I might get killed at the stake for this, but I’m gonna say it anyway and hope someone else agrees, in my honest opinion, I think the rom4s are better than the rom2s. I have owned 2 pairs of rom2s I donated my first pair of rom2s and now the only pair I own are the lu colorway/ volt. And both have been great and serviceable and dependable shoes however, I feel like they’re more a novelty shoe than something that’s actually the goat. And here’s why I think that to be so, this goes for me and my opinion, but the rom4s fit my feet a lot better than the 2s, which is not common as a lot of people don’t work with the narrow fit of the 4s. The rom2s work for people with a high volume foot which my foot doesn’t take up a lot of space in my shoes so I really have to crank the straps down when the rom4s have more of a glove fit. Reason number two is the look, I love both the designs but at the end of the day you get more color options and sizes in the rom4s. Reason three is I honestly don’t think there is any performance benefit from the 2s over the 4s obviously weightlifting shoes don’t make you lift more, but what I’m getting at is lifters feel better when a shoe makes them feel good and I honestly don’t feel like the 2s give me that feeling over the 4s. Plus the added bonus of the rom4s being a lot easier to get a hold of and I got mine for only $100. The only thing that I think the rom2s have over the rom4s is their durability I have never seen a pair of these give up, but other than that I can’t think of anything. Most of the time I end up using my rom2s just for competitions since I do enjoy the color I have. But I hope someone reading this agrees. 🙏✌️

Olympic weightlifting champion Karlos Nasar has left for China, where he will compete for the world title at the championships in Ningbo. Despite a string of health problems over the past month, Nasar says he is completely confident of success. His preparation has been seriously disrupted over the last 30 days. Nasar revealed that he spent 10 to 15 days battling a bacterial infection, followed by a viral one. On top of that came an accident in which he tore a fascia in his leg and ruptured a vein. “It was painful, but now I’m fit as a fiddle,” the athlete said. He stressed that other people’s expectations don’t weigh on him, because his own goal has always been the top step of the podium. “I had an accident, I even burst a vein. Now I’m strong as an ox. I’m the apex predator in weightlifting, and the others can worry about the competition. First, the goal is to become champion. I don’t want to complain, but the last 30 days were really hard. If I need a world record to win, I’ll get it, but otherwise I won’t take any risks. I’d like to thank my sponsors for their support. “I’m not the one who bankrupted the federation. It was an ugly thing to do. I don’t know how Stefan Botev could bring himself to bankrupt the federation. It isn’t a private company that you can just run into the ground. If this had gone on and a new president hadn’t been registered, we athletes would have had to compete under a neutral flag. When we won, we wouldn’t have heard the Bulgarian anthem. We wouldn’t have had funding or been paid our salaries. “You know that, with the salaries in weightlifting, the guys and the girls were never going to become millionaires. I never thought I knew anyone who could do something like that. If I see him, I’ll congratulate Stefan Botev, because he’s a great weightlifting champion. One hundred percent, he has something to say to me too, and I can say these things to his face. I don’t know what kind of person you have to be to do something like that. “I thank Asen Zlatev for his good deeds, because Botev is a great champion too, but Zlatev has real virtues as well. Again, I never thought I knew anyone who would act the way he did. I haven’t lacked anything, because my sponsors helped me. The Ministry of Youth and Sports also helped me and the others. But we’re suffering badly because of the federation. I believe we’ll get through this situation, since the last four years haven’t been easy for us at all. I don’t know if it looks like whining from the outside, but I don’t know how anyone can end up in a situation like this. “I always try to do whatever I can for the sport. But I don’t know why a handful of people are ruining it. I have a lot of offers from abroad, but nothing is dearer to me than Bulgaria. I’m going for nothing less than the title,” Nasar concluded.

Muscle snatch and power snatch at @85kg

When doing snatch/clean pulls, do you make contact with the bar on the way up, or should you keep feet flat to focus on the shrug? I've heard both from different sources. In the video, the first rep is with minimal contact and second is with contact. A bit more obvious for the clean than the snatch

My best sense is that bar contact can cause the bar to move away from the body, which negatively affects the pull. Keeping it close to the body and emphasizing the shrug (up and back) may transfer better to the actual lifts

I never set out to do 3 meets this close together but it’s just the way things panned out. Here are my top lifts from each competition. It’s interesting how I basically had the same total at every meet yet my snatches were descending and my clean & jerks were ascending.

Snatch 116/120/124kg
Clean & Jerk 147/150/155kg

At this age I am extremely happy with how things turned out and how I’ve been able to hold myself together with minimal aches and pains. I’m hoping for another couple years of competing at a high level before I back off a bit.

Over the last 6 years I’ve had to battle some bigger injuries that took me out for 8-11 months each time. But I fought hard to get back in shape to continue to push myself to the limits in the healthiest way possible. This is the stuff no one sees behind the scenes, the work and effort necessary to be in a position to fight for medals in non masters meets. This sport owes me nothing and I’m just thankful to be able to continue to participate. Hopefully by next year I’ll hit my goal of 100 meets.

