Evolve Strength - Strength Training facility; Olympic Weightlifting Seminar

New facility on the north side of Edmonton - Evolve Strength North

3 Locations for convenience

Storage area; no fear, there are also lockers and change room with showers

Artificial turf is coming, it's where the bare floor is..

Brand new ELEIKO training plates, barbell and platform to train on.

Yes, everything is in  kilograms   This is the standard for Olympic lifting.
Will have to remember to convert my previous weight to kg.

Had to try the different plates, feel like a kid in a candy store...

Some Serious hardware; each collar weighs 2.5 kg

The barbell is so smooth, made my lifts so much easier...  Cadillac of weights..

So, the above was a visit on February 16, 2018.   I had a day off prior to my trip to Arizona.  Figured I would spend some quality time and check out the new Evolve Strength facility that just open up in North Edmonton.   It's about 3 blocks away from my office, another convenience factor.   I was met by Eden Chow when I walked into the facility.  I had mentioned that I had heard a lot about the new facility and seeing if he could give me a tour.   After showing me around, I asked if I could give the facility a try.  He said, he would waived my initial fee.    

With that said, off to get my gear from the truck and into the change room.    I had a fairly good workout as I was busily trying out the different plates.  Eden did show me earlier how to use the 2.5 kg collars, but I opted to stay with the standard simpler clips.    I also was busy punching in the numbers on calculator app and converting them back to pounds.  I'll soon get use to the change and use kilograms.  For now, it's the ability to compare to what I know is my previous max weights and translate that to kilograms.  Plus they have many more fractional plates than what I'm use to at Crossfit.

Now, I can definitely say that I now understand what everyone was talking about with regards to the smoothness of the bar with the weights.  Oddly, I found that every lift with the Snatch and with the C&J; was much easier on the catch.    Wow is all I can say.  Glad I got a chance to give them a try and will have a new found understanding of what performance barbells are.

When I was reviewing the events page on Evolve Strength; I notice that they had a Olympic Weightlifting seminar   It was for four hours and was located at the South location.   I promptly signed up (learning from different coaches is always good).   Of course, this would put me in an odd time crunch.   Flight back from Arizona will be two days prior, in the wee hours of the morning.  The day prior to the seminar, I'm scheduled to do my Crossfit Open 18.1 test/challenge.   Yah, I hope I have enough energy to make it thru.

A nice 4 hour Olympic Weightlifting seminar - Sunday; February 25, 2018

Sunday; February 25, 2018:

Well, the 4 hours seminar was great!  I actually stayed for another 30 minutes after the seminar to work on my Split Jerk.   I had a few minutes to show Coach Kevin Zimmerman my issues.   As most of you know from my previous blog entries, I had issues when I use any weight that is 50% of my 1 RM Jerk.  I tend to hinge at my hip before I dip and well; you know where that direction of the path goes.  I usually end up wasting energy trying to change the bar path mid flight..  You know how that goes.   Anyways, Coach Kevin showed me a different technique to try.   And after a few practices with the wooden dowel,  I moved to the weighted barbell.    Wow!  that change the way the barbell went.   I practice a few more reps and called it quits as it's now been 4.5 hours of lifting.  I was tired.  I will give this a try the next day when I back to my Crossfit box.

As you can see from the description about the seminar.  There were definitely a different range of skills level of lifters.  A lot of people had never lifted, and a few of us have.  There were some who had lifted a long time ago, and was in for some refreshers.   The person who I was partner up with was another Crossfitter, but from another local box.    We both had similar goals.  To improve on technique and form. 

Now, I had heard about Kevin Zimmerman about 4+ years ago shortly after I started Crossfit.  It was at a time when I wasn't getting what I need for training at my first Crossfit box with regards to Olympic lifting.   At that time, another strength coach had brought up his name and I remembered it since then.  He had mentioned to me that if he was to do olympic lifting, that would be the coach to learn it from.   I also had mentioned his name to my current Olympic Lifting coach, AJ and she knows him.  She spoke of great things of him.  I've been pretty transparent with my coach and the progress and direction I want to do with my training.   She has been very supportive of my choices.    With that said, it will make the decision easier for me when I make the switch to Olympic lifting in the near future.