one rep max

Got any tips for a one rep max session?

Olympic lifts, kettlebells, gymnastic rings….these are a few of our favourite things….

Ever wished that there was a single instruction manual containing all of this cool stuff? Well, now there is!

Andrew Stemler, creator of the popular i-Course – a full day of learning all the key Crossfit skills – has produced a manual to go along with it. You can support Gubernatrix.co.uk by getting your copy here.

This means, oh joy, that all you people who would love to go to the i-Course but can’t get to one can now do your own version at home. And you people who are lucky enough to have attended the i-Course now have a handy reference guide for all those skills that you only just managed to take in on the day.

What’s in the manual?

The 85-page Elite Fitness Manual is packed full of goodies including:

• Olympic lifts and all their progressions
• Kettlebell exercises
• Gymnastic ring training
• Bodyweight exercises
• Abdominal training
• Muscle-up

It covers practically every key exercise and lift in the functional fitness arsenal. All except the bench press. But you know how to bench, right?

Who is the manual for?

The manual is designed to be suitable both for beginners and intermediate trainees. There is plenty of progression in all the key exercises so if you are a beginner you start with the first progression and if you are an intermediate, jump in where you feel comfortable.

You don’t need any experience in the exercises themselves but a general familiarity with free weights and bodyweight exercises is helpful. If you’ve only ever worked out on machines, you’ll be in for a shock!

Many of the skills described in the manual are so complex and tricky to master that you will be kept busy for weeks, months, years. Stemler comments that “you never master the squat: its always work in progress: there is always something you can improve”, and I can personally attest to this as my squat has been a work in progress for about five years!

That’s why a manual like this is so useful and such good value for money. It will last many years, possibly a lifetime. As it is an ebook it is a good deal cheaper than the traditionally published equivalent would be.

Presentation

One aspect that has always impressed me about Stemler’s publications is the look and feel. Compared to many self-published ebooks in this genre, the presentation is slick, entertaining and easy to read. The photo sequences are very helpful. I always find it frustrating when a book presents only one photograph of a particular move; what you really want to know is what it looks like to get from A to B.

The Elite Fitness Manual breaks key moves down photographically, which is really helpful. Nevertheless Stemler acknowledges that this lends a certain falsity to what are fluid and dynamic movements.

The overall thrust of the manual is not: here’s an ideal way to do this difficult move that only super-flexible 12-year-olds can pull off, but more: here are some safe progressions that you can practise on your own.  Eventually you will be able to put them all together.

So the Elite Fitness Manual is your passport to a broad range of athletic, functional skills and can be yours for only £12.99. Worth every penny, I’d say.

Go shop!

More from gubernatrix

• Review: the Crossfit London i-Course
• The A-Z of training books
• Review: the complete guide to training with free weights
• Kettlebell training guide
• Muscle-up and ring training guide

On Sunday I attended the Crossfit London i-course in east London, a full day event aiming to teach participants all the essential Crossfit skills, from olympic lifts to rings to kettlebells to bodyweight exercises. I was invited to attend and review the course by Andrew Stemler of Crossfit London, whom I have trained with before.

About the i-Course

The i-Course concept is, as far as I am aware, the only course of its kind in the UK and certainly the most comprehensive workshop programme I have seen that is open to all. This unique proposition has proved popular: the next session has already sold out and Crossfit London is booking well into next year.

Why are tickets selling like the proverbial hotcakes? Well, the agenda for the day runs something like this:

• How to squat
• How to perform the olympic lifts, including the nine fundamental moves: squat, front squat, overhead squat, press, push press, push jerk, clean, snatch, sumo deadlift high pull and deadlift
• How to swing and snatch a kettlebell
• How to practise handstands and the handstand push-up with all the assistance exercises currently recommended
• Core including L-sit
• Crossfit kipping pullup
• Parallel bar and rings looking at ring dips and muscle-up progression

For anyone interested in functional fitness or Crossfit, it ticks all the right boxes, but it is a lot of learning to pack into one day! The agenda makes it look like great value for money, but can you really learn all of these skills effectively in a single session?

