**DISCLAIMER: I don’t do weightlifting. As I watch more of Clarence’s videos, I understand how the image of him I present here is quite wrong in so many places.
I learned that progress in Olympic Weightlifting can get stumped at some point.
From what I understand, improvement in weightlifting is closely related to mobility and speed, which apparently starts worsening with age. Turns out this is what peaking age means in the world of oly weightlifting, which was completely unknown to me at the time. Turns out it makes a lot of sense, and not at all was what I thought it meant.
I then watched a Q&A by Clarence explaining why he doesn’t compete. It’s related to cheating, basically. The Q&A is from 2019 and he promises future videos where he will explain it in depth. Three months before I wrote this disclaimer update, he uploaded a series of videos talking about this situation.
Everything I wrote here was based on my first reaction after reading Tyson’s 2017 article and I didn’t know anything about Clarence previously.
I wrote it to deepen my thought process and record it at the same time. I believe writing it really helped me produce new and important ideas. I won’t be deleting it.*****
I didn’t want to title this article simply “Why do we train?”. That question mark is so vague and general. That question could very well turn out to be just another motivational quote. But the question I chose as the title got me thinking.
I recently read Tyson Edwards’ 2017 article about his session with Clarence Kennedy. At the end of it, he mentions how they have different approaches towards training. Different “philosophies”, if you prefer the term ( I don’t).
Tyson says he is “training to enjoy freedom of movement well into old age, whereas Clarence has narrowed his focus to peak performance years”.
Now this is strange. Did I ever think about training in this way before? Tyson then uses a really spot-on quote which I also find worth using:
“Clarence echoes the sentiment of John Broz(weightlifting coach operating out of Las Vegas). When someone asked John for a response regarding lifters’ injuries (specifically knees), in relation to longevity, John said: “40 is a great age for video games”. A reminder that all our choices have consequences.”
Now this quote gets you thinking about injury. You might tear some crucially important ligament hampering something (your training) you devote almost the biggest portion of your time to. And speaking for myself, I really enjoy snowboarding, and that probably will lead me to go back to trying my hand at skateboarding. Now thats a sport where you break bones. I guess breaking bones is something that gets harder to afford with advancing age.
Do not give up now, though! No matter how gloomy the above quote and the “philosophy” may seem, you should not be scared of injury. Just wear a helmet and pads and go skating. Build your way up the skill ladder. You’ll have much fun, and maybe a few broken bones, but nothing that should hold you back from enjoying it.
With that being said, we should go back to focusing on what the quote and the two different approaches mean for us. Now that we have become aware of injuries, we will become aware of the time window. The period of time in which our training will peak, and when we will enjoy the biggest progress in whatever we’re working towards. For me right now, that is climbing.
I have never settled down with any sport in my life. I started using my body very late in life. I dropped a huge amount of weight off my body when I was starting high school. After I regained my ability to move, I started training swimming. When I got to college, I learned how to Wind and Kitesurf. When I did swimming, I improved it a lot. When I did my kite/wind surfing, I learned some moves and improved a lot.
However, I haven’t been solely devoted to any one of those. Shortly after, I got introduced to “caving”, which is just like mountaineering, but its downwards, into the depths of caves. Caves have a lot of places where you have to climb. Tight walls you have to squeeze through, small tunnels which lead upwards, requiring you to squeeze yourself in between, just like how children squeeze themselves between walls and door-frames to climb up. All of these movements were new to me, and I really like to learn new movements (a passion I acquired through the board sports). So I started climbing, and I really fell in love with it.
Tyson Edwards is a really admirable human being. He did gymnastics and olympic weightlifting! He then got into martial arts and then ended up running a marathon. He’s quite good 🙂
I also come from a myriad of backgrounds. I feel like all my training; the early swimming and endurance, the board sports and all the bodyweight training I did, is about to mature into a great result. I feel like a lot of it is getting combined in climbing. My splits help me stretch between holds. The pull-ups will help me pull myself up on a rock.
So right now, climbing is a catalyst.
