Chapter Seven: Some advancements
My next major competition was in May 1999, when I went to Melbourne for the Musashi Invitational. I was back to form by then, having fully recovered from my wrist injury and I broke Australian records with a 75kg snatch and 165kg total. I just missed a 95kg Clean and Jerk. It was obviously a big improvement from the 145kg total I did in Nauru and I expect it had people all over Australia making all sorts of assumptions about how I was able to make such a large improvement in such a short time. People of course wouldn’t have known I had been injured just before doing a 160kg total. Also people in other states weren’t aware that we were training 8 times a week, including those twice daily sessions. Apparently most of our interstate rivals were only training 3-4 times a week.
In the next couple of competitions I was trying to secure a 170kg total to qualify for the 1999 World Championships. At the end of July, just 2 weeks before the Australian Championships in Melbourne, I managed to get this total. I was so happy! It was probably my first really big achievement. I remember Michelle giving me a big hug and being really excited and genuinely pleased for me. The team wasn’t to be selected until a few weeks later, but I was really optimistic I would be on it.
The next day I went to a training camp at the AIS in Canberra for a week. I was invited along with the top 6 girls in Australia who were all hoping for selection for the Olympics. All except Michelle were there, as she had a recurring knee injury. This was the first time I was away without Luke coaching me, as Jack Walls (WA) and Mike Keelan (Qld) were in charge of the Australian Women’s Team at that time. It was certainly interesting, being at the AIS and meeting the other girls for the first time. I had met Caroline Pileggi (WA) and Saree Williams (Vic) briefly before but now I got the chance to actually get to know them. They were very funny girls, so most of the week we spent laughing. I also met Amanda Phillips (Qld), Simone Ingram (Vic) and Melissa Bethune (Qld). It was certainly an eye opener. Watching how the others trained, how long they took to get themselves ready to warm up, their attitudes, etc. I got the impression that a couple of them were fully expecting to be on the Olympic team, a fait accompli. We heard there would be 4 spots for women on the Australian Olympic team, because Australia was host nation.
While at the AIS, we had access to physiotherapy – although it was made clear we weren’t welcome, especially if we had pre-existing injuries. We also had a psychologist there (which I avoided – I didn’t want anyone messing with my head), and a masseur. Plus we had lectures on drugs in sport, stretching, core stability, self massage, V-scope analysis of our techniques, as well as time for recovery, saunas, spas and the ice cold plunge pool and general chit chat.
The V-scope was a complete waste of time in my humble opinion. They put this technical contraption on the end of the bar to log by computer the movement of the bar through your lift. It’s supposed to tell you how bad your technique is, if you swing the bar out, etc. Apparently they did it the previous year also and everyone was commenting how bad Michelle’s “swing” was – ironic since she was the best lifter in Australia. I couldn’t (and still can’t) help wondering whether it really mattered. Of course ideally you should try to make your technique as good as possible, but Michelle’s situation implied either one of two things: 1: that other factors come into play which are equally, if not more, important than technique, such as strength or the right mind; or 2) the standard of other female lifters in Australia was really shit if someone with such poor technique is on top! Will leave this up to you to ponder which was the case!
Meeting Melissa from Queensland was an experience in itself. She was extremely obese, our super-heavy-weight lifter. I had an interesting conversation with her about diet and nutrition one morning. She was interested in losing weight (a wise goal since she was weighing around 150kg, no exaggeration) and was asking me questions about how I used to make weight when I used to diet down to 52kg as a Powerlifter. Her doctor had advised her to lose weight and she had apparently seen a nutritionist but nothing was working. I discovered why later when I watched her eating habits. One lunch she packed so much melted cheese onto her toast that her fork stood upright in it. I felt sick watching her eat it! But I also felt sorry for her. Mentally she was quite immature (perhaps not a fair comment as she was quite young – around 18 years old) and she seemed to lack mental discipline. This was not only displayed in some of her training sessions when she’d crack the shits and plonk herself down on the platform in a tantrum for a while, but also by her eating habits. She obviously had a problem of some sort which was driving her to eat excessively. I couldn’t help wondering about her future and was genuinely concerned for her long term health.
During one of our lectures on stretching we were told to go for a jog or brisk walk to warm ourselves up before we stretched. Simone and I decided to walk (to conserve energy for training later), while the others all (stupidly in my opinion) bolted, including Melissa. Melissa nearly keeled over and apparently suffered a minor asthma attack.
We also had skin fold tests done at the AIS – Melissa complained about that to no avail. Again, I didn’t really see the point at the time. I believed strength levels didn’t correlate with fat levels. For example, Meagan was heaps leaner than I was. She had about 12% body fat while I was about 18%, yet I was lifting better weights. Plus you only have to look at the strength of the superheavy weight lifters to realise fat doesn’t seem to harm them in their feats.
I would find out later about the benefits of skin fold testing!
Coming up next – Chapter 8: A rollercoaster of Low’s & High’s