Today's Thoughts on Variety

As this Olympic quad comes to an end, I find myself starting to venture towards doing things not specific to weightlifting. These past 4 years of training have been very snatch, clean & jerk, and squat focused. The other day I tried doing a speed/track workout. It turned out that the specificity of weightlifting has caused me how to forget to use my arms during activity. It's actually pretty comical how bad my movement is now. Here are three examples:
1) when doing the high knees warm up, I found myself doing same arm same leg movement.
2) when I decided to randomly do a back flip a few months ago, I didn't even realize that I was not using my arms to creat momentum, just leg strength to propel me up and back.
3) And last of all, a more measurable aspect, is my vertical. In 2009 my vertical was 36 inches. This past week my vertical was 30.5 inches.
I am much stronger now (based on squat and deadlift), and more powerful (based on snatch and clean and jerk). So why has my vertical decreased so much? The one obvious reason is that I need to relearn how to move correctly. Another reason for this is that I have become over specialized for snatch and clean and jerk. For example I would say I have a fairly quick bar speed during my snatch. I have practiced and developed that speed every time I lift. But what I have not practiced is my speed with only my body weight. My speed of body weight movement has actually decreased during my time of weightlifting specific training, making it closer to the speed at which I move 150kg in the snatch. I am making this assumption based off of my decreased vertical jump. But that doesn't make sense... People do weightlifting to get faster, don't they? Yes and it works great, but just like the sprinter who can only move his/her body weight efficiently would greatly benefit from doing weightlifting, the weightlifter who is only good at moving heavy weight fast will also benefit from moving just his/her body weight fast. My point is what a lot of great athletes have said, go do Crossfit. Just kidding I wouldn't wish that on anyone! But go out and get some variety in your life, go try another sport for a month when you are far away from competition, and if you already do some of that, try training with a bodybuilder, and yes maybe even a Crossfitter!