2011

Larry Burke Memorial Masters Olympic Lifting Competition

Larry Burke Memorial Masters Olympic Lifting Competition
[caption id="attachment_4270" align="alignleft" width="280" caption="Can you spot the CrossFitter in this photo?"] [/caption]

On Saturday November 25th, 2011, many of British Columbia's Olympic Weightlifters flocked to the Larry Burke Memorial Masters Competition hosted at West Vancouver's CrossFit BC.  To my surprise, "masters" in the BCWA (B.C. Weightlifters Association) is anyone aged 35 and above.

Well guess who turned 35 on November 13th?  Yup - the Moose is now 35!  My friend, Troy "KT" Straith, owner of CrossFit BC convinced me that it would be a good time and he was right.  Thanks Troy!  Troy is no stranger to Masters competitions, in fact Troy is one of Canada's top ranked CrossFit Masters competitors, who most recently competed at the CrossFit Games this past summer in L.A. So when Troy asked me if I would compete in the Larry Burke competition, my answer was simply, "why not!"

[caption id="attachment_4271" align="alignright" width="196" caption="Gold Medal for 85kg Men's Division (age 35 - 39)"] [/caption]

As a CrossFitter and someone who doesn't train for Olympic Weightlifting per say, I might have been somewhat overzealous with my wish to compete in this discipline.  In the past couple months I've been riddled with minor injuries and found myself constantly getting sick (thankfully, I now know why ).  The long and short of it all is that I'm not an Olympic Weightlifter, I'm a CrossFitter, which ultimately showed up in my lifts during the competition.  One phrase comes to mind:  " more ass than class! "

The format for the competition is very straightforward.  You get 3 attempts to establish your 1 rep max on the Snatch and then 3 attempts to establish your 1 rep max with the clean & jerk.  6 lifts in total and then you add the two numbers together to formulate your score.  Keeping in mind there is weight and age classes which people fall into.  Also, to determine the overall winner of the competition they use the Sinclair Coefficient which ultimately determines who is the strongest lifter based on body weight relative to amount lifted.  Using this coefficient, I'm a wuss.  LOL!

I really enjoyed this competition and plan to try my luck at it again after some much-needed training with an Olympic lifting coach.  But in the meantime, I'll continue to work my technique, power, speed, agility, and the list goes on...

Here's a video from the competition shot by a friend of mine (thank you Caragh Camera!) ( note, I added the audio track )

[vimeo 33110695]

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