Snatch clean sweep for Manchester
THE second Manchester Weight Lifting Series for 2015 held its first charity competition of the year at Life Leisure’s Houldsworth Village Gym in Reddish.
Building on the growing interest that now surrounds the weight lifting scene locally, a strong field weighed in to contend for the first time on the Snatch element of lifting.
The technique of the Snatch is to lift the barbell from the ground to overhead in one continuous fluid motion, an explosive and dynamic lift. It is a hard technique to master and at elite level, athletes are able to lift more than their own body weight in a second.
As with the previous Manchester Weight Lifting Series competitions, each participant has three lift attempts, which are then combined with their team members lifts to determine the overall team placings.
The titles, in both the male and female competitions went to Team Manchester. Men’s runners up were Stockport Spartans and in third place, Crossfit OL1.
The women’s competition was extremely close and just beaten into the runner up spot were Crossfit OL1 followed by Crossfit Spectrum in third place.
Andreas Michaelas, British Weight Lifting Regional Development Officer said:
“Congratulations to Team Manchester for their impressive performances. This is the first taste of competition for many of these athletes and judging by the level of enthusiasm and commitment on show here, I think we are heading for an extremely high calibre of competition in the future. The venue and facilities at Life Leisure Houldsworth are superb and we are attracting more and more people into the competitive side of the sport, with many more people trying weight lifting just to keep fit.
“We were also delighted to raise £316 for David Hopkins Foundation which helps individuals and clubs with funding for sport or physical activity here in Stockport.”
The Manchester Weight Lifting Series is team based and is designed for anyone and everyone, from beginners through to advanced lifters.
Andreas and the team at Life Leisure are now looking forward to the second competition in the Series which will be for the ‘clean and jerk’ on 14th June.
The final of the series on 9th August will be a standard weight lifting competition.