Learning

What you get out of the day depends to some extent on your level of knowledge and experience coming into the session. Those who are totally new to the exercises and concepts may not remember much of the technical detail but will come away with an understanding of the most important principles and the range of skills that can be acquired: plenty to build upon and be inspired by.

People who are already familiar with some of the material (perhaps they have done squatting and deadlifting but have never attempted a clean and jerk) will learn a good deal and will come away with better form in the exercises that they thought they knew.

However it is essentially an introductory course so if you have been practising these skills for a few months or more, you may have gone beyond what the i-Course can offer – unless you want some reassurance that you are doing the right thing.

On the day, participants told me that they did learn a lot, even if they won’t remember absolutely everything. I was impressed by everyone’s concentration throughout an intensive day. It was a motivating atmosphere to be in and even though I was getting pretty tired towards the end of the session, I tried to hide it as everyone else appeared to be in fine fettle and as keen as at the start!

Teaching

This concentration and application is testament to the motivation of the group but also to Stemler’s organisation of the session. He starts right on time, which sets the tone for the day, and keeps things moving along nicely.

The team consists of Andrew, a Crossfit Level 2 certified instructor, aided by three Crossfit Level 1 instructors (Miles, Chet and Simon) and police PTI, Colin. The quality of the teaching is very good, especially from Andrew who is a natural communicator and has boundless energy.

The emphasis is on drills and cues that help you get into the correct position for the exercise, rather than a litany of instructions about the relative position of each body part. This will save people from hours of struggle or the misguided belief that they are unable to do particular exercises. ‘Teaching the teachers’ is also built into the course, for those people who are there to learn how to instruct others.

Supporting the instructor team are a number of ‘helpers’ who are themselves experienced Crossfitters. Having this many people helping to run the course ensures that everyone gets attention and things run smoothly. My thanks in particular go to one of the helpers, Steve, for taking these photos when he wasn’t actually helping people with their exercises!

What sort of people attend the i-Course?

I had assumed that most of the participants would be Crossfitters looking to improve their skills, but there was in fact a variety of people attending: personal trainers looking to expand their repertoire for their clients; people just starting out in Crossfit or just wanting to get fit; those interested in a particular element (such as the olympic lifts or the gymnastics) who thought this course was the nearest thing available; and military personnel looking to increase functional fitness.

The exercises and drills are pretty challenging, although different levels of strength are catered for (for example, you don’t have to be able to do a pullup). It probably could have been made clearer at the start that you are not expected to be able to do everything perfectly within this session: the idea is to equip you with the knowledge to practise on your own or coach others over a period of time.

However I know that some people were inspired and motivated by the difficulty and the fact that some exercises did not come easily! There were some pretty strong lads who were very confident on familiar exercises like pullups, but were humbled by a simple L-sit progression. I spoke to one chap who is an experienced runner and was used to thinking of himself as reasonably fit and yet had real trouble with one or two of the more unusual exercises. But he seemed delighted by this discovery and keen to improve.

It would be a rare person who could turn up to a session like this and be able to do everything easily. This goes to the heart of what Crossfit is about: improving every aspect of fitness rather than specialising in one area. Stemler takes it as far as to say that sports people are not “fit” because they specialise too much. As soon as you start to focus on one particular sport, you lose fitness in all the other areas. I find this a controversial idea as the same argument could be applied to Crossfit: that is, doing Crossfit really only makes you fit for Crossfit! However the point is that a wide variety of skills are being taught.

Do you have to be drinking the Crossfit kool-aid?

The short answer is ‘no’ and you can get an enormous amount from this session without being or becoming a Crossfitter. Stemler refrains from trumpeting the benefits of “Crossfit” (except in a jokey manner), allowing the workshop to speak for itself. And rightly so: Crossfit didn’t invent these exercises, it just puts them together in a particular way and has a particular approach to performing them.

