Trilateral Training:
Trilateral Training is an interdisciplinary approach to training. Coach Paul Newt has created a branded fitness regimen, taking the best principles from weightlifting, powerlifting, and bodybuilding and combining them to deliver a groundbreaking new way to program your exercise workouts.
In Part 1 of this post I began outlining my experience with bodybuilding and powerlifting, and why, although I love both disciplines, neither was truly the ideal fit for me. Here, in Part 2, I discuss my experiences with becoming proficient in weightlifting (snatch, clean and jerk). My accumulation of knowledge and experience in all 3 areas has naturally led to a new way to train – Trilateral Training (TRILAT).
Ok listen… let me tell you what DOES NOT help you succeed at weightlifting… BIG BICEPS. Yes, really. It does not help AT ALL. It is cruelly ironic that the one muscle group that seems to grow on me NO MATTER WHAT I DO, is the one that is MOST IN MY WAY!
My damn biceps are making it extremely hard for me to achieve the optimal “front rack” position. The “rack” position is seen when the bar is sitting across the clavicle/front deltoid area at the end of a clean or the beginning of the (I hate to say it this way, Jon North) “Olympic-style” front squat. The wrist position is just SO difficult when you have spent a lifetime building the muscularity of the upper body. Call it a flexibility issue if you like, I call it I am having a heck of time with my wrists. After 10-15 sets, they feel like I may just break a wrist if I am not more careful. But I persevere. My attitude is that the body can adapt to anything. The key is time and small incremental improvements in the right direction. The power of this approach is for real, at least for me. When I first began learning weightlifting technique in 2011, 65-85lbs front squats with the “rack” position was PAINFUL. Ten months later, I was able to front squat with the barbell in the “rack” position, without breaking a wrist, with 315 lbs. A new PR (at that time). Although I had front squatted many times in my “bodybuilder” years using a “superman” or crossed armed, clavicle lock position, front squatting in a weightlifting style was an entirely new experience.
But, as with anything to consistently chop away at over time, eventually you succeed. I guess it is important to mention that I have pretty much always had relatively big biceps. I started my career lifting weights with totally bodybuilding influences and, consequently, devoted most of my time and attention putting size on my chest, arms, and shoulders. On top of that, my biceps seem to “grow” no matter what I do. Even now, my biceps will get fairly “pumped up” even from squatting! Sure, I trained them pretty hard (The Pain Game, post pending), but I always had that “mind-muscle” connection with my biceps which made it even easier to train them. When I work with clients, I instruct them that “almost everyone has a muscle that it is easy for them to connect with- for some people it’s chest, for some it’s shoulders…”. Almost everyone has one muscle group that it is easy for them to “feel” while training. But this is training from a bodybuilding perspective, which does have a role to play in training, but in (Olympic) weightlifting, you don’t have time to “feel” the muscle. In fact, trying to “feel” any muscle during a snatch or clean & jerk could end up in disaster! Also, in bodybuilding, there is the technique of creating more muscular tension ON PURPOSE. A technique of making the exercise harder but altering the form, increasing or decreasing range of motion, and moving the weight slower. This places bodybuilding, in those ways, on the OPPOSITE END of the scale from weightlifting. Your technique in weightlifting NEEDS to be to make the movement(s) feel EASIER not harder, MINIMIZING how far the bar needs to travel, and moving the weight (and your body around the weight) AS FAST AS YOU FREAKIN CAN!
As I continued to train the snatch and the clean & jerk, I started to gain a new perspective on how to integrate the disciplines of bodybuilding and powerlifting where they best fit in.
I now see, as I continue to train, more and more ways to integrate the tools of my previous 30 years of weight training into more effective programming for improving in the snatch and clean & jerk. It’s really all about compatibility and organization. For example, if on Monday, I go to the gym and snatch to a max, clean & jerk to a max, and then finish with some non-maximum front squatting (75%-85% RM), on Tuesday morning I am going to wake up probably a little tight, sore… maybe achy. Well then, Tuesday morning would now be an ideal time to get in the gym for a much more bodybuilding type workout. Causing overall systemic blood flow, flushing sore muscles with blood, using relative light weights, increasing the duration of sets, and hitting muscle groups from multiple angles, are all bodybuilding techniques that I can employ on Tuesday morning so I can RECOVER QUICKER. I will recover much quicker this way than I would sleeping in, or riding the couch. The thing is, I COULD go in on Tuesday morning and snatch and clean & jerk LIGHT. Or do less intense exercises that are variations of the snatch and clean & jerk, such as snatch max 5 from above the knee. OR I could combine elements of both the bodybuilding type recovery workout or the lighter (olympic) weightlifting workout. Experimenting with strategies of this nature, led to the development of Trilateral Training.
Overall, I love, love, love performing the snatch and the clean & jerk. There is just something about training these lifts… When you see someone who is proficient at the snatch and the clean & jerk, you are looking at the equivalent of a martial arts master. People like Jon North and Donny Shankle are MASTERS, much like Jet Li and Jackie Chan are MASTERS. You simply cannot move with the power and grace of someone like that without THOUSANDS of hours of training.
I feel like some people might adopt negative attitudes about learning the snatch, clean & jerk when they discover just how difficult it can be and how much they would need to invest in themselves just to approach basic skill in thoses lifts. They might say, “why do it, if you cannot be competitive in it?”, or “what’s the point of doing that?”. Granted that learning these lifts might not be for everyone. But, I feel it is crucially important to point out that this endeavor is very much about the PROCESS. Your goal may be to just snatch 100 pounds, which may not be alot of weight and people may not be “oooing” and “ahhing” about your Herculean strength, but you cannot imagine how just the pursuit of this goal will change you, if right now, you cannot even snatch the 45 pound bar for 1 rep properly. More important than the goal itself is who you will be when you reach it.
In the beginning of your weightlifting career, it is CRITICAL who you learn your technique from. Choosing the right teacher can save you thousands of hours of frustration. There is one book that I emphatically recommend to anyone practicing the snatch and/or the clean&jerk – Olympic Weightlifting: A Complete Guide for Athletes & Coaches
Thank you for reading. More to come. Check back often, or subscribe to this blog.
Paul Newt has a passion for learning in all its forms, and finds great enjoyment in conceptualizing, creating, and improving systems that lead to success. Paul spends his time training, coaching clients, being a great husband and father, consuming non-fiction books, tinkering with new technology, researching investments, and building on old, refining current, and discovering new successful methods to improve human health, performance, and appearance. Paul’s lifelong goal is to become the best version of himself, and add value to the world by assisting others in doing the same.