I thought it was about time I uploaded the couple of photo’s I took of the Weightlifting Club I go to at Bethnal Green, London. This club has been in existence a massive 80 years, since 1928 and has produced literally hundreds of Olympic Weight Lifting champions over the years. It’s located at 229 Bethnal Green Road, London, E2 6AB:
The power lifting side is well coached by Marting and Ron, and the Olympic lifting side is coached by Giles Greenwood and Patrick Atteridge, both of whom are British champions and more. Pat is European and World masters champion and Giles not only has a Gold medal from the Commonwealth Games, but he holds the British records for Snatch and Clean & Jerk in the heaviest category. That means Giles has lifted more than any other British man ever! I am truly privileged to be taught by such calibre of coaches.
You can see the 3 lifting platforms here and the bulk of the all Eleiko kit they have
Typically you can get 2-3 people per lifting platform, so it does get busy during peak times, but they are normally able to cope. It’s not like a normal gym, you actually have to sign up for an Adult learning course at Bethnal Green Adult Education Centre. It’s a bit tricky to do this I found, but here’s what you need to do, search the Learning Ladder site for Weight and Power Lifting Courses Sadly their website is rubbish and you have to go through each entry to work out what day and when it’s on. In the evenings it’s also only open from 5pm – 8pm. Still if you can manage it, here is where you’ll end up:
This is the main free weights area where the powerlifting goes on. That's Giles Goodwood darting out of the shot.
Tee hee, Giles wasn’t fast enough! You can see at the far end, there’s an area there which is often used as an overspill for the Olympic lifting, and in the bottom right corner is the rest of the smaller weight Eleiko plates.
As far as Crossfit goes, it’s possible to do some Crossfit Workouts if it’s quiet enough, which usually means in the last 1/2 hour before they shut at 8pm. There are 2 rowers but only 1 has the counter working. There’s only 1 pull up station too and it doesn’t lend itself to kipping pull ups due to various sticky out bits, but it’s possible. I’ve done some Crossfit workouts down there, and the coaches and denizens are politely tolerant. Mostly they are happy to see another group of people interesting in Olympic lifting.
I love this time of year, well the closet pyromaniac in me does. I wrote about the Guy Fawkes night poem: Remember, Remember, the 5th of November last year, which gives some interesting insights into the political back drop of this festival. Personally I like to understand a bit about the background of why things are the way they are, and the history of the things we take for granted.
However enough of that nonsense, let’s get on to the important discussions of today: where to buy really great fireworks? I am lucky to live in Stockport, just down the road from Denton, in which there is a dedicated fireworks shop called Quick Silver Fireworks. Rather than one of the many temporary shops that spring up in the month of October in usually vacant shops on the outskirts of town centres, Quick Silver is a year round dedicated shop of enthusiasts.
I like shopping there for the very reason that the staff there are experts and they know their fireworks. They can give practical advice on what to buy and how things work, and also give their opinions on which are the fireworks they like. I’ve been buying my fireworks stash from there for the last few years, each year spending a bit more and more, but it’s all worth it when friends come round or the evening and leave saying:
“Colin, I’m coming back again, you get the BEST fireworks!”.
Tee hee. My advice to you is to look for your local fireworks enthusiasts shop, pay a little more for quality and avoid the cheap oportunist shops who ship in a container load and when it’s gone, it’s gone.
Can you get free stuff if you look hot? Are we men that fickle that we a swayed by the twinkling eye of a pretty girl? A great idea for a video and I love the brazenness of the girl.
I thought the bus test was a bit biased as she didn’t ask when dolled up, she just walked on. But clearly she’s proved the point. Fellas, hang your heads in shame….
I was recently asked for advice on how someone could get that all important first IT job? Like any industry, all IT jobs require 2 things: training and experience, and it’s the experience part that’s hard to get. It’s catch 22, how do you get a job to get experience, without having the experience in the first place? I’m assuming here that the typical entry level approach is not an option, e.g. enrolling on a company’s graduate training scheme, which is the normal way into a new industry.
The short answer is, it’s tricky! You need to look at your own situation to see how you can manage to engineer up some experience. For example the person who asked me did have a couple of things in his favour, he had a Masters degree in Computer Systems, albeit from 20 years ago and he had never used any of the (now way out of date) skills he’d learnt. He was also a senior manager in a small company, which gave him some latitude to implement his own initiatives. This is the advice I gave him on getting that all important IT experience and first job:
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To be honest I think you’re going to find it tough breaking in at a technical IT level with 20 year old classroom skills, despite the MSc from Manchester. I would suggest you spend some time on www.ItJobsWatch.co.uk to get an understanding of what skills are in demand, which are going up and which are going down, what skills apply to which industries and in what combinations. There’s a lot of data there!
Personally if it were me, I’d get into SharePoint (which is a document management and collaboration tool from Microsoft). It seems to be on the rise at the moment. Putting “sharepoint” in the skills section of www.JobServe.com reveals 447 job adverts [at the time of writing] for both contract and permie over the last 7 days for example, and sticking “sharepoint” into itjobswatch shows every role on the rise from last year.
Start like this:
Get a copy of the Microsoft Action Pack You have to become a Microsoft Partner and take a small test, but it’s not hard to learn what you need to pass in a weekend.
Install the SharePoint software, MOSS etc and learn all you can about it.
