Graduation (kind of) and the USAW certification workshop

Three Fridays ago (May 6th for those who are counting) was my commencement for my graduate degree. It was actually a "hooding ceremony" - so technically, it wasn't a graduation. I guess its just easier for the school to have us all walk at the same time, since we'll all be finishing our theses and internships at different times. It was still a nice ceremony though, conducted like any standard graduation. One more summer class, an internship, and a thesis defense, (all of which I'm hoping to have done by the end of July) and I'll officially be done with my master's!


In more recent news, last weekend I completed the USAW Sports Performance Coach certification. For those of you who don't know, USA Weightlifting is the national governing body for the sport of Olympic Weightlifting. They offer a few different levels of certification, most of which deal with coaching competitive weightlifters. The SPC certification is more about learning the finer technical points of the main Olympic lifts (the snatch and clean & jerk), variations on the exercises, and how to teach them. I went in thinking it would mainly be stuff I alread knew, but I was wrong. It turns out that in both the snatch and the clean, my shoulders were never far enough in front of the bar...which is why my snatches and cleans from the floor have always sucked!
In addition, the teaching progressions that USAW present for teaching the lifts are certainly useful. While they do involve a decent amount of steps, it covers the basics of every portion of the lifts, and are simple enough to teach to almost anybody. I also met some new people and networked. One of the coaches there teaching had even been a hammer thrower in college. He certainly knew his stuff when it came to lifting, and was pretty strong (repping 190kg/418lbs in the front squat); however, a lot of the things he had to say about how lifting relates to throwing, I didn't really agree with. THAT is a topic for another time, though. Needless to say, I learned a lot, especially pertaining to how to execute and teach the lifts. Its a good feeling knowing that the USAW-SPC gives me things I'll be applying to my own and other people's training, and not just more letters to put after my name!