Took my time warming up extra long. We got into the deadlifts though, and being fully warmed up, I was feeling much better. Actually went on to do some solid dead lifts. Once we got into the front squat + jerk, Dmitry Klokov wanted me to use less weight. Actually he humbled everyone by walking behind each of us and making us pause deep in the jerk deep for five seconds. For some of us, he was requiring to do two jerks. The back squats were feeling better. The form he taught us really pushes the butt back and then has a little lean forward to keep the weight on the whole foot. The tough effort for me on all of his squats is not letting the knees travel too far forward. Knees forward squatting was exactly what I have been trying to do in training the last year. You can imagine how tough it is to work against your newly trained habits.
Dmitry Lapikov was training at the center with us since the day prior and put up some big lifts. He gave us the lecture that night on his weight lifting career, and it was so interesting and emotional. Spent an hour listening to Dmitry Lapikov speak about how he got into weightlifting and then went into some amazing and emotional stories about his relationships with Klokov, preparations, and competitions. One of the most interesting stories he told us about his time in the +105 category (he competed in -105 in a very competitive time as well) was showing up to training camp and qualifiers on his own dime during his suspension (His suspension was from a pre-workout that was legal, made illegal, and lastly made legal again. At first he was given two years, then a four suspension which is really high. Steroid suspensions are that long.) The World’s committee sat on their ruling and his appeal took forever (he wanted to appeal the four years and get it reduced so he could attend the Olympics). He continued to train on his own budget while suspended, to show the Russian Federation and everyone that he will be prepared for the Olympics and to send him. He showed up to a Russian qualifier very prepared to lift. He told us how everyone thought he was crazy walking into the warm up room with his bag and getting ready to compete. They wouldn’t let him onto the platform, so he competed anyway from the warm up room! He out snatched the guys on platform (opened 205kg, wouldn’t be surprised if the 215k snatch video is from this same event) and would have taken second due to suffering a quad strain during the C&J (he opened successfully 240kg). He mentioned this was very tough for him to clean big weights in the warm up area since there was no crowd that provides the added excitement. He sincerely wants to help the sport. He is the director of weightlifting in his region, a major on the police force, and regularly visits schools to mentor children on setting goals and meeting them. He brought his medal with him that night and let everyone hold it. Very cool!
Here in 2009 is where he first suffered his leg injury. You can see him during the CJ scream in the first attempt. He passes on his 2nd attempt trying to convince his coach to do something so he couldn’t feel the pain. The coach wouldn’t do that for him so he still went out for his third attempt. There you can see his leg buckle on the jerk.
Here, years later he still felt his injury. In 2011 you see him competing the in the video and out performing everyone, but his results were later removed because the suspension was still in effect.
A Long Heavy Path 