What Is Peaking In Olympic Weightlifting?

Athletes in Olympic Weightlifting need maximum speed and strength to pull of the clean and jerk, s well as the snatch lift. You might be wondering, what is peaking in Olympic weightlifting? As a professional Olympic weightlifter, the months of training leading up to a major competition or a meetup.

So what is peaking in Olympic Weightlifting? Peaking is the achievement of the maximum form by the weightlifter through the appropriate training and diet program. An athlete can effectively boost their peak during the last week to the meet by managing weight, as well as, training volume and intensity. 

An athlete is to achieve water cuts with no decrease in performance. As an experienced weightlifter, ensure you do a weight check in the final week of preparation to ensure you have cut or are almost done cutting you had set out to lose.

Weight cutting process should be gradual to ensure that the body can adapt to the changes. Knowing what triggers your peak helps you and your coach establish a detailed method for optimal peak during the meet.

Athletes are highly individual when it comes to how they trigger their peaks as some drop volume while others cut down tonnage.
Training volume and intensity can be manipulated in varied ways depending on an individual Olympic weightlifter to achieve best results. Usually, the majority of the program is cut out, to leave you with;

• The Snatch lift
• Clean and Jerk lift
• Front squats

The weightlifter works with his or her couch to perfect movements in all three lifts. Focusing on the specific movements, you will perform during the meet ensures that you polish your skill.

The total training volume should be reduced to 70-75% whereas the intensity is to be significantly increased. A professional Olympic weightlifter requires high-load speed strength to obtain the power needed to perform lifts during the meet seamlessly.

Olympic weightlifters also require strength and conditioning training to develop endurance and strength necessary to perform movements. Power development is another vital aspect of Olympic weightlifting performance.

Generation of power and strength-speed qualities involves moving heavy loads as quickly as possible. The variations incorporated in an athlete’s workout regime in preparation for an important competition or performance helps them achieve explosive strength. The alterations made in the workout regime help an athlete achieve;

• Maximum strength
• Skill performance
• High-load speed strength; strength-speed
• High-load speed strength; speed-strength
• Increased rate of force development
• Reactive strength
• Power endurance

Peaking velocity is a means of measuring an Olympic weightlifter’s performance. This is the highest velocity a weightlifter attains in the same concentric lift phase. Peak velocity can be used during the preparation to measure the progress of an athlete in the weeks leading up to the competition.

An athlete’s capability based on peak velocity measurement is not affected by injuries, making it a dependable tool that accurately represents an athlete’s capabilities.

Peaking involves preparing your body as an athlete for a performance. You and your coach are to make alterations to the workout regime, shedding off most of the exercises and focusing on polishing the most critical aspects of your workout.

Professional Olympic athletes need to be well rested and primed before a major competition by ensuring they recover from a workout. Peaking improves recovery time after a workout session and increases strength and power so that the athlete can pull off movements during a lift.

Knowing where you are in your critical areas of training weeks before a major performance is essential as it determines how well you will perform. Coaches should set up tapers for individual athletes as different athletes taper differently.

Olympic Weightlifting Taper

Tapering for Olympic weightlifters involves peaking with variation lifts to achieve lower intensity or focusing on competitive lifts that results in low to minimal intensity. You need to be rested and primed before a major performance to optimize your training.

Based on how important the meet is, you and the coach should work on a comprehensive regime that will optimize peak during the performance. Your coach should be able to fine-tune your workout program as you progress to get the best out of it.

A thoughtful tapering process gives the athlete a competitive edge over other weightlifters at the meet. You need to work with an experienced coach for the program to be implemented correctly if you want the meet to turn out great.

Increasing your strength output as a professional weightlifter involves a series of adaptations as an athlete. Having a clear plan of attack has psychological benefits for the athlete because knowing what your training consists gives you confidence during the performance.

When you comprehensively prepare for the meet, you are assured of triggering your peak and delivering high performance.

Mean Velocity vs. Peak Velocity

Initially, mean velocity was used in measuring the performance of an athlete during competitions. With advancement in technology, there has been the development of software and hardware that makes measuring peak velocity possible.

