Meanwhile in Korea … at the 2014 Asian Games.
Here are Lu Xiaojun’s lifts from the 77kg Session:
It started out pretty normal. He went 3/3 in the Snatch with 165, 170 and 175. All lifts very solid.
In the Clean & Jerk however he missed his first two attempts at 200kg! Luckily he made his third and got a 375kg total (5kg below his own WR Total). Full 77kg Results here.
More Lu: Watch the short documentary about him if you haven’t yet done so.
Short Interview with Lu
Update: Thanks “Lu M” and Victor for the translation.
News anchors essentially talk about he blew away the competition but kept the audience nervous at the same time.
Lyu’s Interview Part 1: On the first attempt, admittedly I was definitely too anxious. How do I put this… there was some hesitation as to how to open on the C&J… I wanted to put it a way [on the first attempt] because I know the strength of the North Korean. I knew he had no chance at 207.
Part 2: [Talking about his conversation with his coach before selecting his attempt numbers] stop tormenting yourself, lets just directly go for 200. I’ll hit it first attempt no problem. Coach asks “are you confident” and I go yea I’m confident. (hence all his smiles/smirks during this part).
The reporter also said that in his recent training, Lu has only hit 170+200, but being a veteran competitor, he felt the confidence to go directly for 200 on the first attempt.
Also at the end of the video the commentator mentions how lu has been a father for 50 days…
175kg Snatch Side View
His snatches are God like easy. C&J hopefully can recover by November. 177/206 out of him come Worlds
His cleans all looked easy as well. I don’t know if he’s a bit tired after the clean and has trouble standing up from the squat jerk, or if it’s just the trickier balancing that does it.
He looked really relieved after the successful clean and jerk.
the successfull jerk wasn’t an easy one, he could have missed that as well. That would be a big big fail for an olympic champion
Yes, on his face you can clearly see the effort he has to put in to stand up, when viewing in slow motion. It’s going to be interesting to see him at the worlds (I hope he goes there).
OK I need to write this down about power jerk now. I keep hearing recently that power jerk is superior to split jerk. It is NOT. Quite the opposite. You might think that power jerk is better because you have got more room to catch the bar so you don’t need to jerk it so hard .You’ve got more room not just catch it but longer road to master it as well. That’s very hard. You have to sit down again and stabilize the weight overhead and then to stand up again. The bar is now not on your shoulders but in your hands over your head which makes it far more difficult. Most of the lifters are happy to clean a big weight once! Standing up twice?? Most of the lifters who do power jerk are very unstable. Lu failed two of his jerks today and I didn’t see anyone being so stable under the bar as him. You could say : what about Kakhiasvili? He was a power jerker and managed 235 in 90 kgs category. There are two kind of power jerkers. Like Lu who sits down with the weight because he cant jerk so strong and like Kakhi was who never went down to squat because he never intended. He was a powerful jerker and he didn’t choose power jerk because he couldn’t actually jerk the bar. He chose it because he was more comfortable with it. Lu chose it because he can’t jerk the bar powerfully enough.He always go down completely. It’s ok everybody is different. Apti chose to change to power jerk and it was a good decision. It fits him better. But never think that power jerk is easier. How many lifters do power jerk? How many world records has been done by power jerk? Split jerk is the best way to jerk. It’s much easier to manage and muster the bar. If power jerk would be better every lifter would have been doing it for decades now. Let’s face it :Nothing special has been done by power jerk so far. Just a small minority do it and they do it because they can’t do split jerk.
Lu is a squat jerker. There is squat jerking because the weight pushed you down off a power jerk, and there is deliberate squat jerking where you intend to catch the weight low. Lu is the latter. Look at somebody like Apti who power jerks but is also able to ride down into a squat when he needs to. Power jerk is difficult to master but a true squat jerk like Lu’s is even more difficult.
The value in a power jerk is that if you don’t manage to catch the weight above parallel, you have the option of riding down into a squat, if you’re able to do so. With a split, if you split and don’t get low enough to catch the weight, there’s nothing you can do about that; you’ve missed it. I wouldn’t say power/squat jerking is better necessarily but it has its advantages. It’s just really hard to master and requires great shoulder mobility and stability.
By the way David Bedzhanyan, who is a true power jerker, unofficially broke the world record a month ago: https://allthingsgym.com/david-bedzhanyan-241kg-clean-jerk-2014-russian-championships/
True,you’ve got a point. Still it all seems to me a big gamble. It’s never sure. Bedzhanyan is very much alone. And he doesn’t go down either. He’s like Kakhi was : if he was pushed down to squat he always failed the attempt. So despite all it’s advantages ,power jerk is a disadvantage itself 🙂 i am saying this because I have seen so many competitions and participated another 200 and the numbers prove me that power jerk is for special cases and the for majority it doesn’t work. We used to do it to improve the split jerk. Actually it was always power clean and power jerk together. Power clean to improve the pull and power jerk to improve the jerk. No squatting with it at all. There are athletes who are genetically weak when it comes to jerk. Like Lu. He does the dipping with big weights which is especially for strengthen the jerk. I have no problem with power jerk if it is not with squatting. Practically the same as split jerk just for special cases who has very good shoulders and so on. For me the squatting power jerk is an entirely different kind of jerk. And 80-90% of the athletes who do it look absolutely unstable. All in all very few lifter can do it properly.
