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Austin has been blast. The people are kind, the barbecue is on point and you can even find a gym with a legit weightlifting set-up open for public use early on a Sunday morning! . Thanks to Ursula's (@texasbarbellclub) gym recommendation, I got a chance to move around a bit this morning before jumping on my flight back home to San Francisco. If you're ever in the Austin area and need a place to train, this facility has all the amenities of a globo, CrossFit AND weightlifting gym! -- Bonus Edit: For those of you who like picking up little tidbits, blocks are a great tool to use to train force production from the transition point of your second pull. You can push pretty hard and not have it take a heavy toll on the body. . Whereas 87kg would normally be a pretty (read extremely) heavy clean for me these days, pulling from the blocks allows me opportunity to work the timing of my leg drive and lat pull without beating myself up too much -- if at all. . My recent trip to China has allowed me to develop a stronger awareness and understanding of how/what it means to drive the legs into the bar while I continue to finesse the timing and control of the lats. And as Coach @wuchuanfu would say, "More movement. More lats!!" #FuBarbell (at Hyde Park Gym)

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Got hops? Thursdays are active recovery days at the training base where it can range from a full rest to playing sports, practicing drills, mobility and the such. The girls today are playing around with some plyometrics and speed drills this morning. This young athlete videoed here is 19 years old and 5'2" with BW 55kg, 95kg SN and 121kg CNJ) jumping a 28 plate stack. NBD. - Bonus Edit: the girls this morning did some plyometrics, then they go for a light jog, work mobility and take it easy for the rest of the day. I made friends with one of the girls today Li Si and I learned a lot of the athlete lifestyle which I will share more of in a later post. #FuBarbell #FuzhouWLcamp #ChinaWeightlifting (at Mawei)

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Yuan Chengfei (77kg BW, 2017 Asian Champ -- SN 160kg & CJ 195kg at that comp) hitting 150kg and missed 155kg behind (swipe left). - The Chinese emphasize driving the quads into the bar and using the legs to push the bar up. This can be conceptualized by imagining yourself preparing to do a broad jump as the bar is crossing the knees. You are obviously not trying to jump forward but instead you are trying to drive by pushing the bar up. - I've done an edit by first playing it in real time and then slowing the video down in the second repeat. You can see as the barbell is passing the knees that the legs and seat of the hips start moving forward towards the bar. If that is not obvious, look down at his feet and notice how the heels start breaking off the floor. This is a symptom of the legs and hips driving through under heavy load. - This post is to showcase what is taught at the schools I have been visiting and the concepts they use to teach the technical foundations of their movements. If you are to try this on your own, your aim is not to try and consciously lift your heels up or lift through the forefoot. What's happening in the video is unconscious and happens naturally as the athlete tries to bring the bar to the power position to initiate the final extension. - Bonus Edit: There are so many Olympic, World and Asian champions here that it is seriously getting hard for me to keep track. Thank Buddha for @iamjwjw for being my Asian elite athlete Wikipedia. He's gonna put together a list of all the champs training at this location so you guys can see just how stacked this place really is. #FuBarbell #FuzhouWLcamp #Chineseweightlifting (at Mawei)

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Welp, if you would like to know how the Chinese weightlifting athletes warm-up, I've officially seen athletes ranging from age 8 up to Olympic Champion level do this exact barbell warm-up with very slight variation to prepare their bodies for training. Except, this little girl gets my vote for best style and most adorable. - Bonus Edit: This school is a true developmental school where the kids come to learn how to move and lift. However, the secret is that there really is no secret. All the exercises you see on YouTube being performed at the high level, you will see the young 8-13 year olds doing all the way down to kipping dips, kipping pull-ups, handstand push-ups, dynamic lat rows and other bodyweight accessory movements including all of the barbell main and accessory lifts. - You take that times massive amounts of volume over 9 sessions/week over the course of 8-10 plus years with a low coach to athlete ratio and what you end up with are finely tuned self aware and fully actualized top level athletes. The end. #FuBarbell #FuzhouWLcamp #Chineseweightlifting (at Nanpinghsien, Fujian, China)

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Coach @wuchuanfu droppin' 130kg like it's hot in his yeezys and fancy crabby-lobster-fish pants. - Bonus Edit: Coach Wu says athletes that came out of the Nanping area have very good support strength. As a youth (look back a few posts to the 11-13 year olds), they were required as part of their training to handstand walk 60m without falling down. They would walk 30m and then turn around to walk back. Because of all of the foundational work, Coach Wu really doesn't have to train much to maintain a very strong overhead support position. Case in point? Insert quote/metaphor here about laying a strong foundation and building a big house. #FuBarbell #FuzhouWLcamp #Chineseweightlifting (at Mawei)

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Last one for the books before turning in for the night. I'm trying not to go to bed before 9PM so the jet lag doesn't kick my butt and have me starring at the ceiling at 3AM in the morning. - Accessory work in the form of small muscle training (aka bodybuilding) is done after every session. Here's a popular but probably controversial one for you guys -- the kipping behind the neck pull-up. I've mostly seen the boys knocking these out in spades the last few times I've been to China. This is the first time I'm witnessing the women do this exercise so that deserves the limelight IMO. - This exercise is great for building awareness of the lats, strengthening the mid and upper back and the added momentum allows for extra reps and aggression through the movement. A common theme through most of their accessory movements is that everything that can be done is done with momentum. - According to Coach @wuchuanfu, the momentum teaches athletes to be aggressive which translates into being aggressive around the barbell. The bigger the movement, the more dynamic an athlete can be, the better. All under control, of course. Being tightly immersed in the CrossFit community, this ideology gels just fine with me. #FuBarbell #FuzhouWLcamp #Chineseweightlifting (at Mawei)

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We interrupt your regularly scheduled "Diane Fu does China" programming to make an overdue congratulatory shoutout to Lisa Warren (@lrwarren88) who represented FuBarbell at USAW 2017 National Championships earlier last month (5/11-5/14). - This was Lisa's first national event where she had an outstanding performance going 5/6 (91kg SN, 107kg CNJ) with a 198kg Total in the 63kg BW class. These results earned her a silver medal in the snatch and 4th place overall. - We are incredibly proud of her and excited to see how far her efforts will carry her as we continue to move her further down the path of weightlifting. And thank you @hookgripusa for capturing this moment! - Bonus Edit: Lisa works as a coach down @SFCF, likes drinking margaritas and crushing sandwiches. #FuBarbell #SanFranciscoCrosSFit #USAW #USAweightlifting (at The Westin Lombard Yorktown Center)

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Accessory work is imperative to creating and maintaining a balanced and healthy system. Just purely performing the snatch, clean and jerk is too specific and can lead to overuse strains in the muscles and joints of the body. - The Chinese call this "small muscle training" because it develops the smaller muscles to support the bigger ones and it starts at a young age all the way up to the senior level. Younger athletes perform sets of 6-8 while the seniors do anywhere from 4-6 depending on exact age and rep scheme. - The next time you think about skipping your accessory work because you're limited on time or because you left it all on the platform, feel free to use this video as inspiration. Here are some 11 year old girls knocking out kipping pull-ups and dips like a boss! - Bonus Edit: I will never complain about a pull-up bar being "too high" for me and needing to pull out a box to jump up ever again. #FuBarbell #FuzhouWLcamp #Chineseweightlifting (at Nanpinghsien, Fujian, China)