ashley and damian (plus anyone else who may find this an interesting discussion point),

i recently attended a weight lifting workshop where i learnt the olympic lifts and the various derivatives. the workshop included programming and periodisation and at one point we were discussing individual training sessions.

the tutor presented us with 3 different programmes he used with his athletes and asked us to discuss and critique them.

now, i have always worked on the principle that in a training session the fastest, most demanding (in terms of skill and neural demand) come first i.e. the snatch, followed by less demanding exercises.

however, the tutors example sessions started with a heavy strength exercise (in this case pulls from thigh) then progressed to the explosive exercise (snatch from thigh). his rationale was that the heavy strength exercise acted as a 'primer' of sorts for the explosive power exercise.

i can understand this rationale but i was wondering what your take on this was?

my initial thoughts were:

- would the athlete be too fatigued from the strength exercise to be explosive enough to maximise the snatch?
- would technique suffer as a result?
- is this a long-term strategy or something that may be used sporadically?
- shouldn't the athlete be performing the fastest exercises at the start of the session when they are freshest?

i'm not saying the methodolgy presented to me was wrong, far from it! the tutor was an international s&c coach so the system obviously works but i was hoping to get a few other perspectives on this, and perhaps stimulate some debate.

thanks,
tom

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