"if I could drop beneath 75kg then I could possibly take gold or silver."
Images: Warren Clarke

Gym time

“In a typical session I’ll have five exercises to work through. Two of those five will be technical lifts – a snatch and a clean and jerk. We tend to go heavy with our main technical exercise – generally the snatch. With the other technical exercise – the clean and jerk – the focus is more on power.

“After the technical exercises we’ll move into three strength exercises. Generally one of these will be squats – either front or back squats, occasionally half-squats. Another typical strength exercise is heavy snatch pulls. When I was snatching 113kg, for example, I was doing snatch pulls of about 120-125kg, just so I could feel that heavier weight off the ground. From there we’ll often move to Romanian deadlifts, working our gluts and hammies. After that we’ll normally do heavy shrugs. When I was clean and jerking 140kg, for example, I was shrugging up to 220kg.

“When I was lighter I would typically do more repetitions in my sessions. If I wasn’t carrying injuries I would’ve been looking at, say, five-to-six reps with my strength exercises. Now, I’m normally looking at doing threes, twos and ones

– particularly with the technical lifts, because they take so much out of my body. All up, I’ll normally do somewhere between 15-20 reps for each of those five exercises. I’ll have around a minute’s recovery between each set – although sometimes I like to take a little bit longer … ”

In the cycle

“Most lifters work on a 12-week cycle. Some prefer the 18-week cycle, but personally I would just get injured over 18 weeks because I go pretty hard in my training. In the first month I’m looking at doing a lot of strength work. I’m

at the start of a cycle working towards Delhi at the moment, so I’m doing three or four pull and squat exercises and only one technique exercise. I’m pushing between 70-85 percent of my maximum in this month.

“For the second month the ratio levels-out to about 50 percent strength and 50 percent technique. I’ll normally do a snatch or a power clean or a jerk, then team that with a squat or a pull or a shrug. In this month I’ll be lifting around 85 percent of my maximum on the technical lifts, and close to 90 percent on the strength lifts. I’m looking at around three reps per set here.

“In that last month you only have three weeks of training – the last hit-out in the gym is generally eight days before competition. In that last session I’ll be pushing pretty close to my maximums. The strength component is down

to about 30 percent of our workload for this month, while the technical stuff is up around 70 percent. Reps are down to doubles and even singles. I’ll try to mix-up my technical lifts at this point – doing, say, snatches on Mondays, clean and jerks on Wednesdays and power snatches on Thursdays – just so I don’t feel like I’m doing the same thing over and over.”

Mind power

“When it comes to competition, I normally take the weight I lifted in that last training session, add 5kg, and that’s what I’ll attempt on the platform. This approach is quite different to some of the other lifters who lift more in training, then hope to match that on the platform. Personally, when I’m on the platform, the adrenaline flowing, that’s when I pull out the big weights.

“You have to have a coach who knows when you can pull out the big weights. You don’t want a situation where you’re struggling in your warm-up lifts and your coach is freaking out, thinking, ‘Oh my goodness, if 90 looks hard here, she’s not going to lift 92 on the platform!’ Psychology is so important with lifting. You’ve only got three attempts – if you miss your lifts you’ve got nothing.

“I’ve been so lucky to have Mike. I remember one competition where I started on 87kg – a pretty high starting weight given that my best lift at that point was 90kg. I missed my first lift – I was mucking around and it was a silly miss. I went back out and missed again, exactly the same, another stupid miss. I was so frustrated. On my third lift, instead of making me lift 87 again, Mike put 95kg on the bar. That was 5kg above my best! Everyone thought, ‘What is this coach doing? This is absolutely ridiculous ... ’ But when I got out there I was so frustrated, so aggressive, the 95kg just flew up. That’s the psychology a coach needs to impart – get out there, I know you can lift this.”