DAY 4 WITH PIERRE

Today was very hot in Ottawa, 37 degrees hot.

The morning session went well but I am getting really tired. We took the afternoon off because of the heat warning that the city declared and then were back at it in the evening.

Pierre pushed me hard tonight. I got to the point on the snatch where I was so tired I just wanted to be done for the night and quit. I knew that if I executed the lift properly, and followed his instructions, that I would have to do less reps. One would think that each time your coach gives you instructions that you would want to try and follow through, but I don't think that necessarily happens. But tonight, I was so fatigued, and it was so hot, I just wanted to nail the lift so that I could be done.

Fatigue can be an important factor in becoming a better lifter. When you are exhausted your lifts have to be perfect. When you are fresh you can get away with a lot more because you can usually save the lift.

Apparently, I have a really good jerk. I had a scare the other night when my back kind of 'buckled' under the bar. I have had this problem before and the worst thing on the jerk is to be hesitant. I am still working on it and you can see in the video that I posted that I am actually moving away from the bar rather than aggressively driving under it. My other problem on both the snatch and the clean is that I am not aggressive enough when I meet the bar. I stop my pull too soon rather than let the weight of the bar drive me down. My strength on the lifts is that I am quite explosive and I pull the bar very high but now I need the courage to let the weight take me down into the squat. You can see that hesitation in my snatch. I don't get the bar back at my scapula. Instead, I stop the bar right over the top of my head.

The video of the young athlete clean and jerking is Sammy. Sammy is 14 years old, he weights 62 kg. Here, he clean and jerks 73 kgs.

I should also mention that Sammy, Nancy and Nico have only been lifting since November! Neither Sammy nor Nico had ever played a sport before they took up weightlifting.