Post by Greg Crook on Aug 28, 2007 12:03:44 GMT -5
The warm-up room for the squat will be the biggest cluster F*** you will ever see. It has been this way every meet I’ve ever been to from local to national. As the Summer Heat 3 meet approaches we have 3 fairly new lifters competing. I will be giving them this speech so I thought it may be helpful to post it as well incase there are some people also competing for the first time. For the vet’s it may give them a new perspective.
The biggest mistake I see guy’s do is let their ego get the best of them. Everyone wants to see how high he or she can go in briefs before they have to put their suit on. Why?…it’s a meet no one gives a shit what you can do in briefs on this day! The only thing that matters is what you lift on the platform. I’ve seen 100’s of times guys killing it in the warm-up only to fall on their face on the platform cause they shot their wad too soon. Don’t be that guy!
Our rule of thumb is, if you are in the first flight I want your briefs on while your listening to the rules meeting. By this time you should have already done whatever stretches/warm-up that you normally do. Hit a set of the bar or a plate then go ahead and get your suit on. The reason we do this so quickly is there’s nothing worse than trying to play catch up. If you wait till after the rules meeting to warm-up etc., before you can blink they’ll be 400lbs on the bar and jumping in at that point will be hard and time will be limited. I saw Jonathan’s warm-ups in a meet last year start with 225, and then he had to go to 405 or something like that then one more set (maybe) and then his opener. Let me tell you, that SUCKS!!
My next suddjestion is to put your straps up early. Make every weight as easy as possible. There’s no need to work harder on these warm-up sets than you need to, save it for the platform! In closing, just don’t try to hang with the stronger guy’s around you just save yourself for the lift’s that count and let everyone else burn themselves out in the warm-up room in they want to.
The biggest mistake I see guy’s do is let their ego get the best of them. Everyone wants to see how high he or she can go in briefs before they have to put their suit on. Why?…it’s a meet no one gives a shit what you can do in briefs on this day! The only thing that matters is what you lift on the platform. I’ve seen 100’s of times guys killing it in the warm-up only to fall on their face on the platform cause they shot their wad too soon. Don’t be that guy!
Our rule of thumb is, if you are in the first flight I want your briefs on while your listening to the rules meeting. By this time you should have already done whatever stretches/warm-up that you normally do. Hit a set of the bar or a plate then go ahead and get your suit on. The reason we do this so quickly is there’s nothing worse than trying to play catch up. If you wait till after the rules meeting to warm-up etc., before you can blink they’ll be 400lbs on the bar and jumping in at that point will be hard and time will be limited. I saw Jonathan’s warm-ups in a meet last year start with 225, and then he had to go to 405 or something like that then one more set (maybe) and then his opener. Let me tell you, that SUCKS!!
My next suddjestion is to put your straps up early. Make every weight as easy as possible. There’s no need to work harder on these warm-up sets than you need to, save it for the platform! In closing, just don’t try to hang with the stronger guy’s around you just save yourself for the lift’s that count and let everyone else burn themselves out in the warm-up room in they want to.
