Glenn Pendlay: Consistency in Olympic Lifting

One of the things I want everyone to come away from watching Jon doing these heavy lifts is the fact that they all look the same. All the warm-ups looked the same . . . his approach to the bar is the same.

Once Jon walks up to the bar, on every lift from the way he started with—I think we’re around 150 pounds, all the way up to 145 kilos or 315 pounds, the speed is the same. That’s not a heavy enough weight for him to really be slowing down, so the speed is the same on every one.

His approach to the bar is the same. Once he steps up to the bar, grabs the bar, he gets down, he does the same movement directly before he pulls . . . very consistent. The fact of the matter is, if you make a mistake, but you consistently make the same mistake in the same way every time, you can still be a good lifter.

Lots of lifters don’t do everything perfectly. In fact, probably no lifter does everything perfectly, but if you consistently make the same mistake in the same way to the same degree every time, you’ll be able to overcome it and learn to live with it and still lift weights.

Consistency is the most important part of technique: the same speed, the same positions, the same everything. A lot of times, especially those who are coming into lifts without any background and sometimes aren’t in a gym where they’re getting constant coaching, one thing you notice is people step up to the bar and they look this way, and look that way and they go down, they come back, they do everything differently every rep.

It’s almost impossible to do the actual movement consistently if what you do directly before and what you do once you have your hands around the bar and your method of starting and your start position is not consistent.

Develop a consistent pattern, walk up to the bar, then have a routine. The one hand on the bar, to the other, bend your knees, do whatever style of start you use, but do it exactly the same every time.

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