low carb and olympic weightlifting workouts

This morning I had my 2nd olympic weightlifting workout while on the induction phase of a low carb workout. I felt fine at first, but I became fatigued about half way through the workout. I want to lose weight, but not if it means screwing up my progress in weightlifting. So I've decided to eat a couple cups of white rice before my strenuous workouts, and a cup of milk with whey protein post strenuous workouts. I only do 3-4 difficult workouts a week, so I'm relatively certain if I follow a strict low carb all week except when I eat to fuel myself well for a strength training session I'll get the best of both the weight loss and weightlifting.
This morning I weighed in at 290.4lbs, a loss of 4lbsin 3 days of low carb dieting.

Low carb and olympic weightlifting day 1 and 2

I'd Googled Low carb and olympic weightlifting to see if there was any info on the web, there wasn't. I decided to use myself as a guinea pig and post everything I learn here on my blog.

Day 1: My first day going low carb was Sunday. By noon I was thirsty, a little irritable, and by that evening I had a headache. Other than those three things there's nothing interesting to report.

Day 2: I woke up weighing 294 lbs. 4/10ths of a pound lost in one day. Pretty good so far. Day 2 was even more boring than the first day. I woke up with a little residual headache from the night before. Other than that I felt completely normal. During my work I felt just as strong as usual. I fatigued quicker, but I think that had more to do with having competed in a big weightlifting competition on Saturday. It's almost 4pm, I've worked out, and I've been doing this diet for over a day and a half & I feel completely normal. I don't feel any of the horrible side effects I've read about the induction phase online.

So far this experiment is very boring. Nothing of any significance to report. It will be interesting to see if my endurance returns while I'm on the low carb diet or if I'll struggle to finish my workouts until I increase my carbs again.

"The Kevin" weightlifting competition July 26th 2014 (with video)

On July 26th 2014 I competed in "The Kevin" olympic weightlifting competition at Miller weightlifting in Santa Fe New Mexico. I took Friday night off from work to be sure I'd be well rested and ready to lift. I'd already blogged about the morning of my competition, if your interested read the post before this one.

I was broken hearted at the weigh in. I weighed in at 133k, which is 294 pounds. I had been losing weight for about a week, but that went to crap, obviously. As of this morning I weighed more than I ever have in my life. I'm not ok with that.

I didn't feel nervous at all before this event, which was progress. At my 1st weightlifting competition 8 weeks ago I was a nervous wreck. Rise Miller worked with another athlete by the name of  Danny and myself. He put us through all our warm ups and corrected any bad form we had. He did an amazing job, especially considering he's only 15 years old.

I made all 6 of my lifts. For the snatch I started at 66k, which is amazing because my opening lift was higher than my best lift at the New Mexico games 8 weeks ago. I ended up getting to a competition best snatch of 76 k, which was only 2k away from my lifetime best.

For the clean and jerk my opening lift was 90k, which was higher than my best lift at the New Mexico games. After my 2nd lift my coach, Shane Miller of Miller weightlifting knew I was having a great day of lifting. Coming into this competition my lifetime best clean and jerk was 98k, which I did a couple weeks ago, and it took me 6 tries to get it. So you could imagine how surprised I was when Shane asked if I wanted to try 100k for my final lift of the competition. I felt there was no way I could make that lift, but I didn't want to seem like a sissy to my coach so when he asked I said ok. It must have been all force of will, but I made the lift setting a new lifetime PR!!!

My best lift total so far had been 154k. At this competition, just 8 weeks later I crushed my old best putting up a 176k, 22k more! My total is now only 31k away from qualifying for the masters PanAm championships!!!

Thanks for sending me this video of my 1st ever 100k clean and jerk Kim!

weightlifting competition morning

Olympic weightlifting is more enjoyable than any other other sport I've ever completed in. The morning of a weightlifting competition is especially so. When I competed in triathlons I'd have to wake up and start loading equipment up at 4:30am. The traffic at a triathlon could at times be horrifying and stressful.Often times a triathlon would be held at a lake in the middle of nowhere so I couldn't rely on GPS to get me there. I had to be at the race site by 6-6:30am and set up my transition area. Race started at 8am. In weightlifting weigh ins aren't usually until 10am! There's no need to load gobs of equipment either. All I need is shoes and a suit. In weightlifting I slept late, drove to the gym, weighed in, then I had time to leave for lunch and still make it back in time for my 1st lift! All in all weightlifting is so much less stressful for me. I'm really happy to be doing this.

I'll start my warm up for my 2nd weightlifting competition in a couple minutes, this one is being held in my home town of Santa Fe NM at Miller weightlifting. I'm excited, I've made really great gains in the last couple months. I'll post how I did as soon as I can.

taper for olympic weightlifting

This week I'm tapering for my 2nd big weightlifting competition called "the Kevin" which will be held at miller weightlifting in Santa Fe NM. This is the 2nd time I've tapered for Olympic weightlifting. Tapers suck a lot less for weightlifting than they did for triathlon. A lot less!