Before technology paved the way, mean velocity, which is the average velocity for an entire lift, was used to determine the capabilities of an athlete. Peak velocity focuses on the fastest point during the concentric portion.

Usually, a single lift consists of the accelerating or propulsive phase and the deceleration phase. The propulsive phase is used to determine the peak velocity of a performance.

Reasons to Use Peak Velocity and not Mean Velocity

• Momentum at Which Peak velocity Occurs

At the top of the second pull during the performance of a lift is the moment that peak velocity occurs. When performing a lift, the weightlifter accelerates up to this point beyond which there is a deceleration to the end of the lift. Using mean velocity instead of peak velocity takes away from a weightlifter’s performance capabilities.

• Discrepancies Arising from Orthopedic Issues

Some of the common injuries weightlifters suffer from include wrist, shoulder, and elbow injuries. These areas are the weightlifting joints, and they are vulnerable to injury especially when an athlete lifts heavy weights.

Injuries impede the catching portion of the lift so that using mean velocity to determine performance results in suboptimal readings despite having a fast pull. The slowed down movements as a result of the injuries an athlete sustains decreases the value of the mean velocity.

This can be frustrating for an athlete especially because it takes much more effort to achieve a fast acceleration to get to the second pull. Mean velocity should not be a determining factor in an athlete’s lift performance. With peak velocity, the portion of the lift causing the problem can be eliminated to give an accurate account of an athlete’s performance.

• Ballistic Nature

With ballistic exercise, load projection follows a rapid initial powerful force. Ballistic and lifts both have projections, but the only difference is for ballistic exercise, gravity rather than muscular force is responsible for barbell deceleration. In traditional strength training movements, muscular force determines acceleration.

Bench presses and squats require the weightlifter to slow down the barbell during the deceleration phase, and this involves the control and muscular force. The mean propulsive velocity does not account for the decelerating phase in weightlifting, thus not fully accounting for an athlete’s capabilities.

• Athletes With Different Heights

Athletes with different heights do not use the same amount of time through the acceleration phase when performing lifts. Shorter weightlifters are bound to achieve a higher mean velocity when compared to tall weightlifters because of their shorthands.

Because mean velocity is determined by speed and time, even when two people with the same speed perform an identical lift, the sorter weightlifter will have an advantage over the tall athlete.

The further an athlete goes against gravity when performing the propulsive phase, the more force he or she needs to complete this phase. When two weightlifters with different heights achieve the same mean velocity during an identical lift, it means that the taller athlete has to have had more speed than the short athlete.

These discrepancies that arise when mean velocity is used in determining who performed better at a competition show that peak velocity is the preferred option.

Bottom Line

Most athletes increase speed-strength ability and explosive power by examining Olympic lifts with a purpose to improve skill and performance. Olympic weightlifters train to ensure they have perfect technique. The training process is tweaked to ensure that an athlete is physically prepared to perform movements during a competition seamlessly.

Average velocity assumes that a professional Olympic weightlifter has perfect technique and the phases where an athlete slows down takes away from his or her overall performance. An athlete might slow down in the ranking phase despite performing excellently in the accelerating and finding the mean of the whole lift gives suboptimal results.

The ranking phase is inconsequential for an athlete looking to improve their explosive strength. Force production, however, enables the athlete to achieve peak velocity with the lift of the barbell to the second pull.

Upper extremities and thoracic injuries sustained by an athlete may result in a slow ranking phase that ultimately nullifies the effort in lifting the barbell to the second pull if mean velocity is used to measure performance.

Conclusion

Olympic weightlifting is a registered sport that involves athletes lifting a loaded barbell from the floor through a series of defined movements. Athletes work towards achieving maximal speed and strength to pull off different lifts in record time.

Strength and conditioning training helps weightlifters to prepare their bodies to carry heavy weights. Peaking in Olympic weightlifting involves optimizing training in preparation for a weightlifting performance. Peak velocity enables weightlifters to measure their performance to monitor their progress.

If you like this post? Don’t forget to share on Pinterest!