I have a real story to share
What I am about to write is something I witnessed while I was running on a treadmill. I saw three men coming towards the weightlifting area. One of them started doing some stretches while the other two took one of the bars and started adding rings of weights: one, two, three… I lost the count !!
“My goodness, that’s heavy” I said to myself and my eyes moved from the load to the lifter, back to the load… back to the lifter… “I am not an expert… but it doesn’t look like that guy can lift so much weight!” were my thought. Only at the end I came to know the total: 175 Kg.
Now, the two guys signaled to the lifter asking him if he was ‘ready?”!
And the two walked towards a bag. They took out two copies of the Manorama book, one per each. I really was intrigued and asked myself “What are these guys doing!!!?” I was still on my treadmill.
Then, the lifter got into position, did a couple of attempts. Not very serious attempts – more like a warm up. After that he looked at his friends with a kind of “let’s go for it” look. The two friends laid down on the floor, one on each side, with their face on the ground very close to the weights. I could feel the tension in the air while I was witnessing this entire operation running on my treadmill.
Then, our man started his lifting… in the very first attempt the bar didn’t move… little by little a small gap was coming between the floor and the rings of weights while the guy was in complete tension. I could now see his veins and muscles. The two friends screamed “come on!! come on!!” His face was changing colors: red… blue… Honestly, it was quite hilarious and I had to try to control myself from laughing, I could not believe it, I thought “This can’t be real, it must be a prank” I kept looking around searching for the hidden cameras…
Finally, after several attempts the gap was good enough so that they could place the Manorama books between the weights and the floor !!! And the three of them burst into jumps and hugs of joy !!!
By that moment my time on the treadmill was over, so I approached them to inquire what exactly were they doing. They informed me that they were trying to help his friend break the world record of “snatch lifting”, which is 173 Kg in his category. They further explained:
“Since the record is 173, we put 175 and train to lift it every week a bit more. 2 months back it was not moving from the ground, now we are in 5 cms, we hope that in 1 year or so it will be done”.
And I replied: “But… won’t it be better to start with lower weight, like 50kg, master the entire movement of snatch and rise, and then move to higher weights?” At least I thought that was the normal way to do it…
The guys refused to pay attention to me, and in the background I made eye contact with one of the trainers who was trying to tell me that explaining anything to these men was a lost cause!
Do you think this has nothing to do with running? The marathons you run? Well, wait for the second part, and in the meantime, please share in the comments below your opinion about these guys and their approach to training… Thanks !!
Part 2 to this blog – Coming up soon! Stay tuned!
Some of my other Articles on running:
Fueling for a Half and a Full Marathon