3 Team Training Videos

Quick post with three team training videos to watch: MDUSA, California Strength and Catalyst Athletics.

Weightlifting Etiquette

Simple post today, primarily aimed at new weightlifters. What basic rules of etiquette should you be aware of when training with other weightlifters?

First, let’s get the obvious stuff out of the way:

1. Clean up. Frankly, I think this is the most important rule and the easiest to follow. I take pride in always leaving an area exactly as I found it (or cleaner, if I found it messy). Put away weights and bars in the proper places. Move jerk boxes back to where they belong. Take care of the space as if it were your own. Not only is it the right thing to do, but it’ll endear you with the owner.
2. Don’t coach. Unless you actually are a coach, don’t offer unsolicited advice. Many lifters won’t appreciate it, and you never know if they’re purposefully doing something you consider ‘wrong’.
3. Sharing is caring. Don’t be selfish with the bar, plates or platform. They’re not yours anyway. If someone asks you to share, then do so unless it’s absolutely going to somehow mess up your workout. Even then, explain that and apologize. Be a good person.

Then there are the less obvious rules, specific to the sport of weightlifting:

1. Sightlines. Don’t walk in front of somebody while they’re lifting. More broadly, don’t stand right in front of them, or really too close in any direction. Lifters pick a focal point that they keep insight at all times during the lift. Interfering with that can throw off a lift. Of course this doesn’t apply to ALL situations. If someone is warming up with the bar, their sightline matters less than if they’re attempting a PR. Use your best judgment.
2. Noise. Similar to the rule above, this is more important the more difficult the attempt, but don’t create undue noise when someone is lifting. Don’t take a lift when they’re in the middle of their attempt. Don’t have a loud conversation right behind a lifter during their attempt. Respect the level of mental concentration and focus that the snatch and clean and jerk require.
3. Chalk. Keep the chalk in the bowl. Don’t LeBron James the chalk. Rub it into your hands, and tap off the excess all inside the bowl. Don’t purposefully break the chalk into smaller chalk pieces. Respect the chalk.

And one bonus rule of etiquette. I’ve never heard of this rule before, and I’m guilty of breaking it many times if it’s true, but one of the places I researched for this post said:

6. Don’t stand a bar on its end to unload plates unless you own the bar.

Good to know. Not sure if this is a real thing or not but from now on, I’ll avoid doing it.

Anything I missed? Leave it in the comment section.

Team Training Videos

One of my favorite types of weightlifting videos to watch is team training videos.

There’s something about watching a large team of successful weightlifters working together that I always find inspiring and illuminating.

More than anything else, these videos make me wish I had a team to belong to, but that’s a post for another day.

My absolute favorite team to watch is California Strength. They post about two videos a week, the videos are good quality and it’s a nationally competitive team.

The best recent California Strength video that I’ve seen recently was actually a video of their warm-ups, that I felt I learned a lot from:

An even better team is Muscle Driver USA. Their videos are much less frequent, but they have better lifters, and more importantly, one of the athletes does commentary during the video, which is of course very helpful and insightful.

No one video sticks out to me as the best, but here is the most recent one:

Subscribe to their YouTube channels and hopefully you’ll get as much out of them as I do.

Have any suggestions for other teams to watch? Mention them in the comments.