Free Sample
The Purple Guide to Learning Weightlifting in 10 Days
A no-nonsense, day-by-day starter plan to learn the Olympic lifts from zero — and decide if this is your sport
by Alumigogo Books
Chapter 1: First Day
Welcome. You've just decided to try something that most people never even attempt, and that alone is worth a moment of recognition. Weightlifting - the sport where athletes lift a barbell overhead in two big movements, the snatch and the clean and jerk - looks like it requires superhuman strength, bulletproof joints, and a coach screaming at you in a garage gym. But today, on your first day, you're not going to lift heavy. You're not going to lift anything that could hurt you. You're going to explore what your body feels like when you try to move a long stick over your head, and you're going to learn that the sport is mostly about positions, not power.
Let's be honest about what you're about to do. You're not going to snatch a hundred pounds today. You might not even snatch an empty barbell. Your only goal for the next hour is to understand the first fundamental position of weightlifting: the overhead squat. That's a squat - just like you'd do in a regular workout - but with your arms locked out overhead, holding a straight line from your wrists down through your shoulders and hips to your ankles. If you can hold a broomstick or a PVC pipe over your head and squat down without falling backward, you've just done the most important movement in the entire sport.
Here's why we start here. The snatch - the lift where you pull the bar from the