Both endurance athletes and weightlifters do what's called a taper for big events. Tapering, especially in endurance athletics makes athletes feel like crap. Some of the symptoms of tapering are: Feelings of losing fitness. Sluggishness. Panic that the race or competition is approaching. Grumpiness. Aching muscles and nagging pains. Inability to sleep and feeling constantly tired. These are all normal. Your body has been pushed to its limits for months and now it does not want to stop. That is your mind telling you that you are going to be out of shape in a week. Trust the taper. Tapering is a vital part of the overall training cycle. This allows you to maintain your peak fitness while allowing your muscles to rest and recover.

going low carb and olympic weightlifting

I've been trying to drop weight the old fashion way, calorie counting. I've been failing miserably. I've never really been able to lose weight by counting calories. Back when I used to compete in triathlons I was able to lose weight going low carb, and then maintain my weight by counting calories. I asked my Olympic weightlifting coach Shane Miller if he thought I could still be successful in olympic weightlifting while going  low carb, he said ok but that he'd want me to eat carbs before and after my intense weightlifting days on Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays. I have a weightlifting competition this Saturday at Miller weightlifting and I don't want to mess up my performance so I won't start the new diet until Sunday. I tried to google low carb and olympic weightlifting and there wasn't any information online. What info there was had to do with bodybuilding which isn't applicable to olympic weightlifting. I also tried looking up some info on low carb on some olympic weightlifting web sties, again there was no info at all. So when I do start the diet I'll post how I feel and how my strength is doing with the low carb diet. It'll be an interesting experiment.

Comfort Doctor heating, cooling, and plumbing Santa Fe New Mexico

On Tuesday the Comfort Doctor heating, cooling, and plumbing came and put the finishing touches on our air conditioner. They nailed a piece of plywood in between the swamp cooler and window, they also screwed a grate on the front of the swamp cooler. A few cuts on a piece of plywood, a total of 8 screws and they charged $608. I might be wrong, but I think they charged WAY to much! Consumer beware.

Chris's tree service Santa Fe New Mico

The tree in our front yard has been leaking a HORRIBLE smelling sap, it stinks bad enough I cant stand to be near the tree. It also and has MASSIVE swarms of black flies on it.

I contacted Chris Schaum, Owner of Chris's tree service. He spent almost an hour with me telling me what's wrong with the tree, how it got the disease, and how to treat it. He didn't charge me anything. Excellent customer service. His contact info is:

Phone: (505) 660-0698
Fax: (505) 757-6533                   
PO Box 1756, Santa Fe, NM87504

rebound day

I had a stressful weekend, then on on Monday I had a horrible day of lifting thanks to stress and binge eating. I didn't pray once all weekend. I felt like I hit rock bottom this weekend. I've been eating well since then, eating a few hundred calories below my metabolic rate. I hope I can continue to eat well and continue to keep the Lord in my life even during stressful times. Perhaps I'll even be able to get down to my short term goal weight of 235lbs, eventually getting down the 205lbs.

Today I showed up at Miller weightlifting for clean and jerk day. I felt tentative at best. If I struggled on Monday's snatch day, with snatches being my strength, then what would today be like? Coach Shane Miller had seen I'd struggled horribly during my last workout so he spent some extra time coaching me, telling what to focus on, dealing with bad lifting days and self doubt, and how to make today's lifts. It worked perfectly. I missed my first 2 heavy lifts, but nailed my last two with perfect form setting a lifetime best clean and jerk. It's amazing the difference having a knowledgeable and passionate coach makes.

eat like crap perform like crap

The last week has been so stressful. Each of our vehicles broke down 18 hours apart, our swamp cooler is getting worked on, my wife and kids went camping with my emotionally abusive and controlling mother and her husband, my cousin and her kids are visiting, and I miss my natural father who still refuses to to call or visit. Friday and Saturday I missed my scheduled workouts which is my way of dealing with stress in a healthy way. So this weekend I ate like crap. I usually do when I'm stressed, but this weekends diet was REALLY BAD! worst few days of eating I've had all year. Yesterday I didn't eat anything with any protein in it, it was all crap. Last night I knew I screwed up when I woke up with excruciating leg cramps. My body was going catabolic, eating my own muscles.

Usually olympic weightlifting, especially snatch day, calms me, makes everything feel better. Thanks to having virtually no protein and nothing but crap all weekend this morning I missed all my big lifts this morning. No stress relief in being weaker than I was last week.

I desperately want to drop 60-70 pounds and maintain an average weight of 234 pounds so that I could bounce back and forth between the heavy weight and super heavyweight division, but to do that I'd have to control my eating and I don't see that happening. This whole binge eating thing never ends with me. Sometimes I can control it for a short while, but it always returns with a vengeance.

greater totals and greater goals

This week was a great week for lifting! On Monday I lifted a new snatch PR of 75k. Today I lifted a new lifetime PR of 95k in the clean and jerk. I'm foaming at the mouth thinking about hitting a 100k clean and jerk! My next competition is the last Saturday of this month at Miller weightlifting in Santa Fe NM. If my weights continue to increase it's possible I'll lift 20k more than I did in May at the New Mexico games. That's a big increase in only a couple months. In January I age up to the 40-44 AG, and I'm currently lifting 132 pounds above the New Mexico 40-44 AG 105k+ total state record.

I'm having so much fun with the sport of olympic weightlifting. The next big mile stone I'm shooting for is a 400lb total, which is 181.4k. I'm currently 11k away. I'm really loving this.