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Boris Bachmann on Glenn Pendlay’s new DVD: Olympic Lifting Workshop
If you are like me, a dabbler in the Olympic lifts, you are always looking for good DVDs for instruction. You’ve already bought a bunch of training hall videos from Ironmind and those were, of course, awesome. You’ve bought some books on the subject. You’ve had a little instruction from capable competitors and maybe even a coach here and here. Maybe you were like me and had a father who was an OLer, but you got sick of doing endless lifts with a broomstick…. In any case, you needed a little more – something that blended excellent modeling, explanation, and hands-on instruction with someone who wasn’t already a world-class athlete. Well, here’s a DVD for you – Dave and Laree Draper have put out a new DVD that fits the bill: Glenn Pendlay – Olympic Weightlifting Techniques.
Glenn has a humble way about him and his instruction is crisp and straight to the point. He details his teaching progressions for the Olympic lifts and gives clear rationale for their implementation. His emphasis on positions and transitions is something that as a lifter, I’ve given a lot of thought to, but could never really really “get” with the finer nuances of Olympic lifting – I think Glenn has really opened up some of those details to me with this work. The DVD will be an asset for both trainers and trainees alike who want to improve their snatches, cleans, and jerks, and, in my opinion, is a must-have for coaches who incorporate power-versions of the Olympic lifts for their athletes.
I’ll be honest with you, generally speaking, I’m not a big fan of workshops that are recorded and then sold as DVDs. Often film and sound quality is poor and there is a lot of “filler time” showing the workshop participants. That is NOT the case with any of the workshop DVDs that Dave and Laree Draper have produced. In Olympic Weightlifting Techniques you never get bored watching Glenn working with the participants. The two-hour set of two DVDs has an awesome balance of lessons from Glenn Pendlay, demonstrations by athlete Jon North, and short clips of hands-on instruction with trainees of varying levels of proficiency. I enjoyed all of the segments both as a teacher and learner.
At $44.50, the DVD is a great deal. If you have any interest in improving your own Olympic weightlifting technique, or in seeing how one great coach coaches them, I don’t think you’ll go wrong.
