Weightlifting in Penang

No fans, no water, plenty of mosquitos, wonderful coach.

Still sick and weakened from last night but I will be heading back for one final session tonight before packing up my bags to go to Bangkok tomorrow morning.

For those wanting stats on my sessions.

Session 1 (Thursday evening):
I did some warm-up before learning several good morning exercises. The coach, Balasingam, is adopting the Bulgarian system.
So I told him about my weakness and we did about several sets of exercise 12 reps and gradually loaded the weights by 10kgs until I couldn't do 12 reps anymore.
Firstly, it was the snatch pull, 12 reps, using a 20kgs barbell and repeated until 45 kgs. This is also the first time I learnt to use the wrist ropes to help my grip.
Then it was switched to 8 power snatch, (3 below the knee, 3 above, 1 below and 1 above) did about 4 reps of this.
Some jerk extension, 5 front and 5 back. the weights were increased every 3 sets from 25 kgs to 45kgs.
Finally since I have some problem with my squat so we just did leg curls. Every 2 sets, we added another 15 kgs.
So the initial 15kgs leg curl ended being 60kgs. Boy were my thighs very sore.
The training partners were 2 juniors and 2 masters.

Session 2 (Friday morning):
With the tournament starting in the afternoon, I definitely wanted to get in some practice before it starts.
I did the warmup and good-morning exercise before doing the clean pull same using the same repetition as last night. About 12s reps before doing the 3-3-1-1.
Then the real McCoy, back squat. According to Balasingam, my squat is a full squat because my thighs do touch my calves. So everything done from a 25kgs barbell up to 45kgs barbell was done easily with 12 reps.
When we increased it by another 10kgs, I could only d0 5 reps and Balasingam immediately added another 10kgs on top of that to make it 65 kgs. (I thought that I couldn't lift it since I failed at doing 60kgs past 1 rep back in KL).
And the confidence booster was that I did 4 reps in 8 sets. Yippee.
While Balasingam left for work, I finished off the session with 3 sets of chin pull, 12 reps before warming down and leaving for Georgetown.

3rd Session (Monday):
After sleeping in late, thanks to some late nights with the Singaporean contingent, I head straight to the gym from the hotel and started feeling some queasiness (which was a sign of worst things to come, thanks to the stupid hotel)
After the normal warm-up and good-morning exercises, head straight to the 3-3-1-1 snatch pull. did about 8 sets with adding weights from 25kgs to 45kgs every 2 sets.
We switched to the clean pull 3-3-1-1 and and did the same amount of sets with the weights hitting 55kgs this time.
Then jerk extension, 5 fronts and 5 backs. The weights gradually increased from 25kgs to 45kgs but I wasn't able to generate enough strength and speed on the 45kgs weights (despite the reps going down to 3 each). Anyway about 10 reps of that, warm down and I headed back for some R&R.