Handling Poor Movement Within a Workout

There will always be days that weightlifters struggle to feel movement.  They may be warming up, not overly focused on positions and just rolling through each part of the lift.  Maybe the lifter is sore, they are fatigued and just don’t feel great.  How can this issue be alleviated?

I always recommend using a short wave to trigger some neurological response to the lifts OR a series of On The Minute sets to also spark a positive response to the lifts.  This past week, Juliana Riotto was a perfect example of this scenario.  She was warming up, looked ok, was moving alright but not super snappy.  She had 7 x 1 OTM.  The goal of this was to get her to speed up her attempts in case we are in a pinch in the back room during the American Open.  

Jules opened at 83 and smashed it. I have control of her attempts and decided to bump her to 85 and take a few of her attempts at 85 before we would really push the attempts in training.  When she took 85, she missed it twice.  She was frustrated, I was frustrated and needed to put a band aid on the situation.  I halted the series and told her to move back down to 80, take a few minutes to recover and then get back on the platform at 80.  After the brief hiatus, she took down 80k.  At this point I decided to gradually increase her attempts before jumping right to 85.  She took 82/85/85/85/87 and then finished at 89 without any fails.  How did this happen when she could not find her movement at 85 prior to this?  

She calmed down, I calmed down, we both regrouped and decided to gradually find the right movement.  Some days athletes are smashing weights and can dramatically increase the load and other days athletes are not smashing weights and instead they need to gradually work their weights through the series to feel good technical positions with precise movement! Always remain calm and always try to find a solution to a negative situation!