More Than Just Weights
If you don’t know this story from the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, you should learn the story of Matthias Steiner. He started lifting in 1995 and comes from a family of great lifters. Diagnosed with diabetes that was onset by a untreated infection he still pursued his dream of weightlifting. In 2004 a German woman had watched Steiner participating in weightlifting contests on TV. She kept asking the Eurosport commentators for his email address, until they gave it to her. She contacted Steiner, and he agreed to meet her in Lower Austria. They married shortly thereafter and hence he moved to Germany, where he then applied for German citizenship. On July 16, 2007 his wife Susann died in a car accident. Despite the tragic loss, and after he was able to continue his training. During the Olympic competition, Steiner failed in his third snatch attempt, and with 203 kg ranked fourth after the snatch. Viktors Ščerbatihs, the favorite to win from Latvia, was in position to take the lead in the clean and jerk, but failed in his second attempt. Steiner also failed in his first clean and jerk attempt, and Russia’s Evgeny Chigishev took the lead with 250 kg in the clean and jerk. Ščerbatihs failed in his third attempt, which would have forced Steiner to increase his last attempt to 259 kg in order to win gold. He was successful with a clean and jerk of 258 kg, for a total of 461 kg combined between his Snatch & Clean & Jerk. Steiner became Olympic gold medalist and stood on the medalists’ podium and kissed a picture of his late wife Susann. Choking back tears over the promise he made to her that he would keep their Olympic dream, “She is always with me, in the hours before the competition, she’s there”. A truly inspiring story and for this man the medal was more than just a culmination of his training.
CFE WOD:
- 3 rounds of “Tosh” (200m, 400m, 600m) Work:Rest of 1 to 1. It takes you 45 sec to run 200m, rest 45 seconds, then run 400m etc, repeat 1 round of Tosh 3 times.
Olympic Lifting:
- Front squat – 75% x 4 x 5
- Snatch pull – 85% (of snatch) x 3 x 4
- Jerk – 70% x 3 x 2; 75% x 2 x 2; 80% x 2 x 2
Snatch pull: This is the first and second pulls of a snatch without any attempt to pull under the bar. At the top of the extension, the athlete should continue attempting to pull the bar higher, keeping the elbows moving up and to the sides to keep the bar against the body. With heavy pulls, this will not move the bar very high. With lighter weights, a snatch high-pull will occur. http://www.cathletics.com/exercises/exercise.php?exerciseID=97
3 sets; no rest:
15 kipping pull-ups
20 shoulder-to-shoulder sandbag push press – 25% BW
Shoulder-to-shoulder sandbag push press: grab middle of sand bag with both hands with the bag across one shoulder (front/back ends of bag in front/back of shoulder). Push press the bag up overhead to a fully extended elbow position and bring down to opposite shoulder. This constitutes 1 rep.
- 12min AMRAP
- 40 double unders 3xSU 2xSU
- 15 dumbbell thrusters 35/20 20/12.5 12.5/7.5
