Counting for Olympic Weightlifting

For those of you thinking about doing your first weightlifting meet, you’ll need to learn how to count. Counting for an Olympic lifting meet is critical for timing your warm ups and making sure you’re ready when your name is called and the bar is loaded. For those who don’t know the way a weightlifting meet works, each athlete gets three attempts to snatch as heavy as possible and the three attempts to clean and jerk as heavy as possible. The bar is always going up in weight. You must go when the bar is at the weight that you want to attempt. If two or more athletes want the same weight, the one with the lower attempt will go first. When the bar is loaded, an athlete has one minute to start the lift. If an athlete is following himself, he is given two minutes instead of one. For example, say there are three athletes named A, B, and C (their parents were super weird to name them that), and A is opening at 100 kilos, B is opening at 105 kilos, and C is opening at 115 kilos. The bar is loaded to 100 kilos and A goes first and makes it, and he wants 105 kilos for his 2nd attempt. The bar is then loaded to 105 kilos and since B is on his first attempt, he goes first, followed by A. They both make it, and A goes to 110 kilos and B goes to 112 kilos. They both miss – B missing his 2nd and 3rd attempts at 112 kilos. So, A and B are finished before C has even started. This is why counting is so important. C might have been thinking that two people are before him, and that he would be up in two minutes, but that actually took seven minutes. When there are more people at the meet, this time can add up quickly and you may have 45 minutes before you start. So, to count attempts, you look at the judge’s table and make assumptions about other athletes’ attempts to see when you’ll be up. Each attempt roughly works out to one minute. Now you know when to start warming up and you’ll check back periodically to see if the timing changes and adjust your warm up accordingly. There are a lot of other aspects to “meet day” that deal with the counting system and manipulating attempt selection to be successful, but now you know the basics to get started.