The verdict

A very worthwhile course for the motivated functional fitness fanatic! If you like learning new skills, want to work hard and don’t mind a bit of constructive criticism, this is a good use of your hard-earned money. Whether you ‘do’ Crossfit or not, you will come away with a fine array of skills that you can put to whatever use you like.

To book an i-Course, click here.

Have you done the i-Course? Post your comments below.

Further information

Get the i-Course manual here – your 85-page guide to elite fitness from Andrew Stemler

Crossfit London sunday workouts

What is the overhead squat?

The overhead squat is a deep squat performed while holding a barbell over your head with straight arms. It actually feels more like a snatch (one of the Olympic lifts) than a back squat. The fact that the bar is overhead rather than across your back changes the nature of the move significantly. For this reason, I prefer the term ‘snatch squat’ as I feel it is more descriptive, but ‘overhead squat’ is the more commonly-used name.

Why is it such a great exercise?

The overhead squat is a great assistance exercise for the Olympic lifts. In particular it teaches the correct position of the lower back for Olympic weightlifting. The move also works legs, hips and core very intensely so is effective both as an assistance exercise for the powerlifting squat and as a whole body exercise in its own right. It is quite a challenging exercise for someone who is used to more conventional, bodybuilding-style training, and so acts as a good introduction to the rigours of Olympic weightlifting.

How to perform the overhead squat

Whatever your strength level, it is advisable to practise this exercise without weight first, or with a very light weight – trust me! If you don’t know what to expect it is possible to overbalance when doing this exercise for the first time. However, if you take it slow and practice with a wooden stick or light bar, you will be fine.

Step 1: Starting position – bar overhead with arms locked out in snatch grip

The overhead squat is performed using a snatch grip. This is a wide grip on the bar. Finding the ideal width grip is a process of trial and error. Those with long arms will have their hands right up against the ends of the bar. I am a not-particularly-tall female and I grip the bar just outside the smooth rings.

There is more than one way to get into the start position. The easiest way is to get the bar across your shoulders (i.e. in the position you would use for a back squat) using a rack and then perform a push press to get the bar up into position. Don’t forget to adopt the snatch grip before you press up! You can also snatch the bar into position – although of course you need to be competent at snatching in order to do this.

You should be standing with feet shoulder width – or even slightly wider – apart, toes turned out slightly. In other words, in your normal position for squatting. With the bar locked out overhead, you are ready to begin the squat.

Step 2: Squat down as far as you can, holding the bar steady overhead

Push back from the hips, keeping your back slightly arched. Look straight ahead with chest up and out – this helps to keep the arch in the lower back. Keep your weight on your heels and descend as far as your flexibility will allow. If your back starts to round, this is as low as you can go. Keep your knees directly over your feet, not collapsing inward or bending outward.

As you descend, keep your arms locked out overhead. The bar should be held so that the weight is above your hips, either just behind your ears or even just behind your head. You should be able to feel when the bar is in the right position as it will feel balanced. It is important never to let the bar come forwards as it will pull you forwards and you will have to drop it! Also, if you have very flexible shoulders, you might need to watch that you don’t over-extend backwards and have the bar too far behind you.

To keep the bar in place, think about pulling your hands outwards. Imagine you are trying to stretch the bar or pull it in half.

Step 3: Reach squat depth

The aim is to go as low as possible but your squat depth will be limited by your back flexibility. This will improve as you practise the overhead squat.

As with any kind of squat, your knees should remain over your feet. Ideally, your knees should not push out beyond your toes, but this is dependent on your flexibility. The more flexibility your have in your back, the more vertical your knees can be in the bottom position. You can see from the picture that my flexibility is a bit lacking here as my knees are slightly past my toes! But I know from my own experience that this improves with practise, so if your knees do come out past your toes, don’t let this stop you from practising the exercise as your flexibility will improve.

If you are not used to squatting to this depth, think about letting your body hang between your legs, not behind them. Often the squat is taught with a narrow stance and only to a parallel position, but it is difficult to hit a deep position with a narrow stance so if you have been taught this way, experiment with a wider position. Also if you need to turn your toes out a bit more in order to sink your hips lower, this is not a problem.