As it looks like you have some authority at your company, that’s a bonus. Get SharePoint rolled out at your company and take 3 months to personally install it, customise it, tweak it etc.
Then armed with that experience, you should be able to apply for a job as a SharePoint developer / specialist / consultant. Whether you get one will be down to how you present your CV and yourself at interview.
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The 2 key points to take away here are these:
Pick a specialist subject that is in rising demand and learn it. You stand more chance of getting a job if demand is out stripping supply.
Find some way to get some practical experience, even if that’s just doing it at home. SharePoint for example is a web based technology, so you could deploy it and make it available on the web as a demonstration of your abilities.
This first video I took at the same West Wythenshawe Olympic weightlifting comp a few weeks ago. You saw in the previous video Josh Farghaly doing a very impressive 110kg Snatch. Well this is him a little later having a go at beating his own British youth record by Clean and Jerking 135kg.
It’s seemingly the worst possible outcome of any lift you could imagine, but Josh was fine:
Whilst it feels somewhat narcissistic to study footage of myself lifting weights, it does expose several issues still with my technique. As I mentioned on the video, I’ve changed my style for both the Snatch and Clean in the last few weeks.
Specifically for the Clean and Snatch, about a month ago I really started to concentrate on hitting the bar with my thighs on the way up. This helps to really “get the hips in” as they say and promotes full extension of legs and body. Then 2 weeks ago I changed the Snatch again to try to hit the bar off my stomach, rather than the thighs. This is a bit tricky as I have got longish arms and, not to put too fine a point on it, there are things that are best *missed* on the way up, if you see what I mean?
So at the moment I am striving for consistency most of all. Currently every lift feels different from the last, and until I can get that consistency, it’s hard to work on the finer changes to technique. I do also have a reasonable list of things that I think need fixing:
Full extension, evidenced by a slight backward lean at the top of the pull.
Jumping slightly back on the landing (only an inch) not forward.
Minimising the dip on the Jerk.
Keeping arms straight, i.e. no early arm bend.
I still plan to enter the Northern Masters competition in February 2009, which is an official qualifying competition for the British championships in March 2009 at Lilleshall. In order to qualify, I need to lift a combined total (best Snatch + best Clean and Jerk) of 175kg. Considering that video shows me lifting 147kg, I have some way to go!
However I believe I am currently limited by my technique, rather than my strength. I can Front Squat 120kg for example, so I have the strength to clean that, it’s my technique that stops me. I’m aiming then for a 75kg Snatch and 105kg Clean & Jerk. That will give me 5kg spare to play with.
There’s something about lightning, it’s a very primordial energy that is simultaneously unpredictably dangerous and yet enticing. Whenever there’s a thunderstorm outside, it’s always fun to sit and watch the lighting and wonder what it hit. Personally I find these lightning videos fascinating:
Lightning hits the beach just 100 feet away (warning, bad language!)
Back in June I entered my first local club Olympic Weightlifting mini-competition at West Wythenshawe, Manchester. This weekend we did it again. It’s not really a competition, as there’s such a broad range of ages and weights that it’s unlikely you’d find anyone in the same category. So really it’s just for fun and practice in a competition setting. It’s surprising how a roomful of people all staring at you, can put some people off.
Last time I lifted 45, 50 and 55 in the Snatch and 70, 75 and 80 in the Clean and Jerk (see my video on YouTube) so I was hoping to do better this time. However I’ve been changing my Snatch technique, making a major change only last week, so the possibility for disaster was high. Fortunately it went pretty well, I got 50, 55 and 60kg for the snatch, an improvement of 5kg which was nice. Here’s a picture of me just steadying the 60kg snatch at the top, I’m concentrating hard!
Colin McNulty Olympic Weightlifting Snatch 60kg
On the Clean and Jerk we were all surprised by the timing and so were behind on the warm up lifts. I started on 75 but had not even lifted that in the warm up! The 75 was easy however so I jumped to 85 and then 87kg. A nice 7kg improvement on last time. Here’s the top of the clean with Judge Dredd chin going on:
Colin McNulty Olympic Weightlifting Clean and Jerk 87kg
I’ll sort out a video of the day next week as the copy I’ve got with me is too poor quality. Thanks go out again to Les at West Wythenshawe Weight Lifting club for organising it, and the great bunch of lads he has there. Also to the BWLA guys who came to officiate and ref. This was my first lift as a registered British Weight Lifting Association member.
Oh, do you like my spangly new weightlifting suit? Hmmm lycra! 😉
In a break from the normal, today’s Friday Fun post is a free flash game. I took the night off life last night and was up till midnight trying to get to the end of the Medium difficulty level! It’s very simple, easy to learn, and a lot of fun. This is the link:
In essense the game is simple: have have to build a maze for creatures (creeps) to navigate through. The goal of the creeps is to get to their exit, and your goal is to kill them before they do. So you create your maze not out of blocks, but out of towers that shoot at them. Obviously you either want to create the longest possible route for them to go, and/or to funnel them past your powerful weapon towers.
The key to the game is upgrades (click on a tower to get the upgrade option). A tower upgraded to level 6 (5 upgrades) is more effective than 5 level 1 towers for example. Bang for buck, it invariably costs less too. Here’s a picture of it in play:
For reasons that escape me, these short cut keys aren’t in the instructions that the main game links to:
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