Take the complexity out of Olympic Weight Lifting

Master the reverse chain method and take your coaching to the next level.

Learning the Olympic lifts (snatch and clean & jerk) can feel overwhelming-for both athletes and coaches. The Olympic lifts are highly technical, and beginners often struggle to piece them together.

That’s why British Weight Lifting created the BWL Teaching Method: a method that incorporates progressive part practice, where components of a skill are practiced and then linked together to form larger parts of a longer, more complex skill or routine.

We see this in other sports too. For example:

Gymnastics: individuals' skills are practiced on the floor or parallel bars and then sequenced together to form a routine.
Triple jump: athletes may be exposed to the hop, skip and jump separately, before bringing them together to complete the full triple jump.

This method also incorporates a top-down approach to teaching the lifts (referred to as reverse chaining) and is profiled in detail during the Level 1 Coaching Olympic Weight Lifting course. Using the BWL teaching method can help coaches to:

‘Chunk’ skills and make them easier to remember

Assess athletes’ mobility and readiness to perform the full lifts
Support athletes’ to build confidence in performing the lifts

For example, for the split jerk, a coach can break the movement down by performing the following sequence of lifts:

Press in split
Push press
Tall jerk
Split jerk

These lifts, alongside teaching exercises for the snatch, clean and split jerk are covered in-depth in the Level 1 Coaching Olympic Weight Lifting course.

By the end of the course, you’ll have the tools and confidence to coach the snatch, clean & jerk, recognising key coaching points for the key positions in the lifts.