AZO Barbell club is a group that is devoted to the classic lifts of the Olympics. Those lifts are the snatch and the clean and jerk. All things done during our training are to achieve the best overall results in these lifts. Due to weightlifting being an extremely taxing lift it requires the athlete to train all aspects of fitness from strength and stamina to flexibility and the development of neural pathways.

Weightlifting is truly for anyone even if you have never participated in any traditional sports. Weightlifting is a practice like golf or gymnastics, meaning that you have to be devoted and committed to the practice.

This all depends on your definition of fitness. The only thing weightlifting wont improve is overall cardiovascular endurance. But with some simple tweaks to the program you can achieve an acceptable amount of endurance. The benefits however far outweigh the downsides, weightlifting is very core-centric and requires you to work all most all movements to improve and also with the explosive nature of these lifts they will increase speed dramatically.

The youngest athlete we will work with is 12 years old and there is no upper limit. The masters level of competition goes all the way up to a 70+ year old category and they do have competitors. We adapt the program to fit the developmental process of the youth as well as the special needs of older bodies.

The simple answer is Yes, but we do not train at maximum loads. Much of our training is done at lower loads so we can work on technique and improve the overall safety and comfort of the lift. Training with heavy weights has been shown to be the most efficient way to improve overall fitness levels. Here is some reading on this very subject.

https://www.acefitness.org/blog/5463/7-benefits-of-heavy-resistance-training

Most the way you look is tied to diet if you want a body like Lu Xiaojun or Mattie Rogers or even Behdad Salimikordasiabi then you will need to not only train like them but also eat like them. Many females also worry about looking bulky and this really doesn’t need to be worried about. Most women do not have the genetics and required hormones to achieve that look and those that do can easily be controlled through diet and training.

No, although that is what we train for. We will have in house mock competitions so you will be slowly introduced to what a competition is like. But you in no way have to compete or do anything that makes you uncomfortable.