12 Olympic Weightlifting Benefits: Did You Know Them All?
Author:
Reviewed by:
(21 years of Oly Lifting experience)
Unlock your full potential by engaging with our experts and community! Have questions about your fitness journey or looking for expert advice on weightlifting techniques? Don’t hesitate — leave a comment below and Sergii Putsov will provide a personalized answer and insights to help you reach your goals.
Torokhtiy is reader-supported. Some links are affiliate links, and we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. See our disclosure page for details.
Is Olympic weightlifting safe? – is a question that is frequently heard. “A well-designed workout program is safe and healthy,” is the response to this query. Despite this, there are still many unfounded claims that lifting weights is bad for your health. Let’s try to think carefully about this issue.
Despite the misconception that weightlifting is primarily only a strength sport, proper technique, speed, flexibility, and mental focus are crucial to success. Numerous benefits of olympic weightlifting include physical fitness, improved coordination, healthy bones and joints and quality of life overall.
The Following Are the 12 Olympic Weightlifting Benefits:
✅ Weightlifting Is In Olympic Games Program
Competitive weightlifting consists of two exercises – Snatch and Clean & Jerk. During competition weightlifters has three attempts in the Snatch, followed by three attempts in the Clean & Jerk. The competition winner will be the athlete who will lift the greatest weight in total.
Also, variations of this lift are very commonly used in Functional Fitness training and competitions as well. Olympic lifting may be learned without competing; in fact, doing so can make you stronger more quickly and improve your coordination in everyday situations.
✅ Physique Transformation
Exercises like the Olympic Snatch and C&J target your back, glutes, legs, core, and upper body simultaneously while being full-body, enjoyable, and intense. During your workouts, you quickly burn a large number of calories.
Olympic lifts are a fantastic technique to enhance strength, develop muscle, and reduce body fat. Recent researches have shown the benefits of olympic lifts speed & power training on health, and stamina in daily activities.
Along with healthy nutrition, weightlifting routine can help prevent obesity, osteoporosis, heart disease and diabetes.
✅ Gain Muscle Mass, Speed & Power
Some of the largest power outputs in all of sport are achieved during execution of snatch, clean, and jerk variation. Power, the byproduct of strength and speed, is the essential component that enables individuals to run and jump.
The best approach to increase speed and power in a workout is to include Olympic lifts. Weightlifters use specific drills and workouts to build power and strength.
Feeling “insufficiently strong” is another motivation for women to start weightlifting because they may also gain strength.
By the way you can find a huge variety of my training programs – HERE.
✅ Increase Work Capacity
Olympic lifts are multipurpose, and depending on how you include them into your routines, they may result in a variety of favorable improvements to your health.
Olympic lifts would be used to increase strength, speed, and power as well as to improve the capacity for high-intensity exercise, recover faster, and perform more training.
Your ability to work out more throughout each session will enable you to accomplish your fitness and health objectives more quickly.
✅ Protect Against Injury
Olympic lifts are comprehensive exercises that emphasize flexibility and joint stability by focusing on the shoulders, hips, knees, and ankles. The foundation to preparing the body for the higher stresses experienced in sport and in some daily activities is controlling a load across the range of motion of all these joints.
Implementing the Olympic lifts in practice and enhancing mobility, strength, and stability can considerably minimize susceptibility to injury. It’s crucial to keep in mind that weightlifting is not harmful to the back on its own.
Weightlifting exercises are performed using a strategy that makes safe use of the back and leg muscles while distributing the load to avoid overloading the spine. Additionally, strengthening the torso’s stabilizing muscles is an important part of the benefits of olympic lifting.
Follow us!
Free!
Get a 2-week Weightlifting Program as a bonus for the subscription to kickstart your training plan!
Free!
✅ Increase In Bone Density
Strengthening bones is essential to preventing osteoporosis and protecting against bone fractures, especially for women.
