Integrating Mobility work to an olympic style weightlifting routine

Hey people,

I've been training for olympic weightlifting for a year now. I've competed 3 times so far and I'm making steady progress. I've also been working on my mobility seriously (compared to what I did before, which was nothing) for the last 7 months and i've seen some great progress. Even so, I'm still miles away from what I want to be able to do (essentially what this lad does in the first two minutes of the video:

What I have in mind is not only mobility but also joint health. It really struck me after hearing coach Sommer on Robb's podcast talk about it. I'm convinced it will make me a better athlete as well as a healthier human being. But I'm not sure how to tackle it.

I was wondering if anybody here had any experience integrating some of the foundation exercises/mobility pieces in a weightlifting routine towards a similar goal. Or if you have some stretches that you perform on the side to work on these areas? 

Let me know if you have any idea, I feel like I just opened pandora's box but don't really know what to grab onto first!!!

Sean

I integrate many exercises with my athletes (I'm an Athletic Trainer), but the main point for you is time.  You're training a different paradigm then F1 (muscle strength v connective tissue strength).  I may be wrong, but I think coach said he wouldn't put a weight on someones back until they got through pistol squats.

Damon Amato said:

I integrate many exercises with my athletes (I'm an Athletic Trainer), but the main point for you is time.  You're training a different paradigm then F1 (muscle strength v connective tissue strength).  I may be wrong, but I think coach said he wouldn't put a weight on someones back until they got through pistol squats.

Thanks for your response. I understand and respect coach's point of view. Pistols are something I can do. But I'm sure there must be a way to add some movements to my warm up & cool down routines to improve my flexibility/mobility & connective tissue strength without stopping my weightlifting training 100%?

Let me know what you think.

Thx

It's pretty easy to tackle in theory -- figure out what you can't do mobility wise and work toward it.  You could do swivel hips between sets of PVC snatches.  Or Xiaopings between sets of press jerks.  Jefferson Curls and overhead squats.  Isometric holds of different oly positions with empty bar would be useful.

Start small and be consistent over a couple microcycles.

well the other thing is that in GST you want end range mobility.  While deadlifting you want to be as stiff and tight as possible.  While the long term benefits of GST will help you over a long period of time, it's probably not going to give you much for short term benefit.  That's not to say don't do it, I think shoulder dislocates would certainly help power snatch, and jefferson curls would build up great endurance for squats and deads, but otherwise I think you may want to focus on one or the other.

tex0413: Thanks for the examples. I'll work to integrate a few exercise, but it'll probably be more after the main lifts and in the stretching/cool down phase. 

Damon: I'd agree with you if I was a Powerlifter. Despite the resemblance weightlifting and powerlifting are two different sports and require very different efforts from the body, especially on the mobility side of things. The more ROM I have, the better I can get in positions and be strong in them. 

I'm going so start slowly and integrate some weighted (3-4kg) dislocates, cat-cows and xiaopings. I'll keep the post updated every few weeks

Thanks for you help!!