Step 4: Push out of the bottom and return to a standing position, maintaining the bar overhead

Press your heels into the floor and use your hips and glutes to push up out of the deep squat position and back to a standing position. Keep your core strong, holding your upper body in position. Continue trying to pull the bar apart to maintain its position securely above your head.

How to use the overhead squat in your training

There are a number of ways you can use the overhead squat in your training:

• As a warm up for Olympic lifts
• As an assistance exercise for the Olympic lifts and the squat
• As a core strengthening exercise
• As a tough workout in its own right (e.g. 15 bodyweight overhead squats) or combining it with other exercises in a circuit

The overhead squat has been growing in popularity, due in particular to its adoption by Crossfit as a key exercise. It is a very versatile move to master.

Related posts/further reading

Crossfit OHS Basics – explaining grip and position

The Overhead Squat by Dan John – more information on using the overhead squat in training

Mark Rippetoe teaches the overhead squat (mov video clip)
Crossfit workout incorporating overhead squat – snatch, overhead squat and pull-up

Most commercial gyms have a combination of free weights and resistance machines. This guide deals with free weights, which include dumbbells, barbells and weight plates, medicine balls, kettlebells – basically anything heavy that isn’t stabilised by some kind of contraption when you lift it.

Types of weight training

There are various types of weight lifting and there’s no reason why you couldn’t try all of them. They are all great for getting leaner, fitter and stronger.

Powerlifting
Powerlifting is a sport involving three lifts: squat, bench press and deadlift. These are performed with a barbell and weight plates. All three lifts require effort from the whole body, particularly the biggest muscle groups, the legs and back, so these lifts are very effective for developing overall strength and muscle. Powerlifters will utilise other exercises such as pull-ups or dips to aid them in training, but these exercises are not used in competition.

Olympic weightlifting
Olympic weightlifting (sometimes just called ‘weightlifting’) is a sport involving two lifts: the snatch and the clean & jerk. These are also performed with a barbell and weight plates. However, these lifts are different from power lifts as they involve lifting a bar from the floor to overhead, whereas the power lifts move the bar a much shorter distance. Olympic lifts are technically more demanding than the power lifts and are very effective for developing athletic power and strength. Like powerlifters, Olympic weightlifters use other exercises to help with training, such as overhead squats and core work, but only use two lifts in competition.

Bodyweight/calisthenics
Bodyweight exercises, or callisthenics, are strength exercises that use the weight of the body as the resistance. Popular bodyweight exercises include push-ups, pull-ups and dips, but actually there are as many exercises as you can invent. Bodyweight exercises are excellent training for sports/arts such as parkour, breakdancing and acrobatics as well as developing all-round fitness.

Strongman
Strongman involves a range of events using awkwardly-shaped or –weighted objects and tests various types of strength: grip strength, explosive strength, brute force, endurance. Popular events include the atlas stones, keg tossing and tyre flipping. If lifting a barbell up and down in a gym doesn’t appeal, get outside and start throwing barrels around!

Kettlebells, clubbells, sandbags
Many objects have been developed to aid strength training. Kettlebells are perhaps the most popular at the moment. These are smallish round weights with a handle and can be used in a similar way to dumbbells. It is possible to do powerlifting or Olympic lifting style exercises using kettlebells, sandbags or other objects. Exercises tend to be done with higher repetitions using these objects, so there is a much greater emphasis on strength endurance than there would be in a powerlifting competition. These objects also introduce greater instability into the lift in order to make the core work harder.

Next article: Starting out

External links

• Michaela Breeze’s Olympic weightlifting guide (video)
• The Basics of Powerlifting

• Rounding of the lower back
• Elbows too low
• ‘Reverse curling’ the bar up rather than shrugging

Crossfit encourages full squat cleans, which are technically more difficult to master than the variations of hang clean or power clean (or hang power clean).

A full squat clean starts from the floor and the lifter does a deep squat to catch the bar. With the power variation, the lifter simply bends the knees to catch the bar and doesn’t go into a deep squat – the receiving position is therefore higher.

