Anyone else here lift weights?
I started about 9-10 months ago last year, first off just using the leg press. I started skating March of last year, and was hooked, first in hockey skates, then about this time last year I got figure skates. I'm a 21 year old male, btw. I went from 215lbs to 180lbs in like 3-4 months. Now after lifting I'm at like 195, at 5'9, I'd like to be back at my old 180, as at 180, I'd be at a fairly low bodyfat because of the added muscle, as my old 180 was sort of flabby.
Anyway, I started just doing leg presses, then I moved onto squats the way everyone else was doing them, with a manta ray (plastic piece to keep it on your back) and not down very low. Eventually I started deadlifting, and doing clean and jerks and snatches, and then Olympic style squatting, going all the way down.
My lifts aren't spectacular, I can sumo deadlift 355, and Olympic backsquat 235, and Olympic front squat 185, and standing overhead press (with straight legs, not push press) 115. My actual Olympic lifts are pretty terrible (155 clean and jerk, 105 snatch), as they're very technique intensive, I'd say learning them is pretty much like learning figure skating moves as far as complexity, as in, you need either a coach or someone much more experienced than yourself to at least observe you and tell you what you're doing wrong, and as far as coaching costs go, it's about the same as a skating coach. They're very technical, so I'm probably gonna stop/cut back on doing them.
Those are the two lifts, clean and jerk and snatch (and I hope this forum is mature enough to not make sexual comments about the names of the lifts.) But yeah, I pretty much do lots of lower body exercises, and very little upper body, with the exceptions of overhead press variations. I'm starting now to be able to do pullups, so I might throw those in as well.
As far as downsides, there's a few. You can gain fat if your nutrition isn't good, as you tend to eat more to recover from the lifts. In general muscle is gained with fat, so you gotta go through random "cutting" periods to drop your bodyfat down. I feel like the extra bodyfat doesn't really affect performance too much (ie, I can jump higher at 195lbs than I could at 180) but it's a bit not fun having any extra fat on you. Also, you can tax out your CNS if you lift too much and don't sleep/eat enough, then with CNS taxed out, you can get depressed, moody easier, etc.
My routine is basically this. I pretty much don't use much of a program, but for squats, I tend to do, say, 25lbs or 35lbs per side to warmup, for 10 reps, throw on 10 more pounds, do 5 reps, then do a triple with 10 more lbs, then after that I add 10lbs and do singles, until I get myself up to max or "daily max," and I either max out, or if I don't feel it's a good day to max out, I'll do 3-5 singles with the "daily max" weight. I've learned to alternate front squats and back squats, as front squats work the quads and abs more, and back squats work the glutes and lower back more. Front squats pretty much always help, as they work the abs more, and prevent the back from rounding out when you do back squats. That and doing Olympic squats is better if you got the flexibility/can get the flexibility to get them. The powerlifting kinda squats are good for the ego, and you can lift more weight, but they don't help power as much. Deadlifts I alternate between sumo deadlifts and snatch grip deadlifts, sumo deadlifts are good for the thigh abductor muscles, but snatch grip deadlifts, lifting with a wide grip makes you have to pull the bar from a lower position higher, but you use way less weight on snatch pulls, that and snatch pulls are hard on your grip strength, so a lot of people use straps for them. High reps and me don't seem to agree, and I don't want to add a lot of muscle, so I avoid them, but high reps seem to make me pull tendons/ligaments easier, I've pretty much never gotten injured or felt bad in any way doing singles, but high reps I've pulled stuff too much. I know the USFSA recommends higher reps, and oddly (to me anyway) bench pressing, which I don't quite understand, but yeah. I don't use any machines at all, just barbell, squat rack, and occasionally dumbells. Not weight training, but I do LOVE slideboards, and will usually go on a slideboard for about a song length at a time, and occasionally I'll go on with dumbells in my hands to slow me down somewhat. I'd like to work up to pistols, but most of what's preventing those is a balance issue I gotta work on, it's the same balance issue I have with overhead squats, I naturally walk on the balls of my feet a bit more than most people, so getting the weight really far back on the heels is a problem for me, and it carries over into my skating. Pistols I feel like would be really helpful for a lot of the jumps, as a lot of jumps rely on single leg power (not that I'm really doing anything over waltzes yet.)
Uhm, yeah. I'm sorry for this longwinded boring post (my first post is a longwinded boring one, yay), but yeah, what do other people here do for weightlifting? I understand some figure skaters do it, but locally I don't see figure skaters do it too much.