About Me
my name is Summer, originally from Bedfordshire in England, living on the beautiful island of Anglesey in North Wales. I started OLYLFT because I have a strong passion for Weightlifting, and more specifically, teaching others Weightlifting.
In recent years, weightlifting has grown in popularity and my mission is to ignite this further, by teaching, helping, and improving people of all abilities, complete beginners included, to enjoy the sport as I do, lifting well, with good form.
I have been into fitness for as long as I can remember, even coming home from school and completing a workout. I discovered CrossFit in 2017 and that is where the real passion developed. Fast forward 3.5 years, I obtained the CF-L1 cirtification and began teaching classes at The CrossFit Place in Gaerwen, the only CrossFit gym on Anglesey. I particularly enjoy teaching the olympic lifts. I have great pride in the amount of time and effort I put into learning and performing them well myself when I began CrossFit, that I love seeing the same commitment arrise in others, and the joy it ignites when a lift is completed well. This moved my focus to weightlifting more than any other aspect of CrossFit, not only in my own training, but also the techniques of teaching it. To deepen my own knowledge and understanding of teaching the sport, I obtained the British Weightlifting L2 qualification. Since then, I continued teaching CrossFit classes, as well as teaching weightlifting in a 1:1 and small group setting, along with designing my own weightlifting programming which I use in my own training. Again fast forwarding only a short amount of time, the opportunity arrose to open olylft, an idea which felt more of a pipe dream than a reality, but here we are!
The kind feedback I recieve from gym members and clients has been overwhelming, spurring me to continue down this avenue to helping people discover a love for weightlifting and utilising it to stay fit, strong, and healthy.
What Is Weightlifting
Weightlifting, or otherwise referred to as olympic Lifting, focuses around two lifts, the clean and jerk, and the snatch. Weightlifting is a technical, strength/power sport which requires us to have or learn excellent body and spacial awareness, coordination, control, speed, flexibility, stability and of course strength.
What do the weightlifting classes entail?
A typical weightlifting session starts with all important mobility, highlighting any areas of limitation and tightness, specifically focusing of the areas in which affects our ability to move freely during the olympic lifts. Stability is next, switching on those muscles for the ability to control our body positions from head to toe to the best we can. Next we move to the technical elements of either the clean and jerk or snatch, followed by completing the lifts as a variation, or in full. The remaining of the session focuses on assistant excercises, be that back/front squat, deadlift variations, and/or pressing movements such as shoulder press. Accessory work may also be included, allowing us to focus on the muscle groups in a different way, often targeting smaller muscle groups, helping us get stronger and more adept in a variety of movement patterns, directly helping us get better and stronger at the primary exercises. Conditioning pieces are also involved to enale us to have a full and well rounded regime.
1:1 and Online weightlifting programs are also structured very similar, depending on the goals of the client. Note that I also offer other forms of fitness programs at request, whether that be gerneral strength without olympic lifts, core strength, pull up strength etc, just ask!