The immense pressures generated by Olympic lifts on the arms, legs and spine are just what the body needs to be stimulated into forming new bone tissue and increasing bone density. This is quite helpful in offsetting the natural loss of bone mass that comes with advancing age.
✅ Upgrading Coordination
Weightlifting is thought of as a strength-only sport, but it is actually an extremely skilled and coordinated sport. Nobody lifts hundreds of pounds all at once; most lifters spend months or even years perfecting their technique.
The Olympic Snatch and C&J exercises that call for proper timing, rhythm, and coordination. Enhancing muscle control and coordination is beneficial for both athletic performance and daily activities.
✅ Boost Athletic Performance
In order to do the Olympic lifts, an athlete must quickly and deliberately “triple extension” hip, knee, and ankle, simulating the fundamental movements of most sports, sprinting and jumping.
Olympic lifts have the next-highest carryover to directly enhancing athletic performance in sports where speed, power and strength are vital after engaging in the sport itself. And these are the unconditional benefits of Olympic lifting for athletes.
✅ Become Confident
Strong is the modern slim; as your physical strength increases, it affects every aspect of your life. Your confidence in & out of the weightlifting platform will grow as you learn new abilities and discover what your strong body is capable of.
It’s exciting to lift weights with the same speed and skill used in Olympic lifts, and many individuals discover that mastering snatch and C&J keeps them motivated to work out.
You will see better benefits if you exercise regularly and employ Olympic weightlifting training as a tool. Do not worry that weightlifting will turn girls into angry women. Yes, participating in sports of any type fosters “competitive attitudes.”
Furthermore, it is typical to be able to focus and maintain composure under tough circumstances. It is beneficial in life and trains how to handle stress in a healthy way. And this is the main reason so many girls visit the gym.
✅ Enhance Dynamic Stability And Mobility
People seldom require strength while they are immobile in life or in athletics, therefore it’s critical to challenge the body in the training to reflect that.
Olympic lifts provide the body the mobility & stability around the major joints that it needs when moving quickly, which makes it possible for the body to stay stable throughout both daily tasks and athletic activities.
Exercises like weightlifting are genuinely functional. While some individuals believe that bulking up and becoming stiff from lifting large weights, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Among athletes, Olympic weightlifters are one of the most coordinated, flexible & mobile.
You can find a lot of very useful techniques in my Overhead Mobility Program.
🔻FREE OLYMPIC WEIGHTLIFTING PROGRAM
Get started on your weightlifting journey with the Torokhtiy Free Olympic Weightlifting Program! Perfect for beginners, this FREE 2-week program focuses on Snatch and Clean & Jerk techniques. Suitable for all levels, it’s designed for muscle and technical preparation.
Download now for FREE!💥🚀💪
✅ Extremely Beneficial For Women
To be perfectly honest, there are no biological limitations preventing women from lifting weights. Women may also train more effectively since they are naturally way more flexible than men.
Women can build strength through weight training without gaining too much muscle because of the hormonal variations between them and male athletes. Additionally, regular exercise reduces the quantity of fat tissue.
Women who lift weights do not increase their risk of becoming infertile. The ability of a woman to give birth or the regularity of her menstrual cycle are not impacted in any way by exercise on their own.
It is mostly dependent on the smart load distribution, in addition to the quality of one’s nutrition and amount of rest. Women who engage in regular physical activity often experience a more comfortable pregnancy and give birth to healthy children.
✅ Easy Setup and Accessibility
You don’t need to go to a gym to experience the benefits of Olympic weightlifting! With just a barbell and some plates, you can create a complete setup in your own garage. Squats, Deadlifts, Cleans, Snatches and more…
A squat rack or stand would be beneficial, but it’s not essential. This means that you can easily practice a full-body routine without the need for complex machines, extensive equipment, or even a coach.
FAQ
Do Olympic Lifts Build Muscle?
Olympic lifts are an excellent option to significantly improve your strength training time while reducing body fat, building muscle, and improving ability. Some of the largest power outputs are achieved during snatch, clean and jerk in all of sport.
How Many Days A Week Should I Do Olympic Weightlifting?
