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The 3 Hardest Things About Weightlifting
by Dane Miller
At the end of each day you could let all these things impact you negatively, or you could be positive about them. All good weightlifters love what they are doing, and I do love what I’m doing, but that doesn’t mean nothing bad can come from this sport. I wouldn’t change this for anything. Even the thought of being successful in this sport is enough to keep me going, making my life have an ultimate purpose.
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5 Ways to Improve Mental Focus
by Dane Miller
When going up for a big lift, or even a heavy squat in training, all that should be running through your mind is making that attempt. A lot of times I find myself questioning a lift right before I attempt it. It either goes good or it goes bad. If I only told myself I could do it, then it would be done. Visualization doesn’t just happen right before a lift, it has to be done on a daily basis. Before you go to bed, lay there and visualize where you want to see yourself for 10 minutes. Only good thoughts should be running through your head. Visualize yourself being a champion and achieving all the goals you have set for yourself. This is only one small step in mental focus.
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Athlete Blog: 4 Things You Should Know About Weightlifting
by Dane Miller
Olympic Weightlifting is one of the most rewarding and most frustrating sports you could compete in. I started Olympic Weightlifting in May 2014 after my collegiate football career. I came out of college hang cleaning 160 kilos, never really snatching or jerking in my life. My first senior nationals the May 2015 I snatched 147 kilos and clean and jerked 175 kilos to place 5th place in a very stacked weight class. After 4 years of increasing my clean and jerk and still snatching the same weight I decided to take some time off after the 2018 senior nationals. I needed to clear my head while also enjoy the birth of my beautiful daughter Henley. I think if I took a different approach toward weightlifting, I might still be lifting right now. We all look back and say, “damn, I wish I would have known that before I started”. Here are 4 things I wish I could have told myself before I started Olympic Weightlifting.
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Athlete Blog: The Three Hardest Lessons I've Learned from Weightlifting
by Dane Miller
A lot of Olympic weightlifting athletes start around their teenage years (as I did). These I call the “Rebellious Years.” When I started weightlifting, I thought I knew everything. I would lift heavy when I was instructed not to, I argued in defense of my garbage technique for years, I did my own exercises sometimes because I thought what I was doing wasn't working, and most importantly, I wasn't coachable. When I got into my junior and senior years of weightlifting, I started to notice a minimal amount of growth. It was then that I realized that to be a champion you have to have the best technique. There was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to be a champion, but my technique was nowhere near the best. As we started breaking down my technique and fixing all my flaws, I found myself extremely frustrated and ready to give up. Slowly but surely, I found myself getting better with my technical movements, however I was still nowhere close to the best. Still frustrated and angry I continue to tell myself “if you would have just listened 5 years ago, you would be closer to the best”
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If I Knew Then What I Know Now
by Noah Kennedy White
This article was prompted with the question, "What would you tell your collegiate freshman self about track and training if you could?" I've touched on this subject before, in an episode of Dane's Platform--if you haven't heard it, it's one of our most popular episodes. Check it out here!
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Intern Blog: The Argument for Olympic Lifting
by Dane Miller
When a general person walks into a gym and pays a personal trainer to improve their body, they often begin a workout with bench, squat, or deadlift. These three movements are the competition lifts used for Powerlifting, and they are beloved by coaches, bodybuilders, and trainers. This is not without good reason as they are compound movements. This means that they involve not just one muscle, but a group or chain of muscles to move the weight. This results in a greater stimulus to the nervous system which causes greater increases in size and strength.
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Offseason Blog: Back at it
by Noah Kennedy White
We're back again! After a week of semi-activity following the end of my season, I started up training again. During these early stages of offseason training, the hardest thing for me is always just staying in it mentally. Early offseason training isn't particularly fun--when it's 90 degrees outside every day, the gym doesn't have AC, and you have some pretty high reps in your program. So that's easily been my biggest challenge so far, but I still think I've made some decent improvements in and out of the circle.
- discus
- GS Throws
- offseason
- throwing
- weightlifting
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Not Feeling Great in Your Peak?
by Dane Miller
I think almost every athlete has been in this situation before: creeping closer to a major competition, beginning your peak, and yet things just feel slightly off. Your legs aren’t moving as fast as you thought they would, and you aren’t throwing as far or lifting as much as you thought you would. Here, I’m going to explain why this is perfectly fine--and even expected.
- discus
- peaking
- programming
- shotput
- training
- usatf
- usaw
- weightlifting
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Pan Ams Part II: Hayley's Meet, and Where to Go from Here?
by Dane Miller
As we saw with Hayley, nerves and the mental aspect were the weakest point of her competition in Santo Domingo. Even with this weakness, she was still able to post a fourth place finish in clean and jerk and an 8th place finish overall, contributing to the point system system for next year’s Pan Am Games. So...where can we go with her training?
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Pan Ams Part I: Pan Am Criticism
by Dane Miller
It is very difficult to approach this meet with high expectations and impressive results. Basically, every athlete involved with the competition should not be focused on this meet as their priority for the yearly block of training. Just about everyone should be focused long term preparation for Junior Worlds or Senior Worlds. On top of those factors, it is very well known that Pan Am competitions are poorly managed, hot, not the greatest living conditions, and generally a poorly executed competition which makes it very difficult to set up for a strong peak.
- clean and jerk
- Pan Ams
- snatch
- training
- usaw
- weightlifting
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Training Frequency Questions
by Dane Miller
Many people see elite athletes training with a lot of frequency. Nine, ten, eleven times per week sometimes. I want to address some of my thoughts on training frequency, and some of the important considerations when a coach or athlete is deciding how much frequency is enough.
- discus
- frequency
- progamming
- shotput
- throwing
- Training
- usatf
- usaw
- weightlifting
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Squat Variations Starter
by Dane Miller
For this article, I’m going to get into some squat variations: which ones are my favorites, and how I choose to program them for certain people. To start, I’ll just lay out the variations I can think of--Single Leg Squat, Cambered Bar Squat, Duffalo Bar Squat, Safety Squat Bar Squat, and Zombie Squat. Each has their own benefits and I’ll get into them below
- programming
- squat
- training
- usaw
- weightlifting
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