Oly 4 Kids: Part 2 - Own the Bar

By Dani Waller and Maddi Wu

The Oly 4 Kids program was created in 2016 with the view to make the sport of Olympic Weightlifting appropriate and accessible for kids. The old myths that weightlifting was bad for kids, that it stunts your growth and that children are not anatomically ready for weighted exercises really needed to be cle

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oly 4 Kids
• Release date: Dec 28, 2020
• ISBN: 9780645060416

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

The Oly 4 Kids program was created in 2016 with the view to make the sport of Olympic Weightlifting appropriate and accessible for kids. The old myths that weightlifting was bad for kids, that it stunts your growth and that children are not anatomically ready for weighted exercises really needed to be cleared up. It is unrealistic to think that kids will not pick up objects that are heavy while playing. So doesn’t it make sense that we nurture them and teach them good technique to be physically well? But make it fun! Make it relative! And make it rewarding. This is where the Training Journal comes into play. This was the second book I published. It has the Oly 4 Kids program in it but written instead for the kids that learn the program as the audience. In addition, it has a summary page with dot points to learn and pass to gain a sticker for each weekly level. This has proven to be the key tool that makes the program such a success. The kids take ownership of the technique rules to learn and they want to achieve them. Because what kid doesn’t love stickers!

It is undeniable how universal and versatile Olympic Weightlifting is as a physical fitness code. It is useful for all high-performance sports as well as for everyday functional well-being. It makes sense that everybody gets the opportunity to know this sport, and what better time to learn this life skill than when you are young. If you have ever seen a baby squat down to pick up something, you will know that a young human starts with the correct lifting technique. We lose that as we grow. So why not teach kids to keep that technique? It makes sense, under a controlled and supervised environment. This is why we need a program that teaches what have become difficult methods for adults to learn to lift with a strong and stable core of strength and stability, along with mobility.

The program has been successfully run in Perth, Western Australia for several years now, and participation numbers are just growing. Once the basic program has been implemented, you will want to know the next step to develop the kids with the method. This book will show you what that next step is.

It is important to mention at this stage that you can generalize with what level a child will be at certain ages, and it is wise to do that to form a structure of guidelines. But it is also important to not confine kids to these rules when one comes along that is ahead of their chronological age in both physical and mental ability. The rules of engagement should be more about aptitude than age, although this is not always easy to be governed by.

Let’s have a quick overview of what we will learn in Part 2, as well as a refresher on the characters that were introduced in Part 1.

Overview of Part 2 - Owning the Bar

By now the kids in your class will have completed the 10 week Part 1 of Oly 4 Kids and have a general understanding of the principles, technique and intricacies of Oly Lifting. Hopefully, they will be in love with all of our cuddly characters and have a real affinity with them and what they are teaching. We are going to use these characters again in this book, as refreshers and sometimes teamed up to teach a new exercise.

This part of the Oly 4 Kids program introduces many regular Oly lifting exercises performed by athletes of all levels. It includes all the fundamental exercises that will be used and extended as the lifter becomes more advanced. You will notice that the Oly 4 Kids characters feature throughout, even when not mentioned. I encourage you to refer back to the first book to see the bullet points at the end of each character chapter to refresh your memory on the key points to each learned skill. It is assumed throughout this book that each of these bullet-point lists is maintained and adhered to when practising a new exercise.

The games included in Part 1 will be mentioned again in Part 2. We won’t be going over them, but they will be included as suggestions in the weekly classes to help maintain the key principles and muscle memory, while making it fun and upbeat. Remember we want to keep the kids active while still learning. I will make suggestions, but in the end, it is up to you as the coach to decide what exercises need more attention, and what game would complement or supplement it best. Every group of children will have a different set of skills and skill levels. So, it is important to be very cognisant of this when choosing such games and exercises.

I can’t stress enough that it must be fun for the kids. Fun to do, fun to come back to, and fun to talk about. The gym environment must be consistently safe, so that it will always be fun, not to mention commercially viable for the gym owner, manager or trainer.

Revision of Part 1 - Achieve the Bar

So, let’s start with a quick revision of Part 1, where the kids learned to achieve the bar. In this part, they had to learn certain positions, movements and skills to effectively move onto using the bar, which we will cover in this part.

We started by talking generally about structure, safety and equipment. Please refer back to this chapter if you feel you need to. Alternatively, ask the kids in your class what they remember. This helps them learn, and also helps them to feel good about the program.

Next, we spent a fair amount of time on the starting position or the Standing Monkey. This position is very important because it covers a lot of principles that carry throughout the other chapters as well. It was in this chapter we also introduced the hook grip. This was for two reasons; one is that it is most essential and fundamental to all lifts. Secondly, I felt it related to the Standing Monkey because it is a bit like how a monkey would hold something. So hopefully the kids will always connect the two things whenever they get in the start position; the Standing Monkey and the hook grip.

Next, we went through the Jumping Frog. I really wanted to impress upon the kids that the pull in Oly is all about bar momentum and speed, hence the jump, and not about merely lifting the bar and pulling it. The pull (and the full extent of it) really makes or breaks the lift. You will see that this converts into many of the work exercises we will introduce in this book.

At this point a new character has entered the Oly 4 Kids family of characters; Scally the Scarecrow. It was only after using the program myself for a year that I realized we needed a new character to connect the Jumping Frog and the next character, the Proud Grasshopper or the Torpedo Elbows. These characters don’t have to be taught in the order that the book prescribes. I have found that different groups will come into the class with different skill sets and it may be relevant to go to a character later in the book or to skip a character and return to it. It will depend on what exercises and sports the children have learnt before.

Getting back to Scally the Scarecrow, it is very important to teach the conversion of the bar from the pull (Jumping Frog) to the catch (Proud Grasshopper.) The Scarecrow is a pictorial way of seeing the line the bar must travel, and to teach keeping the bar close to the body the whole way up.

The Proud Grasshopper came next due to the progression of movement. I am particularly proud (pun intended) of this character and what can be learnt from it. It covers a whole lot of necessary things in lifting, rather than the need for complicated terminology and somewhat confusing positions and principles. The Proud Grasshopper is pivotal to all squats, which are the bread and butter of exercises, not just for Oly Lifting, but for many sporting disciplines.

We then taught duck walks and box jumps, both of which are exercises to practice certain positions. Both of these I would suggest are practised as exercises within this book, as the skills are forever useful, and must be practised to be maintained.

The Ledge Jumps, whilst seemingly a very small exercise to do, cover a very critical aspect of technique. I would suggest covering this exercise before doing jerks, or Larry The Lamppost, which was covered next.

The final exercise learnt in part 1 was The Robot Man. You may have wondered why this is taught at the end of Part 1, and not before doing The Standing Monkey. The reason is important, I believe. The start position is most significant and should be taught in isolation. To teach how to get into the position and then be in the position covers a lot of ground. Robot Man completes the circle of learning when you put positions together, which were previously taught. It makes sense after all the components, and further explains why principles are taught. The Robot Man puts it all together and sets up the student for Part 2, actually using the bar.

So