Olympic weightlifters at the elite level train somewhere between 6 and 10 times a week. In order to still have a full day of rest each week, some lifters frequently train more than once every day. Recreational and beginner weightlifters normally perform 3-5 sessions per week, they do not exercise every day.
Do Olympic Lifts Make You Faster?
Olympic lifts may be employed to increase strength, speed, and power as well as high-intensity exercise endurance and the ability to recover more efficiently and endure more training.
Olympic lifts like the Snatch and Clean are excellent choices to boost speed for two reasons:
- They are entire body movements;
- Similar to running, the full body must work to generate a rapid action.
Does Olympic Weightlifting Burn Fat?
During your weightlifting workouts, you literally burn a significant number of calories. Olympic lifts are a terrific approach to optimize your strength training time while reducing body fat, adding muscle, and improving strength.
By far the best result in reducing the percentage of fat will give a combination: weightlifting training, an optimal diet and healthy daily routine.
Conclusion
Olympic weightlifting is a kind sport that may help develop strength and coordination as well as other parts of overall athleticism. It is frequently incorporated into exercises for athletes since it helps improve movement abilities while also strengthening muscles, which leads to higher performance.
Do you think I left anything out? Let’s discuss it in the comments!
References:
- Marianne Huebner, Holly Arrow, Alex Garinther, and David E. Meltzer “How Heavy Lifting Lightens Our Lives: Content Analysis of Perceived Outcomes of Masters Weightlifting.” Frontiers in Sports and Active Living, 15 March 2022, Section: The History, Culture and Sociology of Sports.
- Starre Vartan “Lifting heavy weights can help you mitigate osteoporosis. Here’s how to get started.” National Geographic, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/premium/article/osteoporosis (accessed June 10th, 2024).
- Photos are made by Torokhtiy Media team.
Also read:
Why Trust Us?
With over 20 years in Olympic weightlifting, strength training, nutrition coaching, and general fitness our team does its best to provide the audience with ultimate support and meet the needs and requirements of advanced athletes and professional lifters, as well as people who strive to open new opportunities and develop their physical capabilities with us.
By trusting the recommendations of our certified experts in coaching, nutrition, and sports training programming, as well as scientific consultants, and physiotherapists, we provide you with thorough, well-considered, and scientifically proven content. All the information given in the articles concerning workout programming, separate exercises, and athletic performance, in general, is based on verified data.
The product testing process is described in more detail here.
Author: Sergii Putsov
Head of Sport Science, PhD
Best Results: Snatch – 165 kg,
C&J – 200 kg
Sergii Putsov, Ph.D., is a former professional weightlifter and National team member, achieving multiple medals in the 94 kg weight category at national competitions. With a Master’s degree in “Olympic & Professional Sport Training” and a Sport Science Ph.D. from the International Olympic Academy, Greece, Sergii now leads as the Head of Sport Science. He specializes in designing training programs, writing insightful blog articles, providing live commentary at international weightlifting events, and conducting educational seminars worldwide alongside Olympic weightlifting expert Oleksiy Torokhtiy.
Reviewed by: Oleksiy Torokhtiy
Olympic Weightlifting Champion
Best Results: Snatch – 200 kg,
C&J – 240 kg
Oleksiy Torokhtiy is a professional athlete boasting 20 years of experience in Olympic weightlifting. With multiple European and World titles under his belt, he has showcased his prowess in two Olympic Games (Beijing 2008 and London 2012). Upon concluding his illustrious career, Oleksiy dedicated himself to coaching. By 2022, he had conducted over 200 weightlifting seminars worldwide. He is the visionary behind an international sportswear and accessories brand known for its motto, “Warm Body Cold Mind.” Additionally, he is an esteemed author and the creator of a series of training programs and eBooks.
Still have questions after reading our article? Unlock your full potential by engaging with our experts and community! Don’t hesitate — leave a comment below and Sergii Putsov will provide a personalized answer and insights to help you reach your goals.