Sure, I was training on my own for a long time. But I never needed strength. I never needed the training. I did it just to keep myself active. Now I need the strength, so I got to start working on it for serious. Now that’s a great catalyst.
Now with this catalyst in hand, I can look forward at my time window of climbing and training. What do I expect from my training?
I feel like this is a crucial question. What do we expect from our training ? When you listen to Tyson Edwards ( getting interviewed), he gives you a great explanation of why he’s doing the things he does and what he expects from them. He says he had a lot of power, but felt like he would be overpowered in any street fight situation involving someone possessing even a sliver of fighting technique. So he decided to learn it. When he started, he saw that all those years of specific training he did, didn’t quite prepare him for how cardiovascular martial arts was going to be. So he decided to run a marathon.
What does he expects from running a marathon ? He expects it to give him the endurance he felt was required for martial arts.
Now, what am I going to expect from my own training?
If we do the gloomy math the gloomy quote avove leads us to do, I have some 20 years of high performance and hopefully another 25+ years of fun after that. Now that I know the number I have, I can plan ahead to see what I expect. I plan to get strong and build my technique in the next months and start climbing on real rock as soon as possible. I only climbed on real rock once (I practice 3 times a week in an indoor climbing gym. Summer+covid shutting down university mountaineering clubs was not good for going rock climbing).
How do I prepare for real rock? Just climb really regularly. Technique is super important at this stage, so much so that its the prime defining factor in the difficulty of the climbs I can pull off. If I climb consistently that’s going to create the most improvement.
As I do that, I will also have to focus on specific technique which I don’t run into often in the gym I am regularly going to. I just went to a different gym last week and I was so lost. Their routes were so crazy and different! The wall was taller so I had to become aware of my technique. How do I raise my feet? In what position should my body be so that I can raise my feet? This gym had me asking these questions for the first time since I started. Now that I’ve become aware, I should be trying out as many different climbs as possible. This way I can find the techniques I am bad at so that I can improve them. Slabs + heel hooks for me!
As I progress on that, I have to incorporate actual weights into my regiment. I got to be dead smart about it (is that something people say, dead smart?). For example, I know I have to be doing weighted pullups. Working out with weights requires some good research…
So what do we expect? Why even worry about such a stupid question? Simple. All my life I’ve been working towards proficiency in different sports. There always was the idea of competing professionally. Even though I knew I wasn’t actually training for competitions, the idea came into my mind, because why do we even train? We always get the feeling that, all the training we do will somehow end up culminating in a glorious feat of success.
Now this success does not need to be competition success and I never trained for that, but sure I would like to work my way up to those if I can. As Tyson Edwards said and as I experienced for myself once before, competitions get you setting goals, and they have deadlines. Those get you progressing really fast and you have to train smart. You start thinking about what you need to do in order to get what you want to get.
But, success doesn’t need to come only through competition. Tyson says Clarence sets his own goals. Increasing amount of weight lifted and doing the necessary research+training needed to be able to do that is enough goal setting, and he does that, and it works.
Now that we have proven that not all training should end up in competition glory, and also that competitions are a really great way to have fun and improve, we should go back to what my expectation was…
Going to the mountains… Yes. I wish to get as good as I can get because first of all:
- Doing research about how to get better and seeing results through your research makes you really happy. It’s one of the best feelings.
- The new ranges of motion I will develop through training will be immensely fun to live with (living with an extended range of motion, imagine being able to middlesplit!)
- 1. This is last one is number one and three at the same time. Its super important but it’s not what you’d expect from a list of training expectations. It is : Going to the mountains.
The people we work with, the humans we brush shoulders together, that’s where the most fun to be had is. I want to get the technique and strength ASAP so I can start crushing it (that’s how people describe a successful ascent, you crushed it!). I would be doing research and training smart, seeing progress everyday, and most most importantly, I would be doing this research and training with the people I love. We would be improving together. And when we go to the mountains together I would look at them climb and say, wow you’ve really improved at slamb climbing. You’re really crushing it…
Maybe the real climbing was the friends we climbed on the climb-way-up?…
Giray's Sandal 