Topic: Update from Malaysia, Day 4

[Mark Cannella]

Folks,
We had a training session at 1130am at the actual venue, which is about 10 minutes by bus from our hotel.  It is still a work in progress, so we encountered a few issues, which included: 

The ZKC barbell equipment not fitting the barbells. Many of the women's bars did not allow the plates, bumpers to fit, which made for an interesting start with me stealing a few bars from other platforms.  There were about 30 plaforms or so in the venue, but with no air in the joint and again hot and balmy.  Water was at a premium as well as fitting plates and bumpers. 

The Chinese were lifting as well as a few other Asian Countries, the KAZ's and a few Belarussians. 

Our team hit some bigger numbers this time and a few went decently heavy.  Mike Nackoul hit a nice 185 fsq and a 205 bsq.  Jared and Ian went decently heavy and the girls all hit some nice lifts too.  Choima hit a nice clean and jerk that Kevin was pleased with also. 

The two boys from NMU that got in last night, didn't disappoint with some nice clean and jerks.  Their lifts were crisp considering they both got off a plane and from a trip that was about 30+ hours.

All in all a good day of training with hot humid conditions, including limitations on equipment, resources and a bat that decided to fly in and take me out of the picture. The competition platform is being worked out and the venue is quite expansive.  Should be interesting to see once it is all completed.

As far as some of the other lifting:  The Chinese are the Chinese.  The same precision you see at Worlds or any other event, you see here at Juniors.  Bar tracks in smoothly, the bar is super close and the underneath aspect is superfast.  Some of their lighter men and women were training alongside us and doing their usual big time weights.  The Chinese have a unique way of carrying the bar as it comes off their hip.  Maybe difficult to describe here, but certainly if I pointed it out, you would get a sense of what I was describing. 
Did I see high pulls at the end of their workout?  Yep, the ones with the arms bent, yep.  I also saw bsq's, fsq's, plates stacked up for each other as they did squats with different heights for lifters and a weird jerk drive exercise that was employed by a few. Some good mornings too.

The speed under the bar was incredible and was easily matched by the Barnes Bros. as they too looked fast and explosive jumping down.

I have seen the Chinese enough to know that even with various lifters from various parts, Coach Wen Bin seems to have instilled some kind of system across the vast stretches of land.
All of them look the same and it shows in their efforts.

The Belarussian girl was pretty fast as well as the KAZ group too.  She ended up with a few reps on the bsq and with ease.

Today will only be one training session and with an important technical conference coming up, probably smart to ensure we get our changes in correctly.

Looking forward to more training tomorrow.  The swamp coolers are in place and we should get more sense of the competition in a few days.

Mark

[Matt Erdman]

Thanks for the updates!