Problem 1: Rounding the lower back before sufficient squat depth has been reached

With the full squat clean, your ability to squat can be the limiting factor at first. We practiced squatting without any weight and also adjusted our stance. Some people find it easier to adopt a slightly wider stance with toes pointing out – as in the picture above.

You can also do power cleans from the hang position – just above the knee – until your squat depth improves.

Problem 2: Position of the bar across the front of the shoulders

Many people hold the bar too far down because they are afraid of the bar banging into their neck or choking them. The way to prevent this is to shrug up with your shoulders. We practiced holding the bar across the shoulders very lightly with our fingers and shrugging up and down. You can see the difference in the pictures below.

If you feel that the bar is choking you, shrug your shoulders up. Also, make sure your fingers are just outside the shoulders not on top of them, otherwise they could be squashed if a heavy bar rolls back onto them.

One problem I had was in keeping my elbows as high as possible all the time. This is what keeps the bar in position across the shoulders, but I often let my elbows lower slightly, especially in the bottom position. We used front squats to practice the position of the bar across the shoulders. When you come up out of the front squat, imagine your elbows are being pulled upwards.

Problem 3: Failing to shrug the bar up

This is a very common issue when people are first learning the clean. It’s very difficult for people to get rid of the notion that if you have a heavy bar in your hands, you should pull it up with your arms. In fact, you need to shrug it up with your shoulders. The arms are simply a way of linking the bar to your body.

We practiced first with a plastic tube. We were simply jumping and shrugging from the hang position. The arms should be allowed to bend with the momentum, as if they are merely two bits of string attached to the bar.

For me, solving this problem made the biggest difference to my clean. I was simply failing to shrug anywhere near enough before!

Another useful tip is to curl the wrists slightly inward, as it helps to keep the bar close to the body.

Our clean workout

Having worked on technique, we then completed the following workout, with a choice of bars at 30 kg or 40 kg:

• 5 full squat cleans
• 200m-ish run (up the road and back)
• Repeat for 15 minutes

Crossfit London is holding Olympic lifting masterclasses in January and March 2008. Well worth checking out if you want to take up or improve your Olympic lifting technique.

I’m in London for the festive season so I have grabbed the opportunity to get some quality Crossfit sessions in. I’ve been going to the weekly Workout On Sunday sessions down in Stratford, east London. As you can see from the picture above, there’s no poncing about in gyms, we utilise nearby parks and back streets to the – well, disinterest of the locals, to be honest. Eastenders are not easily impressed!

We usually start with a session on technique – last week it was kettlebell swings, this week it was the concept2 rower. Then we move on to the main workout, up to 20 minutes of highly intensive exercise.

I’m not sure if last week’s workout had a name but it consisted of:

• 20 kettlebell swings (weight of your choice)
• 5 pull-ups
• 5 ring dips

Maximum rounds in 15 minutes

My word, ring dips are humbling! It was my first time on gymnastic rings and I was a bit rubbish. Normally I can knock out 10-15 bodyweight dips on parallel bars with no problems but on the rings I barely managed 2 full range of motion efforts. The instability of the rings is a big factor, and the range of motion expected by Crossfit is greater than I am used to. The rings have to go right into the armpits. Since I couldn’t manage that many ring dips, I did 5 negatives instead. This entails just doing the lowering part of the dip, and putting my feet on the ground to get back up to the top position.

Kettlebell swings are an absolute beast but a fantastic leg exercise. They leave your legs like jelly. I have been doing dumbbell swings for a while so I was keen to try the kettlebell version. I actually now prefer the kettlebell swing because it’s more, well, swingy.

This week we did Fight Gone Bad, a Crossfit classic. This consists of:

• Sumo deadlift high pulls
• Concept2 row
• Tree ball (our outdoor version of wall ball)
• Push press
• Box jumps (24 inches)

1 minute each exercise, 3 rounds
1 minute rest between rounds

Andrew demonstrates the sumo deadlift high pull

I used a 20kg olympic bar for the sumo deadlift high pull and the push press. I found the push press the most challenging exercise because it has the least leg involvement and my legs are comparatively much stronger than my upper body.

