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A Very Strong Woman
Reminder: CFO is closed on Saturday, August 12. Strength Saturday will be moved to Sunday, August 13th and will take place from 2 PM to 4 PM. Email me if you would like to attend.
I'd like to introduce everyone to Russia's Tatiana Kashirina. She is one of the best female weightlifters in the world and won the gold medal at the 2011 European Weightlifting Championships held in Kazan, Russia. Tatiana competes in the superheavyweight (above 75 kg) women's division and weighs 97.6 kg (215 pounds). Her prowess on the weightlifting platform is so great that if she competed in the men's 94 kg class in the recent 2011 US National Championships in July, she would have tied for third place.
Tatiana's opening lifts start after all of her competitors have finished their third attempts. She snatched a world record 146 kg (322 lb) and clean and jerked 181 kg (399 lb) to earn a total of 327 kg (721 lb). Take a moment to think about that. She picked up 400 pounds off the ground and got it over her head. That is a very impressive accomplishment for a male and one that very few lifters ever attain. That she does this as a woman is even more amazing.
There's a video from the European Championships that is commentated in English, but the audio is rather distorted, so I went with the version above that I assume is in Russian. The video is quite lengthy (18 minutes), but I set the start time to include Tatiana's last lift. Aside from her incredible display of power during the competition, I was also impressed with her reaction after she successfully completed her clean and jerk. Tatiana didn't yell, or scream, or carry on. She smiled, bowed, and had to fight back tears. She dominated every one of her competitors by a wide margin, yet was restrained and dignified upon her victory. I was very impressed.
Before I go, I want to point out one other salient fact. Tatiana weighs 215 pounds. She is not 215 pounds of fat, either. She's actually pretty lean. If you are having trouble with strength, power, and recovery, ask yourself if you are eating enough. The answer is probably "no."
Best of luck to all of the competitors in FemmeFit tomorrow. May you channel Tatiana during your cleans.
In my senior year of high school I had a substitute social studies teacher named Ken Sprague. He was retired from owning the original Gold's Gym for a decade and seeing it through to franchising. In his new avocation he was trying his hand at teaching in Oregon's 4-j school district. (ironically Ken got his money to buy the gym from Joe Gold by running and acting in a gay porn production company, really not unlike the trajectory of our former Gov who got substantial financial support in his youth from older male "sponsors.") Some people were blessed to live their youth pre-google as I am sure he did not put that on his application to teach. But that aside, Ken was a lousy teacher however, what I do remember him saying when we got him easily off the lesson plan and on to talking about training was, "It is impossible to diet and put on mass at the same time."
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