And of course thank you to everyone who shows love and supports this journey. I appreciate you all.

My personal program if you want to see what it looks like.
Programming

Is the issue upper body strength?

60kg (keeping foot contact) snatch.
Have previously snatched 85kg but more of a power snatch.
Regressed to this movement as my “main” snatch work. It feels quite fluid and feels like I can start to build back with better range.
Based on the above, what would you look to change?

Wrote out a squat block if anyone wants to give the first two weeks a run and offer me feed back 🫡

46 yo here. I dont do heavy squats. Mainly hack and pendulum, but have discomfort in my knees. Tried to switch to leg press but I dont get the same stimulous on my quads as I get with much lower weight on hack and pendulum. Decided to get good pair of sleevs. I dont think I need 7mm so 5mm would be enough.

Wanted your opinion on the rehband 5mm rx those using it.

1.How is the quality?

1. How does it go with sizing? Is their chart accurate? Or would i have to size up or down according to what the chart shows I need?

Does anyone know where this legend is or what happened to him? I’ve been a big fan for years now and I know for a little bit he had an Instagram and a Gym but since then he’s completely vanished from the Internet.

Weightlifting coach and competitor turned high school PE teacher here.

My high school’s weight room is currently way out of date. I’m talking commercial gym plates with the handles on them (not round), 32mm barbells that haven’t spun well in 10 years. 0 women’s bars. I have the superintendent’s approval to start getting the gym outfitted with bumpers and bars that can be used to snatch and CJ. Thing is we don’t have a huge budget so I’m looking at some cheaper options. Mainly Titan and bells of steel - they’re some of the only brands that seem to offer a cheap needle bearing barbell as well as the comp-style bumper with the metal center hub. Rogue sells echo bars for cheap, but I’d much rather have cheap needle-bearing bars unless they’re known to be very fragile and unreliable.

For those of you who have experience with either of these brands’ bars and plates - would you recommend them? One vs the other? I am fully aware of the whole “buy nice or buy twice” thing, but knowing high schoolers and how they can ruin anything in a moment without supervision….I’d rather be looking at a bent $250 bar than a bent $700 bar. And when it comes to plates, I’d rather have all my racks outfitted with decent plates than half my racks full of expensive plates.

Any feedback welcome.

Hi fellow Olympic weightlifters! It's been a while since I posted here.

Full disclosure: I build and run Ironwise. I stepped back for a few months to rebuild its architecture and make it stable for what's coming.

Performance profiles are now live for every athlete in the database. If you have 3 or more competition results in there, a full analysis profile already exists under your name, with bests, Sinclair, Q Points, lift-to-bodyweight ratios, every competition and every attempt, medals, weight-category history, plus percentile scores on seven performance indicators (technique, strength, reliability, consistency…) against every other athlete of your gender.

So go search your name on ironwise.app and see what's there.

The profile can be claimed just by creating an account: you submit a social media profile and a live picture so I can check it's really you. It's probably the only manual process left in Ironwise, and the live picture is deleted automatically after review.

Once it's yours, you can add your training bests: snatch and clean & jerk, jerks, presses, front and back squat, etc.

Lifters already pay out of their own pocket for travel, coaching and gear, and I don't want a paywall between a lifter, their own results and the analytics. If Ironwise's vision succeeds, it will be funded by sport organizations, not by the athletes.

In the meantime, I'm funding it myself.

For the curious: I've been working on Ironwise for 6 years now. Counting my first performance-analysis tool in Excel, it's 13. Time really is flying, wow.

I've dreamt of Ironwise since my debut in Olympic weightlifting. It's finally starting to look like my initial vision. I'm past 800k competition results, the automated pipelines are adding new federations every week. I'll reach 1M very soon.

My hope is that one day, the IWF will see the benefit in competition data analytics and drive an initiative alongside Ironwise to give our sport, its coaches, its athletes and its fans, the platform it truly deserves.

If your federation's results are missing, or something on your profile is wrong, report an issue using the dedicated option in the side menu. That's the most useful feedback I can get.

Thanks for the support!

Anyone got suggestions for budget beater shoes? I have asics and now that they just got discontinued I'm terrified of wrecking them from daily lifting. Any suggestions for a decent shoe I can thrash and not care too much about for under 150$?

Actually it's a PR for me, I see there is something wrong with my turnover, I suspect that elbows could go higher during 3rd pull.

BW: ~93, 34 yo. Self-tought for 13 months, previous general strength/PL experience. 2 WL training sessions per week.

Can’t figure out how to get under the bar, maybe snatch balances? Would appreciate any tips

Hello,

I'm selling my Lu Xiaojun shoes as I somehow ordered an entire size down from what I normally wear. They are US men's 7.5 or women's 9.0.

I have worn them for two sessions only.

Asking $200 CAD plus shipping. I'll ship via Canada Post to anywhere, but preferably Canada.

Please DM me if interested.