I also found tree ball surprisingly challenging. I thought it was going to be one of the easier exercises – how hard can it be to throw a med ball at a tree?? But the effort of throwing and catching a 5kg ball when you are already fatigued, plus doing a full squat is deceptively hard. Added to that the fact that you are trying to hit the tree and not passers-by so your aim has to stay true, you can’t just chuck the thing in the right general direction.

Steve performs tree ball

What I love about Crossfit and similar systems is how seemingly innocuous exercises can turn out to be quite difficult. It keeps you on your toes, constantly challenged. If you’ve got used to doing a familiar exercise one way and you are suddenly expected to do it another, it can be like doing the exercise for the first time. You can’t be too cocky in this situation!

Crossfit is growing in the UK, although it is confined to a few big cities at the moment. For a list of current Crossfit affiliates, click here.

Below are some useful assistance exercises to prepare you for the demands of olympic weightlifting.

Front squats

Front squats are a useful precursor to the clean as they involve squatting with the barbell balanced across the front of the shoulders – which is the top position of the clean.

Front squats are a great exercise in themselves, even if you never intend to clean and jerk at all. Mike Boyle, for example, recommends front squats over back squats as you get a similar result much more safely. Read more about Mike’s position on front squats and injury-free training in general.

Hang power clean

I’ll be honest with you, I’m partly into this exercise because I think it looks good! Fortunately, it’s also a good strength exercise. The hang part means that it starts from a hanging position not from the floor; the power part means that it is performed only with a partial squat not a full squat.

Some people argue that unless you are training to be an olympic lifter, there’s no need to do full squat cleans; you will get good results with the hang power clean, which is easier to perform than the full clean. You can see where front squats come in, as practice for catching the bar in the clean.

Push press

This exercise is good training for both of the olympic events, as it involves pressing the bar overhead. It’s also a great shoulder exercise.

The push press is actually the second of three exercises that form the progression to the ‘jerk’ part of the olympic lift. The first exercise is the military press, which is the same as the push press except you don’t bend your legs as you press – all the effort comes from the arms and shoulders. The push press is the second exercise, using the legs to initiate the move and get the bar off the shoulders. The push jerk takes it one step further by incorporating not just the bend in the legs but the actual jump as well.

Overhead squat

I have heard about the merits of this exercise from a number of sources and it is an important precursor to the snatch. But mainly I was inspired to do it by seeing the Crossfit women training this move so much. It takes incredible strength and hip power to perform this exercise, especially for high reps and with a lot of weight. My hips were aching after this session as they weren’t used to being worked so hard!

What is the dumbbell snatch?

The dumbbell snatch is a version of the Olympic lift, the snatch, performed with a dumbbell in one hand. You move the dumbbell from the floor to above your head in one explosive movement.

The dumbbell snatch is a full body movement and most of the major muscle groups come into play, particularly legs, shoulders and core.

Why it is such a great exercise?

The dumbbell snatch requires strength, agility, power, speed and balance to perform. It really is the complete athletic movement. It is easier to learn and perform than the barbell version, and people are more likely to have access to dumbbells than to barbells so it can be used in a variety of situations.

This exercise requires a great burst of energy to perform. It is good fun and very rewarding to be able to pick a weight off the floor and have it locked out over your head in one smooth movement.

The dumbbell snatch is also one of the most versatile strength exercises. Sometimes I go for a maximum set, but with a lighter weight and higher reps it is also an incredibly effective conditioning tool. And since it requires such energy and involves the whole body, I often use it as a warm-up exercise when doing heavy weight training.

How to perform the one-arm dumbbell snatch

Olympic lifts are a lot easier if you can get your head around the idea of dropping under the weight. When you first pull the weight off the floor, most of the work is being done by your legs, which are driving upwards. Once your legs have fully extended, the weight has probably come up to your chest and at that point you squat down very quickly so that your body is now under the weight and driving upwards again. If you don’t do this, it’s your arms and shoulders that will be doing the lifting, when really you need to make use of the big muscles in your legs to do the donkey work.

