The G-Force Source: weightlifting & CrossFit

12 Feb The G-Force Source: weightlifting & CrossFit

Mind over matter: it’s a real thing. Have you ever walked up to a barbell and psyched yourself out of a lift? We’re all victim to mind-games, and in weightlifting, it’s very much a reality. But in this edition of our blog—The G-Force Source—we’re not talking about how to strengthen the mind to overcome those mental barriers in your training; that’s something you’ll have to use the Force for. In this edition of the Source, we talk about the inclusion of weightlifting in our sport of CrossFit.

Weightlifting has been around for countless years with competitions being held in ancient times to see who could lift the heaviest weights. Weightlifting as an Olympic sport was included and omitted from the Olympics in the late 1800s and earliy 1900s. There were one-handed lifts (because a two-handed snatch isn’t hard enough) and two-handed lifts which included a clean and press. The modern day sport of weightlifting began in 1972 and it wasn’t until 1987 that the first women were able to compete in the sport. It was our Olympics here in Australia in 2000 where women were first included in the official Olympic competition.

In the same year, CrossFit Inc. was officially founded. Included in the new-found company’s coaches ranks was Mike Burgener who is the official CrossFit Weightlifting head coach. Weightlifting was popular enough in its own rights, but as part of CrossFit’s definition of its sport, “constantly varied, high-intensity, functional movement,” weightlifting was included in CrossFit’s programming in its earliest days.

Thanks to the popularity of CrossFit, it gave the exposure of weightlifting a significant boost with more interest in the sport, as well as people who converted from CrossFit to weightlifting leaving their days of endless cardio and death-by-burpees behind. Goodbye cardio, hello minutes of rest between lifts!

In the past four-or-so years, weightlifting has become much more predominant in CrossFit with its official competition, The CrossFit Games, including one-rep max lifts and plenty of other multiple-rep Olympic lifts. There is no denying that if you want to be good at CrossFit, you need to be good at Olympic weightlifting.

Why are we talking about weightlifting in the Source you ask? Continue reading below in our announcements section and find out.

Further below are our latest personal bests from the gym. Well done to everyone on their new achievements!

On Thursday the 16th of February at 6.30pm, we’re holding a weightlifting workshop at G-Force. Please put your names on the notice board if you’re attending. We recommend that all of you attend if you can because as we’ve mentioned, weightlifting is a large part of CrossFit, and to be good at CrossFit you need to be good at weightlifting.

In the workshop, we’re going to concentrate on the starting positions of the snatch and the clean. We hope to see you in the gym for the workshop.