Recently I traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia to see the city and to visit the school for “Heavy Athletics" – better known as the St. Petersburg Olympic Training Center.  This training facility is located in a suburb of St. Petersburg called Pavlovsk.

There is no absolute scientific basis for the statements presented in this article. It is only an accumulation of ideas we are sharing with you, and is based on years of knowledge attained by gut-wrenching personal training, success and failure in competitive Olympic Weightlifting, reading updated training principles and physiology, and general observation over the years of lifters performing and not performing on the platform and in training gyms.

Many years ago I got a phone call from a lady who asked about weightlifting. She said she had an 8-year-old son who wasn’t in very good shape and that she was concerned about his overall health and self esteem.

Strength and conditioning coaches at the professional, college and high school level will all agree that weight training is imperative for the development of their athletes.  The BIG question is:  What are the best exercises for the job?