It’s a bit weird at first getting the timing right, but once you get it, you see how effective it is. The better your technique, the more weight you can snatch.

There are some video clips at the end of this article. Sometimes it makes more sense when you see the exercise in action!

Step 1 – starting position

Take up a squatting position with your feet slightly more than shoulder width apart, toes slightly turned out for stability. The dumbbell is positioned between your legs, as close to the body as you can manage without damaging any important bits! The dumbbell handle is parallel to the body.

You can either start with the dumbbell on the floor or in the ‘hang’ position, with the dumbbell a couple of inches off the floor. I usually start in the hang position, as shown in the picture. The main advantage of this position is that you don’t have to squat quite as low at the start. But if the weight is very heavy, it might be advisable to start from the floor.

Whether you start with the weight on the floor or in the hang position, your arm should be straight but not stiff and locked-out. I’ve got my other arm stuck out to the side to aid with balance. As with any squatting position, your back should be flat.

Step 2 – drive up and pull

When you start the pull, drive upwards powerfully with your legs and thrust your hips forward. This gives you the momentum you need to lift the weight – you don’t have to deliberately pull it up with your arm. Using the momentum generated by your legs, let your arm rise up with it. Shrug your shoulders to help it up.

You should try to keep the dumbbell close to your body. In the picture, I could have the dumbbell a little closer to my body really.

Step 3 – catch and drive up again

By the time the dumbbell has reached your chest, your legs are practically fully extended and your hips are coming forward. At this point, you drop into a squat so that your bodyweight is underneath the weight. The dumbbell has travelled up with the momentum of the initial push, and you want to ‘catch’ the weight before it succumbs to gravity and falls to the floor. As soon as you are underneath it, drive upwards again and lock out the arm above your head.

In the picture above, you can see that because I have squatted again, my body is practically in the same position that I started, only now the weight is above my head. I finish the move by standing up straight with still arm locked out.

When you see Olympic weightlifters perform this move with a heavy barbell, they drop into a deep squat for the catch. In the one-arm dumbbell snatch exercise it is not necessary to squat that low. You can squat as much as you want or feel is necessary to complete the exercise. This is known as a ‘power’ snatch – when you only use a partial squat to catch the weight. Often you will find that if you can’t lift a particular weight, squatting lower will make a difference.

If the weight is getting heavy, I sometimes incorporate a jump. It gives you an extra bit of power! Olympic lifters always jump – Olympic lifting is about jumping with weight. The ‘stomp’ down helps you to drive up more powerfully and – if you land with your legs a bit wider – increases your stability when you ‘catch’ the weight.

Step 4 – return to start for next rep

Having completed the overhead portion of the exercise, you can either return the dumbbell to the hang position or return it to the floor before the next rep.

If I am using a slightly lighter weight for explosive power and conditioning, I return to the hang position and do the next rep with the same arm.

If I am using a heavy weight, I return the dumbbell to the floor and swop arms for the next rep.

How to use the dumbbell snatch in your training

You can incorporate this versatile move in many different ways, for example:

• as a warm-up for weight lifting
• as part of an explosive strength routine
• as part of a conditioning routine

Ross Enamait has a great conditioning routine incorporating the dumbbell snatch called Magic 50. It consists of 5 rounds for time of the following:

5 x dumbbell snatch with each arm
5 x dumbbell swing with each arm
10 x burpees (with press-up)

I will be covering the dumbbell swing in the next article in this series.

Video clips

Female athlete performing power snatches with jump

This video is a good example of a power snatch with a jump. The female athlete in this clip is lifting a fairly heavy weight and she really stomps the jump well.

Crossfit workout incorporating dumbbell squats

This is a typically tough Crossfit workout featuring the dumbbell snatch. It’s interesting to watch because each of the participants has a slightly different style. They all squat quite deeply, partly because I suspect they have been instructed that way, and partly because the weight is quite challenging and gets more so as the workout progresses!