Bedzhanyan & Kakhi have more of a true power jerk, where they jump their feet out wide and catch high. It’s pretty difficult to recover from that if you can’t catch it high. Lu doesn’t slide his feet out, he just drops deep under the bar to catch low. Then you have somebody like Apti, who doesn’t move his feet much at all, but still tries to catch above parallel. But since he doesn’t move his feet out, he’s still in a good position to recover if he gets pushed all the way down. Personally I think he has about the best looking jerk out there. But not many people can do what he does. I’m in the process of trying, it’s not going so well 😉
I think you should put your energy into split jerk. I don’t want to be old school here but I have to say : if you can split jerk well you have a far higher chance to stabilize the bar. If the jerk doesn’t go well you can still correct by moving your legs but you are absolutely locked if you are sitting under the bar. The weight is heavy in the CnJ and you can’t just milling around in squat position. You just need a strong and firm back and you’ll have no problem. Do lots of 55/38. Front squat then jerk.
I supose you read a lot about Bud charniga’s articles. Am I right?
Never heard of it.
Yeah, he has an article that speak how superior split jerks are in comparasion with power jerks and dip jerks.
Just for your information, what Lu does is referred to as ‘squat jerk’ while Kakhi does ‘power jerk’ as he never goes below parallel into the squat position.
Interesting to see Lu stick with Nike for his shoes and singlet when the rest of the Chinese team has made the switch. I wonder if he has an individual endorsement deal with Nike weightlifting. I have gotten used to seeing him with those neon green shoes so it would be a little weird for me if he switches.
I can’t tell for sure but I don’t think Lu’s singlet is still Nike. I think Lin Qingfeng also wore Nike shoes but Atlantya(?) singlet.
I think his career will end like Lu Yong’s. There is a problem in his legs.
Take that back right now.
yeah, regardless of whether there is sthg to it or not, dont make yourself enemies, please 🙂
The following is my second grade level attempt at a translation:
News anchors essentially talk about he blew away the competition but kept the audience nervous at the same time.
Lyu’s Interview Part 1:
“On the first attempt, admittedly I was definitely too anxious. How do I put this… [some verb regarding] the gold medal… I wanted to put it away [on the first attempt] because I know the strength of the North Korean. I knew he had no chance at 207.”
Part 2:
“[Said about his conversation with his coach before selecting his attempt numbers] stop tormenting yourself, lets just directly go for 200. I’ll hit it first attempt no problem. Coach asks “are you confident” and I go yea I’m confident.” (hence all his smiles/smirks during this part).
Off topic, I can’t seem to find any information on Lu Haojie nowadays. He competed in 2013 at the Chinese national games and I can’t find anything referring to him since. Anyone know what his deal is?
Thanks a lot. I too would like to know what happened to Haojie.
I was creeping Larry’s instagram and someone (I think maybe one of the Americans doing the Chinese camp/seminars?) commented that Lu H has injuries but power snatched 150, power clean and jerked 180 at the Asian game trials.
Yes, Lu Haojie is recovering from a knee injury, however he still powered 150/180 during the test for the Asian Games. Attendees at the Ma Strength Weightlifting Camp were able to witness that.
The some verb means “hesitation.” In that sentence, he said, “there was some hesitation as to how to open on the C&J.”
Thanks for clearing that up Victor
The reporter also said that in his recent training, Lu has only hit 170+200, but being a veteran competitor, he felt the confidence to go directly for 200 on the first attempt.
Thank you. Glad to see that I was not too far off in my translation. I think my Chinese is slowly getting better from watching and reading about all these weight lifting videos!
Also at the end of the video the commentator mentions how lu has been a father for 50 days… so all i can say is perhaps his newborn child is one of the reasons why he “only” managed to total 375 ;p
damn kids ruin everything
Getting married ruined everything.
I heard that his wife is also a champion WL-er. That baby probably already has a higher total than either of us.
Does anyone know of a father-son weightlifting dual in which both are highly successful? (Norik Vardanyan clearly doesn’t count.) From what I understand, the genetic combination for a champion weightlifter is so rare that even if 2 extremely successful weightlifters had an offspring, it would still be no guarantee that s/he could even make it to the top of nationals (especially where the talent pool is as large as in China).
The only father-son pair I know of is Vyacheslav Klokov and Dmitry Klokov, both world champions.
I understand that and have no problem with it. When someone says that sitting down power jerk is the future jerk ,that is the point when I disagree. I know that some athletes can’t jerk well – like Lu – and have to do it but I don’t accept that kind of jerk as superior. I think it can still be very effective – Lu is probably gonna break the world record at some point – but it is still just a jerk for a very special few. On the other hand : if you are an elite athlete you shouldn’t gamble :))
He was very close to lose his 3rd jerk in the same way that he lost his 2nd. That would’ve been the biggest shock in the competition so far.
However, his snatches were very good. Probably good enough to hit 177 in November.
I d be shocked if he hasnt done 180 in training.
Probably, even more if we consider that nearly every lifter is overweight in training.
It would be fun to see Lu have a go at 85’s, just to see how close he could get to Rybakou’s marks.
I would love to see Lu move up to 85 for 2016. Him being 32 at the time, along with Tian Tao, would be an interesting pairing for 85s at Rio.
Does anyone know what sponsor the Chinese team recently switched to?
It’s Anta, a Chinese sports brand. It’s a direct competitor to Li Ning.