| Olympic Lifts and How They Can Work for You |
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BodybuildingPro.com  Training Database Bodybuilding Articles Olympic Lifts and How They Can Work for You
Adding Olympic Lifts - The key to Explosive
Power
Olympic style
weightlifters have long been known to be the best in terms of
explosive power. If you observe an olympic weightlifer in action,
you will notice that he or she performs most all movements
explosively. Due to this speed and explosiveness, power is
developed over time. Typically, bodybuilding workouts are all
developed in the same manner and do not necessarily provide for a
well rounded athlete. The bodybuilder will be extremely muscular,
but because other factors aren't necessary to succeed in
bodybuilding, it is easy to ignore them. Adding an olympic lift (or
two...or three) into your workout program may be just what you need
to become a better rounded athlete.
The table below shows a
number of Olympic lifts and their respective benefits:
Olympic Lifts
| OLYMPIC LIFT |
BENEFIT |
| Power (or Hang) Clean |
Power cleans are a great full body movement
which involve the glutes, hamstrings, quads, calves, traps, and
spinal erectors. |
| Power Snatch |
Glutes, hamstrings, quads, calves, traps and
spinal erectors. |
| Push Press |
Delts and Triceps. |
| Overhead Squat |
Quads, hamstrings, glutes, spinal erectors, abs,
delts, traps, triceps. |
| Jump Squat |
Glutes, calves, quads, hamstrings, spinal
erectors, and abs. |
Problems Involved in
Including Olympic Lifts in your Bodybuilding
Workout
In order to incorporate
olympic lifts in your bodybuilding program, you may want to
consider changing your current split. The reason for this is
because bodybuilding workouts are designed to allow you to develop
a specific muscle group(s) during a training day. For example, on
chest day, you may include bench press, incline press, dumbbell
flies, and machine presses. It may be difficult for you to include
some power movements in your routine because some of these
movements involve more than one muscle group, and you may risk
overtraining by including these exercises on any given day. For
example, as you can see above, the overhead squat works many muscle
groups, from the quadriceps and hamstrings all the way to the
delts, traps and triceps. If you include this on leg day, you will
run the risk of overtraining your triceps if you have already
exercised them earlier in the week. Likewise, if you do the
overhead squat on arm day, you will run the risk of tiring your
legs out if they are to be exercised later on in the week. As you
can see, this can present confusion to the bodybuilder wishing to
gain explosive power.
Solution:
The recommended solution
to this problem is to divide your workout program into three
seperate workouts based on the individual power movements; (1)
those working your legs, (2) presses, and (3) pulls. This allows
you to incorporate power movements without compromising your
bodybuilding recovery. Below are examples of which power movements
and bodybuilding exercises you can include on each of the
individual days:
Incorporating Olympic Lifts in a Bodybuilding
Program
| TYPE OF MOVEMENT DAY |
POWER MOVEMENTS INCLUDED |
POSSIBLE MUSCLE GROUPS TO TRAIN |
| Pull Day |
Power cleans, power snatches |
Upper back, shoulders, biceps |
| Push Day |
Push presses |
Shoulders, chest, triceps |
| Leg Day |
Jump Squats |
Quads, back |
So, as you can see, with a little bit of planning, it is possible
to incorporate olympic lifts into your workout program without
compromising your bodybuilding gains, and best of all, gaining
explosive power in the process!
Take care,
webmaster@bodybuildingpro.com
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