I started training at Catalyst Athletics with Greg Everett on April 18th, 2011. I had almost zero experience with the snatch and the clean and jerk. I played rugby for seven years and had used crossfit as a way to get rugby fit, and it worked. When I quit playing rugby I thought I'd just do crossfit, but that got boring fast. I started a "strength" program last November and discovered that I like to front squat. My crossfit coach encouraged me to try olympic lifting. The only thing I had snatched at that point was the bar, and I shudder to think what it looked like. I had done power cleans and cleans, and maybe a few jerks with the bar. Olympic lifting was intriguing to me and seemed like something I could be decent at.

I decided to take the weightlifting class they offer at Catalyst. I took a few of those with Kara Yessie and it was obvious to me that this is what I wanted to do. I emailed Greg, shifted around my schedule and joined the team. This wasn't something I took lightly. I gave myself an entire weekend to think about it and make sure it was something I could commit to. The last thing I wanted to do was waste my time, or Greg’s.

Greg told me that the first couple weeks would be more mentally exhausting than anything else. Something to understand when learning the lifts is that you are going to feel dumb. You should just accept that right off. If you're serious and you want to be good at them, just accept that you are going to experience moments of complete ineptitude. But nothing good comes easy, right? Knowing the lifters at Catalyst train five days a week, I wondered how I would recover without rest days, but it turns out that 1) you don't need to be 100% recovered, and 2) you don't need nearly as many rest days as you would think. Greg was right about the mental exhaustion. My brain was constantly trying to process all the information it was given and somehow translate that to my arms and legs. I'm pretty sure that I thought of little else besides snatching and cleaning and jerking for the first few weeks. That being said, Greg is really, really, good at teaching the lifts. I could write an entire article on this, but I will save that for next time. I'll just say this: he's so good at teaching the snatch and the clean and jerk, that you don't even realize you've learned them. It's like magic. He's also extremely good at seeing what you did wrong and saying the exact thing to make you fix it.

Let's go back to feeling inept. After that come little breakthroughs and something will click. Something he's been telling you for maybe three weeks will all of a sudden click and it's awesome. And then...more ineptitude. I guess it's the same as learning anything else, try and try and try, and then fail and fail and fail, and then somehow you understand, or your body "gets it". I find that my mind understands very clearly what Greg is telling me, but getting my body to do it is what can take some time.

If you're lucky, you won't have any wrist problems. I had wrist problems. I spent the first six weeks icing my wrists every single day. I was really worried about them. I couldn't train at 100% because of my wrists. Greg promised that they wouldn't hurt forever and that they would get better, and he was right (it kind of gets tiring how he’s right all the time). I hardly have any trouble with them now unless I do something to hurt them. If you're just starting out and having some minor this or that, don't get discouraged. Just do what you can do, and it will get better. I got really pissed off about my wrists. I didn't like to be held back. It was annoying. But I learned that this is how training goes. Greg explained that if you don't have something hurting somewhere, then you're probably not training hard enough; and when something is hurting, you train around it. It's not a big deal; it's just how it goes.

The first few months are all about learning the lifts and all the lifts used for training. It's also about getting to know your coach and learning to communicate, and building trust. I have to trust my coach to know what he's doing, and he has to trust me to show up and do the work. There were a couple of times I got yelled at, and a couple of times when I got pissed off and threw a fit, not at him, but at myself. The times I was yelled at, I definitely needed it. There are a lot of other things I could talk about in this post, like nutrition and sleep, and platform and/or training partners, but I will save those topics for future posts.

It's been about 4 months. I walked into Catalyst able to snatch nothing, and I recently snatched 50kg. I was probably able to clean around 35kg before joining catalyst and jerk nothing since I'd only done it once or twice before. My last clean and jerk was at 63kg, but I’m pretty sure I can do more now. I think I've made good progress and I don't plan on stopping any time soon. I obviously didn't do it on my own. If you want to get better at the lifts, do whatever Greg Everett says.