Confidence Builds

This past weekend I competed in my third Olympic weightlifting meet at Woodward CrossFit. I didn't set any PR's, but my confidence is growing. Enough so that in January I will be competing in the Texas State Championship meet in Alvin, Texas. It will be my second sanctioned meet and worlds different than my first one.

When I competed in my first sanctioned meet this past January I choked....bad. I have dedicated myself to the Olympic lifts and training for them only for almost a year. With some coaching by Olympian Chad Vaughn, I had finally built up enough confidence in my lifts to start competing. I had one other meet early on in the summer and did fairly well, no PR's but hit all my lifts. So, I got my USAW card and signed up for a meet at 210 CrossFit in San Antonio. I picked an opening weight that I had regularly hit while training and went for it. And then I scratched on all three attempts at 85 kilos. Not my brightest moment in the world of Olympic weightlifting.

After my poor showing I decided I need a full time coach and looked to Ursula Garza for guidance. She was gracious enough to accept me into her tight nit training group, and so my training began. If your not familiar with Ursula she is a stud! A former lifter herself, trainer for the CrossFit Olympic lifting certs. and a former U.S.A. record holder in the clean and jerk. Stud! She pretty much started me over with HEAVY focus on the snatch. Since it is the most technical of the two lifts it only makes sense that we spent the most time on the snatch. We drill, drill, and drill and then do hang snatch. Lot's of hard work. BUT! it is starting to pay off. When I first started training with Ursula I could only snatch 90kilos, and clan and jerk 120kilos. Just two weeks ago while training at Central I snatched 102kilos and cleaned and jerked 125kilos. Like I said, paying off!

At the meet this past weekend I snatched 98kilos with no straps and just missed 100. I cleaned and jerked 120kilos with ease and just missed 125. Not PR's but consistently making my attempts and getting stronger. Which leads me to going to the state meet in January where I will go for new PR's in the snatch and clean and jerk.
Seeing the progress I'm making and recognizing all the hard work I have been putting in is only feeding the fire inside. All of the workouts and sacrificing my free nights with my family to go get coached is not going to be for nothing. I have big goals for myself and am visualizing myself getting there. I have video of the lifts from this past weekends meet and should have it up next week for all to view. Happy lifting!