If I am a coach in an Olympic weightlifting,
I should take notes of the training load and
also look at it then at a greater time spent,
which training load had more. or had which outcome
and also for research purposes we have to investigate
on long -term training load effects so not just
two weeks four weeks six weeks whatsoever but
maybe we have to document as coaches over a span
of years which training loads had which outcome
Hi, Flo. Welcome to Evidence Strong Show. It's
my pleasure to have you. Please briefly introduce
yourself. Alex, thanks for having me. My name
is Florian Wieners. I'm 24 years old. I'm from
Germany and I myself compete in Olympic weightlifting
martial arts and I study my master's in sports
science, specifically in sports performance.
performance sports. Besides that, I work as a
strength and conditioning coach for professional
youth athletes and right now also voluntarily
coach two young kids in Olympic weightlifting.
Awesome. Great background in relation to Olympic
weightlifting. And this is important because
we're talking tests that correlate or relate
to Olympic weightlifting performance. We should
start with what we think matters for Olympic
weightlifting performance. Well, in theory, what
has always been researched a lot is explosiveness.
So in the sense of counter -movement jumps on
force plates, muscle mass, max strength testing
when it comes to back squat, front squat and
so forth and else. also power so like power cleans
and the relation to the olympic lifts themselves
and In practice or in real life, the state of
the art in Olympic weightlifting is or seems
to be training experience. So when you look at
Russians or Chinese training regime, you see
young athletes in the age of seven upwards who
are already be training for Olympic weightlifting,
kind of like the same for gymnastics. And yeah,
it seems that training experience and also power
or explosiveness. plays a huge role and also
muslims if we specifically look at for example
the chinese weightlifters we see and like kind
of highly developed muscle mass also in the upper
body. How did you go to your study? When I looked
at the paper or the research, I only found like
research that solely focuses on, for example,
just elite level athletes or just explosiveness
or muscle mass and so forth. But I never found
a really comprehensive studies that also includes
athletes from not. elite level and also that
includes other performance factors like training
experience or includes all aforementioned performance
factors like counter moment jump like muscle
mass or training experience so i thought i was
highly interested in creating a study with lina
and to look or to find out what's most important
in Olympic weightlifting or in the success of
Olympic weightlifting. So we took, or I took
broad spectrum of success. Or yeah, I took a
broad spectrum of subjects, which starts with
CrossFit athletes who execute Olympic lifts regularly,
goes over competing athletes like myself on a
national level, and then also include elite level
athletes that compete, for example, in the Europe
championships or even in the Olympic Games. And
yeah, I just wanted to find out what's the predictor
or the most significant predictor or correlation.
between counter movement jump, training experience
and muscle mass on Olympic weightlifting performance
or success. The athletes would come in and we
tested the muscle mass via bioelectrical impedance
analysis. And then we warmed up for the performance
test, which was counter movement jump in my case.
And then I asked them for how long they trained
and to get... a sense of training experience
or to get the training experience calculated.
And then depending on the athlete, I looked up
in the data bank of the Austrian Federation for
Olympic Weightlifting, their max lifts and took
the Sinclair score because the Sinclair score
is a practical score that allows me to compare
individuals independently of gender and body
weight. And then, yeah. And for those who had
not an official record, they had to max out.
Are we ready for this? the results yes i am ready
let's go so the results were to say superficially
the counter movement jump was the best predictor
for the single score for the success in olympic
weightlifting then training experience and surprisingly
the muscle mass or the relative skeletal muscle
mass has had no correlation no significant correlation
with the success in elliptic weightlifting. And
when it comes to the semi -partial correlation
coefficient, it was 50 % for the counter movement
jump height. So 50%. The Katamuni jump explained
50 % of the variance in the Sinclair score with
inclusion of the other variables. But if you
square it, it's 25 % for the Katamuni jumps.
And the overall model that we used, and we also
included the sex, the gender, male and female,
to account for biological differences. And the
whole model explains R squared 66 .7 % of the
variance in the Sinclair score. So it's pretty,
yeah. Good explaining model, let's say. All right.
I have some questions. So were there any differences
between females and males? I didn't look at the
direct differences between females and males.
But when you look at the descriptive statistics,
you can see without any statistical analysis
that the elite level, regardless of sex, was
always better in the counter -moon jumper. Their
level of explosiveness was just always better
than the other levels. And the muscle mass. was
the lowest of all three like in the descriptive
statistics yeah the rsm percentage For elite
level was 39 .5%. And the competitive level was
41 .7%. And for the fitness level, so the CrossFit
level was 40 .2%. So, yeah. Why do you think
it's a fat mass in elite weightlifters is higher?
Why? We had some individuals without saying the
names that had some more fatness than others,
I would say. But it shouldn't be any significant
effect because... on the crossfit levels we also
had some individuals who had respectively higher
fat mass but i would say because in crossfit
and also competitive athletes who might do other
sports too besides that have higher upper body
mass especially crossfit athletes they spend
respectively i guess higher amount on developing
upper body mass or upper body performance than
maybe elite level athletes and therefore if you
take the whole muscle mass of whole body muscle
mass you can't differentiate between upper body
muscle mass and lower body muscle mass. So for
future research, I would also suggest to maybe
take the lower limb muscle mass, the upper body
muscle mass, and also the trunk or the core muscle
mass. Because when I looked into the data in
detail, I've seen huge... muscle mass values
for trunk muscle mass in the elite level athletes.
That's fascinating. A little bit unexpected.
All right. What do the findings mean? So what
coaches can and should take from your study?
I would say spend time improving. explosiveness
not just in regards to lifts but also with plyometrics
and also when it comes to training with kids
do a lot of speed strength training and plyometrics
and a variety of speed training and also like
i guess always without the problem of early specification
train the movements have a high training experience
because if you want to get better at something
you have to do that something I guess. And yeah,
just train a lot and put a lot of effort in explosiveness.
What I do not want to say is to not spend much
time in hypertrophy because like I said, I looked
at the whole body muscle mass. And the lower
body muscle mass is still, I would say, important
for Olympic weightlifting. And so we have to
differentiate there. And yeah, but it doesn't
seem like the whole plays a lot of role in the
success of Olympic weightlifting. Yeah, takeaway
message. It always comes down to the basics,
I guess. Be explosive, train a lot. And yeah,
you don't have to look like a bodybuilder. All
right. Did you change anything in your coaching
or in your training? after running a study? Yes,
I decreased the hypertrophy volume for upper
body. Just kidding. I put more value on plyometrics
and on power development. And also for my other
athletes because I'm not just coaching Olympic
weightlifting athletes, I'm also coaching a variety
of athletes. track and field, volleyball, even
swimming athletes or martial artists. And yeah,
if it comes to power development. I have some
more insights into that now, some more knowledge
about it. And yeah, I have more emphasis on power
explosiveness development and the variety of
training you can use to develop that. Do you
use Olympic weightlifting with your athletes,
sports, the volleyball players and other sports?
Yes, I do use them, but it's... Depends on the
age and on the experience with it. So if somebody,
when a professional volleyball player athlete
comes to me and he's like 20 to 25, let's say,
or he's now an older athlete, let's say, and
he does not have any experience with the snatch,
I would teach him the clean to develop power.
I would not spend too much because I guess, or
I think, and the research, some research shows
too, If you have to take a certain percentage
of the 1RM of the snatch or the power clean whatsoever
to have a significant influence on power development,
that means the athlete has to have some experience
with those lifts. If he does not have the technique
to execute a certain amount or a certain threshold
for power development, then it doesn't have much
significance in the development of power. I don't
want to waste any time developing something that
does not have meaningful effect on certain variable
I want to improve. But also when it comes to
younger athletes, so for example, American football
athletes, which I also train, when they're 16,
I coach them a hang snatch or hang power clean.
So the clean is easy to teach. The snatch depends
on the experience and the age, I guess, so that
I don't waste much time on it. developing something
that, you know, yeah. Like Louis Simmons also
said in West Side Bible, he said, when you waste
too much time developing the technique before
it has meaningful effect, then you might exchange
the exercise. Right. So you balance long -term
development with immediate usefulness of the
exercise. I ask myself the question, is the time
I spent getting the technique down or having
the meaningful effect? And then I decide, am
I doing it or not? Right. it awesome do you have
a last minute advice for coaches not really i
guess olympic weightlifting is one of in my opinion
one of the best sports in the world We should
use it regardless of sports, whether you are
Olympic weightlifting or not, because it has
many positive effects. And when it comes to specific
Olympic weightlifting coaching, spend time with
the development of explosiveness. And yeah. Awesome.
All right. Two short questions to finish. The
first one is, what is your favorite lift? My
favorite lift would be the clean and jerk, the
snatch. It's nice to lift a high amount in kilos
of snatch and to lift the first 225 pounds or
100 kilos, but you can take more weight in the
clean and jerk. And for me, it's about, yeah,
getting the most amount of weights over my head.
And that is possible with the clean and jerk,
I guess. It feels like more raw power. The snatch
is more technical. Therefore, you have to pay
attention on the technique while lifting. But
for the clean and jerk, you just grab the barbell
and just lift it, I guess, and be aggressive.
with it. Awesome. So where people can find you
online if they want to follow your journey, ask
a question, look at your research? They can follow
me on Instagram or LinkedIn on both platforms.
I'm called Florian Venus and yeah, I'm happy
to help some people or connect with some. Thank
you so much and all the best for your research
and coaching and training. Thank you, Alex. I
wish you the best.